Since the release of 1990’s RPG Construction Tool: Dante, the RPG Maker series has supported numerous creators as a no-coding game development tool. In March 2026, Gotcha Gotcha Games announced a brand-new entry in the series titled RPG Maker U2U, promising new forms of expression, including graphics that blend 2D and 3D in a style reminiscent of so-called HD-2D games.
In recent years, game development has become more accessible than ever, but knowing where to start can be daunting for beginners. Should you learn programming first? If so, which language should you study? And with so many game engines available, which one should you choose? For creators facing these questions, no-code game development tools like RPG Maker can be a handy starting point.
With that in mind, AUTOMATON spoke to developers with experience building games in RPG Maker, hoping to encourage those who are interested in game development but have yet to take that first step. This time, we interviewed Kan Gao, the creator of acclaimed 2011 narrative adventure game To the Moon. We discussed everything from why he has continued to use RPG Maker throughout his career, to how he stays motivated during game development. The conversation yielded plenty of fascinating insights, and we hope you’ll enjoy reading it.
—Could you please introduce yourself?
Kan Gao (hereafter Gao):
Hello! My name’s Kan, I’m the writer & composer at Freebird Games. I began creating games around 2005 using RPG Maker, and I’m probably best known for the To the Moon series of games which began in 2011.
—Since its release in 2011, To the Moon has received high praise from players around the world. Could you tell us once again what kind of game it is?
Gao:
To the Moon is a narrative-driven game with an RPG aesthetic, about two doctors traversing backwards through a dying man’s memories to fulfill his last wish in his mind. It has since spun into a series of games spanning over a decade, about other patients’ life stories and the doctors themselves, all revolving around the themes of what it means to have lived. As with all stories, its reception is very subjective, but I am very grateful for those who resonated with the games.
—The final installment of the series, “The Last Hour of an Epic TO THE MOON RPG”, has been announced. As you bring a series that has continued for many years to its conclusion, how do you feel while working on its development?
Gao:
Mixed feelings to end over a decade’s journey, certainly. Maybe that could be an excuse for progressing so slowly, hah. But while I think there are still many stories that can be fittingly told in the series’ format, I’d also like the series to be a compact and meaningful experience rather than dragged out.
At this point, even though Last Hour seems like a goofy spin-off on the surface, those familiar with the series know to expect more than that. My hope with this last episode is to have it create a fractal-like relationship between each episode and the series as a whole, and bring it back to what it’s always been about since the beginning.
RPG Maker’s strength is its simplicity
—You created To the Moon in RPG Maker. Looking back, could you tell us again why you chose RPG Maker among the various game development tools available at the time?
Gao:
It was the tool with the least friction capable of making what I needed to make. I think an important rule for me is to choose not the most elaborate, fancy or feature-heavy tool, but rather the simplest one that’s capable of doing what I need for the project. Friction is the enemy of making multi-media projects, and I tend to become my own obstacle when choosing a needlessly complex tool for the job.
—Your games are known for their ability to deeply move players emotionally. What aspects of RPG Maker do you think make it particularly suited for creating emotionally impactful experiences?
Gao:
I think to create emotionally impactful experiences, we must be in an introspective mental space ourselves. And that is often a very different mental space compared to technical problem-solving, which we can often get stuck in when making games. What I found extremely helpful with RPG Maker is that when I don’t have to constantly solve problems on the technical side, I was able to focus on the actual creative content and narrative a lot more.
—Not only during the development of To the Moon, but throughout your experience using RPG Maker, were there any moments that really made you feel that choosing RPG Maker was the right decision?
Gao:
Just like in love songs, I felt it most when I tried leaving it, haha. It became clear how many features and considerations I was taking for granted. Even now, when we’ve expanded and have in-house tools, many are still inspired by RPG Maker – I guess it just speaks to the thought put into it to make the development process easier, especially considering many of them were established over two decades ago. Even after getting to the point of having a team and being able to create custom in-house tools, I’ll probably still be using RPG Maker for fun side projects and experiments just because it flows so well.
—Conversely, while creating To the Moon, were there any limitations unique to RPG Maker? If so, how did you overcome them?
Gao:
Since I use one of the earlier versions of RPG Maker (XP), there were some difficulties with porting since it wasn’t a native feature back then; but fortunately, that was solved by talented folks like Ancurio and the RM community.
In terms of making the actual content, to be honest, I haven’t run into technical limits. Not that I personally need features of high technical complexity, but there’s a misconception that RPG Maker can’t make advanced custom systems. It does have full scripting capabilities underneath, after all. I even remember someone making a 3D game demo in RPG Maker XP via scripting, and bullet hell game and the like. Of course, there are better choices out for making those types of games, but it just goes to show that if you need some particular outlier features in your otherwise fitting game, the technical limits are fairly breakable.
Advice to developers getting started
—What is the most important thing you would like to tell people who are attempting to create their first game using RPG Maker?
Gao:
Find a welcoming community online and share your progress while providing feedback for others’ projects as well. Even with RPG Maker’s smoother flow, it can still be a long and tedious journey making a game, and that kind of growing-together community is very important for both problem-solving and motivation. There was a time when I was starting where I was getting just one or two feedback posts on my game demo every release, but that helped tremendously in helping me keep going and kept me grounded as well.
—To the Moon is a work that has received particularly high praise for its story. For people who want to create story-focused games like this, are there any ways of thinking or approaches that you believe they should develop?
Gao:
Stories are very subjective, so it’s hard for me to give general suggestions. But I think one thing that’s always a good reminder is that the way we perceive the story we’re working on and the way others see it can be very different, and we should take that gap into account.
Because often, when we think about a story, its characters, and world for so long in our head, it becomes very special to us, and we begin looking at it through a different lens because we know every detail and nuance about its intricacies. But when we release it to the public, most people are passersby, and they won’t see all those intricacies and details at first. Hopefully they will eventually; but there’s a whole arc of getting people to care about it as much as we do that we often tend to miss.
So, a vital part of any story to get to that point is to plan for the arc. Taking into account things like the audience coming in tired from work or just browsing with no commitment, and guiding them into eventually taking it more seriously.
There are many ways to do it; for To the Moon, it’s Dr. Watts, who syncs more with people who aren’t attached coming into the story (and his arc of growing more attached as the story goes on hopefully syncs with the players who need it the most).
—“Finishing a game” is often one of the biggest challenges in game development. What do you keep in mind in order to continue creating games, and how do you maintain your motivation?
Gao:
Expect the grind. It’s easy to be caught off-guard the first time the honeymoon wears off with a new project, but the only way to get through it is to know that’s the case with every project, and we won’t finish any project if we don’t plow through the work.
And one practical advice would be that while you should know where the game’s going – its spine and ending – don’t plan every detail out in advance. Planning and details are fun and creative; if you get all of them done first, what’s left is pure grind. Save some fun for scattering throughout the project, not all upfront.
—Around fifteen years have passed since To the Moon was first released in 2011, and the game development environment has undergone significant changes. In today’s world, what value do you think people can gain specifically by using RPG Maker?
Gao:
Experiment and fail fast until something sticks. People make fun of “idea guys”, often rightfully so; but the right idea and direction really is the difference between spending resources to get closer to your target vs. farther from your target. The problem is that it’s extremely difficult to know that without trying things out – even veterans often get caught off guard about what takes off and what doesn’t.
So, create something first – a prologue, a demo, an MVP, and let folks test it out and then decide. RPG Maker, with its low friction workflow, is good at fast-paced development and experimentation, so use that to its advantage.
—Finally, could you please share a message for people who are thinking about starting game development?
Gao:
Don’t overthink how to categorize what you’re making. Just think about what you’re making as interactive experiences that someone might remember one day. Classifications are useful for marketing, and still important, but also creatively limiting. So, at the core, just make sure the experience you’re creating is a meaningful and interesting one at the abstract level.
It all just becomes someone’s memory at the end of day, so just make it one that someone would want to keep and make room for, amidst all the noise of the world today.
—Thank you for your time!
The RPG Maker series’ latest entry, RPG Maker U2U, is currently in development. Meanwhile, The Last Hour of an Epic TO THE MOON RPG, the final chapter of the To the Moon series, is scheduled for release in 2027.
