How to deploy your RPG Maker game to the browser

What you need

Either RPG Maker MZ, the current release, or RPG Maker MV, which is older but still widely used and deploys to the web the same way in practice. Both write HTML5 output straight from the editor, so you don't need a separate export plugin to get a browser build.

You'll also want:

• A project that's been played through in the editor without errors.
• A way to serve files over http:// for local testing, since RPG Maker's own deployment output won't run when opened as a local file.
• A quick pass over your asset file names. The single most common reason an RPG Maker game breaks only after web deployment is file name case, covered below.

Export for the web

1. Open the Deployment window from the File menu in the editor.
2. Choose Web Browsers as the output platform.
3. Check "Exclude Unused Files" so images, audio and other assets you removed from the project during development don't get bundled into the export by mistake, which keeps the download smaller.
4. Run the deployment. What comes out differs by engine version:
   • MV writes your game into a folder named www, with index.html sitting inside it next to the data, img, audio and js folders.
   • MZ drops that wrapper: the same set of folders and index.html land directly in the destination folder you picked, with no www folder in the way.
5. If you offer encryption for your image or audio files, remember that encrypted files can't be reused inside the project afterward, so only encrypt as the very last step before deployment, on a copy of the project you're not still editing.

Both engines target browsers that support HTML5 Canvas and the Web Audio API, which in practice means any recent version of Chrome, Safari or Firefox on desktop, and recent mobile Safari or Chrome on phones.

Test it locally

Don't test a deployed build by double-clicking index.html. RPG Maker's own documentation is explicit about this: for security reasons, browsers won't let a page opened directly from the file system load the game's own data files, so you'll get a blank or broken screen.

The fix is a local web server. RPG Maker's official guidance points to running IIS on Windows or Apache on macOS and serving the deployed folder from there, but you don't need either of those for a quick check: any one-line local server works just as well, for example running python3 -m http.server from inside the deployed folder (the one containing index.html, not its parent) and opening http://localhost:8000 in your browser. Play through the opening and a save/load cycle before you move on to zipping.

Zip it for upload

• Zip the contents of the deployed folder, not the folder itself, so index.html sits at the top level of the archive. For an MV project that means zipping what's inside www, not the www folder as an item.
• Check file name case before you zip. Windows treats Hero.png and hero.png as the same file, so a project can playtest perfectly on Windows and still fail the moment it's deployed to a case-sensitive web server. If your database references Hero.png but the actual file on disk is hero.png, the browser build will throw a "Failed to load" error for that exact file. Go through img/ and audio/ and make sure every name matches what your project data expects, letter for letter.
• Check your audio formats. RPG Maker MZ uses Ogg Vorbis (.ogg) only. RPG Maker MV ships each sound as both .ogg and .m4a, because different browsers decode different formats: desktop playback generally uses .ogg, while mobile devices and some browser audio paths need .m4a. In an MV web build, deleting either format to save space can leave part of your audience with silent games.
• naughty.games accepts builds up to 250 MB unpacked and 2,000 files. RPG Maker projects with a lot of custom tilesets, character art or voiced lines can get close to that; "Exclude Unused Files" during deployment is the first thing to check if you're over.

Common problems

index.html won't open, or the page is blank. You opened the file directly instead of through a server. Serve the folder locally as described above, and make sure your final host also serves it over http:// or https://.

Character or tileset images fail to load only after deployment, never in the editor. This is the case-sensitivity issue. The editor runs on an operating system that ignores letter case in file names; most web hosts don't. Fix the file names or the database references so they match exactly.

Some players report no sound at all. In MV, check that both .ogg and .m4a versions of your audio survived deployment and weren't stripped by an "Exclude Unused Files" pass that misidentified them as unused.

The exported folder is much bigger than expected. Re-run deployment with "Exclude Unused Files" checked, and check your img/ and audio/ folders for leftover assets from cut content, since RPG Maker doesn't prune those automatically without that option.

The game behaves differently after zipping and uploading than it did in local testing. Double-check you zipped the contents of the deployed folder and not a parent folder, since an extra folder level between the archive root and index.html will break hosts that expect index.html at the top.

Save data isn't there when a returning player opens the game again. Web saves are stored by the browser against the domain the game is hosted on, so switching hosts, or a player clearing site data, resets them. This is normal for browser games and not specific to RPG Maker.

Publish it

Once your deployed build plays correctly from a local server, it's ready for naughty.games. Upload it as an HTML5 zip with index.html at the top level, up to 250 MB unpacked and 2,000 files, and review usually takes about 2 working days. It's free, non-exclusive, and there's no revenue share, so keeping the game on itch.io or elsewhere alongside naughty.games is fine, and you keep 100% of whatever your own Patreon, SubscribeStar, Ko-fi, Steam or itch links earn. We pick which games to promote by hand, looking at average time played, how many players come back the next day, and how many play past the first minute.

Head to /submit when you're ready to upload.