77 replies to this topic

[Ragnar]

been looking at screens for 5 minutes and still cumming

Edit: Seriously this game looks ridiculous I love that cave in the video. The whole thing is like the when Mother 3 first came out and I was like oh crap every single part of the game is consistently like nothing I've ever seen before

Also lol Castlevania

Also you didn't credit me for that one wobbly sound >_<

[Ashramaru]

Looks amazing, good work man, I'll be adding this to my gaming list.

[Liman]

Watch and learn... custom graphics is the way to go... along with some clever and funny writing too. I'm glad you're getting so much positive comments, swordofkings.

[swordofkings128]

man thanx guyz, i'm glad ya'll like it.

its so strange seeing a video of my own game(let alone seeing my game on other sites!)... I can't wait until somebody posts the ending.

ohand ragnar, sorry about that but thats just the bizness man. if you can't slam with the best, jam with the rest.

[GZ]

alright i beat the game and am going to post a review later because i plan to cover a lot of stuff and i am kind of busy right now. so more or less this is a bump to say good job. for a quick LOW DOWN, basically the game has a great style and graphics but is weak in some other areas. i think however on the graphics alone it makes the game and is worth playing for this reason alone.

[Neophyte]

I haven't been able to comment since I'm not at home right now, but I will definitely try this out. It looks to be a pretty decent game, the graphics interest me a lot. The gameplay(judging from the video) looked kind of boring, but I'll hold off on anything further for now.

By the way, great job completing a game. That alone makes this game a must download for everyone.

[swordofkings128]

alright i beat the game and am going to post a review later because i plan to cover a lot of stuff and i am kind of busy right now. so more or less this is a bump to say good job. for a quick LOW DOWN, basically the game has a great style and graphics but is weak in some other areas. i think however on the graphics alone it makes the game and is worth playing for this reason alone.

didn't ya just luv the ending?

Spoiler

make sure you don't spoil it please.

[Ragnar]

man thanx guyz, i'm glad ya'll like it.

its so strange seeing a video of my own game(let alone seeing my game on other sites!)... I can't wait until somebody posts the ending.

ohand ragnar, sorry about that but thats just the bizness man. if you can't slam with the best, jam with the rest.

I like how you have a track called "the title of this game is not a reference to trance music"

[swordofkings128]

just a lil' inside joke, you know... *elbow elbow*

[GZ]

alright i beat the game. i have a lot of "crits" because this is a fairly long game and since you obviously put effort into this it's the least you deserve i think:

[hide]`~-= story =-~`

i guess i'll file this under story, but basically the game has too little direction. this is a really big problem in some parts, most notably the TREE thing at the start (i had to use the editor to figure out what was going on, not only to find the tree but to figure out what i needed to do in the cave). in general there were a lot of parts where i had this feeling and more or less you just have to wander around until you find the next part. when you meet the queen for instance, when i got the crystalwitch i wasn't entirely sure if i was supposed to go back or not since she was hexed with one. but later when you catch the robbers you do have to go back. so in general the game was very confusing and i think with a few more lines here and there you could have easily made it more easy to follow.

in terms of the actual story, there is not a whole lot to say about it since it's pretty bare and loosely put together. i think it was fitting though for a game like this. the dialog was pretty good for most people, but i think in general you should have had more story and dialog text. it seems like you just pass by towns so quickly when i would have liked to stay longer and do story events inside the town, sidequests even (i did not find a single sidequest). the ending i thought was suitable for a game like this, but it seemed to happen so quickly. you kind of just go to the end and after the battles the game just ENDS.

a few miscellaneous things: i liked the apple of time and the crystalwitchs (and the explanation given as to how they are made). the chicken head to show who is talking was a good idea. party characters being in various spots in a house was also a great idea. the rat should have been used more, same with escalde. it seems like you get them and nothing really happens. dreeply is maybe seen once in the entire game besides the end and feels like a slapped in villain. a few spelling errors here and there but nothing extreme.

`~-= sound =-~`

good musical choices all around, and i have no major complaints about any of this stuff. however i think you could have cut down greatly on the amount of tracks you used. the music folder is something like 40 MB and my estimate is you could easily cut down half the tracks. when i was in towns i recall there being the town music AND town house music. this made no sense to me because i could never hear beyond 20 seconds on either track since i was entering and exiting houses whenever i entered a new town. the same problem happened in dungeons too because there were far too many enemies (i elaborate in gameplay).

good songs though i think they should have been more retro given the style of the game.

`~-= graphics =-~`

the best part of the game. not only do the graphics look well and stay very consistent, you have a lot of varied environments to keep things fresh. you may have even went overboard with how many enemies you have but i think you may have done this because of the weak battle system and wanted to keep things interesting on the battle front at least. can't really say much more, since you accomplished the goal of retro graphics and didn't really fail any where in this regard.

the black border kind of bothered me on some parts. it sometimes made it hard to tell where you can go and where a dead-end is, if there were more clear indicators of where you could go i would not have a problem with this though. i actually got stuck in the castle because i did not even bother trying to go down the right hall since i thought it was a dead-end.

those short pictures you had (intro, top of the tower, end sequence) were good and i think you should have had more of these. one graphical glitch was that the water pathway to the water place was pink at the top and bottom instead of black.

`~-= gameplay =-~`

the gameplay was not good at all. there is essentially no balance on any enemies, the party characters, and you level up at an incredible rate. i personally got level 99 after beating the volcano boss. after that i could beat every battle extremely quickly. i tried to avoid as many battles at possible after a certain point but even then there were far too many enemies and the pathways were too narrow to realistically dodge them in many cases.

notes (using bullet form because it's easier than forming semi-coherent paragraphs):

- the start was way too confusing. this should be the most accessable part of the game, because if someone gets stuck here they may just quit and never give the game a chance. later on you can get away with doing things like this because the player has invested more time into the game and won't quit at the drop of the hat, but having the big desert maze and the tree thing (coupled with having to use the mark VI!) was too much.

- way too many battles considering they are not engaging at all (use a powerful maggle and it's over). since you level so quickly no battles are a challenge after you get level 99.

- running was a good addition. it is something that you wanted to use mainly in monster areas and you would not want to use when in towns since you have to enter buildings and such (more precise). something like a faster default speed wouldn't have solved this.

- game lagged on some of the larger maps. then again my laptop isn't exactly great but i think this suggests to me you should have map the maps smaller or in smaller chunks.

- the stairway thing in the last dungeon was garbage. i was not aware of any order other than trial and error on this.

- did not see the point of backtracking the dungeons when you beat them. you were kind enough to clear the enemies but didn't allow the player to just automatically exit.

- bug: sometimes when i picked up item boxes they would reappear when i revisited the map but they couldn't be picked up.

- bug: the follow system used for party members worked 99% of the time but occasionally the party members would fall behind and not move.

- all the one hit kill parts were really cheap. if it damaged health (to a minimum of 1hp remaining after getting hit enough times) i wouldn't have minded but i see no reason why you would want to do cheap stuff like this. it just wastes the players time. the optional boss GOVERNMENT was terribly placed at such an early point because him coupled with the cave where the bugs instant kill you made me save like a maniac because i though a one hit kill could be around the corner.

- were you supposed to be able to save any where? i did play the game from the editor so this may just be a thing enabled when you play it this way. it makes no sense why you had save points if this is true.

`~-= overall =-~`

the game feels rushed. there were a bunch of minor bugs, and things like zero balance whatsoever. certain story parts also suggested this, it seems in some of the dungeons you just wrapped it up abruptly.

graphics and the style in which the game is done is pretty much the main draw for the game, but nothing is really on par with it. i would say the graphics were excellent, while the story / dialog was good, music was good, and the gameplay was bad. i think with another month of work you could have made this much more accessable and better in terms of gameplay by simply adding a bit more balance and reducing unnecessary battling. adding a few real puzzles or alternative gameply sections also would have been nice since the entire gameplay is basically just battles.

the game could have benefitted from a filesize decrease. as i was saying with the music, it seems like this could have been cut down in size greatly. when you see screens of a game like this and hear 80mb it deters a lot of people. i myself don't really give a shit but for some people this is the dealbreaker on a lot of games. i also don't think the game would suffer because of how i mentioned the music tracks get cut off so often because there are different songs used everywhere (ie. house and town music).[/hide]

FiNaL NoTeS:

i may have missed some stuff but this is all i can remember right now.

[swordofkings128]

Yeah, the gameplay was actaully pretty last minute. I had a few major sidequests planned, about 5, but the game was getting too huge file size so I had to cut them out, a long with a few features. When I finally took a look at how big it had got, that was when I rushing because, the more I worked, the more I wanted to add. I planned on adding many more picture sequences much like the one in the intro, to tell the story instead of having sprite based cutscenes, but the ones in the intro were hard to make, and making more at the time seemed too hard.

music, the songs are pretty excessive(51, 48 by me), but I planned the game to be much longer, with more maps, but when I got around to making the maps, the thought of "what if the song becomes annoying to the players?" came to mind, so I cut the areas down(aside from the huuuuge maps) for the sake of having a wide variety.

as for the lack of direction and saving anywhere, I did it for the self lulz. infact, this game is a huge joke, 10 months in the making. but I might make a new version, with side quests, plays more like a game rather than a pretty collection of graphics and gives more direction. But not for awhile. I like not working on anything.

perhaps I should of got a team together, someone to code the game in gamemaker or something(would of had an ABS then + different graphics probably), but then I wouldn't of had the freedom of doing what ever I want with the story because I would have to "compromise" and use ideas from my team.

All of this, aside from some audio, was by me, so I had to hurry it up because I wanted to finish this before summer was over and I had to  go back to school(August 18th). at least now, I'll have something to show people what I can do graphically, musically and story wise so I can work on other projects, with people. Don't worry, next vidcon I make I won't be making alone(I hope  :sad:),  so it will be much more playable than this mess, and probably not an rpg. maybe a platformer. meh.

Thanks for the review GZ. Oh, and for the stair way, talk to the statue to left on the right hall before you go to the stairs of doom, and it will tell you the combination(aren't I evil? :fogetbackflip:)

[GZ]

i think you will be hard pressed not to find people willing to DO THINGS if you show them this game (most importantly the graphics). finding the right people is probably the tough part. i wouldn't say so much compromise would be an issue, as gay as it sounds you typically get better ideas when you work on a team even though it may not seem this way (since ultimately it isn't 100% your vision). there is a chance for conflict but i think it's minimal as long as you find the right people.

anyway for 10 months solo this is pretty good. this is why i always tell people to team up (or maybe DOUBLE TEAM (guiltforge girl society...)). if you had even one guy doing anything they could have made decent contributions in that time assuming they are not a total douche.

it's good to see you even bothered to finish it. given your reasons it makes a lot of sense why the game was not so fun but you made the right decision i think. i wish more people would do this, just to showcase their game instead of getting UPTIGHT about not having the perfect game and never releasing anything.

[Eyesore]

I know if I ever worked on a game with someone the story would be totally up to them.  It would be douche-like to try and change someone's vision.  Suggesting ideas is still cool though.

I love the bright flashy graphics in this game.  Was this done with the RPG Maker?  Seriously?

edit: haha holy crap I just read the description.  You sir are brilliant.

[Zatham]

No!



No!
No!
No!

The game's music is in mp3s and my RPG Maker crashes every time it has to play mp3s, no matter what version I have installed. I should have been ready for this. No... I... I'm crying irl... what am I going to do!?

EDIT: OK so I'm playing the soundtrack while playing the game without music. It is a reasonable compromise. The music AND graphics are tripping me out, for the better.

[Ragnar]

So I started playing the game up till the point where I was supposed to fight DOOM BEAST and I couldn't find it so I saved and quit and then looked in the editor to figure out what to do, but I didn't play it further yet.

Basically it has the same problems Yume Nikki had, which is like pretty much the Boards of Canada of video games as far as I'm concerned - but yeah both your game and Yume Nikki both try to be extremely EVOCATIVE of something and basically it's an interesting experience no matter what - I've got to admit some moments like the blue cave were almost a fucking sublime experience even though nothing was really happening. This was the first game since I was really little where I just wanted to walk around for no fucking reason at all which is definitely some kind of good thing. Ok actually Zelda 64 was my last time but for a 2D game this was the first time in like 16 years at least - well wait there was Earthbound so 10-11 years. But like I thought it was outstanding how the game actually had a 'feel', like the way the characters are animated feel like the way they move even though it's the same RPG Maker engine we all know (unless you did some weird code to make people walk different)

but yeah my main problem was everything tried to be 'like' something even though I can't really reference too many things in general, like the look in general was like Earthbound Zero and the sprites looked a little like Gameboy RPGS - and so it kind of felt like a cop-out in some way when you actually had to do stuff because it basically felt like an RPG tacked on some admittedly beautiful pictures and sound. It really doesn't have a very good feeling of 'design', like where Earthbound starts out in your house and the game tries to ease you into the story (really most classic RPGs do this while most RPG Maker games 'show' things to you which I hate), this game is like listen to some wizard for a couple minutes without knowing what's going on and then avoid some enemies in a desert when you'd rather start out in a town probably? So yeah, that's my only problem - the game feels like you made a town with 8 houses in it and you chucked 1 idea into each house like it's its own little dimension. But that kind of makes it trippy in it's own right. But I still felt like nothing corresponded to anything else unless it comes up a lot later in the game. Like that one house that had the orange people, a game like Earthbound would give them more 'life', like something such as the Mr. Saturns you see them a lot and they're definitely the mascots of that game. It's just frustrating because you could do that stuff with just a little clever writing/scripting, it might sound stupid but some stupid stuff just does that - like Skip Sandwich and Mushroomized in Earthbound, all they did was make you walk different but it was just the best thing ever because you were doing it in Earthbound I guess. That's another part of it, don't be afraid that doing different stuff will destroy the atmosphere of the game, most things won't considering how much atmosphere this game has.

Ok so to sum it up, this pretty much borders on a work of art but it would help a lot to have the trappings of a game that make it feel 'solid', like good gameplay balance and not just throwing a bunch of battles and messing with the player that way, just sensible stuff like that. Yume Nikki didn't really seem to give a crap about whether the game was 'fun' and sort of played with the familiar stuff in RPGs but did the opposite to make the player feel uneasy, like that part where you have to turn the light on and off and it seems like nothing's going to happen ever. Unless you want the game to be a little unsettling you should have a little more structure to the game, like if NPCs gave you more items and interacted with you more, for example. That sounds like a bad example but really if you do a lot of little things like that it makes the game more fun to play

Edit: I disagree with GZ, this game is a lot like old NES games and those didn't need 'puzzles' to be interesting, I think there just needs to be more of a feeling like your actions matter and that would flesh out the world in its own right. Even though the game isn't cutscene heavy there's a weird sort of feeling like you're at the mercy of the game, again this works for an art game like Yume Nikki but I think a game like this should have a good gamey feeling and if it did it'd convey a lighthearted feeling better

Edit: If there's any other problem with the game it's that it's almost so highly stylized to the point where it hurts the game, like you didn't really distinguish between good ideas and so-so ideas - everything feels kind of sacred, by that I mean every last thing looks either equally important or equally trivial so I ended up feeling lost. Even if someone's directing a movie, they have to consider what the audience is supposed to notice/care about and equally what's supposed to look not important so they're like "oh so the sled represents his lost innocence", and such and such like that

Edit: But imagine in Citizen Kane if they just tightly focused on some pancakes for 2 minutes and then it turned out the pancakes didn't mean anything

Edit: I seriously think old games do this - like in Dragon Warrior there were only so many different tiles, but I'd say the poison swamp tiles stand out a lot because they're black with speckles like a negative of the other tiles. And for each one you step on they have an effect, in that they hurt you a little bit. And then they had the even more damaging tiles which were like these eyesore striped patterns and those immediately catch the eye if you go into a room with them

Edit: Sorry about the wall of text, I'm sort of having a gameplay discussion with myself by this point

Edit: Unless you're really clever and you're making some commentary on videogames, how the important stuff in games are denoted by flashing colors or they make some trippy sound effect and that's why we all have ADD

Edit: Seriously all things do this, like a movie would show this girl in a red dress and then the audience will be like 'hmm I wonder who the hell she is, what's her story'. Again I know it sounds retarded but this is how people direct movies and crap. With your game it's like you have the attention-getting stuff all set up but then it doesn't deliver

Edit: I did like the title screen however

[swordofkings128]

woaah Ragnar thats an awesome post man.

anyways, here are some things I'll put in Ghosts of Aliens Dee eX
-Gwaldin will be a temporary playable character
-Add sidequests
-Balance Gamplaay
-MAYBE add puzzles perhaps
-More explanation

I already got my self-luls out of this, so I'll fix all these things some day. Not for awhile though! Schools starts tomorroww for me. 

[Ragnar]

I don't even really remember what I posted

and I'm too lazy to read

[Zatham]

side effects of drugs, people.

[The Illusionist]

This sort of came out of no where for me. I remember seeing screens of this game but never knew it got such attention.

Great, I will give this a shot.

[Tau]

So this is your game.. Wow seriously this looks amazing and I will definitely try it out even though it's against my usual file size limit download.