I'm making a game to propose to my boyfriend with...

...and I'm fine sharing it here because he never reads my blogs.

As you probably know - if you've read any of my other posts - I quite like RPGs.  I've tried to make games with RPGMaker before, but I started off too ambitious and then got distracted and lost where I was for a bit.  This game will be much shorter and it has a deadline of the end of this month.  My boyfriend is expecting a proposal in February (or he gets to propose in March), so I'm aiming for January to keep the surprise element.  The ring - black ceramic and lapis lazuli - is being made in America, so hopefully it will arrive in time.  It's not a huge problem if it arrives later, though it would be nice to have it ready.

My game - which I'll share here after completion and maybe on Steam if I can figure out how - will be a short RPG made with the free version of RPGMaker XV Ace, since the expensive version is like £60 and I am a poor student.  I'm aiming for 1-2 hours of gameplay, split into five segments.  These segments mirror a walk the boyfriend and I did in our first year, from Manchester to Birmingham.  It took us five days to cover about 80 miles and we stayed in AirBnBs along the way.  For the boyfriend, this was very much LOTR inspired, and I watched all the movies with him on his birthday so I could put in some LOTR elements.  I also read The Hobbit.  So far, the only joke I've actually included is calling the main villain "Sour Ron", but the thought is there.

The plot of the game itself will be about two people who fight Sour Ron, lose, and are cursed.  One loses his memory entirely, and the other loses some of her memory and her true form - she spends 90% of the game as a rose instead.  The two go on a journey to find and defeat Sour Ron, in the hopes that it will restore their memory/personhood.  Along the way, they discover that the journey itself is the important part.

My mental soundtrack for this is In the Beginning from Anastasia, for several reasons.  Firstly, it was the song I listened to when I attended my interview at this university, where I ended up meeting the boyfriend in halls in our first year.  "No one told me I was going to find you.  Unexpected, what you did to my heart".  Secondly, it reminds me of Shadow Hearts, which is one of the first stories that defined love for me.  Both thematically - the idea that, at the end, I want to be standing at the beginning with you - and, more literally, because Anastasia is a playable character in Shadow Hearts II.