Gargoyle - Living Statues That Move When You Look Away, Struck From Your Own Monsters, for RPG Maker MZ

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They move when you look away.

What this is, in plain words: Gargoyle is an RPG Maker MZ plugin (four JavaScript files, MZ 1.x) that turns any event into a stone statue of the character or monster it shows, struck at map load from that character's own walking sprite in one of seven materials. A statue moves toward the player only while nobody is looking, freezes the instant it is seen, and is found nearer each time, in a different held pose, with a fresh crack. Touch one, or let one reach you, and the stone splits into plates and falls away: the monster steps out and your event, or a troop battle, takes over. No art to draw and no image files to import: it works on MZ's own characters and on any sheet you already use. Commercial use in your games is included.

A gaze rule your players can see. By default the map goes dark except the player's lantern: a beam where they face and a little glow all round. Whatever the lantern lights is watched, walls cast shadow, and a statue in the dark is not drawn at all, so it is never seen moving. Prefer the classic? The screen rule moves statues only while they are off screen, and still makes an armos-style guardian that wakes when you walk past.

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⚠️ Compatibility — the question you actually have

Tested against RPG Maker MZ with the stock scripts unmodified, verified by running the plugin in the real engine rather than only in tests.

Plugin Manager order:

1. PlinthCore.js — Plinth 1/2 - the statue: struck from each character's or enemy's own pixels in seven materials. No engine code.
2. PostureCore.js — Posture core - derives sitting, kneeling, lying, sleeping, collapsed, waving and cheering frames from a walking sheet. Place ABOVE Posture.
3. GargoyleCore.js — Gargoyle 1/2 - the pure rules: the gaze, the lantern's light, held poses, cracks, grit and the breaking stone. No engine code.
4. Gargoyle.js — Gargoyle 2/2 - statues of your own monsters that move only while nobody is looking, hold a new pose each time you look back, and break out of the…

Core methods extended — 14 by saved-original prototype extension, none replaced: Game_Map.prototype.setup, Game_Map.prototype.refresh, Game_Map.prototype.update, Game_Event.prototype.update, Game_Event.prototype.updateSelfMovement, Game_Event.prototype.start, Game_Event.prototype.list, Game_Player.prototype.canMove, Sprite_Character.prototype.update, Sprite_Character.prototype.isEmptyCharacter, Sprite_Character.prototype.updateBitmap, Sprite_Character.prototype.updateFrame, Sprite_Character.prototype.updateVisibility, Spriteset_Map.prototype.createLowerLayer.

Because nothing is clobbered, Gargoyle co-exists with other plugins that patch the same seams, including large suites.

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Every glance, something has changed

• Nearer. An unwatched statue walks toward the player around obstacles and freezes the moment it is seen, even halfway between two tiles.
• A new pose. Eight held poses made from its own frames: two strides, a lean, a lunge, a crouch, an arm raised, both arms raised, turned half away. Each round of eight glances shows all eight in an order of the statue's own, never the same pose twice in a row. A pose a sprite cannot make (a winged body has no arm to raise) is replaced by a hunch or a slump, so the eight stay different pictures.
• A fresh crack in its stone, up to twelve; each one is added and none ever moves. Grit falls and settles at its feet.

Struck from your own monsters

Granite, marble, sandstone, bronze, gilt, obsidian and ice, each a grain and a light of its own rather than a grey tint, with lichen, rain streaks and moss as it ages. Eyes are blanked when a face is found and never guessed. Tag an event with <gargoyle> for its own graphic, or <gargoyle: actor 3, bronze, age 60> to strike an actor's sprite on a page with no graphic at all.

When it reaches you

Twelve plates are cut from the statue you were looking at, thrown off and dropped, dust settles, the screen shakes and the living monster fades in. Then the page's own commands run, or with troop 4 a battle with that troop: win and its self switch turns on and it is gone; lose and it is game over. Afterwards a woken statue turns back to stone where it stands, the stone climbing from its feet.

Made for designers

• Per statue: material, age, rule, speed, steps N (how far it may move per look-away), near N (wake on approach), troop N.
• Commands: Hold statues (one, or all, for cutscenes), Wake a statue, Turn back to stone, Lantern auto / on / off.
• A switch that is ON while any statue is moving, and a variable holding the distance to the nearest statue, for your heartbeat music.
• Saved with the game: every statue's pose, cracks and state come back exactly.

Light on your game

Measured in the real MZ engine by our test harness: the crypt with six statues and the lantern drew in 11 draw calls per frame with 0 texture uploads, with or without statues closing in. Each statue reads its sheet once when the map loads; a glance redraws one statue once; nothing reads pixels or allocates per frame.

Goes with

• Plinth: your characters as still statues on carved bases, live petrification and stone battlers. Gargoyle shares its stone.
• Posture: one character sits, kneels, sleeps or waves, made from its own sheet. Gargoyle shares its core file.
• Vigil: rest shrines that raise the fallen enemies of the map.
• Embrace: two of your characters hug, kiss, hold hands and carry one another.

The crypt in the screenshots is built from Verdant 27, The Elemental Dungeon; the gargoyle and cockatrice come from Deepwarren 02, The Winged Dark and the goblins and orcs from Greenskin 01, The Muster. None of that art ships with Gargoyle: the plugin works on any character sheet, including MZ's own.

In the download

Four raw, readable JavaScript files (Gargoyle.js, GargoyleCore.js, and PlinthCore.js and PostureCore.js, the same core files Plinth and Posture ship), a full Readme and the licence. Read the full documentation before you buy: Gargoyle Readme.

Commercial and non-commercial use in RPG Maker MZ projects. Written with AI assistance (the code, including the drawing code). © Core Systems Asset Factory.