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What is The Gate?
An episodic action-adventure fantasy game for PC. A world whose people all possess magic abilities is under threat from a sprawling army of masked savages. Sharing a twisted collective consciousness, they stop at nothing to steal and imprison the souls of all who even think of opposing them.
They call themselves the "Gate" between those born worthy of power and those born unworthy. To steal another's soul is to gain their abilities, and the Gate as a collective aim to be the only ones who possess the abilities of souls.
The Gate's biggest enemies are SoulSeekers: brave, daring rebels who work against the Gate to return stolen souls to their rightful hosts. After decades of war, one group of SoulSeekers, the Zikiu Gang, may have finally found a way to end the threat of the Gate once and for all.
What they need is the co-operation of a young woman, the daughter of the only SoulSeeker the Gate ever feared, the woman who calls herself "Magma."
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What do you need to know about The Gate?
In late 2014, GamerGate was brought upon an undeserving world. For those who don't know, GamerGate was a months-long campaign of hatred and harassment against women in the games industry by a mass online-gathering of despicable people. It was one of the most disgusting things I had ever witnessed. How the games industry could be brought to THIS profoundly sickening point was beyond me.
I didn't just want to sit there. I had to say or do something about GamerGate. What, I didn't know, but SOMETHING had to be done.
I made the decision to drop everything I was doing and get back into game production. The Short Ass Podcast was sidelined, Noakes Network was abandoned and every series attached to the channel was discontinued. I wanted to build a company whose mission statement was to help make the games industry a much more positive place, through it's conduct and it's creative output.
The name of the company? YESMODE.
The first YesMode game? Whatever made sense to make as a first title, whatever would make the most impact in a post-GamerGate world and whatever would allow the brand of YesMode, and the mission statement it was trying to convey, to spread across the widest base of gamers. That game would become "The Gate."
I didn't care how I produced The Gate at first, just as long as I could get it out there FAST. Therefore, since I knew RPG Maker XP inside-out from my Lost-Sorceress days (and since the newer RPG Maker models, VX and VX Ace, were, in my opinion, worse than XP to make games with), I would use XP as my Gate-production-program of choice. Having spent years honing my music and graphic development skills, I had no worries at all about making my own assets for The Gate.
I wanted to create an almost children's-book-like story for The Gate, conveying the lessons to be learned about how we as people should treat each other after GamerGate. I went for the classic-Nintendo approach of making the graphics as charming and welcoming for the child in each gamer as possible. Not to such an extent though that would nullify the grim, Gate-haunted atmosphere I wanted each area to exude.
The characters undergo numerous hardships that spawn from the rampant horrors of "The Gate" (who as a group metaphorically represented GamerGate advocates, like you couldn't tell from the name!) and face these horrors in an upfront, devastating and genuinely human way. I wanted to blend this heavy tone with a spirited, approachable tone so that players of all ages, no matter what personal tastes they have, could enter the world of the game and feel the horrors of The Gate without being disturbed enough to discontinue play (and thus not be exposed to the full story). The game's message could reach as many players as possible in this way.
I made sure the dialogue and situations of the characters were genuine and human, not forced or "gamey" the way certain RPG narratives tend to be. Each mechanic of the game is designed to create legitimate character connection at all times, whether you seek deep character connection or couldn't care less, that connection will happen for you.
If you don't bond with the characters because the story strikes a chord with you, you'll bond with them for the usefulness of their abilities. The bond WILL happen either way. If you aren't desperate to save and protect those trapped in Shells because of the story, you'll feel that desperation because getting hit once with a Shell in hand means Game Over. One way or another, The Gate will draw empathy from you.
In getting to the root of GamerGate's stream of rage, I noticed some dangerous traits of games: Firstly, through a simple mishandling of rules and pace, games can create an unnaturally frustrating environment for the player. Secondly, games can create consequence-free landscapes where players can murder countless approximations of humans without being stopped or questioned. In enough games, this amount of murder is presented as rewarding. Finally, games can be built in such a way where the player's actions become autonomous and emotional investment in the game disappears completely.
To combine these traits is to create a game that encourages constant autonomous apathetic violence in an increasingly frustrating way. If a game like this was played as much and as obsessively as the biggest hit-games in the world are, it could alter your state of mind to the point where a GamerGater-attitude wouldn't seem like a problem at all. Not to say that these kinds of games are the SOLE cause of GamerGater-attitudes, but they certainly don't help matters.
What scares me to this day is that SO MANY GAMES possess ALL THREE of these traits in tandem. My biggest aim with The Gate was to AVOID these three traits. By utilising attack-then-wait mechanics over non-stop button-mashing, the game makes the player think about each attack and rewards players for more patient and considerate play; none of the Shells can be rescued by storming through the game angrily.
The Gate provides no environment free of consequence; forcing yourself to kill a monster just because you CAN may ultimately cost you your life, the better option may be to strike it once, knock it back and move away. That's not to say sparing monsters is always the best plan, the game simply wants you to think more deeply about each kill, but not to enforce pacifism so stiffly that you resent it. At no point does The Gate allow the player to switch off and play autonomously, demanding player concentration by giving them only three hit-points and refusing to display them on-screen, thus forcing the player to keep track of them mentally.
The Gate was intended as an episodic saga. I would release a handful of new missions on an annual basis rather than try to make an entire game all at once, thus not releasing the game for years. I wasn't prepared to do a Lost-Sorceress and make a full game on my own in one instalment a SECOND time! An episodic model would allow me to weave interest in the game gradually over many years, causing the biggest surge in interest for the saga's final episode, as fans crave to know how the story ends. This excitement wouldn't be stirred up the same way if the full game was released all at once.
At present, The Gate's first episodes exist only as a beta, which you can play below. Only a few aspects of the beta are unfinished, such as music. Production stalled on The Gate when RPG Maker MV, the newest RPG Maker, was released in October 2015. Up until MV, RPG Maker projects could only be released for PC. With MV, you could now create games for Mac, Android and iPhone. It made sense to transfer The Gate from XP to MV.
Unfortunately, the transfer would be anything but smooth! MV's map-rendering process was completely different to XP's and it would take some time to get used to. In the meantime, I would release Magma Blast for PC and Mac just to make sure YesMode had SOMETHING to sell as The Gate was being developed. That, however, is a story for another post!
Want me to get more game work out to you? Please go to patreon.com/lenaray - That's...
...and donate to keep me not-starving as I game-develop!
MINIMUM PC SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS TO PLAY THE GATE BETA
OS: Windows 7/8/8.1/10
PROCESSOR: Intel Core2 Duo or better
GRAPHICS: DirectX 9/Open GL 4.1 capable GPU
IN OTHER WORDS:
Any machine, however limp, will run the Beta. Unless you need a new machine THAT badly.
HOW TO DOWNLOAD AND INSTALL
1 - Click where it says DOWNLOAD THE GATE BETA at the bottom of this page.
2 - After downloading the .zip file named "The Gate - Windows-Only Beta," go to your Downloads folder, right click on the .zip file, select "Extract Files" and click OK (or "Extract All," then "Extract" if that's what your computer says).
4 - Open the extracted folder, also named "The Gate - Windows-Only Beta" and open the file inside named "Game." (The file with the round, orange symbol. Don't try to open the other files named "Game," they won't do anything.)
5 - That's it! Enjoy the game! When you are finished, select "Exit" from the Title-Screen Menu or Pause Menu (access it using the controls explained below).
GAME CONTROLS
Arrow Keys: Move Player
Enter: Main Function Button (talk to people, open doors, etc.)
Esc: Cancel Button
Space: Pause/unpause game
D: Use first ability
S: Use second ability (if unlocked)
Alt+Enter: Turn Full-Screen On/Off
NONE OF MY DOWNLOADS CONTAIN VIRUSES
I promise you from the bottom of my heart, and if I'm lying you can sue me, there are no viruses in these downloads, nothing that will hack you, no scams, nothing to worry about at all. I would never in my life upload anything unsafe to the internet. You'll just be downloading the .zip file to extract/unzip, open and play. That's all there is to it!
WARNING: GAME CONTAINS VISUAL EFFECTS THAT MAY BE UNSUITABLE FOR PEOPLE WITH EPILEPSY.
>DOWNLOAD<
THE GATE BETA
Any questions, confusion or compliments about The Gate? Leave a comment below!
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QUICK GUIDE TO MY GAME WORK - PART 4: MAGMA BLAST
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QUICK GUIDE TO MY PODCAST WORK - PART 1: SHORT ASS PODCAST
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