March 25, 2021
When it comes to MZ plugins, it is hard to avoid one name: Visustella. But what is it that Visustella offers? Well we asked and they answered. Let's learn about what is available from the Visustella team!
Looking for a list of trusted Plugin Creators? Be sure to check out our RPG Maker MZ Plugin List!
Quality
Quantity
Accessibility
These three words describe VisuStella’s core principles. The VisuStella MZ library builds off these principles to produce RPG Maker MZ’s largest and most versatile plugin library to date. VisuStella MZ plugins pander to the love of traditional JRPGs and those who enjoy playing them. If you enjoy traditional JRPG’s and want to realize your dream, VisuStella MZ will lead you towards your goal.
Team VisuStella is a plugin development team led by the true-and-tried Yanfly, with the main team members being Fallen Angel Olivia, Atelier Irina, and Arisu’s Dollhouse. Additional assistance towards the VisuStella MZ library came from various prolific community plugin devs such as Trihan, Aero, Shiro, Hudell, Harmless, Liquidize, and Yami!
Ten of VisuStella MZ’s plugins are free to use. These ten consist of the cores for everything else in the library. Each of these ten cores contain immense amounts of customization and control over the many aspects available to RPG Maker. In fact, it would not be an exaggeration to say the features contained in these ten plugins are able to help you create 80% or more of your game. That’s just how feature-rich these ten cores are.
Let’s talk about five of them to give you an idea on what they have to offer.
The VisuStella MZ Core Engine enhances the basic foundation for RPG Maker MZ. Controls are smoothed out to a more modern feel. Players can enter character names with their keyboards. Colors for gauges can be switched out as the dev desires. A plethora of quality of life options are included, too, to speed up your play test sessions, debugging, and more!
Ever felt that you, as the game developer, never have enough control over how skills and items behave in battle? Every other skill is just a bland walk forward, swing at the air, and animations appear along with some numbers. Not anymore! With the (free!) VisuStella MZ Battle Core, take full control over the skill and item animations with Custom Action Sequences! Move your characters the way you want, inflict damage the way you want, and control the game mechanics the way you want. Not just animations either.
However, those are the small advantages of using the VisuStella MZ Battle Core. The biggest advantage would be to gain access to the large range of battle systems made possible through the Battle Core’s foundations as long as you have the associated premium plugin. These battle systems range from Grandia’s ATB, Final Fantasy X’s CTB, Persona 5’s STB, Bravely Default’s BTB, and there’s even more in production!
A good looking menu is a must have for any kind of game, RPG’s included. The VisuStella MZ Main Menu Core gives you a large list of pre-made and customizable layouts to pick and choose from. Show off character portraits, use faces, or perhaps their sprites if that’s what fits your game more. If your game only features one character, that’s fine. There’s even a solo-character option, too.
The VisuStella MZ Message Core offers you more control than you ever need for the message system. From word wrap capabilities to center-aligning text, making text bold and italic, it’s all here. And if it isn’t, you can even create your own text codes, macros, and more with the plugin’s settings. Ever wanted to auto-color keywords so that way your players will never miss them? The Message Core does that, too!
The VisuStella MZ Elements and Status Menu Core adds in trait sets to let you quickly define what your characters are like. Are they male, female, both even? What about their alignment? Lawful evil or chaotic good? What zodiac are they? What’s their nature like? Create whatever traits you want to assign to your actors and enemies to give them that bit of extra personality. Furthermore, these function as mechanical enhancements because they also streamline the creation process by assigning RPG Maker MZ traits and effects to each of them.
And that’s just five of the ten free cores that VisuStella MZ has to offer. You can download and play with these ten free plugins here in the VisuStella MZ Sample Project.
Where the ten free core plugins offered by VisuStella MZ provide general features, the premium plugins provide specialized features for features that aren’t necessarily found in every game, but can definitely help make them more feature rich.
Let’s take a look at some of our favorites!
I don’t know about you, but I love a good class changing system in the RPG’s I play. The VisuStella MZ Class Change System plugin implements the functionality for players to alter the classes of their characters on the go, so that you don’t have to create entire event systems to do it yourself. Not only can players change an actor’s class, they can assign multiple classes, too, allowing effectively different layers of class control. Subclassing, triple-classing, multi-classing, it’s all here.
Item crafting scratches a magical itch for me in RPG’s. The euphoria I get when I create items through crafting is immensely satisfying. The VisuStella MZ Item Crafting System adds such a feature to scratch that itch. Create the recipes for each item you want, assign how many costs, what kind of animation is played when it succeeds, and more! Create a tier system that reveals more recipes the more your player crafts!
Every RPG nowadays has a quest journal of some sort. These help the player keep track of what they have to do and what their objectives are. The VisuStella MZ Quest Journal System allows you to create an unlimited amount of quests with objectives, rewards, and so forth to help players keep track of what it is they need to do in your game.
Do you tire of games where the only way to acquire new skills is through leveling up? Wouldn’t it be nice if the player had a bit of agency in what skills they wanted their characters to learn? The VisuStella MZ Skill Learn System allows players to pick and choose skills to learn from inside the skill menu (as long as they meet the requirements). Give players the agency they want and break free of that boring learn-new-skills-upon-leveling-up trope.
Bored of making maps restrained to the grid? The VisuStella MZ Grid-Free Doodads plugin lets users break free of the grid and place tileset objects and more anywhere on the map they want. With extremely flexible layer control, sprite options and effects, you can do even more with doodads than what you normally could with just the editor alone!
Making a good on-screen touch encounter system takes a lot of work. The VisuStella MZ Encounter Effects plugin will do most of that work for you. Make certain events chase the player once they’re within their field of vision. Give players an advantage in battle if they can sneak up on enemy events. Or even reverse it and make enemies have an advantage if they can give your player’s party a jump scare.
With VisuStella MZ’s Extra Enemy Drops, enemies can now drop more than 3 items! And players can see what they drop, too! The items will fly out like:
Pew!
Woosh!
PLINK!
PLINK-A-DINK!
PLINK-A-DINK-DINK-DINK-DINK!
DINK-DINK-DINK-DINK-DINK!
DINKDINKDINKDINKDINK!
DINK...
Oh, and different item rarities have different glowing and flashing effects, too!
Those are just some of the many premium plugins available through the VisuStella MZ library. Each of these plugins can enhance your game in many ways. Do check out the huge list of plugins available through Visustella MZ’s library.
I’m sure many of you don’t want to burn a hole in your wallets if you buy these premium plugins. Don’t worry, Team VisuStella doesn’t want your wallet to suffocate either. They’ve devised a way for you to purchase the plugins in bulk to save on money! We’re not talking saving like 25%. We’re talking more than 50% saved!
When VisuStella releases plugins, they release the plugins in waves. These waves are groups of 8 to 10 plugins each. Each wave contains a good mixture of gameplay defining plugins, extension plugins, and enhancement plugins.
The waves can be bought as a set for $25 each, which is considerably cheaper than buying the plugins individually.
In fact, we encourage you to buy them as waves to make sure you save your money and get your money’s worth! With there being 8 to 10 plugins in each, that’s only $2.50 to $3.00 each!
Be sure to check out what plugins each wave has to offer!
VisuStella wishes to support you, aspiring game devs, with our plugins. Get a feel for what the plugins can offer with our Sample Project and the free ten core plugins first. If you feel confident in our quality, quantity, and accessibility, only then should you consider our premium plugins. We wish you all success in your journey as a game developer.
