RPG Maker Dungeon #10: Ruina: Fairy Tale of the Forgotten Ruins
Originally published on August 13, 2023
Ruina: Fairy Tale of the Forgotten Ruins is an indie Japanese RPG released by Shoukichi Karekusa in 2008. In 2021, two fans dug into the files and painstakingly translated it into English line by line. I interviewed those fans in a piece for Crunchyroll News that April. Suffice to say, the fact that the game exists is a miracle, and that the game is available in English even more so. This is a deep, complex and idiosyncratic RPG built to be replayed over and over. It combines the best aspects of Japanese RPGs, tabletop roleplaying and gamebooks. If you're going to play any game featured in RPG Maker Dungeon, make it this one. In fact, if you're staring longingly at Baldur's Gate 3 right now but don't have the funds or the hardware to play it, you can do a lot worse than seeking out Ruina.
I've already written plenty about the game already, so I won't repeat myself. If you don't believe me, go read developer Melos Han Tani's write-up on the game. What I want to talk about instead is the game's form factor. Ruina is set to be remade at some point in the future. This remake is, almost certainly, an unalloyed good. The original game has an at-times fiddly interface (subjected to even greater strain in the English translation by character limits) and runs on software which was outdated even at the time of its release. A version of Ruina with some quality of life tweaks and translation fixes would make the game that much easier to recommend. If the remake works on Switch or Steam Deck, even better. Ruina would be perfect for portable play.
But while I'm happy for the remake, I don't think it's necessary. The hand-drawn maps, charcoal-drawn battle backgrounds and parchment-colored menus of the original Ruina remain beautiful today. The character art retains a certain hand-made charm. Ruina's old-fashioned mechanics fit the default RPG Maker 2000 menus like a glove. RPG Maker developers in the United States spent years trying to make their own custom menus as an alternative to the default. Ruina proposes an alternate universe, where custom menus work in harmony with the default interface. Every weakness of the engine is leveraged in service of the gamebook concept.
Some time ago I saw a person I respect on Cohost say that they preferred not to play RPG Maker games because of the hard limitations of the engine. I can understand that take. RPG Maker is very frustrating to make a full game in despite its ease of use. I don't believe Ruina would have been any better, though, if it was made in another engine. Just as the English translation of the game will only ever be an alternative to Shoukichi Karekusa's original, the remake will be just another (accessible) copy of that forbidding monolith that is Ruina. When it is released, perhaps some curious folks will return to that first game to see what all the fuss was about. I hope that they see it then as I see the game today: a gorgeous work in its own right.