Thanks - just to clarify, is it 2003-style side-view battler or MV-style (MV, right?)

If you don't specify any dimensions for the characters, I will just make them the same size as the RMMV default ones, if that's ok? It means you can test them more easily with the default tiles.

Yeah this is kind of a complicated story, and I don't see all too well how the different chapters tie together. It kinda reminds me of Heroes in a way. (the TV show)

But if you have a long game it would be exciting to have the plot unveil slowly, to give you sort of an "aha now I know what's going on" experience. Still, it's nice that you've put so much thought into it, just be careful with setting the bar too high on your first game, which I understand this is. (correct me if I'm wrong) 

 I think you should change your character names, but like you write yourself these names are only supposed to be placeholders. I think the first two thigs to think about when deciding on a character name is:

1: Whether the character is male or female

and 2: What country she/he is from, since that'll likely be the two most important factors in deciding his/her naming, at least in a realistic setting on Earth ^^

To be honest sales do not matter too much for me either. The main reason why I always ask this is that I don't like to work with people who have unrealistic sales ambitions or are only interested in making easy money, but you seem quite down to earth and accepting of the fact that this may not be a commercial success, or even generate much of a profit, so that's only good I think.

Regarding the art style, making RPG maker tilesets for newer versions of the program is a major major pain, and I can't figure out exactly how to do so tbh, characters and enemies I would say are not too hard though, of course it depends on the style you want, but if it can be anything I can just pick a style I'm comfortable with, if we end up deciding to work together that is. One thing I will say though, is that there any many free graphics on this site which are excellent for RPG's, probably far better than what I can do, most of them have a medieval fantasy theme to them though, with your game I'm imagining  a more modern-day setting from your story snippets. There are still good resources for that here, but a slightly more limited selection.

And yes RTP means exactly what you're saying, it's the images in default RPG Maker Style. 

Do you have any concept art for your characters?

And now a comparatively slow and small update to the chicken game, I've added a windmill and a sunflower farm.  (I'm having a bit of trouble with the farmers' pathfinding)

I guess I will go outside or into the forest or something during the next couple of days to record some sfx, hopefully that'll cheer me up a little bit and help me get my motivation back.

I don't think I can do anything like this when it has to be this exact, I'm sorry to disappoint you :P

Your own pieces are excellent though (if a little bit disgusting, but I guess that's the point) , so why not do them yourself? You do have the talent I would say. This is of course assuming you made those yourself ^^

https://opengameart.org/content/zombie-character-sprite

Here are some zombies split into body parts otherwise, I don't know how useful they will be for your game though, they are not exactly the same style, and the licencing might prove problematic for you, but maybe not.

Best of luck!