Board Thread:Fun and Games/@comment-30093849-20161003161516/@comment-35006067-20180424142158

A bit of necromancy, cause I think other persons may be interested.

In general, the Misao Awards are a good place to look at if you want to find good, free and all-ages, RPG Maker games, even if they're biased towards a certain category of games (namely, the ones striking the nostalgia cords).

As for my personal favorites (all links are safe for work):

Umbra Soul

You play as the dark sorceress trying to summon the god of darkness into the world. The writing may not be as polished as in TLS (the bar is high), but the approach is original, the characters' motives believable, the world consistent, and the gameplay solid.

Characters of note: The conflicted protagonist, her (adoptive) tsundere succubus mom, a one-eyed succubus berserker, a jealous shrinking violet demon king.

Interesting gameplay mechanisms: You can evolve your summons (and it's actually integrated quite well within the story), and unlock a lot of optional, pure fluff, scenes ("your reward is plot").

Luxaren Allure

A traditional RPG, where the heroin fights to seal back the evil her girlfriend has unleashed. Quite classic, but really well-done.

Also 100% yuri.

Characters: Lynette is basically Ginasta, except with more jealousy involved. Also, naga archeologist.

Mechanisms: The final party member has some interesting moves and synergies. She joins a bit late in the game though.

The Grumpy Knight

You play as a Death Knight from your local necromantic kingdom. On a vacation in her native peaceful island. While your family is SUBTLY trying to get you a boyfriend.

Fun, lighthearted, plays well.

Shares the same universe as most games from the same authors.

Characters: The grumpy heroin.

Mechanisms: Several endings, replaying to unlock them does not feel like a chore.

Star Stealing Prince

Young prince learns his little kingdom under the snow may be supported through unsavory means and goes on a quest to uncover the truth.

I don't remember much about the story. I'm however still impressed today by the game's atmosphere. It really manages to convey feelings through color choices, musics, dialogues.

It also plays really well. The boss battles are especially interesting.

Characters: The skeleton bodyguard (death is no excuse for not being nice), the dream demon.

Mechanisms: Status-inflicting moves are actually useful!

Wine & Roses

Basically a storyless game, but with some interesting gameplay: You must defeat a bunch of bosses, and can fight them in any order. When you defeat a boss, it gives you some equipment, which can be pretty useful again some other bosses, and quite useless again others.

The goal is thus to find the optimal order to defeat bosses. The real fun of course starts when you find strategies to defeat bosses without owning their "weakness", and manage to defeat the final boss having skipped most of its underlings.

Exit Fate

A good Suikoden clone. Fun to play, but perhaps a bit too faithful to its model.

Uncommon Time

In an universe where the music of the spheres is a real thing, the heroin must complete a ritual to tune the celestial bodies back together, or bad things could happen to the world (like, eternal winter as "the Earth" goes out of orbit).

Not a perfect game by far. The writing can get lengthy and anvilicious at time, and "the prologue", the part before the real plot and the interesting stuff start, is really too long. But I have a fondness for this game, cause it tries to do things differently with its universe and its characters. Also, lots of classical music references.

Characters: Butch ace control freak, depressive savior.

Note: I've excluded non-RPG from the previous list (like Ib) and commercial games (like OneShot), not because I don't like them, but because this list was long enough at it was.