A Punishment for Mai

[Meguido]

Hello everyone,
after a long (yeah i must apologize cause it took me too long) time I finally had time to get the game i'm working on introduced here...
 
 

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A Punishment for Mai is a Thriller based action-rpg game with a horror background atmosphere. You control Mai; a girl which is trapped in an unkown town, fighting to find a way out of there...
 

Prologue​

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Mai is a 28 years old young woman with a sad and dark past from which she remember almost nothing but a deep pain.
Without knowing how, or why, Mai wake up one day in a motel room, wondering, she comes out only to find that she's in a place that she never saw on her life and which has nothing to do with her usual reality.
The girl, who initially thought she was alone in this city, ends up discovering that there is more life than she thought: monsters, demons, strange people and, last but not least, a kind of sect of people in cassocks who seem to be the 'lords of the place '. Under such conditions, Mai, plucks up courage and starts to seek for a way to get out of there, but unfortunately for her, after several months of searching she finds nothing.
However, someone has been watching Mai most of this time, a mysterious man who appears infront of her. He calls himself the 'Driver' and hides his face behind a mask.
Despite the initial distrust, Mai has no choice but to accept the help of the 'Driver', which, promises he will help her get out of the town.
Time passes and Mai begins to lose patience, strange dreams beset her, surviving in the town is becoming more dangerous, the doubts of what the town is and why is she there and above all that, a deep sense of sadness, are making the she starts to doubt on his sanity and to top places of her previous life started to appear in the town, including the house where she lived before appearing here.
All seems lost, but one day the 'Driver' appears and tells her it's time to leave the town, but first she shall pass a test...

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Characters​

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Mai

• Name: Mai Mitchell
• Age: 28
• Birthday: March-15-1987
• Height: 1.64 m
• Weight: 67 kg

Story:
 

Mai was the youngest of three sisters. She was living happily with them and with her parents also until one day, seven years old still, her parents decided to buy an abandoned hotel and went to live in there.
After a month living in the hotel, Mai's mother found a strange book and, thereafter, everything changed. Her mother began to behave oddly, as if nothing mattered to her, except the book; Shortly afterwards, her father disappeared leaving no trace and, being not out quite, her two older sisters fell ill and died strangely. This left the poor Mai, 9 at that time, all alone, with her mother increasingly isolated in herself.
One day, while cleaning, Mai found her mother conducting a strange ritual. Her mother found Mai was 'spying' her and forced her to participate in the, increasingly more frequent, rituals.
At the age of 10, tired of the barbarism carried out by her mother and having to involve in it in silence, Mai denounced her mother to the authorities. Her mother was jailed but soon after that, disappeared from prison, inexplicably.
Mai, meanwhile, following the arrest and subsequent disappearance of his mother was completely alone and went to one hospice after another until she got full age. After leaving her last orphanagem she became a wanderer until she met a man with whom she established a relationship. After some time living together, Mai got pregnant.
It seemed that, Mai finally would be able to be happy again, but all shattered during the second month of pregnancy. Her partner disappeared and she, all alone again, sank completely in the darkest recesses of his mind.
Suddenly, a day like any other, Mai went off to sleep, but when she woke up, she wasn't on her home anymore...

Lucy

• Name: Lucy McVid
• Age: 19
• Birthday: August-3-1996
• Height: 1.59 m
• Weight: 62 kg

Story:
 

Since the death of his mother, Lucy became an introvert and lonely girl. This was also getting increased, due to her inferiority complex caused by her sluttering.
She had no friends, but she wasn't alone, because her father supported her at all times.
Time went by, Lucy and her father were increasingly inseparable and this helped the girl to not be sad, but then everything changed.
Her father began to receive phone calls from an unknown woman and, from that moment on, everything went wrong. He became unfriendly and violent. He spent hours doing strange rituals and talking to that woman in phone.
Over time, Lucy, just like Mai, is forced to participate in the rituals, but unlike she, Lucy did not have nor has the power to bear with those and ends up suffering a lot.
In her eighteenth birthday, the girl finds, during an argument with her father, that she carries some kind of power in which the unknown woman from the phone is interested. The discussion rises increasingly in tone and ends with her father forcing her to participate in a human sacrifice.
During the grisly ritual, Lucy falls fainted. During hours she suffers overwhelming nightmares. When she finally wakes up, discovers that she is in a different reality, that she is all alone and that someone locked her in that place. Like so often throughout her life, Lucy huddles in a corner staring off at infinity and says nothing...

 
The Driver

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• Name: Unknown. He calls himself 'The driver'.
• Age: 53
• Birthday: ?-??-1962
• Height: 1.92 m
• Weight: 97 kg

Story:
 

This strange man hides his face behind a mask. But his face is not only that is hidden because both his past and his intentions are totally unknown.
It is not known how long he's been in the city, but based on his knowledge from it, is sure that he's been long surviving there.
One day, by chance he discovers Mai, as she was looking for supplies. The willpower he perceives in her, somehow attracts him and from that moment on he spies on Mai to see if she is strong enough. When finally he believes she is ready, he comes to her and manages to convince her that he knows how to escape the city.
The driver is not a playable character in the adventure, however, has two main uses. The first is, that transports Mai forth with his car. And the second is that he provides her with ammunition and other items through his 'store'.

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Gameplay​

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As stated before, the game is an Action-rpg. So i'll talk about some elements it has:
 

• Action-RPG: some people also call it Hack'n'Slash in 2D. This is the basic idea behind this game's gameplay. Some examples in this same genre could be games like the classics "The Legend of Zelda" or The Adventures of Alundra. But of course, APFM is not one of these games, nor it is set in a fantasy world. APFM is a horror game, so although there exists all the classic elements of the Action-RPG, like Magic (yeah, there is magic, but the explanation for that will come later in another report), experience per enemy killed, which will make us gain levels, melee attacks, a shield to fend off enemy attacks or even Magic Points, which are called Mana (MN) here, APFM will have other elements, more survival-horror-like games. Examples of this could be a reduced number of battles compared to action-rpgs usual style, using firearms (which require ammunition), a targeting system, moving through smaller and darker maps (trying to cause a 'claustrophobic' feel and fear on the player), etc.

• Puzzles: The thing we love uppermost in survival horror games (in some way an inspiration for this game) are puzzles, hence this element was the only sure-one with a place in this game since the beggining of its design. So there are different kinds of puzzles; from lowering levers to restoring the power in some area to hitting spheres to 'turn' them... Said like this, it sounds rather easy, but this have to be seen while playing.

• Exclamation: So in order to keep the player focused on the mos important things in the game we added a little system to inform the player about important "things" on the level. This tells the player about "things" he can interact with. For instance whether there is a book you can read or a key you can grab and so on.

          Every "thing" you can interact with has a range and when the player enters it, this symbol appears above the "thing":

          Also a sound plays whenever the symbol comes up.

          And when the player leaves the range the symbol disappears of course.

• Exceptions exists in this "dual indication" system, like some "things" the player can move in any way or another (we'll discuss about this soon) or some other "things" that maybe are hidden (for instance in  the darkness) or maybe there are some requirements we don't meet up yet to get that "thing"...
• This system will help the player to find the objects, etc. he needs in a more easily way without destroying the experience, the feeling or the complexity of the game itself due to that.

• Development system: Let's take this little closer to the RPG-side of the game. In addition to levels, whose range from 1 to 10 and will serve to improve Mai and Lucy's parameters, there is also a kind of 'board' for each character, called "The White Room",  from where they can upgrade even more their skills and even learn Magic. All that at the cost of Ability Points (AP). One thing to keep in mind as i don't want to overlook it (although this system will be deeply explained in a later report too) is the fact that you can enable / disable the Magics and parameters' 'upgrades' at will, so whenever you disable anything, you'll recover any AP invested in the enabling process. This will let the player choose what he needs in each situation.

 
There are more aspects about the gameplay that i can talk about but at the end I'll explain why it's better this way...
 
 

Screenshots​

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Videos​

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This is just a little teaser of the action-rpg gameplay. Still its the first time we show the game in movement:

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Here's the Launch Trailer for the Chapter I:

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Fanart​

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Yeah we even got some fanart already from some friends:
 

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Notes​

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Ok, so let me explain why it took me so much to introduce the game:

• When we started *promoting* the game we had so little info about it and just some screeshots. I came here and saw the rules and realized we needed much more info on it. So we decided to keep on updating on indiedb until we had a firm base of info to bring here. Once we had it however i came across some personal problems and had little-to-no time to be on the internet and that's why it has to be until now that the game got here.

• About the aspects i didn't mention here it's because they are already explained in the indiedb news so i think it's probably better to just link you everyone to those entries. In those entries you can follow up the progress as it was happening until the day of today where we're closer to the launch of the Chapter 1.

• Maybe you're wondering why i talk about "we/us" so if that's the case let me tell you I'm working with my brother and our indie *team* is called Fatbros. I'll link some social media at the end if you're interested in following our works.

• As a final note, please let me know if you want me to post every report is already up on indiedb here as a new post or just want the link to it.

• Sorry for my english, it's not my mother language and i try the best i can. Same goes for the translation of the game. Don't take into account if you see screenshots in other language because the games will be in english too.

Links​

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So here are some links to some media feeds we have and the complete profile for the game:

• Fatbros' Twitter
• Fatbros' Tumblr
• Fatbros' Blogger (for Spanish people)
• Fatbros' IndieDB Profile

• Zero0Ichi's Twitter
• Zero0Ichi's Tumblr (for Spanish people)
• Zero0Ichi's IndieDB Profile

• Meguido's Twitter
• Meguido's IndieDB Profile

• A Punishment for Mai IndieDB Profile

Feedback & support is always welcome!​

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[Seriel]

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Woah. Never heard of Indie DB, but that seems really good!

Good luck with your project!

 

[Meguido]

Thank you!

And indiedb is like a data base of indie games where you can add your game and keep it updated (posting news) so everyone interested can follow up. Usually when you write a new report in there and get published in the frontpage your game gets in a high position like the top 100. But give it a few days and it's back to 1000+ position

 

[Meguido]

So here i am with more info on the game...

Gameplay

Magic​

As mentioned in earlier reports, One key thing that generated doubts to Zero0Ichi when he was designing the game was the magic aspect.
 

Zero0Ichi:Should i add magic to this kind of game? Magic in a horror-game?!...

He thought about it a lot and in the end he said to himself

Zero0Ichi:If i had the chance to add it, i will

and so the game end up having magic.
So let's talk a little bit about Magic, because there are some highlights.

• Character Differences: Mai and Lucy differentiate in the Maná they have, being Lucy much more stronger in this aspect as she has a lot more MN. This balances the fact that Lucy can't use firearms or barehands to fight. On the other hand, Mai possesses, let's say, the most powerful magic, while Lucy has the best healing Magic.
• Maná: The Maná points or MN are required to use Magic. You can't use it without those. The problem is, human don't have this ability in a natural way, which means that no item recovers MN, not even the save-point recovers it. For Maná to be recovered, you have to drink 'monsters' blood which gives the ability to generate Maná to the character. This isn't shown very explicitly in the game even if it might seem obvious, I still wanted to clarify it.
• Magic-Types: The Magic is divided into three different types:

• Healing: Always used in the Player character, they are used to recover HP, recover from illness, etc.
• Elemental: or attack. These Magics have elemental affinity and cause damage to the target the player's aiming to. For example Fire, Lightning, etc.
• Ailments: These Magics cause illness to targets plus a small amount of damage. Examples include: Hurt, Slow, etc.

• Usage: From the Menu, you equip the magic you want to use. This will be assigned to the HUD's Magic Hotkey. Back on the game, just press the aforementioned hotkey and you'll use the Magic producing its effect and spending the required MN.
• Particularities: There are some attributes that can't be forgotten when using Magic, like the Cast time, the Blow-up power, the scope, the range or the ability to bounce back from some of these.

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And this is, roughly speaking, the Magic system.

The Red Box
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Fellow:

what is special in that red box?




Dev:

Well, it's an object the player can pickup and throw.

• Warning: Just like any other *thing* you can interact with, when you're close to any of these, you get warned. This time though, you have the typical interaction sound but no exclamation mark, instead, you get a light gray outline around the box.

• How-To: When you get close to a box, just press the interact button and the character will pickup the box. ¡Watch out though, the Interact button is the same as the attacking one so if you're not close enough to it you'll attack it instead of picking it up and yet you'll destroy it but in place! With the box picked up, we can move it freely. And when you want to throw the box out, you can do it easily just by pressing the Interact button again. The character will throw the box away and destroys it.

• Usefulness: The box has two different uses:

1. Throw it upon enemies: They'll get damaged.
2. Break it when trrown or get attacked: There is a chance to get some items inside of it. This items can vary from:

• -Scraps: When you get these, the character will recover some HP (Health).
• -Blood: When you get these, the character will recover some MN (Mana).
• -Poison: When you get these, the character will lose HP (Health).You have been warned!

The item dropping ratio will be influenced directly by the character's LK (Luck) parameter.

More Media​

In this report there are more media to see!

• Here you can see some new screenshots.

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And that's all for now

 

 

 

[Meguido]

More info as we're getting closer to the chapter 1 release

Levels​

The first part of this system is quite straightforward. It's the classic old-school leveling-up system. You defeat enemies, they give you experience and when you get enough of it you then level up and this results in your parameters growing up.

In APFM, the levels range from 1 to 10 and they require an, increasingly, amount of experience to acquire them.

Through leveling-up your parameters get increased but you won't learn any skill or Magic in this way.

Of course, in this aspect there are some important differences too for every character, since, while Mai has a focused physical abilities (HP, ST, etc) growth, Lucy has a growth more oriented to her magical parameters (MN, MD , etc).

Finally, note, there's one more thing which will lead to the 2nd part of leveling-system. Leveling up will provide AP. You'll get 1, 2 or 3 AP depending on the level, which then, can be used in another section of the leveling-system.

Screenshots​

Here there's a small selection of shots from the Chapter 1

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Level-up System Part 2​

Let's keep talking about the level-up system in A Punishment for Mai.​

As mentioned earlier, the character's *development* can be divided into two different parts. And this time I'll talk you about the second one.​

AP​

Let's recall AP is obtained whenever the character levels up. Depending on the level you reach, you'll get 1, 2 or even 3 AP, which then can be used in the "skill board". Besides getting AP when leveling-up there are also some extra AP you can get for killing an especified number of enemies.​

Entering the *Board*​

You can't enter the *board* whenever you want. To do it, you'll have to search for this point in some maps:​

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Upon examining it you'll get teleported to the *board*.​

The *Board*​

Once in there, you can move freely over the place and interact with all of you *copies*. Everytime you interact with on of them, you'll get the option to learn or forget an ability.​

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You can learn and forget any ability at will. This allows you to use what you see fit in every situation.​

• Learn: You'll get the ability and lose 1 AP.
• Forget: You'll lose the ability and get back your lost AP (the AP you used to learn this *slot* if you did it).

Abilities you can learn are: Healing Magic, Attacking Magic, Status Ailments Magic and Parameters' Bonuses.​

Differences

Just like in others game's aspects, there are also differencies between both characters in this one too. As always more physically-oriented for Mai and more Magically-oriented for Lucy.And this is basically an overview of the system.​

More Screenshots​

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[Meguido]

Hello everyone.

Today We'd like to inform you all that the A Punishment for Mai Chapter 1 release is really close and also that we've some surprises and info to show you in the next few days.

As you probably noticed already, we're changing the layouts and stuff on our social networks and blogs to give them a more appropriate look.

To end this post we will let you take a look to a sneak peek of the trailer for the APFM's Chapter 1. Hope you enjoy it.

 
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Staty tuned.
 
PS. I dunno if this is allowed to keep updating this topic everyday (i mean for the rule that says that bumping is allowed only after 72 hours) so due to that pleas follow the incoming news on the official blog:
 
Blog
Twitter

 

[Meguido]

So this kind of "mini special event" for the release of Chapter I keep on going as you may seen in our blog/twitter. But today it's in some way special.
 
Right now i'll give you this and then later today i will edit this same post to add some more important info:
 
Launch Trailer with a final surprise.

Here's the trailer for A Punishment for Mai Chapter 1:
 

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It's closer than ever...

 

[Meguido]

So here it is! Chapter I NOW AVAILABLE

Read more info about here: http://fatbrosgames.tumblr.com/

Play it here:

            On Gamejolt:

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              On IndieDB:

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[AnthroMP]

Looks amazing! I hope it all goes well!