- Joined
- Oct 30, 2025
- Posts
- 1
- Pronouns
Hi everyone! This is my first time posting on this site, so please excuse me if I make a mistake or something. Everybody has that one full-scale dream fangame they'd love to make someday. Mine is Backyard Experiment, with a region based on my home state of Victoria, Australia, a Pokédex almost entirely made of Fakémon, and pretty much everything a canonical Pokémon game has. Of course, with the scope of this game, me being a solo developer with a moderate amount of experience, and other personal commitments, this would only be released after a few years, so I'm just working on planning and other concepts for now (plus, there's bound to be a new version of Essentials by the time I would actually start development). I've been posting development updates on the r/PokemonRMXP subreddit for a while now (where this post is lifted from), but I thought it'd be nice to post somewhere else and get a fresh set of eyes.
Trams (affectionately nicknamed "things that go ding") are an integral part of Victorian culture, especially if you've been to Melbourne, and since the region in my project is based on Victoria, this is one of my ways of honouring that, as well as trying to reconcile the old-school idea of late-game fast travel with modern Pokemon's way of having early fast travel. I know you can't please everyone and all that, but whatever, I can try.
In this region, trams serve as a rudimentary form of the Fly HM before you actually get to fly. Of course, this would mean you would have to get Fly at a later time; since Pokémon Essentials has Fly tied to the fifth badge, and I won't use all field moves in my project, my plan is to push it back to completing the sixth or seventh Gym. (Side note: my plan is to have an alternative to HMs, but I haven't figured out the specifics just yet.) Access to trams is planned to be available after the first Gym is beat. As with using Fly, you can only travel to somewhere you've been to before, with the added caveat of only going somewhere on your line. Towns and other settlements are connected via lines, named after types (ie. Fire Line, Water Line, etc), so if you want to get to somewhere not on your line, you have to hop on multiple lines.
Here's my first map of what each of the lines would be. This isn't taking into account any public transport in actual Victoria (aside from the Normal Line, which is based on the not-a-tram-but-actually-a-train-project City Loop) and is purely from a gameplay perspective.
(This feels like a good time to add that this is a placeholder, and my final region map will be inspired by these types (separate links) of Victorian public transport maps.) (Also, I didn't include it on the legend, but bushes and ocean rocks are routes, Poke Balls and large signs are settlements, and Gym signs are Gyms located outside of a town.)
I'm also toying around with the idea of adding other lines (indicated by dotted lines on the map), specifically, one connecting two otherwise unconnected cities and, if the size of the map deems it necessary, an equivalent for the Normal Line for the city based on Canberra (over at the top, separated from the other places). With the last one, Canberra has what's known as a light rail system, which is a certain type of tram (from my admittedly short research), so I'm not too confident on it. Also, I didn't include any tram lines in the southwest of the map because it's the starting area, and I want to introduce the feature a fair bit after the tutorial).
But once you do get access to Fly, why keep using trams? Well, this is where one of the region's new Pokémon comes in. Every time you use a tram, you have a small chance of encountering (and being forced into a battle with) a Steel/Dream-type Fakémon mimicking the appearance of a tram, and further based on the concept of liminal spaces. Enter it, and you'll have to battle it to escape... unless you were planning on getting kidnapped. (I should probably add that I'm including the Dream type in my game.)
So yeah, that's pretty much my idea. Thanks for making it this far, I know my writing's probably not the most entertaining. My main concern with it is balancing the locations and stops of each tram line, as well as making sure the progression with this and getting Fly later on is logical. I'd love to hear feedback on the idea if you've got any, or just your thoughts on it in general.
Trams (affectionately nicknamed "things that go ding") are an integral part of Victorian culture, especially if you've been to Melbourne, and since the region in my project is based on Victoria, this is one of my ways of honouring that, as well as trying to reconcile the old-school idea of late-game fast travel with modern Pokemon's way of having early fast travel. I know you can't please everyone and all that, but whatever, I can try.
In this region, trams serve as a rudimentary form of the Fly HM before you actually get to fly. Of course, this would mean you would have to get Fly at a later time; since Pokémon Essentials has Fly tied to the fifth badge, and I won't use all field moves in my project, my plan is to push it back to completing the sixth or seventh Gym. (Side note: my plan is to have an alternative to HMs, but I haven't figured out the specifics just yet.) Access to trams is planned to be available after the first Gym is beat. As with using Fly, you can only travel to somewhere you've been to before, with the added caveat of only going somewhere on your line. Towns and other settlements are connected via lines, named after types (ie. Fire Line, Water Line, etc), so if you want to get to somewhere not on your line, you have to hop on multiple lines.
Here's my first map of what each of the lines would be. This isn't taking into account any public transport in actual Victoria (aside from the Normal Line, which is based on the not-a-tram-but-actually-a-train-project City Loop) and is purely from a gameplay perspective.
(This feels like a good time to add that this is a placeholder, and my final region map will be inspired by these types (separate links) of Victorian public transport maps.) (Also, I didn't include it on the legend, but bushes and ocean rocks are routes, Poke Balls and large signs are settlements, and Gym signs are Gyms located outside of a town.)
I'm also toying around with the idea of adding other lines (indicated by dotted lines on the map), specifically, one connecting two otherwise unconnected cities and, if the size of the map deems it necessary, an equivalent for the Normal Line for the city based on Canberra (over at the top, separated from the other places). With the last one, Canberra has what's known as a light rail system, which is a certain type of tram (from my admittedly short research), so I'm not too confident on it. Also, I didn't include any tram lines in the southwest of the map because it's the starting area, and I want to introduce the feature a fair bit after the tutorial).
But once you do get access to Fly, why keep using trams? Well, this is where one of the region's new Pokémon comes in. Every time you use a tram, you have a small chance of encountering (and being forced into a battle with) a Steel/Dream-type Fakémon mimicking the appearance of a tram, and further based on the concept of liminal spaces. Enter it, and you'll have to battle it to escape... unless you were planning on getting kidnapped. (I should probably add that I'm including the Dream type in my game.)
So yeah, that's pretty much my idea. Thanks for making it this far, I know my writing's probably not the most entertaining. My main concern with it is balancing the locations and stops of each tram line, as well as making sure the progression with this and getting Fly later on is logical. I'd love to hear feedback on the idea if you've got any, or just your thoughts on it in general.
Last edited:
