Forest at the edge of the world

[Nirwanda]

Forest at the edge of the world:
​

 
 
Abstract: A villain gets dragged into a quest to save a village.
Genre: Fantasy, Dungeon crawler
Average Demo Time: 1:30 / 2 hours
Game Progression: 50%

 
Story / Setting / Purpose:
As Desmond, hot and upcoming villain your life was simple: exploring crypts and ruins in search of the ultimate power while (non-lethally, you're not very good at this evil thing) fending off would be heroes. This all changes when your life is saved by a feisty fairy named Meera and a woman named Dinah and you end up unwittingly questing to save Dinah's hometown.


As a side note, this game takes place in the same universe as my other game and roughly at the same time as well. So they both share lore and a few nods.


This game was originally made for Rpg Maker Central's Indie in a Week 4 contest.



Character Bios:


Desmond:

(I was very tempted to call him Oscar, if you know what I mean) Our hero, or shall we say villain. A self proclaimed force of evil whose megalomania is crippled by certain thoughtful tendencies. He sees himself as a smart individual and a creative mastermind, but it remains to be seen how much of that is true.


Mirroring Riev from The Messenger and the Cursed One, Desmond is a magic/melee hybrid, though he has a higher emphasis on magic. His skillset is very varied and he can cause several crippling status effects on foes.


Meera:

Having left the fairy kingdom, this knight wanders the land in search of a purpouse. She seems to have found one as a Jiminy cricket styled conscience for our wayward villain. She quickly strikes a deal with him to be his familiar, only to start bossing him around the next minute and force him into helping Dinah's village.


Also mirroring a character from TMatCO, Meera acts pretty much like Gia: she's a straight up melee warrior, though unlike her predecessor, she has a variety of support spells to keep her relevant when things require Desmond's magical touch.


Eric:

You know him, you love him. Eric is your typical hero and right now his mission is stopping your villainous plans whatever they might be. In his free time, Eric enjoys dabbling into psychology, and when not dazzled by the complexity of human mind he likes mixing different types of tea to create unique drinking experiences.


In battle Eric is exactly what you would expect: a one trick pony. That trick being sticking his axe in you. While powerful the very limited nature of his combat skillset make him less of a threat than some of his allies. He also has a hidden potential.
 
Credits:
Intensive playtesting:
Eien Nanashi

Scripts:
Yanfly
Modern Algebra
Tsukihime
Fomar
Craze
Mr. Trivel

Music:
Kevin Mc leod
Bensound.com
Purple-Planet.com
http://www.danosongs.com/

Windowskin:
Rpgmakersource.com


 
Screenshots:

Eric tries his psychobabble on you.

You're kind of an smart-ass.

Not everything is sunny forests.



 
Features:
- Charm and humor (hopefully)


- A variety of skills give you different tactical possibilities in combat


- Made with Celianna's beautiful Ancient Dungeons tileset
 
Download:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/0x9k1qjte6unsgl/Forest+at+the+edge+of+the+world.exe
 
Known Issues:
In the opening cutscene an attack animation is supposed to play over Desmond, but for whatever reason despite being set up right, it displays in the middle of the screen.
 

 

[snickt007]

I was interested in playing, but I can't seem to get past the first fight.

 

[Nirwanda]

Thanks for trying and sorry about the trouble.


Have you checked your skills? You have a drain spell that should keep you alive through all the fight.

 

[SamGreen]

I was interested in playing, but I can't seem to get past the first fight.

I found the first fight difficult, but not impossible. I liked the challenge, it needed a bit of strategy which is a good thing in my opinion.


I've only just beaten the Earth elemental and here's what I think of the game so far:
In general, the mapping's very nice, no problems there, for me at least. I like the music, it's not monotonous and the battle music has the perfect amount of tempo. The dialogue is very amusing, it's amazing how English isn't your first language and you can put some decent humour into the dialogue. The game is very interactable, for example, all the NPC's give some kind of information that helps give you a better backstory in the game, and some of them you can even speak to twice and they say different things, which is also a nice touch. The jokes and writing is very intelligent. The battles are hard and you lose a lot of health, but the drop rate completely makes up for, so I wouldn't change anything in that respect.


And here's the issues I've found so far:


I noticed a spelling error when Meera is going through Desmund's pockets, it says "Riffling through pockets", when it should be "Ruffling". Actually, you're right, apologies.


On the map "EotW - River Crossing", there is a bush that overlaps a tree on the bottom part of the map, before the soldier. It erases part of the tree by being there.


When I was poisoned, Desmund died on the map, outside of battle and it said "Desmund ha caído" en lugar de "Desmund has fallen".
The Earth elemental battle was once again, hard, but doable, at level 2, no need for grinding.

I'm enjoying the game so far, will update when I play more.

 

[Nirwanda]

Thanks a lot for all the compliments (though the music was found on the  web, look at the credits). I'm really glad you liked it


Nice catch on those oversights  too. Thanks!


I hope the rest of the game is up to your expectations.

 

[Saneterre]

Known Issues:
In the opening cutscene an attack animation is supposed to play over Desmond, but for whatever reason despite being set up right, it displays in the middle of the screen.
 

I haven't tested your demo, but I'm guessing that your problem is one I had in the past : the animation you're trying to play is probably set to "screen" in the database. So go to your database, copy paste the animation to a free slot, then change the "screen" mode to something like "center(/middle)" or "ground" (I use a french version of VX ace so I'm not too sure of the english translation).


Then remember to change your animation in your opening cutscene event and it should work now.

 

[Nirwanda]

Worked like a charm, thanks! (also I had the animation set to play on the player instead of the event )

 

[snickt007]

Thanks for trying and sorry about the trouble.


Have you checked your skills? You have a drain spell that should keep you alive through all the fight.

I did check the skills out but I might be the problem. It looks really cool though. Good luck :3

 

[Nirwanda]

I did check the skills out but I might be the problem. It looks really cool though. Good luck :3

It's real easy, though. Just use sting and whenever your health gets low just use drain. In any case thanks for giving it a chance.

 

[omen613]

Just played up to the cave so far,


So far I've enjoyed the gameplay. The dialogue is fun and I applaud how you give all your extra backstory to the NPCs and the main story gives you just enough to progress through. A quality other designers could learn from.


Your mapping is good and easy to navigate.


I liked the skills you gave Des and Meera but my constructive criticism would be to add more depth to the enemies. Make me prioritize one enemy over the other.  Up to the point I'm at all I did was use Sting and the drain skill whenever I got low on Health. And Meera basic attacked everything until the Earth Elemental fight where her elemental attack was worth using. Making the player alternate through the skills more frequently I think would polish up the battles.


Keep up the good work.

 

[Nirwanda]

Well, the plants and maybe the hornet enemies (I don't recall if I set that one or not) were weak to wind. You will need need to manage your priorities better in the next dungeon, I can tell you that (difficulty bump ahead). Though it's true that I could have made more stuff weak to dark...


Thanks for the compliments and I'm happy you enjoyed the game. I hope you continue to do so.

 

[omen613]

Ok finished the Demo.


Your right, the temple was difficulty jump. I can see a lot of work went into this area. Good Job.


I think you should revisit the forest area and give it equal love and care that the temple got. Maybe I missed something but, Why did they know to go east to the cave? Maybe the forest area could have something they decide to follow that leads to the cave? one of the missing people for example.


I say this because it seems people are giving the game a pause before they make it to the cave. Myself and SamGreen from the posts so far. So I would think the forest will play a large role if people pick it back up and continue.


Again keep up the good work 

 

[Nirwanda]

Yeah, you're probably ight. I should give a reason as to why they took the path they did. Actually, despite the title the forest doesn't play as big of a role. maybe I should add more about it....


Thanks for the feedback, I'll try to rework the area some. And I'm very happy you enjoyed the game.

 

[Szarps]

Ok I just finished the demo and this are the things I noticed that need polishing/improvement:


-First the exp and level feels slow, I believe that in the first steps of the game you should make the player feel good with little milestones such as level ups and the appearance of some new spells skills. Also in level 1 Desmond having 3 skills and some spells being level 1 it kinda looks weird, but that is mostly my opinion.


-The drain spell is kinda OP, Desmond gets a lot of health, usually 100% and is like "ha you can't kill me". If you can make the spells more situation oriented and reward the player when they use it good that is powerful, i would suggest cut 50% of the power and give the other 50% when used against some foes with weakness to darkness element.


-The elements seems kinda off in relation to what defeats what, usually wind performs poor against earth, try using the most common way the elements win over one another, do some research or just think it like real life, some examples are: water wins over fire because it extinguishes, fire wins over earth/grass because it burns them, earth wins over water because it absorbs it, simple. Also if applying elements into a game, make the enemies look like they have affinity for a certain element with visual clues if possible, else with the name at least that would really help, else the player would be just shooting at random till something works and that doesn't feel reward, it feels like a bad design.


-Also getting back to the first steps, you should always consider that whoever plays the game is the first time they play a RM game, therefore explain all the controls, and the first battle at the start is a good way to introduce the player with just a skill and one spell so they can understand the battle system easily feeling like is a safe space before you launch them into the game.


-Make the world a bit more interactive, I love to read absolutely every dialogue, every line of text that I can possibly found even in the most ridiculous and mundane thing the world I'm in can offer me, also as this game has some light focus on the comedy part you can push that further doing this. Some good examples are like being able to read the notes in the initial town when you go out, i rushed to there to see what was written there and seeing it was nothing i kinda got sad, and escalated a little bit more while spamming Z through the libraries and tables I found. An incredible example of this done right is monkey island series, you can pretty much have Guybrush examine and tell you his opinion about pretty much every object or thing in the games and that makes it incredible from a design perspective and all the little gags you can found and feel good for exploring the world. You can even get the extra mile by having a second or third dialogue of the same object being examined twice or three times referring to the player insisting on him/her keep digging in search of more dialogues like: "Ok, it's a book on a table, got that? there is nothing more to it, stop smashing Z and let's do evil things", dialogues like that are gold because people in adventure games and RPG's are used to NPC having just 1 line of dialogue and then repeating it over and over, by doing this you overcome that expectation and fill it with laughs. One last thing on this point, if your game will have some focus on story put some books on the libraries creating events with options so the player can learn a bit more of the world if he decides to.


-The temple.. well, while i kinda like it but the bats need to calm down, they can do like 4 or 5 spells on each character per turn while desmond and Meera can barely defend, and also it really breaks the entire experience that the only way to win them is to use tornado which pretty much kills them, there is just no strategy there, no chances of winning, no other way to get around it and that really is a big turn off, I wanted to rage quit after the second time dying against them. My suggest would be low they agility and give them one action per turn like every other enemy or ally. If charging against them at level 3 is absolute doom because of the ridiculous amount of debuffs and the player simply can't do anything, then that is no fun, is punishing for no reason.


-Make the battle go slower or give enough of visual clues of what enemy is attacking and what is making to the player, the battles were rather too fast for me to know who was the first priority target, some little animation movement or even going blank for half a second would help a lot to know who attacked and what it caused.


-Be careful how you manage the evasion rate, If I recall correctly RM doesn't go over the more "natural" or "logical" way to determine if a character hits or evades, usually is just the evade rate alone instead of (hit rate - evade rate), you can see a more detailed version of this with this plugin from yanfly 







-Finally the prices of the shop seem a bit like the player ain't quite getting what it's paying for, like the 1700 jump from an item into another for only 5% of everything feels like the game is asking too much for nearly to no improvement. I would suggest two things; first make the prices a bit more worth by making the stats more rewarding for the price. Second if all the items will be worth the same (good sword and cloth 1500 e.g.) tune it so if not picking its counterpart it will feel on the battles, more like, ok i have 1500 so i will buy a sword, now desmond is more strong but I still get a bit of a hard time being soft to enemies, the same for armor, more resilience but the enemies are hard to kill, this way the player get to make a meaningful decision on what to buy and grinding would not feel like an unrewarded task. In the case you choose one of them be more expensive than the other think about it this way: If you want the player to experience more risky battles then make the damage items cheaper than the defensive ones, if by the other hand you want the player to experience more of a challenge and tactical kinds of battles make the armor cheaper than the brute force items.


And well that's all the flaws or things that can be improved upon that i saw/recall in the demo. Even with all this details I kinda enjoyed the dialogues and see some good potential on the characters and they interactions. Good luck and keep on improving


EDIT: just a little quick note, the password puzzle with the colors I didn't knew where I could get a clue of the password so I just tried any order at random till I got the right one. Try to put some clues into it (if the book near the puzzle was the clue, try make it less abstract to interpret cause I read it three times and still couldn't relate anything)

 

[Nirwanda]

Well, gracias for checking out my game hermano porteño! This is loooong, so we'll go point by point (sorry I didn't reply before)


- Slow exp: Completely on purpouse. I'm using the western rpg progression style where a level 20 character is a legendary hero of epic skills. Not the japanese style where at 20 you're just starting out the plot. The game is supposed to be finished around level 10, just so you know. You do get one new spell/skill at almost every level up, though.


- What's weird about Desmond having three skills? Would you prefer it if he had only one providing you no strategy whatsoever. Or did I misunderstand you?


- Drain: yeah it is op, particularly in the early game. But, since you lack a dedicated healer during it, I thought it fair to give you a skill to easily replenish hp. It's power is kind of low, too, so it's a mediocre damage source. The idea behind that is to give players an strategic choice: Do they want to take the slow but safe route or use more powerful skills?


- There are generally two ways to go about elements in rpgs the "linear" route, which is what you're describing: A is weak to B, B is weak to C, C is weak to A. And the alternate style of using opposites, which is the one I took. A lot of games use this system, like Final Fantasy. So, in this case wind and earth are opposites. Earth elemental enemies take extra damage from wind and wind elemental enemies are weak to earth. The "tell" of an enemy's weakness is what skills they use...and common sense: It throws a fireball? Nail it with water! It's a bird? Then it's probably wind elemental, bring out the earth spells! I can see how it could be confusing, though.


I've added yanfly's scan script, though I'm a jerk and it only tells you enemy stats, in order to find out weaknesses you have to use an spell of that type on the enemy.


- Tutorials: I could add a tutorial but I think it would be redundant. I've only promoted my game in RM sites. Besides it was made for an RM contest, so probably all players will know how to play it. What I could include is a basic readme explaining what each button does and so on. I think that would be way less intrusive.


- Interactivity: The game was made for a contest, like I said, so I really didn't have time to add interactivity, besides I've been criticized for adding too much text to my games. (Also: Oh, god it's a lot of work!). I think the npcs are colorful enough, anyway. I'll consider adding some interactivity, though I'm not certain how much.


- Focus on story: well, the game has a story to tell, but it's basically a four/five dungeons tiny game, if you want to learn more about the world and lore check out my other game: "The messenger and the cursed one". (it's on my signature )


I tried to add world building to almost every piece dialogue I could think of, though. From local sayings "May Garth'un open a path for you" to organizations (Meera escaping the Onyx court, for example)


- Evil bats of DOOM: I assure you they only move once per turn, they do have multitarget skills though, that may be what's confusing you. And I agree, maybe I should tone them down a little (lower the status effect odds). The whole dungeon needs a little toning down on the difficulty, I believe. I blame my test player for being too good at rpgs and therefore not informing me about difficulty problems.


- I could definitely make the battles go slower, I just made them really quick 'cause I'm impatient, and no one likes long random battles.


I still will check about slowing them down a little.


- Evasion: What RM does is check for accuracy and evasion separately, so there is an accuracy roll and then if it suceeds there's a second roll that checks for evasion. I don't understand what you're trying to tell me with that "be careful". I'm perfectly aware I'm using big evasion rates, it's on purpouse. It keeps things interesting without being punishing for the player (like giving enemies a high critical rate would be)


- Shop prices: There is a logic behind this, equips from the store are mundane weaponry, while magical equipment (which is the good one) can only be found. The tiers are supposed to be minor step ups to give players that, for whatever reason, missed the magic equipment a token upgrade so they still feel like they're making progress. But you might be right about 5% being too boring, maybe I'll change it to 10%. On a final note the small gaps between weapon power are there so the player won't be underpowered if they miss a piece of equipment and also so all weapons remain relevant to a certain extent. I'll consider your suggestion about giving weapons and armor different prices.


- Grinding: I really didn't balance the game around grinding (nor plan to reward it), enemies, experience, items prices and chests were created with the idea that the player is at the minimun possible level when reaching a location. So, for example, if you go through the forest without grinding or backtraking once, you'll have just enough cash to buy every 300 gold equipment upgrade available at the moment.


- Color puzzle: The puzzle was actually quite simple if you just thought of the elements as colors, so fire= red, water= blue, earth= brown, wind= green, holy= white, unholy= black. That's a classic rpg convention and many, many games use it. I imagined players will be familiar with it. Sorry if you weren't. BTW, now when you're told about the Spirits in the  Mages' guild, their names are color coded for player convenience on suggestion of another player.

Spoiler

Once you figure the colors out, the puzzle solves itself. First there was a drought, because of the absence of Nilben therefore water, meaning blue. People thought it was caused by Musphel: who could cause a drought? His opposite spirit, therefore fire, red. Then Umbra listens to prayers of vengeance...do I really need to say it? Black....(or purple, actually ). The war could be equated in destruction to Thalassa's tornadoes, therefore wind, green. and that's it. Once again, my playtester thought it was too easy.

Thanks for the compliments, it was an interesting experience reading from someone with such different design sensibilities. I'll try to put your advice to good use, thank you for it as well.


I hope you finish playing it once the final version is out.

 

[Szarps]

Hi and i didn't quite note we are from the same country nor la misma provincia . Anyways, back to the game and perhaps some of the things I might have express myself wrong:
 


-Slow exp: ok, no problem, I dont despite that approach at all, it's actually interesting when pull off right, just some of my thoughts on game design (which are far from set in a stone for everyone to follow )


-Yeah the many skills at level 1 was a bit my fault for not explaining really good. I really love when a game has different kind of skills and spells that will help me go through the game (and actually needing them, because that's what creates an engaging experience) but I just felt like it wasn't really just right and perhaps many skills at level 1, but again that was manly some of my opinion. On the other side by having them in the first battle being relatively easy, it does provide some space to get the idea of what the guns in Desmond's arsenal do.


-Drain: Ok, not a really bad choice, though it renders most of the potions that give almost full health to Desmond basically useless (in battle).


-Elements: that's an interesting way to go around the elements which I haven't really seen. If so i believe it's a nice way to have a bit of difference, but at least let the player know how they work cause, like I said, it felt like shots in the dark D:


-Tutorials: yeah for people who is used to the RM the controls won't be major problems but i would still insist on adding at least a short tutorial with the option to go through it or skip it for the players who already are adepts of the engine. Say at the start of the game while the screen is still black, a message that says "Would you like go over the tutorial?" Y/N. that way it wouldn't be intrusive whatsoever and you leave room for everyone to enjoy your game!


-Interactivity: ok, I'm sorry on that one, I didn't read the context in which the game was made, my bad. Still if you like some ideas, from the top of my head would be more like, if is some history put it in a book in the libraries or the books on the tables, perhaps even journals of explorers to better understand the world Desmond and Meera are in, adding some notes in the wall note outside the initial house like perhaps some news of the town of something that happen which tells me something of how they live, used to or what happened, even with just those little things you can tell me more about the world and enrich the experience while adding a bit more of interactivity. Then if you would like to use it for some comedic purposes I strongly recommend to at least watch some of the monkey island games on youtube (the 3rd and 4th mostly), you'll perhaps get a better grasp of what I'm trying to say.


-Dungeon: I dont really believe EVERYTHING needs a tune down, just the bats, the rest of the enemies were ok enough for me to workaround with the blind skill and some focus on the healers, the bats are the problem. On an unrelated side note: I really laughed with the "evil bats of DOOM" LOL


-Battles: don't need to go too slow to the point I get to make myself a coffee before is my turn, just give enough visual clues of what's happening cause it can be a bit troublesome due to the front view battle system, even a 0.5 fade to white can really help to know who is attacking


-Evasion: alright, I just pointed it out because the numbers seemed high, but if it isn't the case glad it makes for more depth


-Grinding: I must say I like that idea, like it's not about getting levels and then progress the plot but all going a the same pace, keep it in line and it will really help the feel of pacing


-Puzzle: now I feel kind of stupid .. also I kinda didn't put as many attention into relating everything nor really giving it a good read so there could be some invalid feedback about that point specifically. I tried to speed read and relate the key/easy words to get it but it didn't work and after not really following I just said "oh **** it how many possible combinations could be?" 


Glad it served you of use and I really hope it helps you in creating a better version of your game. I finished the demo just before doing the feedback so I could get everything that seemed most important (on a minor detail the final room where the demo ends Meera and the soldier were still following Desmond as also standing in opposites "corners" of the room, kinda bizarre seeing 2 of them but nothing game breaking dont worry ). I look forward to the next update (or perhaps its final version if it is soon), do message me if you get another update out

 

[Nirwanda]

Ok hola again, I don't have much to add to what you've said. But let's see....


-Drain: There's always Meera to use the potions on


-Elements: I guess that could be something else to add to a tutorial, right?


-Dungeon: I dunno, I got a few complaints about the enemy healers being too good at their job and attacks being too damaging.  I should probably play through it a few times to decide a good balance...


-Battles: maye I'll add a cast animation script so it's easier to identify an skill's user


Well, progress has been slow, but in theory it shouldn't take THAT long to finish. We'll see...


Thanks a lot for the interest and all the feedback.


I'll inform you about any news.