Born Under the Rain

[Indrah]

 
 

Masud did a terrible thing. 

Now he wears the Mask of Odion, a cursed relic that's forced his soul into the body of a mummy. Worse is Odion himself, the former owner of Masud's new body. 

"Keep walking, sweetheart," Odion says, his phantasmal jawbone clacking and clattering. "Every minute we spend in this God-forsaken desert is another minute your body rots in my tomb." 

An ocean of sand stretches in front of them. How many more miles till they reach the tomb? How many more days till they break Anuket's Tear and lift the curse? ​

​

 
 

 

RTP files included.​

 
Features: 
-Battles by LockeZ add a layer of depth to combat. 
-Lots of gorgeous maps by Indrah provide a solid backbone to the exploration-focused gameplay. 
-33 relics to collect that boost stats and grant powerful new skills. 
-A story featuring four well-developed characters with a focus on mystery, duty, and living in an unconventional family. 
-Original soundtrack.
-Puzzles, riddles, and some Metroidvania components add to the fun of exploration. 
-Colorful supporting cast. 

Developers: 
Indrah: Mapping and Other Stuff 
LockeZ: Gameplay and Combat 
Kasey Ozymy (Housekeeping): Writing, Music, and Other Stuff 
Crazy_Leen: Additional Art 
 
Additional credits:

Spoiler

Scripts: 
Fomar0153 
Yanfly 
Neon Black 
DoubleX 
Mithran 
Shaz 
Galv 
Hime 
FenixFyreX 
Acezon 

Icons: 
Ying 
Avery 

Battlers: 
Magellan 
qut 

Faces: 
Makio Kuta 

Sprites: 
Rajiwali 
Mack 
Saitou 
Momope 
Tora 
Gmork 
Lunarea 

Windowskin: 
Matseb 

Tilesets: 
Lunarea 
Celianna 
Maru 
Blanche Patissiere 
Gmork 
Candacis 
Cait 
Liberty 
Ying 
Moon 
Mack
Ayenne

The game was created for the McBaconJam over at RMN and developed in three weeks. You can view the game's RMN page here.

 

[Lunarea]

Please make sure to add appropriate tags to your thread.

 

[Indrah]

Dangit I totally missed them. Sorry about that

 

[Liak]

Looks great! I'll give it a shot.

 

[Oddball]

OOOOOOOOH!!!! I just LOVE culture in games! I'm going to try this out and give feedback!

 

[Geoff Moore]

Gah, this looks awesome!! What are you doing to me??? I still need to find time to play Star's Favor!! Damn you, real life obligations. XD

 

[Goldstorm]

Took me a while to download, will play and review when I have time. Don't know what it is with Mediafire and my isp but they are not playing friendly this week.

 

[Oddball]

Took me a while to download, will play and review when I have time. Don't know what it is with Mediafire and my isp but they are not playing friendly this week.

I usually just go to the library, and it works fine when i can't download at home

 

[Matseb2611]

Looks like I shall be the first to provide some feedback. I've played for about 1 hour so far and here are my thoughts.

Really liking the art style and mapping. Some great-looking tiles there, like the pyramid. I still feel that some rooms can be made better and more atmospheric. The use of lighting effects inside the pyramid would be good. Not sure why it's so bright in there. It should be dark. Also sometimes some colours look odd, like blue tiles in one of the rooms, which oddly stood out. The facesets are great though. I really like them. And wow cool, the game uses my windowskin. BD

The characters and dialogue seem fun. Odion is a rather likeable and upbeat character who thinks himself tough and mighty, but always embarrasses himself. And Masud being entirely silent adds a nice contrast to his talkative friend. The other two party members seem to have defined characteristics of their own as well.

However, despite all the characters being colourful and fun, the story seems rather bland and uneventful. It falls back on the typical cliche fantasy plot of finding some magical relic by crawling through the dungeons and fighting monsters.

Now for the battles. I am sorry to say, but I found the battles to be extremely boring. Each fight just drags on and on. The enemies don't pose much of a threat and just have too much HP, acting nothing more than damage sponges. Even worse, when I fight the Efreeti, Odion can't even use his fire skills on them, which means I have to just spam his only one remaining skill on them each and every turn. I noticed the Attack function has been removed, but this hardly changes anything, because I just end up spamming the same skill for most characters anyway (Chokehold for Masud, Gloom for Odion, Flipkick for Mazika, and Concussion for Rashida). The other skills either have large cooldowns, can be used once in battle, or are just heal/revive skills.

To add to all that frustration, the battle music is also very repetitive and annoying. It just makes battles very unfun for me. Sorry.

Also would really appreciate some new battle animations. When battles drag on so much, you want at least something nice to look at, but those default stock animations aren't helping (I don't mean the graphics, but the animations themselves).

Also, the skill descriptions are very confusing.

Example: "Power: 10. Magical Damage. Inflicts another power: 10 worth of magical damage over 4 rounds."

So what's power? Is it flat damage? And what's the second bit about additional power over 4 rounds? Is that slip damage?

The whole dungeon has too many ways and is very confusing. There is a lack of landmarks and most turns and rooms just look identical. I must've missed tonnes of areas before I faced the boss. Also those encounters. They are unavoidable. What is the point of having visible encounters if they can't be avoided via alternate routes? They're not better than random encounters in this regard.

All righty, so I faced the boss, but... I don't understand. He treats Odion with respect and calls him a master, but then he just fights us? That doesn't make any sense. Also there wasn't much of a warning before the boss fight occurs. I just walked down the hallway, entered a room, and the cutscene triggered.

The village seems nicely mapped. There's a lot of detail there. I didn't find the npcs to have much interesting to say, and, why is there a woman there smoking a cigarette? I didn't know those were invented in Ancient Egypt.

Also no cutscene for when we settle in for the night at the inn? Just screen fade and we're back outside, off we go back to more dungeon crawling.

I went back in the pyramid, but after another long-winded enemy encounter I just had to stop.

Overall impressions - the game is not bad. I dig the art style, especially the facesets, and the characters are really fun and charming. And it is good to see more Ancient Egypt games being made. However, the way you're forced into every single battle and how every battle drags on is extremely offputting.

 

[Makio-Kuta]

 I dig the art style, especially the facesets,

;D

I agree with a lot of the points you made, they're very similar to ones I left on another site after playing for an hour as well. Though, I actually found the NPCs in the town to be charming. (i've only been to town once though and haven't talked to them a second time though)

 

[Matseb2611]

Ah good good. Glad I am not the only one.

In regard to NPCs, well what they had to say was OK, but I didn't really find it adding anything to the game. None of the stuff they had to say told me anything about the world the game is set in, or any useful pointers on beating the enemies. It was just fluff talk kind of that just made me shrug and move on.

 

[Makio-Kuta]

Ah, fair enough. I thought it did well in telling the player how important/loved Masika is in the town in some cases. And I recall shouting at the merchant to shut up - which was largely the point there, so I thought that was a good touch.

 

[LockeZ]

If you dislike how long the battles are, you should redownload the game.  We have updated it with a new version today, which includes multiple difficulty settings.  Changing the game to easy mode will shorten the length of the battles.

You can just install it to the same place as you did the first time, and your saved game will continue to work perfectly fine.

Overall I feel like the longer battles are what create most of the difficulty and strategy in combat - your healing spells are limited and many of your best skills are only usable once per battle.  However, I realize that a lot of people aren't used to games where normal battles require effort.  Including multiple difficulty settings seems like a good way to please them, and also gives me a chance to include a hard mode for those who really enjoy a challenge.

 

[Makio-Kuta]

However, I realize that a lot of people aren't used to games where normal battles require effort.  Including multiple difficulty settings seems like a good way to please them, and also gives me a chance to include a hard mode for those who really enjoy a challenge.

I enjoy regular battles that require effort, but "effort" is not the same as "long." For regular battles I very rarely was on the verge of dying, even as the battle dragged out - it didn't get more difficult, just was an extended length slog of the same thing. My strategy did not change from the start of the battle to the end - most random battles I either didn't use the one time only moves, or only ever needed to use them once. (I never touched items outside of the boss battle I fought)

The difficulty increasing as the first boss battle dragged out I felt - but I don't know if that has to be tied to length. Amp up the damage early on, cut back the max HP, and you can create the same sort of scenario without it taking 50 years.

Does changing the difficulty only drop the max HP of the enemies? Because I didn't find the game too hard, and I'd hate to think I'd have to dumb down all the stats just to make battles a length that's less tiresome.

 

[LockeZ]

Changing the difficulty to easy basically just reduces the enemies' HP.  Changing it to hard makes the game much harder all around.  Normal mode is equivalent to the version you tried.

I don't personally think the battles are very long.  A typical battle (on normal mode) is about six to eight rounds and can be beaten in under two minutes.  That's probably about three times as long as a typical battle in a game with random battles would take, but you fight far fewer battles than you would in such a game.

More importantly, the battles are the length they need to be for the cooldowns, the once-per-battle skills, and the status effects to make sense.  Think of the game as more like a tactical RPG, except instead of the tactical element of combat being created by letting you move around on a grid, it's created with complex skill interactions and limitations.  If your strategy didn't change from round to round from at least the second dungeon onward, you weren't really making proper use of your skills (or weren't hunting down the relics in the first place), and that's probably making the battles take much longer than they would otherwise.  If you don't like that style of gameplay, then feel free to play on easy mode.

In games where you can kill all the enemies in two or three rounds, the enemies don't get a chance to do much.  The designers have to make you fight the same group of enemies two or three times just to make sure they get a chance to use their special strategies even once.  That's not the case in this game.  Those two or three battles have been combined into one, which allows the battles to have a much greater level of depth.  What the enemies do and how you respond to it affects future rounds of combat, in contrast to games like Dragon Warrior or Final Fantasy where you return to your status quo after almost every round, because you're in a new battle after almost every round.

 

[Matseb2611]

 However, I realize that a lot of people aren't used to games where normal battles require effort.  Including multiple difficulty settings seems like a good way to please them, and also gives me a chance to include a hard mode for those who really enjoy a challenge.

Well, I do enjoy a good challenge. But as Makio said, length does not equal difficulty. I've never gotten wiped out, and over the entire hour only had one character get KOed once. I never really felt that I was struggling or close to dying. The battles were easy. They just went on for eternity due to too much HP. I'd personally recommend for the difficulty settings to change stats such as Atk of enemies (more powerful hits), or even to gain some new attacks to use in battle, which are more dangerous than their regular attacks.

 

[Takuto]

It was a good game, though. And I liked the battle music, personally.

The unconventional cast was a genius addition, as well.

Overall, with the theme being Ancient Egypt, paired with the cast and the relics, the game was refreshing.

 

[Kes]

I've tried this too, and yes, there were good points about the game, but I have to agree about the battles.  I enjoy a good challenge, but these were not challenging, they were just long.  They didn't require much thinking or devising of strategy, just the patience to slog away.

 

[LockeZ]

I appreciate your feedback, Matseb, but if you don't enjoy that type of long-form battle, there's an option to change it.  And obviously, battles are more threatening and require more complex strategies later on.  The first dungeon is designed to be mostly about learning how your basic skills work - and you did specifically say you were still trying to figure several of them out, so it seems like I was right and that time I gave you to practice them without being in too much danger was actually necessary.

Some people like short battles, some people like long battles.  Oh well.

Anyway, this game was made for a three week long game jam at rpgmaker.net, and I fully admit that I spent too much of the development time working on making fun player skills and not enough making interesting enemies.  You get a brand new skill about every two battles, and every skill has a unique and useful effect, so it should hopefully at least always feel fresh, even if you're enough of a veteran to not feel challenged.

 

[Liak]

I've finished the game. I found all the Relics, too!

Spoiler

For some reason, I couldn't find part IV of the riddle (but solved it nonetheless). Would you mind telling me how the riddle goes?

The game is very, very well designed. Very player-friendly, actually, with the map encounters, post-battle healing, hidden item indicators and so on. I really enjoyed it. I especially liked little details, for example that there is basically three types of characters: Player characters which have faces, important NPCs which at least have dialogue and non-important NPCs which don't even talk. Nice idea if that was yours. (Haven't seen that in any game yet.)

One thing you could argue about is the character selection in battle. For half of the game, I didn't realize you could change the order in which your characters take their turns, and actually, when I found out, I was kind of disappointed. I had a lot of fun figuring out how to allocate my stunning abilities and Nightmare, so that they come in the right order. Or that I want to use buffs or stuff like Ignite, which doesn't deal damage right away, with Masud and Odion, so Backstab hits hard. It gave me more freedom when I found out I can attack in any order, but it was also kind of, well, too much freedom? After a while, I reverted back to my original playstyle, because it involved less clicking. So, I guess it's not a problem by any means, but I would have done that differently.

Apart from that, great game, absolutely recommend it. 10/10!