I’m just going to go straight to the point, I want to work on a Persona 4 fangame. With the appreciation for all the fan made content, I thought I’d introduce to you guys a pet project I’ve been fostering for some time now. I really love Persona 4, and lately I've been on a Adventure game kick thanks to titles like Sam and Max and Monkey Island. Since the social element is probably the one part of Persona 4 I've had the most fun with, a Persona 4 Adventure Game sounds like the way to go. (Or it could be a disaster) The game would take place during the last few month’s of the Protagonist’s time in Inaba, sharing RPG elements and emphasizing the interaction between characters. Shadows have been discovered in the real world, and you have to go and confront them, but neither side is exactly attacking each other, rather the Investigation team will ‘negotiate’ with the parallels of the citizens of the town (Within the immediate area of course) to restore order in an episodic series.

Normally, I would’ve made this post showcasing the features that the game has going for it, along with all the pretty graphics, maybe the soundtrack and give a definite release date. Unfortunately I cant really do such a thing when the game is in this state:

Hopefully you havent been turned off by the game at this point, but sadly, this is about 2-4 months of work compromised of concept art, as well as my interpretation of the characters. The Protagonist there looks okay, but I know for a fact that others can surpass my art capabilities for sure. I need artists. Not the best way to say “Hey, I’m ‘hiring’ for a non-paying job!” but its gotta come out at some point, and really the only reason why this blog post is here, other than letting people know what I’ve been up to.

But I dont intend for there to be a lot of work. A lot of inspiration for making this comes from, obviously enough, the episodic Adventure game business mentality from Telltale Games, along with the wealth of Adventure games that a lot of the guys behind Telltale are known for. Content will be reused, episodes will be long enough to keep you interested and more episodes will come out on time.

So you might be wondering (Or probably missed it, its in the first paragraph) why or how is this game episodic? The idea here is to put out content for people to play in a short amount of time. You’ll visit other locations, but certain content like characters would be reused in order to cut down on development time. If an episode can last about 2 to 3 hours, thats about 8-12 hours total (If the game can last four episodes. See? 4 game in the series gets 4 episodes. Huh? Huh?)

Sadly, I’ve still got to tackle the big “Negotiation” part of the game as I’ve been busy with the other elements of the game. Since this is going to be an adventure game, you’ll be talking and interacting with the objects and characters in the game. You wont be dealing with non playable characters that provide only one line of dialogue. You need to talk to people, look for clues to find other people and other shadows. Which is why you’ll be using this:

The Action Ring provides four context sensitive commands that you can do with everything (That you can interact with) in the game. You can use or pick up items with the top command, examine the item with the left command, talk with the person (or object) with the bottom command, or use an item with the right command.

Oh hey, you talk to people to. Actually this is just to show that I’m intending on bringing the graphics user interface from Persona 4 in this game so that this can feel as much as a sequel as this game can possibly be. You’ll also notice on the right hand side of the screen is actually an unfinished element. Its actually material for a second player. Now how is a second player supposed to work in an adventure game? I dont want to reveal too much, but what inspired me to add this is how developers are adding in a second player to games made for a Single Player (Such as the recent Sin and Punishment and both Super Mario Galaxy games) but the second player didnt play as a character, just a helper. What I do like is that the other player is interacting with the game, maybe not as involved in the game as the other player, but the second player wasnt given too many commands that would be too cumbersome for them to understand, and their inactivity did not cause a negative outcome of the gameplay. (At the very least, the second player can’t cause griefing.) It will fit nicely into an adventure game setup, although I intend for the second player to take control of another character and can easily drop in or out at any time.

I may be making a big deal out of nothing, but this project has already sapped out a lot of my spare time, and if I cant generate any interest or any help, this might not be going anywhere, and it’d be a real shame too. I’m getting a lot of good ideas going for this game, and a lot of it sounds like it’ll work out pretty well in the end, and more importantly, we get to see the Investigation Team some more. So let me close this blog post with some of the goals for this game.

• Provide an incentive to drive people to check out Persona 4
• An engaging story spanning four episodes
• Quickly provide content in a short timespan by reusing sprites and some backgrounds
• Beautiful 2D artwork and animation
• Successfully combine the story, characters and setting of Persona 4 in an Adventure game setup
• Feature a unique drop-in/drop-out 2 player co-operative mode
• Use and borrow elements from the Persona series for an Adventure/RPG hybrid.
• Full voice overs and (Hopefully) new music.