Demon's Keep
A downloadable game for Windows
Once each year, the Demon Lord takes a young woman from a village in his domain. It happens at night. There's no warning. No chance to say goodbye.
Small RPG. About an hour to play.
Submission to the 2026 Cookie Cutter RM2k3 Jam.
Not compatible with EasyRPG.
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Would be appreciative if someone educated me on the EasyRPG issue - why the enemies get so many more turns under that engine? Is there a setting or build setting that fixes this issue?
I couldn’t find anything conclusive in the github issues.
Hi null! Sorry for the confusion, and thanks so much for playing! Demon's Keep uses a command unique to the modern steam version of RPGMaker 2003 to automatically set the ATB to "Wait" instead of "Active". EasyRPG doesn't recognize this command, so it stays set to "Active" mode, increasing the number of enemy turns. There's no menu option to change it because I didn't like how the game played on Active, and I didn't consider how that would impact EasyRPG players.
Like my game Facets, Demon's Keep uses a hacked executable to remove the Autobattle and Row commands. If it weren't for that, I'd try to support EasyRPG better, but as is I'd rather formally state that EasyRPG is not supported for Demon's Keep. I've added a note to the page to make that clearer for new players.
Thanks for explaining. I probably had more fun in ‘unintentionally hard’ mode anyways - up until the last boss, so no harm done. Also good for me to know for the future.
Great work, again!
Great work! I had decided this was a very hard, but well done RPG, but I was a little salty about the last boss - it seemed impossible given the turn economy.
Then I read Matt Bee’s comment about EasyRPG, and she got about 1/3-1/4 of the turns when I ran the thing directly with wine, instead. (WTF?!) No problems after that.
So, probably not the intended experience for the rest of it, but still quite fun!
Thanks for sharing this! An enjoyable experience :) Balms and staying at 1hp are two features I love in RPG sagas :)
Luxuriated in this one. Took my time, getting smacked around some until I didn't anymore, learning to make effective use of each party member's small but useful toolkit. Just a good paced experience that hits a lot of classic beats with its simple but effective story, with the kind of cool climax I'd expect from one Far Away Times.
This game is an excellent baseline for the jam, and it has a little bit of everything. Overall, more than any of the other entries, I've played, Demon's Keep gives the vibe of "a normal RPG, but scaled down". The story doesn't do anything fancy, but the execution is solid and it manages to get more than you'd expect out of the short runtime. There's a nice flow to the combat, with every mechanic having a purpose. The penultimate boss fight especially is surprisingly tactical despite its apparent simplicity.
It's been awhile since I've played such an unforgiving RPG, walking into the first cave and getting immediately clobbered gave me a nice nostalgic feeling lol. Nice level curve and sense of progress, every level up felt meaningful. I couldn't get past the Daisy fight at max level though 😔 I don't know if there's something I'm missing or if I just suck at ATB. Probably the latter, I always turn on "wait" in these kinds of games when I have the choice. Still, I enjoyed the journey.
Okay, I'm silly, I was playing in EasyRPG which ironically made everything a lot harder. I started with the vanilla game as intended and had a great time. The last boss was a lot of fun
wow, this felt like the full rpg expierience! the boss fights were really well balanced, allways fighting for my life but still made it :) v qernqrq gur frpbaq svany obff, ohg vg jnf sberfunqbjrq dhvgr avpryl!
Demon's Keep rips. Elegant design with a satisfying narrative arc and mechanical progression. Polished presentation. Excellent endgame sequence. Definitively a favorite among the Cookie Cutter entries I've played so far!
Great game, gameplay felt excellent, battles/skillsets felt poslished, nice exploration. Sometimes you just want a short hero versus demon lord story and this packed a lot in a short amount of time :D
really like the balance of this one, not just for how much drama it squeezed out of its relatively boss fights, but how stuff like individual level-ups feeling huge and the slow walking speed helped achieve a sense of scale and progress that is a) impressive for a ~60 minute game and b) necessary to sell a "village boy beats the demon lord" type story. possibly the best job i've seen of distilling a traditional rpg story down to its essentials, both in terms of sheer brevity and in terms of the effectiveness and completeness of its drama. great job on the formalism john
this daisy slander makes me sad.
the boss fights are pretty peam, tho, as is the ending.
I'm amazed, a real RPG? In RPG Maker?
This was a super fun and cute entry! Just enough mechanical meat to sustain a short little story, with a nice progression arc and great use of all the RPG Maker tools (consumables especially). The story itself is like extremely cliche, but that's kind of exactly what it needed to be for this. I really liked it.
That was neat, the bosses really kept me on my toes. The ATB hack (I believe?) to make the bars fill up faster in the first half meant you really had to be quick about healing, curing states, etc., which I enjoyed.
The story didn't really do anything for me but its such a short game that I don't mind. I was okay with the slow walking speed at first because I thought it was going to be a fairly somber game, but then it wasn't so ultimately it annoyed me since I kept trying to go back and see if various things were changed by the story. (There's an air of secrecy about progression, so I misinterpreted having to do some extra stuff. That's just how I play games though!)
Overall, really impressive to put together in a few weeks. The cutscenes are quite well-directed which was fun to see. I also got a kick out of one of the spell names being very blunt.