Hello r/dragonquest! I have been wanting to share this with you guys and holding off for SO long but I think the time has come.

This is not about an official Dragon Quest game, but rather something I've been working on that I think might appeal to fellow DQ fans!

I am an older gamer, grew up playing Dragon Warrior I to IV and, to this day, they remain my all-time favorite games. Though I still love them, I couldn't *quite* get as much into later Dragon Quest games and have spent my entire adult life wishing we could've had more 8-bit DW games. Then, one day, I just decided to do it myself and I have been working on it for almost 2 years now.

My game is called The Book of Rynn. It is a game made from scratch for the actual NES console, *not* a romhack, and all assets have been handmade by me, a professional pixel artist and a professional music composer. Not a single asset has been lifted from anywhere. I started off wanting to essentially cosplay creating a Dragon Warrior game but over time Rynn formed its own lore, its own characters and locations, its own mechanics and vibes as well.

I had many stories to tell, so I opted for a "short stories" format rather than one long epic adventure, so I chose to break this down into 4 standalone stories. The first story, called The Royal Seal, is now out and playable as a free demo. Expect about 8 to 10 hours of gameplay.

The game is mechanically complete, and I am preparing to launch a Kickstarter campaign in January 2027 to finance the production of the next 3 stories as well as making physical copies of the game on a real NES cart, with box, manual and foldable map, just like in the old days!

I will leave you with the good stuff:

Free demo: https://sebotron.itch.io/the-book-of-rynn (you'll need an NES emulator or a flash cart to play on an actual NES)

Kickstarter campaign: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sebotron/the-book-of-rynn-a-new-homebrew-nes-jrpg

I would absolutely *love* for fellow fans of older Dragon Warrior games, the ones that remember the long grind fondly, the quirky NPCs, the catchy music tracks and all the evil demon wizards we sent back from whence they came, to give it a try. The final game is still in development and nothing is set in stone so feedback is more than welcome!

Thank you so, so, so much for reading and checking it out and I hope you all have an excellent day!

Sebotron

EDIT: I have to leave for a few hours, I will absolutely be back later and reply to more comments! Thank you all! I'm back!

One of many iconic purple dragons

Tough cookie thief hp jumped from 18 to 48 Likewise my genious priest's MP went from 18 to 51, both at level 2!

Hello all. This is my first dragonquest game and I've I've been really loving it but I've ran into an issue that's been hurting my enjoyment of the game.

I was trying to do the hallelujah + electro light combo + sleeping them with Rabs pep power at manglegrove way station but everytime I've attempted it the metal slimes run away before Rab gets a chance to sleep them, or even before I have a chance to swap in Erik and attack them with Erik or even Jade after.

Is there another way to grind decently that's not so frustrating or rng reliant? It takes way too long to pep jade up again to cast electro light even with save scumming just for the slimes to run before I get a useful turn. I don't want to burn out right here at the end because until this grinding thing I was having fun. I'm playing on harder monsters as well. Thanks for the help

I’ve seen countless posts on how easy this game is supposed to be but i feel that doesn’t tell the whole story.

I’ve just reached the Beacon and the game feels stupidly hard all of a sudden? Harmours one-shot me fairly consistently and most battles get out of control real fast. But i can’t seem to find any mention online of this part of the game being particularly difficult?…

And overall the balance feels off. The game starts out really easy, so i put Strong Monsters on, and Damage Dealt less but then battles drag on for way too long, so i turn Damage up again and now this.

Do difficulty sliders overcorrect this much or is this part of the game legit hard?

(Sorry if this is off-topic or against the rules; I'm totally new here and had nowhere else to ask this, so I figured I would come here🙏)

For anyone else who is a fan of both DQ and HxH and knows how much Togashi loves the series, how well-executed do you think a non-canon spin-off DQ manga would be if he illustrated and wrote it?

I have a habit, kind of OCD, to talk to every NPC: upon arrival to new locations, after finishing relevant events, whenever new dialogues would show up. Sometimes it helps with the actual gameplay. Sometimes it helps with immersion.

Now I know for most NPCs, their dialogues after beating the story is just a repeat of 5-6 set sentences, and talking to them is just pointless, but it bugs me so much not to. For DQ2R, it's just the worst. There are still like 10 scenes to watch, even if you choose to everything irrelevant. And there are small interactions, like the couple in Rimuldar for example. God forbids if you have to leave for something, or if it's already 8pm.

Hurts even more when it's after 30x attempts at Malroth for the damned sword...