RMMV Between Worlds

[jigida70]

A Princess, Soldier, Wizard, and Sorceress walk through a portal. To discover the punchline, check out Between Worlds, a game about four main characters overcoming their flaws to save three different worlds.

The Story
Six months ago, King Berema had a vision of impending doom. That day, a sorceress told him to save his daughter, Princess Vanora, she must be sent to another world. With her, the King sends his most trusted advisor, General Norric, and several soldiers and servants.

Before going through the portal to the new land, Princess Vanora was told "In half a year's time, to her rightful place the Princess shall be. Look for the sorceress, for she will bring salvation."

Now, as the promised time has come, Princess Vanora receives word that the portal has opened again, but the Sorceress is not with them. General Norric denounces Vanora's authority in this land, and takes command. Only one soldier, a young man named Kailua, defends her. Princess Vanora, and Kailua are banished from their settlement, and make their way to where the portal had recently re-opened. Will they find answers that will lead them home?

Spoiler: Play the Demo

Between Worlds Demo

Spoiler: Images/Screenshots

Spoiler: Our Heroes

Princess Vanora
The spoiled Princess who must overcome the King's failures as a father, to become the leader he never was.















Kailua
A captain for the King's army, who stays loyal to Princess Vanora
when others cast her out. He must become the most lethal warrior
if he is to protect her.










Alion
A servant girl, who came to this new world supposedly by accident. Unbeknownst to her, the sorceress had been grooming her to become a powerful magic user herself.








Anthony
Just your typical guy coasting through life, who unexpectantly wakes up on another world to find he is the most powerful Wizard on three planets. Nothing out of the normal.

Battles
I am sticking with the default RPG Maker Battle system, but using custom made battler animations. My main focus will be on the visuals and storytelling. If the feedback I receive tells me that I need to focus more on the battles to keep players interested, then I will put more time into the battles. However, whatever time I put into one aspect of the game, is time taken away from other aspects.
Battle Gameplay Teaser

 

[rpgLord69]

Played the short demo. Not sure if it's a performance issue or the fact that the game was online, but there was some issue with lag. The text appeared before the character portraits. Many times I had already finished reading the text before the character portrait appeared. Also, when moving up/down the character seems to change size, appearing larger/smaller in succession. I'd also try and make the walking animation more fluid. In the battles some models appear to be floating in air, rather than standing on the ground. It's quite an ambitious graphical style and I think it's going to take a lot of work and fine-tuning to get it right. Good luck!

 

[RivalRamen_Games]

I played a bit of the demo, and I have a few words...


It's pretty good! The story kept me invested, but you lost me at the jitteriness of the graphics. I have to say, the characters would randomly shrink and grow whenever I walked up or down respectively. Also, This happened... (Yes, I played the full demo of @hiddenone 's Reincarnation assistant.)

I'm no expert on human/elven anatomy, but I don't think that's healthy to have your body cut off at the neck/shoulder area. Also, Kailua's headless and neckless body is stepping on Vanora's headless body's ankle, which is probably painful...

But other than the weirdness of the graphic implementation, the game was really good! I wanted to find out why the heck the Sorceress didn't come through the portal. What's the danger that Vanora's home plane was in? Was it a rogue necromancer? A Tarrasque? Or, dare I say it... A GIANT MUSKET BUNNY ARMY?!

I'm a huge fan of inter-dimensional travel, and I must say, yours is pretty well executed! The story had me invested!

I have very high hopes for this game, and can't wait to see what you'll do with it!

I'm Rival Ramen, and thank you for coming to my review.

 

[jigida70]

Thank you both for the feedback.
1. The shrinking and growing on the map was an attempt to deal with the map being rendered in 3D, and there being depth (objects closer to camera being larger, objects farther away being smaller). So I set three regions, each being three tiles high. Then I had different graphic sizes for each layer of "depth". I am actually glad you both brought that up, it tells me that it is something that I probably want to abandon doing from here on out. I am actually working on new maps where I rendered each object in the scene (tents, trees, etc) separate and close to the camera, then add them to the scene at appropriate sizes so there isn't a "depth" to the maps. I'll go back to the first couple of maps and re-do those, then choose one size of walk sprite and stick with it (at least one size per map, I might have smaller, more intimate maps with bigger sprites, and larger, maze or dungeons, with smaller sprites).
I'll also put the walk sprite's fluidity on this point. That is definitely something I'll work on. I plan on redoing the walk sprites later on.

Spoiler: New Map

Still deciding on best size for character sprite (currently 192 x 96)

2. The Save graphics problem is one that I just haven't dealt with yet. I'll either need to figure out how to have the same images for the saves, but smaller, or just have it show the Face images instead (I have corresponding face sets for the bust graphics).

3. In the battles, I'll need to figure out a way to place the figures better, so they appear on the ground. Or work on the battle animations. Thank you for pointing that out.

4. I uploaded the game for web play, to make it easier for access. However, I might want to re-deploy and upload for download only. The only other thing I can think of, is to use more wait commands with text boxes (a wait before text begins maybe).

Seriously though, thank you for the feedback. After over a hundred hours of working on the game (the graphics were about 95 of those hours), I was in a little bit of stall mode trying to figure out what to put my time into working on next. The points you both brought up gives me some guidance.

 

[Skychord]

Hello hello, I played the demo for a bit and stopped due to me having an exam tomorrow. So far these are the thoughts I've collected:

As a fan of simple RPG storylines, I really love the idea of the story. Isekai or just otherworldly interdimensional stuff has always been fun stuff to me. I can already see hints of complex writing/lore stuff even within the first few dialogs, so good job! Your concept and idea is really great.

Just, I'm not that big of a fan of the artstyle. I'm not saying I don't like 3D stuff, it's just that, RPG Maker and 3D render/depth isn't really a thing, and if it is, I think it needs some complex and hard execution stuff that I myself can't comprehend. So I'm really happy to see on the post above that you changed it to the normal overhead top view camera. I was going to rant on how I think the 3D depth angle camera/maps thing is pretty obnoxious here, so that saved me the trouble of doing so.

All of my other problems have already been addressed by others before me, so I'll just add one tiny bit of advice that I feel needs to be addressed:
You shouldn't make an area with unlimited random encounters without a way to revive characters.
I think it's fair to make that kind of thing somewhere in the middle of the game, but I think I managed to softlock myself when I was playing since the princess died. I can't interact with the strong sorcerer and I can't revive the princess. Not to mention, I think the potion somehow killed me? I'm not sure myself, she was alive and when I gave her the potion, she just dies.

Well, point is, since it's the first area of the game, if a party member dies, then you're left with one left, and since leveling up the princess is integral to proceed (I think?) Not being able to do so is kind of bad, especially since she's pretty weak defensively.

All in all, great concept, loved the idea, can't wait for the new maps, this game has incredible potential. Wish you luck!

 

[jigida70]

Skychord, thank you for the feedback. As I rework the forest map, I'll put some kind of "home base" where characters can revive and refresh, probably have a cave they stay in until Vanora is strong enough to move on in the game . I'll also use that as a variable check for story progression. When they go back to the cave, if certain switches have been activated, then a conversation happens.

 

[jigida70]

I think I've addressed most of the feedback I got on my first prototype/demo. I switched to an overhead map style, I added a tent scene in the forest to rest, fixed the save graphics, redid the walk animations, and just gave it a facelift overall. I also only have it available as download for now. I'll do more research to see if I can get Galv's message bust plugin to work well for a Browser build. I would like to have a demo available eventually that people can play without having to download.

Spoiler: New Demo

Between Worlds by RoguePimptastic

jigida70.itch.io

Spoiler: New Images