AGOT
CW: Some depictions of military and gun violence, minimal blood, sequences that are evocative of gore but are non-detailed and do not use red blood or show organs/dismemberment/ etc. Some enemy designs are suggestive of sexual themes but are abstract and non- explicit.
Four souls trained in the art of alchemy mount a final, desperate offensive against a malicious "intelligence".
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Made for the RPG Maker Themed Game Jam #15.
(Game is "jam quality"; please excuse some lack of polish and roughness)
Controls:
Arrows - Move
Left and Right - Selects targets during combat
Z/Space/Enter - Confirm, Advance menus and dialog, Interact
X - Cancel, Open Menu
Shift - Hold to sprint
(the usual RPG Maker inputs)
The game should work with a gamepad as well. On my XBOX controller, the analog stick and such moves, A confirms, B cancels, X holds to sprint and Y opens the menu.
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Tips that would be in the manual if there was one:
-Save often! Some areas are gated by strong enemies!
-As you collect quartz, you can spend it in the Alchemy menu on new skills. Each quartz also improves your stats just by picking them up!
-Elements are mutually opposing, not a wheel: Fire <> Water, Earth <> Air
-Skills need to Cooldown a certain number of turns before they can be used again. They don't reset straight away after battle either! So be careful if wandering enemies are close to each other! You could start the next fight at a disadvantage.
-The final boss can be fought at level 18. The maximum level is 25! You can fight them earlier possibly if you want to, but maybe rotate your saves just in case?
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This game is dedicated to all of my fellow creatives and craftspeople who are so bloody tired of art theft, fraud, and community damage.
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Also! By request there is now a Mac deployment just based on MV's default Mac deployment options. I have to stress I have never used that option before nor have the means to test it or troubleshoot it, but interested can give it a wack if they so desire.
Download
Comments
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Thoroughly enjoyed this one. Spoilers below. (Hopefully below the cut.)
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The change to the oubliette is a nice touch!
I feel like I have to be the one to ask, though. What is the alchemist... doing... with the quartz in Data 50F?
Thank you for giving it a go, and I am happy you enjoyed it! ^^
Well, the intention was like, if collecting quartz out at the extremities of the machine is like pulling out a USB, I wanted to make collecting quartz at the heart of the thing more like pulling out a tooth. But the animation doesn't communicate that very clearly, and the blood looked better in white than the oubliette's black since they have opposite-colored tiles, but that can carry the wrong connotation, of course XD
If I make AGOT into a full game I'd probably make it clearer by:
1) Giving the player sprite an animation closer to something like the hefting animation in like Super Mario 2 or Zelda where like, the player is pulling something up overhead.
2) I want to make it so the player sprite is actually holding the quartz aloft for a bit in all cases, so the action is better communicated and more tangible.
3)The pained noises are supposed to be from Phlogiston, but you don't hear them at any other point in the game, so the effect sort of relies on a very quick inference that is easier to connect to the player character instead because they are visibly performing the action. An audio cue when you get Phlogiston's communications earlier in the game that could be reused / warped here would help a lot, or like a higher effort close up animation in a cut away, something like that.
I suppose the blood would still be white, and that will always have someone reading it a certain way, but that might just be an inescapable reality XD
Anyway anyway, pardon this being partially a note to self for a further release. Thank you very much for playing and I am happy if it entertained you ^^
fun game, thanks
Thank you for playing! I appreciate it! ^^
i agree with the other commenter, "jam quality" is selling the work way too short. this feels sooo full and developed. really incredible spritework, distinct and very apropos sense of atmosphere, generous and really sexy music direction, thematically mature, fun combat, tight progression and pacing - i thought this was a hit on all fronts, there's not much more i could want than this. fantastic work
Thank you for saying so! My appraisal of AGOT is probably off just from lack of exposure and like, the difference between my internal version and the external version? It's been a surprise that people seem to like it, though it's awesome it's been connecting with folks of course ^^
Thank you again for giving it a go! :3
What a journey...
Now that I've played through to the end I want to give my thoughts on the game separately to those that I expressed in the jam comments.
Vibes and aesthetics are what I really enjoyed most about the game.
Although very unique and uncompromisingly it's own thing, I can see many influences from other great RPGs like Franzen in here.
The party really reminds me of the Onion Knights in Final Fantasy III.
Ocean, Terra and Gale I get, but Ashleigh is kind of the black sheep as far as the naming modus operandi goes. Perhaps the 'Ash' part has something to do with Fire but maybe you could clear that one up for me?
Again, very enjoyable game and art experience in general. The game is just so lovingly made that at some point I want to go through it again.
I didn't find everything, got to level 20 and beat the final boss. Didn't find the treasure on the treasure map nor beat the optional tank boss.
On my next run through I want to try get to level 25 and do all the optional stuff so I could maybe write up a spoiler free walkthrough on the game if time allows in the near future (with your permission, of course!).
Thanks again for making this unique and beautiful treasure. i LoVe YoU
Thank you for playing AGOT! As long as it was enjoyable in some way I consider it a success. Here are some quick replies to your comments:
-FF3 and FF4 were deliberate inspirations; I really enjoy working at like a 16 x 16 tile size and that era of console RPGs I'll always carry with me. I am still working on my playthrough of Franzen but it's a wonderful game ^^
-Ashleigh's name is less direct than the others, but you have the intended interpretation of its wordplay correct!
-The final boss's balancing was decided around not completing the treasure map and not defeating Guernica, so that's all groovy. There's no changes to the ending for finding all the levelups, so it's strictly up to the player if one wants to do so. If I fully polish AGOT, and there is a little more I'd like to do with it, I'd probably think of something to do with that.
-If you want to write a walkthrough for the game, I'd hardly mind! Depending on your format for it I could get the map images or contribute some notes, whatever would benefit the effort.
I appreciate ya making it to the end screen too, thank you so much again for giving it a go! :D
Thanks and yes today I did fancy another bash at the game in preparation for making a walkthrough for other players.
In this latest run I discovered some more quartz to get to a level 23 ending and I am only missing the treasure map clue which I assume is where I will get my greedy mitts on the final two.
Pending another run tomorrow I should be at the stage where I would feel confident enough to make a decent walkthrough.
I will probably mock it up in something shitty like Notepad and just get a basic .txt file containing all the info to start out with.
To be fair I don't own any decent writing app due to Microsoft gating stuff behind paywalls and subscriptions nowadays but Google probably has a decent free one so I'll see what I can come up with and send you a link to whatever I get made to Google Drive or something and get your OK on it or any additions you would want included.
Not 100% sure what time frame it's going to get done in but I'll be sure to keep to you updated.
Yeah! No sweat! I mostly use like the LibreOffice suite or google doc type stuff too; everything "mainstream" going subscription only or whatever just makes me sick to my stomach XD
The treasure map does have the last 2 quartz, but it might be trickier to figure out than intended. If you need a soft hint feel free to lemme know :3
A soft hint would be most welcome!
I think about as soft as I would want to go is:
'Is it on the overworld?'
I look at the map and it doesn't look like the overworld but then I think to myself what the hell else could that map clue be?
Like if it is then I don't mind manually searching every square on the overworld but if it's not I really have no clue even on which map it could be XD
EDIT: Fast forward six hours and my raw walkthrough for AGOT is ready now here.
This is all the info I gathered in my three runs to get a player through the game including the Presidente fight if they wish. All I believe that is missing is the treasure map section.
I will edit and add to the walkthrough as needed. If you would kindly give it a skim over at your leisure and make suggestions or corrections I would be grateful :)
The treasure map location is not on the overworld! Though in retrospect, it probably should be? It's probably what people think of most when they think about a treasure map quest, and it would give more purpose to all of the overworld tiling that is largely set dressing. I'll stick a pin in that XD
I'll give the walkthrough a poke today if I can, off to a slow start so far this morning ^^;
If I may, I don't think this is "jam quality" as mentioned in the description. The first impression is one of polish, attention to detail. The atmosphere is crazy good. PLEASE continue developing this.
That's very high praise! Thank you very much! ^^
I am working on some smaller things as sort of a cool down right now, but I would like to polish AGOT at some point, yus! There's things I cut for time that would make some of the implied stuff in the game a little less implied and I want to expand the middle and last floor to be a little more interesting. I want to tweak the final few maps too just to increase the drama of the ascent a little bit but the ending parts work pretty much how I want them to, aside from a few embellishments maybe...
Thank you so much for giving it a go! If you make it to the end, I hope you enjoy it! :3
I haven't yet. I play on Mac and there's no build, the saves don't work well on the browser for some reason. Any chance you can make a build for Mac?
Let me see what I can do for a Mac build. I was doing some research on like additional things that might be needed but checking the deployment options in RPG Maker there is one for Mac? So I'll give that a try. I don't really have any means to test it since I don't own a Mac, but let me see if I can get one out here in a second.
I imagine the browser saving issue could be a Mac issue or a browser issue, I'm not certain. Let me look into that Mac deployment though.
A Mac build has now been posted, though I have to emphasize I do not have the means to test if it works or troubleshoot it if it does not! The engine I use apparently is pretty spotty with Mac support and that OS is outside of my scope of experience. I do wish I had a Mac so I could fuss with it more, since I would like it to just be a smooth deploying thing regardless, but fate says otherwise. If you could let me know if it works though, I would appreciate it, so I know whether to keep the build available or not? Or, if you'd just rather not bother with it, feel free to let me know too for the same reason.
Another possible trail that could be tried is a like, an independent launcher? I was doing some research and I saw this on the rpgmakerweb forums, though like above I can't perform any tests on it or say anything about how well or unwell it works; just sharing what I turned up in 10 minutes of sniffing around:
https://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/threads/rpg-maker-launcher-for-macos-osx-3-3-3.17...
Part of its operation is giving permission to the OS to run a like, unverified app, and I don't know how comfortable / uncomfortable a Mac user would find that, but it's a possible solution if you end up interested in more RPG Maker games.