Charon's Sabbath

[Synonysis]

http://contest.rpgmakerweb.com/game/view/id/138#.U7S7zvldUkQ

Hello! This will be my first ever release of a full game. I'm using eventing that is relatively complex for someone of my level, so I am in need of TESTERS!

Testers to ensure that my game has working scenes, is bug free, and has correctly working fonts!

This is also an entry for the 2014 Indie Game Development Contest!

The game is short, but I'm hoping that you'll find it very sweet! Please enjoy!

The Story

Upon death in the world of Charon's Sabbath, souls leave behind their physical bodies, immediately venture to the spiritual realm, and fuse with a sentient cluster of spiritual energy, called the Soulmother. However, when the Soulmother is suddenly dormant, the souls of the dead have nowhere to go and are left behind in the world of the living, unable to find peace, becoming lost.

These lost souls are completely cut off from interacting with the living. The boundary between the dead and the living is so extreme, the dead will perceive any spoken, written, or non-verbal language of the living as unintelligible. Lost souls are doomed to continuously relive their death through their memory. The vast majority of them descend to wrathful madness and insatiable hunger due to this hellish fate.

You play as Munica, the soul of a young girl, tasked by the weak Soulmother to gather the last of the lost souls that have yet to be tainted and help them find peace.

Sever the never-ending cycle of suffering, and realize salvation.

Features

12 souls to save!
A lovable protagonist!
Quality parallax mapping!
A non-combat RPG!
2 different endings! 
A soundtrack to fall in love to!
An alternative alphabet!
And more!

Screenshots

Spoiler

Download

With RTP (~270M: https://www.dropbox.com/s/eh1jbgqa0ahfc5b/Charon%27s%20Sabbath%20WithRTP.rar

Without RTP (~83M: https://www.dropbox.com/s/d0hq152cgdguuh1/Charon%27s%20Sabbath%20NoRTP.rar

Credits

Spoiler

Charon's Sabbath runs on RPG Maker VX Ace.RPG Maker VX Ace is developed by Enterbrain.

Charon's Sabbath is designed and put together by 
Victor 'Synonysis' Sivoravong.

Charon's Sabbath was originally created as an 
entry for the 2014 INDIE GAME DEVELOPMENT CONTEST.

Charon's Sabbath is intended to be a non-commercial 
game and should be free for anyone to play.

_______________________________________

Visual Resources by...

Alisa_Tana
Celianna
Enterbrain
Lunarea
Mack
PentagonBuddy
Soruve

_______________________________________

Audio Resources by...

Enterbrain

_______________________________________

Scripts by...

Yami
Yanfly
Galv

_______________________________________

Special thanks to...

The RPG Maker Team
Humble Bundle
The RPG Maker Community

_______________________________________

Thank you!

Spoiler

The ending is dependent on how many souls you successfully save by the time you turn in to the Soulmother. You can reach both endings without having to gather all 12 souls. (The Soulmother tells you that you can turn in as long as it is night time.) Saving 0 to 10 souls will get you to one ending. Saving 11 or all 12 souls will get you the other ending.
If you still need help with the burning mansion, I'll include a cheatsheet.

http://i.imgur.com/2gTBUPC.png

http://i.imgur.com/TaMVMVd.png

 

[Alkorri]

Maps look gorgeous. The custom bust looks a bit out of place with the RTP one, but otherwise I wouldn't mind testing this game at all. Is there a non RTP version?

 

[Synonysis]

Back from the dead! All nighters aren't healthy, people.

With RTP (~270M: https://www.dropbox.com/s/njt56vjs1ll3971/Charon%27s%20Sabbath.rar

Without RTP (~83M: https://www.dropbox.com/s/o50692edk278522/Charon%27s%20Sabbath%20%28No%20RTP%29.rar

Here are the DL links. zzz

 

[Alkorri]

Hello there, Synonysis. I just tested your game!

Like I said, gorgeous maps with a strong beginning and an interesting quest. It's also a joy to read properly edited text too ;D

However, I do have some issues/comments.

Spoiler

I like the 'transparent' effect of Munica's sprite. Together with being unable to interact with people or open doors, it really makes you realize Munica's non-corporeal nature. You also do a good job of cluing in the player which areas Munica can access such as the partially opened doors. I also like the alien alphabet, which really makes you feel out of sync with the word. It's exciting to think that if you progress far enough in the game, you might actually understand it?

In the eastern town, there was this lost soul who took poison after losing his love. At one point he said: My life no longer worth living. Did you mean 'My life is no longer worth living'? Or was he being poetic?

I have a confession to mark. I hate platform jumping puzzles. Absolutely despise it. It's my fault I know, but I just don't have the coordination for it. So when I came across it in the swamp... I tried, really I tried. At first it was easy, then it got hard, fast. It didn't help that there wasn't any save crystal I could reach midway, meaning that if I decided to accidentally jump into the water, or jump for something I couldn't reach, which was often, I had to do it ALL over again.

After dying about 15 times, I'm sorry, I just quit that whole region. Other people might love it, and I enjoy the mechanic there, but sorry, it's not me.

I went west to the cave, where I died a lot too until I figured out you had to plant yourself in front of a crate and only hide when the ghosts come out. I actually enjoyed this part after successfully finding two souls. Good challenge that didn't leave me too frustrated.

Two issues, however. I found Emily's soul, got touched by the ghost where I lost the soul but instead of dying, I was shunted back to the beginning of the level. Oddly, the map was no longer dark/tinted. When I died and reloaded, naturally the map was dark again.

One of the rooms in the north western(?) part of the cave allowed you to walk on walls:

After breaking the second orb, personally I thought it would be nice to get some sort of message acknowledging that you banished the ghosts or something like that. But no biggies - at least the ghosties are gone.

I went north to the town where I came across the ruined house. I figured out a way to get around the house (some nice strategic mapping here) until I came across the lost soul. Here I kept dying after agreeing to help lead the soul out. I might be being dense here, but I'm getting the sense that you have to walk a certain route through the burning house, and anytime you walk a tile wrong you instantly die. This to me is incredibly frustrating because of the seeming randomness (a case of the player being forced to predict the developer's mind). I'm sure with enough patience you can find your way out of the house, but it doesn't help that I have to repeatedly go through the same non-skippable dialogue with that lost soul before I can attempt the puzzle again. 

After having to speak to the lost soul about five or so times and dying, I gave up, sorry. A save point after the dialogue would have helped me a lot here!

Anyway, this be my two cents and I don't mean to be so negative. It's a beautiful game and there's some nice eventing here

 

[Synonysis]

Thank you very much, Alkorri! Good to see that my extra attention toward visuals worked out well and that the fonts functioned properly. Without those, the immersion would have been thrown out of the window.

Spoiler

The alternative alphabet serves as an important element in one of the endings.   

It's also good to see that there are only minor blemishes that can be easily fixed, and that there are no game-breaking bugs as of yet! So thanks again for pointing those out. 

As for the parts you had trouble with, I was afraid of that one stigma where the game designer is making the game too easy by holding the player's hand throughout the game, or something like that. That's just me trying to make up an excuse.

For the burning mansion part, I intended for the player to pay attention to the debris and the holes while traversing through the mansion and then memorize a safe and clear path to the exit. Perhaps this idea was too vague and I should make this clearer?

Spoiler

The ending is dependent on how many souls you successfully save by the time you turn in to the Soulmother. You can reach both endings without having to gather all 12 souls. (The Soulmother tells you that you can turn in as long as it is night time.) Saving 0 to 10 souls will get you to one ending. Saving 11 or all 12 souls will get you the other ending.

 

[Alkorri]

Thanks for the response.

Spoiler

As for the parts you had trouble with, I was afraid of that one stigma where the game designer is making the game too easy by holding the player's hand throughout the game, or something like that. That's just me trying to make up an excuse.

For the burning mansion part, I intended for the player to pay attention to the debris and the holes while traversing through the mansion and then memorize a safe and clear path to the exit. Perhaps this idea was too vague and I should make this clearer?

I dislike hand holding as much as anyone, but players with atrocious coordination like me would be at a clear disadvantage.

I also appreciate if you make things clearer, yes. Don't necessarily take my word for it. You could wait for other testers to see what they think. I was just bringing up my own issues with it - others will likely breeze through with no problems. This is not the first game where I stopped playing because I couldn't get through puzzles like this >_<

 

[Synonysis]

Kk. I patched things up for the deadline. It's not much, but it's better than nothing.

Thanks to testers from everywhere for pointing out errors for me to fix them!

• Fixed tinting problems
• Fixed collision issues
• Added more save points in the swamp
• Added hint dialogue for the burning mansion to help clarify the objective
• Changed some events in the burning mansion scene to be a bit more forgiving

If you still need help with the burning mansion, I'll include a cheatsheet.

http://i.imgur.com/2gTBUPC.png

http://i.imgur.com/TaMVMVd.png

 

[Indrah]

Here's my very quick and sketchy take on the game (link for info on why it's so short and all that jazz)




 
+ Good parallax mapping.
+Overall pleasing presentation.
+The use of odd runes signaling you could not talk to the live people was cool.
-Constant Game Overs at every failed step of every puzzle. NO TO THIS.
-Puzzles are more based on frustration than skill or trial and error. Some leniency is needed.
-Sprite used for the main character was a bit ugly and didn’t fit very well
-Tiles were sometimes manipulated in ways that crashed with each other. They could be too grainy or simply not match in the style, which brought the nice mapping down.
-Intro is a bit too wordy for what it needs to convey.
-Main character would probably be more appealing not speaking, as she has nothing compelling to say.
 
To the developer: just getting rid of the constant Game Overs would already change the game in a HUGE way, taking off the main offending frustrating factor. I feel the intro is too long and the main character too boring to merit dialog, but not offensively so like the god.damn.game.overs OTL I just could not get over how unfair they were and had to stop. It drove me AWAY from an otherwise decent game.