[Developing] Totama: A Pocket Monster RPG inspired by Pokemon, Zelda, and Stardew Valley

[Trainer Asher]

Totama is an in-progress pocket monster adventure RPG inspired by Pokemon, Zelda, and Stardew Valley.
Explore the nation of Ukiyo, the floating world, a continent in the clouds.

Bond with the wild Totama, challenge others in heated battles and skillful revels,
rebuild Ukiyo Village and foster a thriving garden,
and calm the Angry Yokai that are entering the mortal world.

TOTAMA
The Floating World

FOLLOW TOTAMA and join the COMMUNITY
TWITTER --- DISCORD​

Totama began as a Pokemon fangame, but we realized that so much of what the game could be was limited by Nintendo, the Pokemon world/lore, and limited engines in older Pokemon games. Deciding to code a game from the ground up, we realized it was time to make a new game altogether FOR the Pokemon Fangame/Fakemon community that wasn't held back by Trademarks and old hardware.

In-game sprites, assets, UI, and resolution mock-up. Gray is feeling Violet today in the Windy Valley.​

STORY and SETTING​

Spoiler:

Totama takes place in Ukiyo, the floating world, a landmass floating in the clouds. The people of Ukiyo possess their "Tama", or spirit orbs, their spiritual energy in glowing orbs that hover around them. Your Tama allow you to express your feelings and emotions with others, and form close bonds.

Concept of the player character, Gray's overworld sprite with one Tama floating overhead. Gray's mood today is "Purple".​

The story begins in Mitama Town, a town without Totama, except for your Appa's partner Totama. Appa is old, and wakes you up to teach you how to tend to the garden. Appa teaches you to wield a spirit sword to cut grass and reap crops, and to cast a wind gust to clear debris.

That night, angry Yokai attack your village while chasing a fleeing Totama. Using your spirit sword and wind magic you fend off the Angry Yokai. You find the scared Totama, Riuki, the Little Cloud Totama, clutching a Moon and Sun Petal, and care for it overnight while Appa figures out how to care for it. Appa creates the Petal Flute from the Sun and Moon petals, and using the petal flute you boost Riuki's morale and it offers to bond its Tama with you. By wearing Riuki's Tama along with your own, Riuki joins your party, and it will be with you for the journey ahead.

Riuki, the Little Cloud Totama.
A magical Totama from an unknown place. Riuki's spirit is deeply connected to the floating world, and it seems to adapt to all of the environments it encounters.​

In the night the Angry Yokai attack again, destroying Mitama Town, and gnawing away at the root of the World Tree that binds your village to the floating world. You, Riuki, and Appa, along with other villagers escape to the mainland before Mitama Village floats away into the clouds.

The villagers are wary and fearful of your Totama, but ask you to travel north through the great Valley of the Wind to go to the roots of the World Tree and find a new settlement for a village.

This is where your adventure starts. You will meet amazing characters, fantastic creatures, rebuild your village, and uncover the secret of the Angry Yokai and the mystery of what is plaguing the World Tree.

Your story begins at the southern end of the Valley of the Wind, modeled after the Wild Area from Pokemon SWSH, and Hyrule Field from Zelda. After traveling north and establishing Ukiyo Village at the base of the World Tree, your journey to stop the Angry Yokai leads in whichever direction you choose. Will you head the frozen Iron Mountains of Jegan in the north west? The scorching sands of Nuhara in the southeast? The people and Totama you meet in each place will vary wildly, and you may make friends on your journey that will be willing to settle with you in Ukiyo Village.

The Valley of the Wind serves as a central area for exploration, bonding with Totama, and item gathering. The Totama you bond with here may not seem impressive now, but depending on where your journey takes you they will evolve into fantastic and powerful creatures.

The Totama, battles, revels, bonding, and more.​

Spoiler:

Totama are not caught, they are charmed and bonded to, and they are not battled in wild battles. Totama are visible in the overworld, and depending on their temperament can be calmed and charmed through playing the music of the Petal Flute and offering gifts and food. Different Totama will respond differently to different actions, and by offering them your Tama they will have a chance to offer to bond with you. The Totama will then follow you, and after sufficient friendship is gained they will offer you their Tama, which you can their wear and add them to your party.

There will be other ways to bond with Totama, such as finding Totama eggs that you can hatch by carrying or incubating in your Garden, and other methods not currently public but heavily inspired by spinoff Pokemon titles.

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Soluna. Soluna is Totama's version of "shininess". A wild Totama has a chance to be blessed by the Sun and appear as a Sol variant, a warmer, brighter colored version, during the daytime, or a wild Totama at night may have been blessed by the Moon, and received the Luna status, a cooler, darker color palette. Totama you have already bonded with will also be able to receive Soluna as the player collects Sun and Moon Petals they find on their journey, and constructs a specific shrine in their garden.

Spoiler:

The Totama are heavily inspired by Pokemon, as well as other monster taming games. The Totama sign-system is similar to Pokemon's system in many ways.
This system is still a work in progress, and any comments on the current type system are welcomed.

Notably, in Totama, some types from Pokemon do not have 1:1 equivalents. The Flying Type, Dragon Type, and Ghost Type are now Traits that act as purely defensive types. A Totama can be Fairy/Frost with the Flying Trait, and it will gain a weakness to Thunder and an immunity to Earth. Additionally, Sound and Light are currently attack-only traits, meaning moves can have the Sound or Light-type, but there is no defensive equivalent.

Sign effectiveness is a work in-progress, but the overall goal is to create a far more balanced system than that of Pokemon. In addition to creating a balanced type-chart, other battle mechanics like super effective/resisted damage modifiers are also being tweaked, so your Frost/Leaf or Stone/Earth Totama can still have tons of utility in battle.

In line with this, the goal of Totama is for every final stage Totama to have the same or a similar base stat total.

Here is a public version of some battle data for Totama, including the Sign Effectiveness chart.

The logic with the formulas is to judge how offensive or defensive a certain type is, and currently we are balancing them so that more offensive types are less defensive, and vice versa. Additionally, we are trying to keep the skew less than Pokemon's, so that types don't have to be purely offensive or defensive!

This doc also includes the equivalent Pokémon type chart, some moves, statuses, hazards, etc. And an in-progress damage calculator that needs to be tweaked. But because the damage calculation formula is there as well, you can also play with that if you would like.

Feel free to make a copy of this document and make your own edits to play with balancing! Any suggestions from looking over this chart, or from changes you make, are highly highly appreciated!

Another change from Pokemon are IVs, EVs, natures, and abilities.
There are no IVs in Totama, each Totama you bond with will be fully capable of challenging the best of the best with proper training.
The EV system is still in progress, but currently you will be able to gain EVs through multiple avenues including minigames and other activities, and EVs will "overflow" meaning you will have access to far more EVs on each Totama that you can use, and you can customize them on the fly with your Totama to change your battle strategy.
There are no "natures" currently in Totama. You can update your Totama's temperament/mood by changing the color of their Tama, their spirit orb. The stat changes from natures have been rolled into a new Skill System.
Abilities have also been rolled into the Skill System. This will be a system where you can assign different skills on the fly once your Totama has gained that skill. Skills will operate as a point system where more powerful Skills will cost more points. Skills may do things like give them a 10% attack boost at the cost of 10% of defence, or a more expensive skill may give a flat 10% attack boost, and a high-level skill may allow some Totama to cause Rain, Hail, Sandstorm, or Smog on entering the field. In effect, your Totama's nature and ability will be swappable in the menu with this system, and you can mix and match skills for different strategies not possible in Pokemon.

In-Development Concepts for Entry Hazards

In Development Concepts for Status Conditions

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Battles in Totama are primarily doubles throughout the entire game. At the beginning of the game, before the people of Ukiyo begin bonding with more than 1 Totama, there will be single battles. Additionally, you may notice that some characters in the story stick with the traditional ways of 1 Keeper: 1 Totama, and you will face them in a 2v1 due to their higher leveled partner.

Most battles will not be forced. You will have the option of engaging in a battle with a interested Keeper that locks eyes with you.

The strongest battler in Ukiyo is determined at the Grand Reunion, a massive world tournament of 32 contestants that have qualified by acquiring at least 7/12 Charms from National Captains that live all across the country. The roster of contestants will rotate every single time the player participates in the challenge, and levels, team size, and strategy will scale to the player's levels.

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Revels are a hybrid between battles and Pokemon Contests. Revels will be more or less equivalent to battles in Totama, and many Totama Keepers will offer to engage in either with you. Revels are still mechanically in-development, but will deal with you and your Totama coordinating together through move combos and Petal Flute music to show that your bond, coordination, pattern recognition, and strategy are more refined than the other team's.

The most skillful revelers compete at the Grand Jubilee, very similarly to the battlers Grand Reunion.

Items, crafting, and farming in the garden.​

Spoiler:

The currency of the world are Petals, brightly colored, shimmering scales that seem to fall from the sky. Petals can be used for more than just currency, and you will find utility grinding them up to make ink, or using them to feed the crops in your garden.

The Garden will be important to you on your journey and it will help Ukiyo Village thrive. You can plant all sorts of fruits and vegetables in the garden and create all sorts of foods, drinks, and deserts from them. Your Totama that you invite to your garden will help you farm, and you may find that the Aqua Sign Totama are very effective at keeping the plants watered, and Fiend Sign Totama seem to find all sorts of rare seeds somehow.

As you travel the world you will find seeds for new plants to grow in your garden. These plants will unlock even more recipes for you to craft, and you will have access to even more effective foods for offering to Totama or giving to villagers as gifts to increase your bond.

Various named NPCs across the world will have a friendship mechanic that you can increase by battling/reveling with them, giving them gifts, remembering their birthday or favorite local holiday, etc. and once a sufficient bond is gained you will unlock additional options for these characters. Maybe they will ask to live in your village, teach you a rare move, or give you a rare item.

Ukiyo Village is being designed to be fully customizable by the player, including selected what buildings, their location, and allowing for future remodels into various designs from across the continent. Full multiplayer functionality for Totama would have the player be able to visit their friends villages, and interact with them in the Garden.

Game Development, Team, progress, and goals​

Spoiler:

Totama is being developed in the free, open-source game engine software Godot, a phenomenal engine for indie 2D pixel RPGs. Using Godot will open up mods, hacks, fangames, and sprite/art injection to anyone.
Totama is being made as a love-letter to the Pokemon fangame, fakemon, and hacking community. Because of this, our goal is to make the project totally open-source, and free-use license so that anyone can modify, hack, create fangames, special versions, or inject their own creations into the game. We are still exploring various Creative Commons licenses at this time, and assets are not currently free-use.

Totama's development began 5 months ago with basic coding of a 2D pixel action RPG in Godot, with about 1 month of dedicated development time during that period that has focused predominantly on concepts, story and characters, worldbuilding, and developing gameplay mechanics. The story, world, and gameplay concepts are all finalized, character/Totama designs have begun, basic mapping and world design has begun, and the current Totama roster (conceptualized or with a working battle sprite) is around 60-70.

Totama is being developed at a native 640x360px (360p) resolution, allowing for a larger game screen with higher graphical intricacy than the pixel-based Pokemon titles. Along with this, Totama is currently using overworld and battle sprites in similar proportions to the Gen 5 Pokemon titles Black/White and Black 2/White 2.

Team:
Ash. Game Director/Developer, art direction and design, coding. Contact me on Twitter, or in the official Totama Discord.
@nathandg. Story, gameplay mechanics and balancing, backend algorithms.
@samuelcastao. OST composition and sound design.
@Syntthetix. Music
@qjmarron. Music direction/oversight
Sandro Arney, character design, art, and portraits

Additional Credits:
Vic. Fakemon Design, Creative Commons
PrincessPhoenix and Festival Pack. Fakemon Design, Creative Commons
Mr. Fakemon. Fakemon Design

Totama is always looking for new team members from anyone who is interested in music composition, coding in Godot, mechanics balancing and testing, and especially art, spriting, and animating.

If you are interested in helping create Totama, please contact Ash either on Twitter or in Discord.

Goals!:
Goals for a small, low-budget indie project can obviously vary wildly. We have some basic, necessity goals, reach goals, and future goals for Totama.
Basic:
- Create a single-player RPG story with a roster of 200+ Totama and 50+ named characters
- 15 tracks in an OST
- Port to PC/XBOX
- An online Totama battle/revel simulator with full team building and matchmaking

Reach (will either require fundraising or a larger team):
- Full multiplayer, online ranked matchmaking
- Online supported guild and friends chats
- Porting Totama to the Nintendo Switch
- Supporting your fan projects with modding, hacking, and injecting programs so you can make your own games/stories/characters as simply as possible

Future goals:
- Totama spinoff, sequel, and prequel projects including a Pokemon Conquest/Fire Emblem, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon, Tower Defence, and card game within the universe
- Another Totama RPG taking place in a "futuristic" SolarPunk Earth

Suggestions​

Spoiler:

We want your input! To make this game all that it can be, we are hoping to tweak the game through ample public input in order to make Totama balanced, fun, engaging, and rewarding.

Please drop any comments, critiques, suggestions, or ideas in the thread below, or in our official Discord server. Please keep your comments respectful and constructive, this is a passion project that is being made for the community, not for profit, and we are people too. Thank you.

Submissions​

Spoiler:

Because Totama is an indie development with a small team, and because it is heavily inspired by the wonderful Fakemon, fangame, and ROM hack community, we want everyone to be able to submit their creations for inclusion in the game.

If you would like to submit a creature design (Fakemon, Totama, Yokai, etc.), a character concept (artwork, background, name, etc.) or even a game concept that you want to see in a monster tamer RPG, please feel free to send it our way!

Your ideas will not be used without your permission, and we will work with you to make your designs fit into the world and aesthetic of Totama.

EDIT: Thank you to Lucky Benjamin for already submitting some Totama designs!

You can submit concepts HERE. Or in the #submissions channel of the official Discord.

Thank You!​

We look forward to building a community with you, and updating the community with the progress we make building the magical world of Totama.​

FOLLOW TOTAMA and join the COMMUNITY
TWITTER --- DISCORD​

 

[Trainer Asher]

I was inspired by this pixel design on the right to create some pointed thatched roof homes for the Windy Valley area.

The Windy Valley is a central area of Totama. It is designed to be similar in concept to SWSH's Wild Area as well as Zelda's Hyrule Field. Totama, rare items, and possibly something else will repawn here daily.

"The Totama you find in the valley may not be impressive now, but if you bond with them, and grow together, they may turn into wondrous and fantastic creatures, depending on where your journey takes you."

The current plan for the Windy Valley is to make it a 3200x3200px circular area. For reference, Sinnoh Route 224 is about 3000px I long I believe.

The Windy Valley will serve as a central area that allows you to take your adventure in whatever direction you choose. Completing quests in various regions may give you access to some fast travel options as well.

The Windy Valley is heavily inspired by Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, Princess Mononoke, the Nomads from Fire Emblem 7, and nomadic/plains cultures from across the world.

"Some people say the people of the valley have been on Ukiyo far longer than anyone else. Does that mean we came from somewhere else?"

 

[Trainer Asher]

Here is a public version of some battle data for Totama, including the Sign Effectiveness chart.

The logic with the formulas is to judge how offensive or defensive a certain type is, and currently we are balancing them so that more offensive types are less defensive, and vice versa. Additionally, we are trying to keep the skew less than Pokemon's, so that types don't have to be purely offensive or defensive!

This doc also includes the equivalent Pokémon type chart, some moves, statuses, hazards, etc. And an in-progress damage calculator that needs to be tweaked. But because the damage calculation formula is there as well, you can also play with that if you would like.

Feel free to make a copy of this document and make your own edits to play with balancing! Any suggestions from looking over this chart, or from changes you make, are highly highly appreciated!

EDIT: Added a Totama Signs 2.0 chart with the Yokai Sign, Sound/Light offensive signs, and Aerial/Shade defensive signs. (Shade is currently being worked to resist physical moves, hard to represent in the chart.

 

[Linkinglinkingking]

love the concept, can't wait to try it out one day!

 

[Trainer Asher]

love the concept, can't wait to try it out one day!

Thank you so much!

If you haven't joined the Discord I'd love to have you in there so you can see what we're working on and offer some feedback as well!

Just from reading this post what thoughts do you have? Is there anything you'd like to change or add?

 

[Trainer Asher]

Small update on the progress over the past few days!

Worked out the game scene, UI, and idle sprite at 640x360px resolution with some Windy Valley buildings and some placeholders rocks pulled from Woostar.

Due to this, the game is being moved down to 480x270 to preserve some of the simplicity/retro pixel feel, as well as ensure the player sprite can be seen well enough. This is a good middle ground so that more of the world will be visible than on other titles like Black 2/White 2 that have a smaller resolution and weren't widescreen.

- 2 more tracks for the OST through the pipeline
- 3 more Totama added to the roster! They're visible in the Totama Discord, and they still need names!
- 3-4 artists currently working on character portraits, character concepts, and new Totama designs
- Title track is being produced by an experienced game composer!

Also, Gray has some new sprites still in the pipeline!:

Thanks everyone! Feel free to join the Discord in my signature for more frequent updates, ask questions directly, make suggestions, etc.

 

[Trainer Asher]

They walk now!

 

[Trainer Asher]

The game is in engine with basic physics!

Basic movement and animations are done for the player character! There's still kinks, but this is a fun milestone for Totama!

Collision boxes and layers, menus (inventory, party, settings, etc.), and warps/scenes need to be finished, but after that it is back to making more assets, tilesets, and sprites!

Being able to control Gray in the overworld feels like such an accomplishment.

Also, some animations for Appa's sprite have been finished as well!