This post contains spoilers for Bonerquest. If you want the real full Bonerquest experience, don't read all of this. You have been warned.



Arron Linde used to write for Destructoid, now he's made the move to Shacknews and on most podtoid recordings, he'll show up and talk about the gaming news of the week and share his thoughts on them. One week he came up with the idea for a game called Bonerquest. And on yet another episode, he asked about Suikoden 2. Being the guy that I am, I offered to loan my copy of it to him: if he let me make Bonerquest. For some reason he said yes to it. I tried to explain that I had my own ideas and vision on where to take Bonerquest.The other stipulation was that Rev could keep busting his balls over Ocarina of Time. Arron Linde does not enjoy that Nintendo 64 game. I thought that was a funny running gag, so I threw that in there. That was the easy part though. They were going to ride him over that any way. Now I had to step up and make a game.



First off I threw out most of the ideas they discussed about the hypothetical Bonerquest. Interactive sex scenes and things like that were a bit much. Not that some of the content in my version of Bonerquest isn't a bit much. But still, that seemed to go into places I didn't want to. I knew I wanted to do it similarly to Dragon Warrior (also known as Dragon Quest) and other regular Nintendo role playing games. To evoke that style, I took a quick google search around the internet and found most of the sprites were already available in a format that I could use. Excellent. Now I've a graphical basis for the game.



Next was monsters. I wanted the monsters in the game to be unique and have each section use a different theme. Minor spoilers ahead. One area uses butt based monsters, such as the Butt Viking and Butt Soldier. The open world areas have a poop theme. Turd based enemies roam around. The other areas also have similar body part themed enemies. I won't spoil that for you though. I want to let everyone have a geniune reaction to seeing some of them for the first time. The boss battles in particular will hopefully get a good laugh out of players. Using MS paint to design all these, I think they fit well with the established overworld Dragon Warrior look. I even changed around the battle sprites of your hero so that it looks similar to Dragon Warrior's first person look, but still gives you a sense of seeing your hero in action. My big problem is figuring out the statistics and how much damage each thing does to the player character. How much damage the player does to the enemies. That is one major reason that I want to do a play test with a couple people.



Big spoilers after here: Storyline was the part that I worked the hardest on. I played a game earlier this year that really made me think about how a game is made. Why their made that way. The idea with Bonerquest was to make everything representative or symbolic to gaming. I wanted the game to talk about certain issues that face gamers like me. Guys who don't care if the SEGA or Super Nintendo is better, that just want to play a great game. The idea that once a game is beaten, there isn't any value within it anymore. That you and so many other gamers trade away their games. Stuff like that. Not to get all heavy handed and up its own ass, but I tried to put a little of that in there. I also wanted to do parodies of major game storylines. The "big conspiracy that involves mars or something" plot that a lot of games use. Major characters dying off in an over the top dramatic scene. That was another thing that I knew I wanted. One of my favorite role playing games has a ton of multiple endings, so I wanted to put multiple endings in my game too. Now don't get me wrong, Bonerquest is about fun role playing gameplay, but I did attempt do some art game indy nonsense with it. Not that I'm an overly serious person.



Big spoilers after here: Level design was the one that I wanted to really go crazy with. The quest is structured in a way that you can do the first quest and continue on if you choose to and visit three other dungeons. The game suggests that there is only one dungeon out there, but there are three. Right now I'm trying to put in all the coding to get the different combinations together and have them do different endings. At first I thought just to do simple variations on each other, but that isn't fun. I want radically different full and real endings for Bonerquest. One ending that I alluded to earliar is the conspiracy ending. Lots of little choices can also lead to endings. If you talk to a guard in the first room then talk to the king again, you can finish the game like that in under a minute. I wanted there to be lots of options and things to do. Its just taking me a long time to do all this. I design out how I want my levels to look in MS paint then make it in the RPG Maker and hope to make my little dungeons playable. I put in traps that use telaports, moving obstacles that do damage, and designed a huge labyrinth area for my main dungeons. Pokemon, Zelda, Suikoden, and Final Fantasy influencing the designs. Probably a bit of Dragon Warrior influence in there too. Without making all the dungeons mean to people playing either. I want them to be challenging sure, but not so much that it makes you stop playing. Hence the need for a play test with a few people.



I don't know if the other Destructoid member working on Bonerquest wants to get mentioned by name yet. Someone is helping me do the music for the game and everything that we've talked about between each other has been awesome. They sent me an intro song and I was blown away by it. They're doing really awesome with the soundtrack and I can't wait to hear the full versions of the music. Right now I've only heard the one intro song, but I've full confidence in this destructoid member. Not that I haven't been wrong before, but I think this poster has the goods.



I'm not a game developer. I'm not really a smart guy. Never really been a big artist. I'm just a guy who plays a lot of video games. One of my favorite genres being old role playing games. I wanted to take the best gameplay of the Japenese RPG (JRPG, Dragon Warrior, Final Fantasy) and Western RPG (WrPG, Fallout, Planescape Torment) and put that together. Level grinding and big bosses with cutscenes and dialog trees with lots of characters. I wanted their to be a world to explore and see the different things you could do. Right now I've only two towns in the game and am debating a third town with an arena mode similar to the Gold Saucer in Final Fantasy 7 or the Collusium in Kingdom Hearts. Like a gauntlet of enemies. I've a whole bunch of enemies that I couldn't use anywhere else that I wanted to put into Bonerquest but don't have room for. Some of them are humorous, some of them are awful. Just plain out awful looking. So bad I have to use them somewhere. Maybe when I start doing full disclosure of my dungeon draw ups in paint and all that, I'll have a "enemies too bad for bonerquest post."

So I ask now. Will the gaming audience accept Bonerquest? The Bonerquest as I have envisioned it? I've tried to work in a lot of jokes and in jokes relative to the Destructoid audience as well as some for people that play video games. This is a game that I would want to play. That was my main goal. Make a game that I would want to play myself. The other goal was to make a game that doesn't ask for you to spend four months playing it. A couple days if you're not a big role playing gamer and maybe a night or two if you want to see everything and are the type of player that wants that sort of thing. I made a thread asking about what people liked in role playing games. I tried to put in things people said they wanted in role playing games. Whatever else I can think of to put in, I'll be happy too. I'm really close to being done with the test build. I've a few more areas to map out and have to code in all the endings and their branching paths. I've everything written, I think, so that isn't the problem at this point.

Summary:
I'm building a role playing game that would be out on the Nintendo or Genesis back in the early nintys. Doubtful it would get released due to strong nudity and frequent potty humor, but an old school role playing game. I put in choices like Western Role Playing Games. I put in some grinding and dungeons from Japanese Role Playing Games. Hopefully you'll accept the game for what it is and not what you hope it might have been.

Post Script Additional:
Bonerquest 2: Origins is in the early planning stages. I've two ideas rolling around on how to do it. An old school Lucas Arts adventure game style. Inventory system. Lots of areas to visit related to a central location. Lots of talking and puzzle solving. The other idea was for a combination Mega Man and Castlevania game. Like Mega Man you pick from a selection of bosses and play their levels gaining a new weapon for finishing each boss, like Castlevania you use a melee weapon and it would have a gothic theme to it. Dark and brooding Conan style stuff for both of them. I've a picture in my head of a guy using his genitalia as a weapon to defeat enemies and bosses that are even further out there than those present in Bonerquest: The Awakening. I might end up doing both, depending on if I can figure out how to make an adventure game or a platformer.

Additional Additional:
I'm not making T-shirts or merchandising for Bonerquest. I don't want to sell you the game. This is for fun. This is the way as it is for any indy game. I don't want to make money off the game anyway. Its freeware. I'm not selling you bonermugs or crap like that. You won't get a T-shirt that says "I beat off Bonerquest" or some other goofy slogan. That isn't my style. I just want to make something for people to enjoy. Hopefully it will get done before Christmas, but chances are I might not get it all done before 2009. Like I said, I'm not a programmer and am not a smart man. I'm just a guy who plays lots of Video Games. Since I was two years old I've been playing and I don't think I could stop if I really wanted to at this point. Its in my blood now.

Will you accept the Bonerquest?