Four Island

I've been talking on Twitter a good amount about the fact that I'm making a Mother 3 fangame. I get a lot of questions about it, so I figured it was time to make an FAQ!

if flint doesn't have anything nice to say, he shouldn't say anything at all. i implemented yes/no prompts in my game. #mother3 pic.twitter.com/1FAqCsem6K

— star comes out of nowhere! (@mysticalgloves) February 12, 2021

What's this game about?

The game is a retelling of the Tanetane Island segment of Chapter 7 from Mother 3.

I really like how Tanetane Island digs into the main characters' traumas, but I feel like it didn't do enough with it. Lucas has a lot of insecurities that the game only really scraped (though, to be honest, it did a very good job of scraping them), and Kumatora and Duster barely received any attention.

I'm hoping to use Tanetane Island and its hallucinations as a way to explore these characters that we love, poke at their wounds, and maybe even process them a bit.

I will do my best to provide content warnings when the game is released, but as a start, you can assume that anything Mother 3 itself touches on might show up in my game. That being said, there's no reason to include slurs in my game so I'm referring to the Magifolk as Magifolk.

[tanetane fangame]
same little scene from yesterday, but now everyone is more surprised! pic.twitter.com/EWFK4kaqAd

— star comes out of nowhere! (@mysticalgloves) February 17, 2021

What are you making this in?

This is the actual question I get asked the most, and the answer is: nothing!

Well, sort of. I'm not using any tool like Game Maker or RPG Maker for this project. It's also not a romhack of the original Mother 3.

I'm writing the game engine from scratch in C++ and Lua. I'm using SDL2 for crossplatform graphics, input, and sound.

Most of the assets I'm using are ripped from Mother 3 using some tools I wrote (based on the lovely MOTHER 3 Funland utility). The rest are hand edited by me in Photoshop or Aseprite.

I'm using Tiled as a map editor; my tools export directly to Tiled's format and my game engine reads it back.

[tanetane fangame]
why is there a big mirror in the middle of the forest anyway?#mother3 pic.twitter.com/Hch8jp5HlU

— star comes out of nowhere! (@mysticalgloves) March 6, 2021

You mentioned crossplatform. What will this game run on?

I'm aiming for Windows, Mac, and Linux. I'm doing all of my development on a Mac, so it'll likely be somewhat tuned to that, but I have access to Windows machines and Linux isn't too hard to find, so I'll make sure they all work before releasing.

When is it going to be done?

Unsure! I have a lot of ideas for this game, and while I am having fun making it, I do have a day job that takes up a good amount of time. I'm still making steady progress, but it could take a few more months (right now it is mid-March and I've been working on the game for about a month and a half).

The best way to find out further details as they progress would be to follow me on Twitter!

The game doesn't have a name yet, so I've just been referring to it with [tanetane fangame].

[tanetane fangame]
funny bug i just encountered. this is what being on Mother twitter is like. pic.twitter.com/OMDBVHtmgb

— star comes out of nowhere! (@mysticalgloves) February 18, 2021