Goblin Noir: Cement Shoes are Highly Unfashionable- Full Release updated to V1.01

[RadiantCadenza]

By DrunkenElf and RadiantCadenza
 
 
Sheila Stix is your is your average small time gangster. She might not have the most legal job in the world, but how else is a goblin supposed to pay for all those trips to the mall? But when an average trade goes horribly wrong, its up to Sheila to find the culprit before her boss decides to punish her for her failure with a brand new pair of cement shoes. And those don't go with ANY of her outfits...
 

 
 
This is a Noir-inspired prohibition-era D&D story where Sheila needs to look for clues and gather information to try to track down the culprit responsible for the death of her fellow gang members as she tries to recover the goods and money.
Sheila is, what some might call, a “pathetic weakling” and even with her trusty gun, isn't very well suited for combat. She'll have to talk her way out of her problems using a debate-based “combat system” using conversational skills instead of fancy weapon techniques or magic spells.
 
Characters: (well, 3 of them, anyway) 

Spoiler

Shiela Stix

Level: 8

Race: Goblin

Class: Gangster

Alignment: Chaotic Neutral

In any other game, our 'hero' would be a low level cannon fodder random encounter enemy, worth about 200 exp and maaaaaaybe a potion drop. As a lackey of the Viper Gang, she and her cohorts often get saddled with dangerous and thankless jobs, but money is money, and Sheila's shopping habit ain't gonna pay for itself.  

“Da Boss”

Level: 50

Race: Goblin

Class: Gangster

Alignment: Lawful Neutral

The leader of the Viper Gang, whose ruthlessness is only matched by her greed. She can be especially harsh with her subordinates and does not tolerate failure.  

Lyle Mayweather:

Level: 22

Race: Elf

Class: Cop/Electrician

Alignment: Lawful Good

A rookie cop on the RCPD. Although being a sorcerer with electric powers makes his eyes glow, he doesn't seem that bright.

So yeah, this is just a little preview of what we've been working on this month. With only a week left before the deadline this may be a buzzer beater, but we're starting to make pretty good time. The characters and world are from DrunkenElf's upcoming webcomic, and he's doing most of the art and writing. I'm doing most of the "Game design" bits and audio stuff, though our jobs bleed into each other a lot. But the contest gave us a good excuse to work together and get something released as quickly as possible, so we're looking forward to hearing what people, (and hopefuly the contest judges) think of our work. 

So why not give it a whirl and tell us? 
Goblin Noir Version 1.01

https://mega.co.nz/#!hwAl0KrQ!act-ltO1uBE8yf_16WfdoYLQ17QKuhaBHgzOCRGzxhg

Patch notes:

Fixed some typos and bugs. Fixed a map passability error and prevented the last boss from dealing the finishing blow to himself, which was a thing that could occasionally happen. 

 

[Alkorri]

Genius concept! A goblin for a hero set in the Prohibition? And a debate-based battle system? Definitely will be looking out for this

 

[Clord]

Genius concept! A goblin for a hero set in the Prohibition? And a debate-based battle system? Definitely will be looking out for this

Reminds me of that game with business battle system. I can't recall the name at the moment.

 

[valkill101]

I like this, keeping an eye on this one.

 

[hyde9318]

WHY does this now have more comments? I absolutely love the concept, and it really seems you know your way around some graphical works. The characters are quirky and memorable in appearance (I am sure they will be in attitude as well ), and you seem to be having no difficulty in the mapping department. This really does look promising. I wish you the best of luck and I certainly would love to see this when it is done. Absolutely giving it a play through.

 

[frrrosty]

Absolutely love this concept.  Looking forward to seeing the finished game!

 

[RadiantCadenza]

IT'S DEMO TIME! YEAH! 

https://mega.co.nz/#!1oJWVJoL!c4MUKtbf6zAmOIvDQgxGhwYQ6s__AS0WH0K2QUK_fXo

Public demo of the first section/chapter. Let us know whatcha think or if you hit any bugs. 

It'd also be helpful to us if you note your playtime to help us judge the length of the game. 

The final game will have 4 such chapters, each with an exploration section and at least one debate "battle" 

 

[Alkorri]

Hello there! I finished playtesting the demo. I had fun and the setting is unique with quirky characters. Sheila is a great character and I can't wait for her to solve the mystery.

For your information, Chapter One took me 20 mins to go through. I was probably slower due to the second spoiler. I didn't hit any bugs at all, although I have the following comments:

Spoiler

Is there any particular reason why the player cannot fully see the picture of The Don during the phone conversation? Did you want to add some sort of mystery to the boss character?

You have a very nice map of the warehouse interior, but the outside of the warehouses look very bare. Is it a disused section of the city? Because I'm not sure why you don't see more elements like forklifts, barrels, potholes, graffiti, newspapers or trash etc if it's a rundown part of town. I'm not saying it should be cluttered with everything, just something to show it's not supernaturally clean (unless story-wise it's supposed to be that way, in which case ignore me)

If you don't mind, I spotted some errors:

Spoiler

Sheila: No, boss. It's worse than that...

The money and the gin are gone, and the rest of the coup are dead... (did you mean coop?)

Moe - Doesn't look too bad. Only a bit of dirt

Only a bit of dirt!? It's ruined!

It's called fashion, ya idiots!

Sheila - As much as I'd like to leave, I have a warehouse full of dead goblins to snoop around first.

This means whoever did this could break a goblin's bones with their bare hands. 

Weird place for a newspaper. 

There's some blood splattered on the ground here. Clearly, someone bled here. 

Hmm.. no real mystery here. There's enough holes..

Judging from the state of the bodies, and the evidence I've managed to find around the scene

Huh, what's that at the door?

Oh my God! It's a freaking police officer!

If the officer goes inside the warehouse, then I am 

I should probably try chatting with him a bit to get a feel of the guy. Maybe get him to let his guard down.

Officer: Haha, it's actually one of the better nights for me out on patrol.

It's bad that he knows my name, but I'm terrible at straight up lying.

Officer: Your uncle happened to be my GARDENER

Officer: but it is my sworn duty as an officer of the law to do everything in my power to uphold the standards

This guy takes his job a liiiiiitttle too seriously 

Officer: The way you're behaving makes me believe that maybe I should take a peek inside...

Hmmm, why are you sticking around, officer? Don't you have some criminals to catch?

He seems kinda embarrassed.

Can Sheila track down the culprit before her deadline? Can DrunkenElf and RadiantCadenza finish tis game before THEIR deadline? Find out, on the next EXCITING

Forgot to mention I like the art and how expressive they are. Music is great too!

 

[RadiantCadenza]

Thank you very much for the feedback. 

Yeah, we wanted to put the boss in a shadowy dark room to give off more of a intimidating vibe, but it's not really giving the impression we wanted so we're thinking we'll just give her normal lighting. 

Valid point on the warehouses, I could probably add some bits of trash and scatter some more crates and barrels and junk. Forklifts and that sort of hardware aren't there, because honestly, we just don't have any sprites or tiles for them and little time to make them. Machines are hard, we made our custom car sprite and we were pretty happy with that. (and ONE week later a vintage car tile was released on members+ Ah well.) There is no graffiti anywhere in the city because spray paint hasn't been invented yet. The city itself isn't that old. So despite being miserably crime ridden, it doesn't look too run down and slummy yet because all those brick and concrete buildings are brand spanking new. There's a few leftover buildings mixed around from the previous era that are more run down, and those look more like what you'd find in a traditional fantasy setting. Temples and castles and such. The city is based primarily on 1920's Chicago, but I also kinda like to think of it as being similar to modern Tokyo in that you can be in a brand new office block and then turn the corner and find a 1000 year old temple. 

Note that DrunkenElf is the one who's developing the story and setting so my own explanation of it may not be... 100% correct. But he doesn't have an account here, so I'll just speak for him and let him yell at me latter when I say dumb stuff. 

Thanks for pointing out those typos. You've got yourself an honorary spot in the credits for playtesting/proofreading (unless you don't want me to) 

Editing this thing has been a nightmare, and it doesn't help that many of the characters speak in accents to it makes spotting actual spelling and grammar issues that much worse. I also made the mistake of putting in all the dialogue and THEN trying to edit it for the first chapter. Now I'm doing all the editing in Word, even putting in the text codes for pauses and line breaks and such, and THEN eventing it into the game. much smoother. 

I wish I could take credit for the music since I happen to be a musician myself, but I just didn't have time to make my own OST with all the other things I need to do to make a game in a month. I might manage to squeak in one or two of my own tracks if I have some time at the end, but the music I managed to find fits perfectly anyway. 

 

[Alkorri]

Machines are hard, we made our custom car sprite and we were pretty happy with that. (and ONE week later a vintage car tile was released on members+ Ah well.)

I thought that vintage car was very nice, I wondered if it was the same one by Lunarea ;D Still, it was a good job.

The only reason I mentioned forklifts was because one of the Member+ packs - I think January or February? - had resources by Moon who did a forklift, van, truck. Were you a member during that time? If you missed the download, perhaps you could ask staff. I'm not sure if it would fit the period, however.

I like the accents a lot. Brings me back to that era quite well, I thought. As for the text, I sympathize If I ever get to that point, I might use Enelvon's external text script. Good luck with your project!

 

[Matseb2611]

Heya. Really liking the game idea you've got there, so decided to try out the demo.

Overall I've enjoyed it. Liked the whole dark humour and the characters are very well fleshed out already considering it's only the beginning.

The art style of the character busts is awesome. How come there weren't any for the NPCs though? You know the ones Sheila argues with in a small flashback.

My favourite aspect of the game so far is the verbal battles idea. It's seriously awesome. I loved it! Not only it made me think, but also really helped to get to know the characters and the setting better. It must've taken ages to put together with all the dialogues for each option, not to mention the fact enemies can use questions on you as well. Great stuff there.

Oh, a bit of a weird thing I spotted in the menu. I saw Sheila had a 'Pistol' equipped as a weapon, but there was also a 'Gun' in her Items menu, which was a little strange.

Also, and it's probably a trivial thing to get excited about, but I quite liked the shadow effect you did for the overpasses in the warehouse. Little details like that really do help to turn a good game into great.

Perhaps the one thing I was sort of disappointed about is how quickly the demo finished. It took me slightly less than 20 minutes to get through it. Hopefully the full game will have a decent length since there's quite a lot of potential there, especially with the verbal battles. Looking forward to seeing how this turns out when it's complete.

 

[RadiantCadenza]

So, we succeeded in making the game in a month, but we totally failed at making the contest deadline. We ended up working on it until the literal last minute, and ended up screwing up and submitting a completely broken and unplayable beta.

But, I took an extra day, fixed all that junk, and here is a completely playable beta. Even if we literally have no chance at winning the contest, we're still really stoked we managed to finish a game together, so no regrets.

https://mega.co.nz/#!lkRT1DgT!mbslvdhInJrvg3ALUiudZlbw6xBcpZZYtMDHz24l-dU

(Content warning: Game essentially would be rated teen. Some strong language, some sexual humor, a whole lotta alcohol is involved in the theme, (You're a gang member during the prohibition, duh) but nothing too explicit in general)

I spent a good deal of today bugtesting and fixing errors. I'm confident I eliminated all the game-breaking bugs, but there are still a lot of editing and spelling/grammar things to fix. I intend to have a fully smoothed out final version of the game in a week. If anyone wants to give the beta a whirl, we'd love to hear what you think of it.

We worked on this game every single day for the whole month, and literally put hundreds of hours into it and we still couldn't quiiiiiiiite make it. To be honest, I don't think that amount of work really shows because the game still takes about an hour or so to clear, but we really learned just how much work it takes to put out complete games. Hundreds of hours of work= one hour game. Wow. And our original plan had nearly twice as many battles as what made it into the game. Wow. What fools we were.  

 

[Alkorri]

Sorry to hear that, RadiantCadenza. I find it admirable that you accepted the mistake with grace.

If I may suggest, Indrah is doing a livestream of all the games according to alphabetical order. G is coming up soon. Could you check with Indrah, explain the situation, and make sure she's playing the playable beta of your game? This could still be good exposure for all your hard work. 

 

[kartersaint]

You can still have a chance to promote your game at some Indie game publishing websites. Likes as RPGmaker.net

 

[Matseb2611]

Heya. I've tried out the updated version. I noticed the starting point is in a totally different place. Is this still work-in-progress? The character started in a bar.

It was really nice to get a chance to try out more of those verbal battles. That orc gang leader was a pretty hard one as he'd always interrupt me. I did eventually find what to do, but it was after I tried out all the other options and received 3-4 game overs. Maybe a bit of a hint would've been nice there. But it was fun anyway.

The game kind of stops right after that though. Sheila says she blacked out/passed out and then that's it. I can hear the music, but the screen doesn't fade back in.

Also, I came across one passability error. The door in the bar that's right next to the female orc in a red dress can be walked on and you can go all the way up to the ceiling.

I really hope this game gets polished, because it has so much potential and I'd love to play it through from start to end.

 

[Drunken Elf Mage]

Heya. I've tried out the updated version. I noticed the starting point is in a totally different place. Is this still work-in-progress? The character started in a bar.

It was really nice to get a chance to try out more of those verbal battles. That orc gang leader was a pretty hard one as he'd always interrupt me. I did eventually find what to do, but it was after I tried out all the other options and received 3-4 game overs. Maybe a bit of a hint would've been nice there. But it was fun anyway.

The game kind of stops right after that though. Sheila says she blacked out/passed out and then that's it. I can hear the music, but the screen doesn't fade back in.

Also, I came across one passability error. The door in the bar that's right next to the female orc in a red dress can be walked on and you can go all the way up to the ceiling.

I really hope this game gets polished, because it has so much potential and I'd love to play it through from start to end.

YO! DrunkenElf here! I was the one responsible for the writing and the artwork.

I don't know where you got the wrong build from, the correct one can be downloaded right here https://mega.co.nz/#!lkRT1DgT!mbslvdhInJrvg3ALUiudZlbw6xBcpZZYtMDHz24l-dU

Don't be afraid to ask any questions! I am always availablel

 

[Matseb2611]

Ah, that explains it. I got it from the game's page in the contest. There was a comment that said it's been updated, so I assumed the newer version was uploaded. Thanks for the new link. Gonna download it now.

 

[RadiantCadenza]

My bad. 

We actually CAN'T update the big green download button on the contest page. The contest pages are un-editable past the deadline.

The updated link was right in my comment. 

So, as you've learned first hand, our contest build is pretty broken and only has a small part of the game playable. Obviously that has no chance in the contest, so I did the smart thing and deleted the bad build from the webhost, so the DL link is just broken now, but that's probably better than having a broken game up. 

And welcome to the forums, Drunken Elf Mage. 

(About, time, jeez) 

 

[Matseb2611]

Don't worry about the contest. I am sure it's not everything. The main thing is that you've made a great game and acquired some fans.

 

[Alkorri]

Yes, I am a fan of the setting. Get some exposure by making sure Indrah is playing the latest version! (she downloaded all of the games two days ago if I'm not mistaken)