RMMZ Door of Shadows [v0.4.1]

[Antilurker77]

Door of Shadows​

SYNOPSIS

Spoiler

Follow the story of Theo, a young fox with a lust for adventure and his companion Maxxe as they set out to follow in Theo's father's footsteps and become the greatest monster hunters that ever lived. Fight ferocious beasts and uncover the secrets of what the monsters that roam the world really are.

Features:

• Fully Custom Map and Player Battler Sprites
• Fully Custom Tilesets
• No RTP Battlers or Music
• 6 Playable Characters with their own unique skill sets (5 available in demo)
• Roughly 6 hours of gameplay

Door of Shadows is a traditional, turn-based RPG featuring a cast of anthropomorphic characters. It's somewhat of a rework of an earlier project I made, Scar of Shadows. I mainly wanted to focus on improving the writing and characters this time around, as Scar of Shadows had very weak writing. I also decided to go with non-RTP art and music to really make the game stand out and be more memorable.

IMAGES/SCREENSHOTS

Spoiler

CREDITS

Spoiler

Plug-Ins
VisuStella

Monster Graphics
Aekashics (http://www.akashics.moe/)

Music
DarkGod666
aDropInTheOcean
Eclipzodiac
EternalSushi
Mattashi
Maverlyn
NemesisTheory
SilverPoyozo
Neon-Bard
DJFibuko
Deemo-R
RFInfection
Koori-Kun

DOWNLOAD LINK

Spoiler

Downloads to the latest and older versions can be found here:

Door of Shadows Downloads :: rpgmaker.net

rpgmaker.net

 

[ChampX]

Played about an hour of the demo, I delivered the vitalite to the professor and my next quest is to save the professor's son so that's where I left off. I may play more later, we will see. I didn't try any of the side quests currently, maybe if I play again I will try a couple or so just to see what they offer. Anyway:

What drew me to try this game was the anthropomorphic characters, which isn't something we see as much these days. Always liked having games like Starfox, Sonic, Sly Cooper, Gex, etc where the characters were more cartoony (even if some of those games were questionable quality).

I really liked the ruins dungeon, it had an interesting mechanic with the switches to progress and the tiles seemed to have quite a bit of detail them. The auto run segment after the boss where you avoided rocks and jumped pits however felt a little awkward, especially with the timing of jumps. A few tries and you get used to it, but I just can't put my finger on why it feels off.

I do wish I could say the same for the more forest/plains areas of the game in terms of detail. They just feel a bit more open with a lot of empty space and not much detail on what is there. Perhaps some more plants/rocks/trees? The main town I think is fine, but it did catch me off guard when at the beginning it said, house with blue roof and then two seconds later I walk by a house with a blue roof that isn't the correct house. Perhaps the hunting guild should be the only house in the starting area with a blue roof?

The characters did warm up to me after awhile and I like how each all have their own personalities to them. I think the level up banter was quite unique and amusing to. I may play more just to see where this all goes. The story does start a little slow, but I gave it a chance and I think it does pick up after awhile.

I liked the vast amount of options the game does offer in the options menu. It is an interesting UI layout on top of that (although I am unsure if all VS plugins for MZ use it or if this was a custom UI layout for game as I don't use MZ, but either way I like it).

I haven't played around a ton with the combat mechanics nor did I really grind that much. I kind of won being under leveled and mostly with brute force + defensive play so I can't comment too much on the depth of it. I can see that grinding is encouraged especially with the vast encounters you can possibly run into along the way. That's fine although I would just make sure you don't rely too much on it (and maybe you don't, I'm just going by what I know from playing).

I did like how different colored balls for the encounters had different behavioral patterns to them. One suggestion I think that may increase accessibility though would be if you also added some pattern to them as well (maybe the red ones have a star and blue ones have some stripes etc) to help players who may have some type of color blindness. Alternatively, find some way you could incorporate an option for that through the vast options menu to.

Anyway keep up the development, you are free to take my feedback however you wish as my feedback is just that, feedback.

 

[Antilurker77]

Thanks for playing! I will work on the plains and forest area in the future. I've gotten a lot of feedback on how they feel kinda empty. It's just a matter of me sitting down and doing some additional art to spruce up those areas.

A lot of the side quests you don't need to really go out of the way for, and there's no harm to just picking them up. They're where you get most of your SP from so you want to do at least a few.

I can see about making the timing more lenient for jumping over the gaps.

Combat wise, I balance the EXP curve around hitting every red enemy and dodging all the blue ones. Newer areas tend to be less dense with encounters too, I think it's really only the first three areas that are absolutely swamped with encounters. To be fair the combat isn't really super in-depth anyway, I think it picks up more around the 2nd dungeon once you get some more skills and spells. Overall though I opted to keep things a bit on the simpler side so don't expect any crazy skill combos or anything like that.

The UI is all base VS plugin stuff. I would like to customize it more in the future if possible. I know there's a battle layout program for MV, wonder if it works with MZ?

I did not think about color blindness for the encounter balls. I will see if there's anything I can do about that.

 

[ChampX]

Not sure about the battle layout program for MV. I just created extension plugins that modified a yanfly layout manually by code to better fit my own needs so unfortunately I can't speak on that front.

As for color blindness, one thing you can do to test that is to look for an app in your smart phone of choice's app store and search for colorblind simulator or similar. These apps tend to allow you to preview various types of colorblindness outputs with your camera.

 

[Antilurker77]

Here's a quick preview of one of the areas in the next update:

 

[Fauxworks]

I'm used to old school phantsy star grinding so the beginning was no problem,the overall game is challenging but fair. Getting new abilities feels mad rewarding and maps are well designed.
I really liked the game but my only gripes is weapons you buy feel kinda weak but I'm sure
you wanted it that way. The first purple chest almost got me but I persevered for that sweet dagger and red enemies only sometimes made me mad.

I stopped playing for now after killing the second boss and will resume to play more

 

[Antilurker77]

I've uploaded the new v0.4.0 for you all to play. Originally, I wanted to include one more area in this release, but development is currently on hiatus so it was not included. The reason I uploaded this update early is for some upcoming streamer/YouTube playthroughs. Changes as follows:

-Added roughly 2 hours of new content
-Added a new playable party member
-Reworked encounters; most blue enemies have been removed and the density of red enemies has been made more consistent
-Red enemies will become blue enemies and no longer chase you when your party out-levels them
-Known issue: sometimes enemies can be much slower than intended just after leveling or certain events

Note that this version is not compatible with old save files. You will need to start a new game. This is due to many event IDs being changed around which can cause chests or cutscenes to reset in old save files.

 

[Antilurker77]

New screenshot!

 

[Antilurker77]

Hello, I've released a new demo for you all to play. This version contains the missing content I originally planned to include in the v0.4.0 release, as well as some balance changes. Patch notes as follows:

-Added roughly 30 minutes of new content
-Changed many buffs and debuffs that lasted 5 turns to now last 7
-LV25 abilities are now available for all characters
-Slightly increased Maxxe's SPD
-Fleetfoot and Snare have been reduced to 20% (from 30%)
-Robin's Draining Edge now heal for 200% of damage dealt
-Robin's Swiftness now increases evasion by 40%
-Added some female guard npc sprites
-Known Issue: Upon leveling up, the window does not display the correct stats

Old v0.4.0 save files should work fine with this version. Please don't hesitate to post if you find any bugs or have any feedback. Thank you!

 

[Antilurker77]

Thank you Studio Blue for the stream!