itch.io

Once I fully explored the dead end ‘tri-path’ end, I dropped back to a rote, right hand wall follow strategy. As soon as the cognitive load gets too be too much (I find myself having backtracked unintentionally) I tend to fall back on such a strategy, or start mapping if I think I can.

I think one way to keep the player engaged with an ever deepening dead end or ultra confusing maze is ‘stuff’. I you put odd happenings, strange marks and sounds, or other ‘things’ into the environment, I’d stay more engaged and probably not turn into a wall-follower.

The ‘stuff’ wouldn’t even have to build towards something, and maybe it would be cruel if it didn’t, but imagine a meta story playing out environmentally about a horrible monster or a frightening mystery where the environment gets more and more intense (and big, and labyrinthine), but eventually just peters out in a dead end like this game. It was just a side area. The main area might be plan, or all branches, main or side, might seem to have an escalating narrative.

Maybe that’s too cruel. I’m not sure.

There’s the one rpgmaker 2k game that I can’t remember the name of with all the huge, interconnected dungeons and visible on-screen enemies milling about. It was so sprawling, but there was just enough random treasure, some kind of fast travel points, and odd hidden connections between the vast dungeon ‘sections’ and such that it was still stimulating for quite some time. At some point, I had to tap out on that one, and I was fairly far in. It just ended up feeling exhausting at some point, like being lost in the inversion of a giant desert with no landmarks… an infinitely crowded city where every block is so noisy and full and interconnected with twisting alleys you aren’t sure if you’ve seen it or not… Hopefully you know the one I mean, I feel kind of stupid describing it like that.

It feels a bit like the vibe you are describing here, and it was quite popular back in its day, I think.

“And Scalooms… Well, they turned out okay, I suppose.”

:(

I actually found this one pretty challenging! First few games - trying to learn the system and find all the ‘camps’. Next few games - routing, culminating in me ‘being shamed by my cowardice’. Fair…

Then two more, using the fastest route I could find. First, killed by the first encounter (?!) a vine and ice magiya using jerk.

Second routed run - the boss seemed to mostly use physical attacks and the anti-phys armor, with a -str condition. Just kept them blinded and blasted away with the 2mp magic attack.

Then I saw here that I was actually lucky with that boss… oh well. I think I gave this one the most ‘tries’ out of all your sketches I’ve played to win, by quite a few - I’d guess around 10?

Protect your (fem)elf.

Good stuff! Rusted Moss meets Cave Story? No matter what, nice pacing, good mechanics, lovely music and visuals. Thank you.

You have real skill (and enjoyment, that’s clear) for making up silly little guys. I’m glad you let yourself be indulgent on this one, it was a lot simple fun, even without your signature novel rulesets and punishing difficulty.

This is an idea I’d love to see you revisit, if you are ever feeling it! Having this kind of concept combined with your mechanical style would be so interesting.

If you like the GBA era of Fire Emblem, check out the “Storge” romhack (if you haven’t already). It plays with the exact space you outlined here!

Good stuff! I fought the boss and went pretty hard, i used one christ’s love and one ‘round’ of scripture, then mostly holy water with some strikes mixed in. I got ‘black plasma’ from the fight, and realized I had to climb back up.

I didn’t get any drops at all from enemies, so i gave up on that idea did a lot of running and some judicious healing, fighting only against mercs. Won with 0 MP and like 12 hp, took the wrong fork on the first map (that’s where i thought, “i’m dead now”), but made it straightaway after.

I thought there were no drops, like a reverse trolling from the first game, and the ‘black plasm’ would hurt me, but i did eat it when things got tough.

All in all, i managed to make it my first try, somehow, and it was e-x-c-i-t-i-n-g! When I saw the altar at the end, and knew a bad round against even 3 lowly mercenaries could end me…

I also naturally went from Soraion->Treasure->Soarion->Balbalap, just by deciding to explore a bit.

It’s just barely reachable. I died but saw the port the first time, made it the second.

So, I didn’t visit hetra bheb, grunita, the southern lighthouse, or nouf! I went straight from balbalap to luwoll, and was able to guess at ‘just go east’ from the directions at luwoll. Just barely made it, but on the first try.

This one was fun. I’m thinking now how to combine this with something a bit like Uncharted Waters, but keep the ‘arcade game’ feel of this one without the safety of a friendly, full sim like Uncharted Waters.

I’m so late to the party, here - i feel like i’m always echoing others, but I want to reinforce a message here.

I was also surprised by the ambiguity/negativity of your author’s notes for this one. I thought the vibe would be ‘finally got it!’.

While you might have felt there was ‘too much’ for your process, there was certainly not ‘too much’ for the player. I play a lot of ‘magic tower’ games, so the format here was instantly readable, and I liked the simple game of the battles, as a replacement for the normally deterministic way those games go.

I was able to get all chests, botch a couple paralyzes against the ‘cave bird’, and still get out with enough mp to paralyze and bop the last ressurectoid on the way out. Good stuff.

An hour is nothing weighed against the fun and just plain playable result you got out, i think :)

Ugh. Just a touch too hard. Even after getting the “idea” here, couldn’t win after a few different strategies, probably just too RNG dependent.

Great work for an hour though, and interesting idea!

“I thought people would tune it out and dismiss racial hatred as an explanation for any of the game’s frictions.”

Yeah, I tuned it out so fully that I didn’t even have a chance to dismiss it, just never occurred to me. I figured the townspeople were just selling junk goods to foreigners! I recently moved to a new country - so that narrative feels on point for me (although luckily am not having that experience).

I also figured out the joke after my first run - the bad spear and healing items, and refusal to stay at the inn (which now that I’ve read your post comes out in a different light!)

I’m getting inspired by trying your sketches. I grabbed both rm2k and wolf editor and plan to try to make some small basic sketches myself.

I haven’t used either tool yet, so it’ll take a while to

1. understand the base systems at play
2. figure out how best to subvert them to my own mechanical preferences

But! I think i will go faster to making sketches this way than building something myself. My goal is to make a handful of sketches and re-evaluate what tooling i want to use going forward. We’ll see…

5 stars just for your successful trolling - played this right after the first sketch. You succeeded in your goal, at least with me ;)

^-^

“believe it or not i just don’t like puzzle battles that much”

Wow, as a ‘full consumer’ of the OI brand, I’m quite shocked! Great idea on just speeding up execution in easyRPG - that may be an easy setting to tweak for the user already. That’s what I’ll try coming back to this.

I actually like hard+attrition fine, now that I’ve had more time to think on it. I think the combination of the battles having a lot of ‘quiet’ moves (to borrow from chess lingo) combined with the ATB waiting, it blew other qualities a bit out of proportion for me. Honestly, if this was the same but made in 2K I might have not even noticed the ‘friction’. I think I just really hate ATB - if it would just ‘jump’ inbetween inactive time, it would be fine.

You do attrition really well, so it makes sense that you love it. I loved the ship-based OI game, for instance - I still remember the feeling of replaying battles to preserve resources in that one.

I plan to check out your ‘sketches’ too! And thanks for signal boosting Razuth - I don’t know if I’d have found their work otherwise.

Glad you are still out there doing your thing :)

This is like some kind of strange rm2k gambling game. I could seriously see people laying bets on an ‘automated’ version of this… What an odd idea you had!

Missed exactly one attack, on level 48 - with one party member and one enemy left, then went first on next turn and continued. Then all good outcomes till 55, when 3 enemies all went first, killed 3 characters, and then one went first in the 2nd turn- game over.

I still had lots of resources left, too.

I think Beautrix is the actual main character, right? Fun and inspiring ‘skit’ - such a cool idea to do these!

Good one. Made it to 28 with Lament, Cearcelaan, and Jorkon. Maybe got lucky with RNG and encounters till I got a whole party paralyzed by zap boxes.

Not 100% sure I understand the mechanics - may try again later :)

Ah! Clever with the Kraken, I wouldn’t have thought of that…

Very nice! What a strange world where just growing plants can be illegal… oh, wait.

There are a few possibilities to get stuck and sometimes cramming all plants under the light is hard, but it plays very well overall. Short and sweet. Thank you!

Fun to see new 2K content - it’s clear you put in a lot of care to the visuals, seeing the characters jumping around when they attack is a lot of fun.

I think I have probably missed an area somewhere - I can currently choose between Kraken, Lindwurm, and Shaytan for my next goal, and all three seem untouchable with my setup and tools. I’ll do some more exploring and see what I can find - the maps are extensive.

Small possible bug - there are bones outside the lindwurm that say ‘the door is locked’ on examine.

“I will lay on my deathbed and the doctor will ask if I want palliative care and I will say no because that sounds like a Skill name and I need to be ready for Gremlin Nob in the afterlife.”

I laughed so hard that the bloody, weeping ghost of the Silent squirted out of my nose! 5 stars!!

What would you like for dinner tonight?

I dunno… whatever’s easiest for you is fine.

Ok, poop it is then!

Pure cinema!

I liked Kaeru quite a bit - a kind of simpler ‘magic tower’ like. I don’t know if you’ve played anything in that genre before, or if this is just some cool ‘convergent evolution’ type situation.

It was fun to get access to everything in unfinished state and see where you may have been going with things. Thanks!

Excited to have another OI entry! Overall I’m excited with the general direction, and your encounter design is interesting, as always.

I see some interesting conversation about some potential ‘flaws’, so I’ll give some of my own (hopefully constructive) criticism:

First, I don’t like the ‘real time’ combat model. It still ends up being turn-based (and I see that it pauses when you are making decisions, which is good and important), with the only effective change being that I have to ‘wait around’ a lot as a player sometimes.

I get that this might be a weakness of the software. You want to have ‘granular’ turn order, where faster combatants go more often than others rather than ‘we go, you go’ activation, and this ‘real time’ version might be the easiest one to get in RPGmaker.

Think of something like Final Fantasy Tactics, where there are speed scores counting up to 100, but no ‘waiting’ - the system just calculates the next turn and goes there.

Also a ‘turn order’ UI where I can see the turn orders of the participants would be amazing! It could also indicate ‘fray’ status…

I get using the tools you know, but it’s kind of a bummer in a hard game where I am replaying combats…

Second, I feel like there are two ‘genres’ in here, broadly, and they feel like they are fighting each other.

The first genre is something like tactical combat ‘discovery’ - here things aren’t totally clear, a bit random, but overall each battle is a puzzle. The ‘unclarity’ is part of the game - a lot of play is learning by doing and putting together strategies, and the output randomness there is ‘juice’ after a fashion.

I think ideally in this type of game, there aren’t ‘attrition’ systems - think something like a SaGa game. You get full HP between battles, and the battles are HARD, maybe expecting you to scrape by nearly losing each time. Also, if you lose, you can usually try again right away - you can generally save anywhere and try again freely.

The second ‘genre’ I’m feeling here is a very ‘attrition-heavy’ game, where you are trying to figure out routes and ‘trades’ to make it though a fixed gauntlet. Think a Magic Tower game, or a well-made Fire Emblem type of game. These games usually don’t have any randomness, and every element is super clear and calculable. ‘attrition’ plays a big role, and the main game is about routing and trying new things - kind of like a good arcade game that can be played at first just to survive, and later for highscore/1cc.

So, you have this hybrid. Things are not clear, but there is attrition-heavy gameplay too. Saves are limited, and the combat system feels ‘slow’ to play.

I really like both of these genres, but there is something a bit ‘grating’ about this particular combination. Specifically the combination of ‘unclarity/discovery’ and ‘heavy attrition’.

I do find the game overall really compelling, and I think it’s short enough that I don’t mind replaying through the friction because the overall design is good. Speeding up the ‘waiting’ so it’s instant would help. And then letting me save anywhere and getting rid of the attrition mechanics, or making everything way more clear and deterministic would make this perfect. Or having a ‘life points’ style attrition system like SaGa games have - if a character is KOed they have to sit out a battle, or use a limited ‘revive’ item, something like that.

Overall I don’t want to seem like I’m dissatisfied with this amazing free experience you’ve given me - I’m not at all :)

I’m actually happier if you make more creative and ‘scuffed’ things, if you doing more polishing or learning other tools would feel bad or reduce your creativity or output.

Thanks as always for sharing!

Great comic!

Strange, but compelling.

Wow, awesome art style and great setting. I managed to win, but I didn’t feel like I did a great job - it took me a quite a bit of time to understand the central gameplay loop, which is honestly pretty cool. Jamanguar and Bright Flier were hard carries for me!

I also didn’t manage to use the temple with the rhyme, or forge much of the special equipment. I’ll give it another try.

Fuck yeah! I’m awesome.

Done! Looking forward to it.

Glad it’s working for you, and that you didn’t hand edit all those events!!

Yeah, same response as EnamersU.A - I was a little confused at first, and then delighed while learning and after understanding the rules (mostly). Gargoyles are unkillable?

Strange and fun. I don’t know the language, but I can still play a little, and even get to an ending?!

Very nice. Easy enough for someone not so good at shmup!

Amazing work - great plotting and mechanical design! 10/10, would wake a witch again

As always, amazing job. I like the combo of cards and drpg - good stuff!

Extremely well made! Kudos!

Scored 9057, probably can be improved a lot!

Interesting gimmick - reminds me a little of an extreme version of tactical nexus multiplier items.

At the end I saw maybe killing almost all the monsters in their weak form might not have been best for optimizing. Oh well, I was never too good at that anyways.

Nice improvement on your other Magic Tower like. You have interesting ideas - you should keep making them!

Interesting Magic Tower game, with some new ideas that let you play it in an unusual way. Not too hard or long.

I got ending B, went back to get all mushrooms, and still got ending B - maybe a bug there?

My main recommendation is having a key to speed up combat. Thanks for sharing it!

Alright, taking a look, I was able to make a ‘mini-plugin’ that hijacks your display function and de-randomizes it. It catches it automatically whenever an object gets touched, so nothing has to change in the data.

The changes are adding one file to the js/plugins directory and then registering the plugin at the js/plugins.js file.

I’ll share these via pastebin, not sure what a cleaner way would be.

This first one is LoopDialogue.js, that’s the ‘hijacker’. It goes in the js/plugins/ directory. This is the code, but unless registered it doesn’t do anything on it’s own.

This second one is the adjusted plugins.js file. What I did here is add the plugin I made (LoopDialogue.js) as the final entry, it looks like this:

{“name”:“LoopDialogue”,“status”:true,“description”:“Fixes random dialogue loop.”,“parameters”:{}}

You can either replace js/plugins.js with this file entirely, or just add the line above as the last item. Either way, make sure and save a backup of plugins.js, in case something goes wrong. The first bit of code won’t have any effect on its own.

I haven’t tested it extensively, but I’ve modified my own and it seems to be working fine, and covering all the objects.

Feel free to contact me if anything doesn’t make sense or goes wrong, and please don’t go back and edit the logic object-by-object, that’s no fun at all!

Hmm, not too familiar with the structure of MZ projects, but is the actual function defined on every object? I figure there is some place upstream where you are calling some kind of randomizer, where the randomizer function can be replaced with something custom?

I can take a look in the code and see if I can figure it out sometime, and let you know if I see anything.

Very nice! Like a cross between a dragon quest and a top-down wizardry. I like your art style and I feel like the ‘upbeat hellscape’ vibe from alien squatter is here, too.

I noticed a small typo on the directions that let you know burrowers can exit caves “can to”, an extra word in there.

A suggestion - I like to get all 4 of my team’s comments about stuff. Right now it is random, so I have to examine things many times sometimes. It should probably loop instead.

Thanks for making it!

Well done! I was just going to try a bit and now that snake eye is toast.