Taeres Chronicles

The Story

Like a lot of teenagers who spent their hours on MMORPGs and story-driven RPGs, I had that slightly arrogant spark: "a video game isn't that complicated. I can make one too." I was wrong, of course. But that little bit of arrogance turned out to be the best fuel possible. It gave me the push to actually start.

And above all, I had a story to tell. A character I'd created, one I'd filled entire notebooks about. That character was named Taeres, and here's a small piece of trivia: with one extra "h" added for copyright reasons, it became my handle. To this day I still draw on elements of that universe. It all started here.

The inspiration came from what I was reading at the time: the novels of David Gemmell, and especially the Waylander series. You can feel its spirit in what I was trying to tell.

Under the Hood

I built the game in RPG Maker, first the XP version, then migrated to VX Ace. I used free assets and the built-in character generator to create my protagonists. But the map composition, I did entirely by hand. The writing too, of course.

What I'm most proud of, technically: throwing myself in without overthinking, with a kind of raw simplicity. The project moved incredibly fast at the start, precisely because I just went for it.

RPG Maker XP → VX Ace · Free assets · Built-in character generator

The Wall

The biggest obstacle was exactly that: knowing nothing. I dove in like a hooligan, head first. And it was great. Discovering all the systems, the dependencies, the music, everything that builds an atmosphere. The gameplay mechanics that broke instantly the moment I tried to test them, without me having any idea how to debug them.

It was chaotic. It was fun. And it was my first real lesson in what making a game actually means.

What I'm Proud Of

My pride is simply having started. That initial push, a little arrogant, a little careless: "if everyone can do it, so can I." That exact moment is what set everything in motion.

And for a kid with zero knowledge of game development, managing to produce a game with a real intro, a proper atmosphere, animated characters... that has a special flavour. I'd put fifty, sixty hours into it. For a first attempt, that's no small thing.

What I Learned

Taeres Chronicles made me grasp the sheer scale of game development. All those dependencies, all those layers. I understood it was a craft in its own right, one that brings together a whole range of disciplines. A founding lesson: a game isn't one thing, it's an assembly of dozens of things.

Today

It's a prototype that won't be continued. The project aged very badly across RPG Maker's updates, and it's simply no longer recoverable as it stands. Today, what remains is an intro and a few broken quests.

But it's my launch artifact. The concept was shaky, the project itself was a bit of a mess, and yet I'm still proud of it. Because it's here, precisely here, that the developer I've become took his very first step.