RMVXA Grenickle Park [minigame compilation][No travel game jam]

[Canini]

This is my submission for the no travel game jam. It is also a showcase of all the minigames I have created for my various game projects. This game contains every minigame from:

The Alex and Adva I've heard norse demos:

RMVXA - Alex and Adva (I´ve heard norse)

Alex and Adva (I´ve heard norse) Hello and thanks for taking a look at my game prototype! This is the second game I have started working on since joining this community and the first one I feel good enough to elaborate on. SECTION A: GAMEPLAY MECHANICS SECTION B: CHARACTERS SECTION C...

forums.rpgmakerweb.com

Dauðra Dura (the doors of the dead):
https://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/inde...s-of-the-dead-one-map-ten-events-entry.95784/

The fishing trip of Byleif (verse 27):
https://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/index.php?threads/rse-the-fishing-trip-of-byleif-verse-27.108205/

Grenickle Park

SECTION A: SYNOPSIS

Spoiler

This is a game I originally worked on as a unofficial entry to the minigame competition (since it uses ACE and not MV) and have now reworked for the no travel game jam. This game takes place in a single amusement park.

IMAGES/SCREENSHOTS

Spoiler

DOWNLOAD LINK

Spoiler

http://tymorthetrickster.com/Grenickle%20Park.zip

SECTION B: CHARACTERS

Spoiler

• You and your friends
• You and three friends came to Grenickle Park to have fun. Instead you got roped into searching for a viking couple's eight missing children. You are promised a reward, although in reality you just want to get away from Adva and her sword.

• Byleif the Blitzer and Tymor the Trickster
• The chieftain of the viking crew and the attendant to the local queen, respectively. Both seem more interested in fishing and dancing rather than carrying out their duties, though.

• Alex and Adva
• Two of Byleif's best hirdmen and the parent of no less than eight children. Although recruiting you to look for them they do not seem overly concerned about the whole thing. Seems like the rides of the park are in greater danger of being broken by the unruly horde of viking kids...

• Rover Bergelmir Gomgup
• A mountain giant that seems to be after the vikings for some reason. He can be seen poking his head through the walls of the park and seems to be planning something sinister that involves blocking off parts of the park.

SECTION C: STORYLINE/PLOT

Spoiler

You and three friends have decided to visit the famous Grenickle Amusement Park in the dwarven capital of Ivaldesburg. There you are roped into finding the eight lost children of the viking raiders Alex and Adva. Play five different minigames across seven attractions and a main street.

SECTION D: SETTING AND/OR WORLD DEVELOPMENT

Spoiler

This game takes place in the world of Grangard, based on norse mythology. As part of the no travel game jam the entirety of the game takes place in the dwarven capital of Ivaldesburg.

SECTION E: Game Mechanics/Features:

Spoiler

• Five minigames across seven attractions and plenty of fun and curious little shops to explore
• 20-40 minutes of gameplay
• Four fully customisable characters using Busted Ed's Tips 'n Tricks advanced character creation system which I streamlined a bit and merged with the classes from my own game. Please note that the characters and classes have no actual impact on your performence in the minigames, it is just to showcase the idea. Feel free to skip the character creator if you just want to go straight to the games!
• A heavily modified version of the Falcao Pearl ABS script
• Platforming, action and racing elements

Controls

Z interacts with objects
X Opens the menu
F uses special minigame items
A Jumps
M opens the spell and item menu
Shift button runs

Credits

Falcao Pearl's ABS script (as well as the sprites and sounds that comes with it)
Galvs jumping script and fishing script
FenixFyreX Stair movement
Map Effects v1.4.1 for VX and VXace by Zeus81
Byleif face by madhattermonster
Elementals by Chalkdust
Owl sprite by LastLaugh’s
3 D Paralax and character customization by BustedEd
Tymor Face Connie Cartwright
Wolf sprite Minnow
Wolf face soruve
Assistant Sprite by Themo
Vincent sprite by Personigo de la Cefo
Face sprite by Henrik Magnusson
Green fields tileset by nirwanda
Rat kids by Hellpug/Emily Lampson
Mint Bunny faceset made by Imperial-France edited by gmestanley
Sprite by Maiko's rabbits at FSM from Apprentice Geisha
Alex and Adva faces Made by capraqueen edits by Oozart
Sprites by Plueschkatze
Giant rat face by Jackson LeTourneau
Music by Eric Matyas and DaveyBriteRPG

Important Note

One of the minigames in this collection, the fishing minigame, is wholly based on Galv's fishing script. Obviously I take no credit for this script. The reason for adding it to "my" minigame compilation is because I wanted to include every minigame I have used for my various projects. The only thing I added to the script was a win condition.

 

[hinola]

# Synopis and story telling

Spoiler

Overall
There is no message in the end of the minigames to tell us if we won or not. I finished the dance and just poped out of the room without knowing why.
The shield-surfing (nice reference to the lord of the ring ?) finish with a chest that just kick you out of the area.
Why a chest ? It gives nothing. And it just teleport the player outside...

The game let us play (and create) 4 characters. I spent time creating my team, but they are never used.
You play a new character for each minigame.
Why not play directly the viking family ? Our characters have no place in the story. We don't even help them.

There is a guy who conspires (I suppose) against the vikings with the rat, but we have no mention of him, and there is nothing more.
As he turn directly to the player, I thought his first message was adressed to me. But I suppose it wasn't.
He should be set as fixed direction and then turn toward you when he actually talk to you.

I like the fact that the rabbits appear when you finish a minigame.

Things I liked
- There is a story and an universe (vikings/rats) as thread even if it's a minigame collection
- There is a progression in the story visible on the lobby with the rabbits
- There is an end, with a resolution to the story between the rats and the vikings
Things I liked less
- There is no success message when we finish a minigame.
- We know to few about the rats.
Remarks
- The story is just here to link the minigames.
Bugs

# Graphics, interface and use of visual space

Spoiler

I ... have a problem with heterogeneous resources.
Some faces are drawn, maybe by yourself, some are colorized, some are rtp faces.
I have no problem with any of the three, but mixed like that, the styles are way to different.
You could have keep the simple tilesets from the lobby and the drawings for the faces, or make all the game with the RTP.

One of my character doesn't have the right face (supposed to be the green hair girl, I got a blue hair man)
One of the npc (lotery ticket seller) doesn't have the right face.
These are some details that could easily be avoided.

About what is displayed on the screen
Hp, MP, Exp and TP
As we have many character in the team, this display have no interest. IT shows only the first character stats
And these stats are never used in the game.

bottom icons with keys
We only use one slot for the bow or the grapple. The remaining slots have no utility.
But as I said for the heterogeneous, this bar kinda look like the fishing interface, as the gray color are the same, but the style is different.

Things I liked
Things I liked less
- heterogeneous resources.
- Lots of issues that could have been avoided with a bit more attention.
Remarks
- It's a one month jam, so I understand the problem of finding resources in a short amount of time.
Bugs

# Mechanics and gameplay

That's where the game is supposed to specialize.

Spoiler

Character creation
The system gives no informations about the classes. So I had to blindly choose them.
The Mercenary, the Tinkerer and the Hirdman can be selected like the other (the cursor doesn't go on top of them)

The dancing minigame
I made it seriously the first time. Waiting for all the dwarfs to move is long.
As I had a doubt on something, I did it again. And didn't touch my keyboard.
I actually won. Without doing anything.

The fishing contest
You are supposed to catch the biggest fish of the day.
But there is no fish tot compare to.
So I caught a fish, with the simpliest bait and the golden rod, I talked to the guy and won.
I tried later with a simple rod, it works too.
What's the difference between baits ?
I did everything with the first one and I get the chest with the key.

Shield surfing
There is a bug on the sprite : if I go up, I see the shield of the right direction sprite above my head, if I go right I see the shield of the left direction sprite
Targets seems to drop something, but what ? I can't catch them.
They do 0 dmg, they don't slow me. What's the point to make them shoot arrows ?
Each tim I shoot an arrow, my character stop.
I suppose you wanted the player to always press down, but we can also press up and go backward on the stairs.
I got stuck once, no message showing, my character couldn't move, just on top of the stairs, The leftmost tile.
I think I moved at the wrong moment.

Avoiding monsters
Cool stuff with the grapple, I like the idea.
But the wolfs are so easy to escape. I was barely paying attention to them.
They are slow, with a low frequency and don't always follow you.

The race
When I wanted to enter the race, the dwarfs told me I could go later.
Finally, I could enter the race, but I don't know why. Do I had to make more minigames ? I did all of them at least once the first time I tried.

Pro tips
- Go on shield surf game
- Get arrows
- press down and finish the mini game
- Go to the fishing place
- Sell the arrows
- Repeat
- profit
Even if the money isn't really important in that game, this is something you have to watch out for.


When teleporting to and from a minigame, the character change apparence on the map.
You should make a fade-out transition, change team, teleport player, fadie-in transition.

Things I liked
- The grapple
Things I liked less
- that was super fast. once again, everything feels unfinished.
- A lot of minigames are way to easy (the dance, the fishing contest)
Remarks
Bugs
- In the character creation, 3 classes events are "non passable"

# Mapping, level desing

Spoiler

Overall
The maps are really simple, and don't do much in a minigame based game.

The map on the snow with the wolfs :
I understand there is no need for a realistic or detailled map.
But the lava tiles on the clouds tiles make no sense. And there is no transition.
This level is really easy, as there is only one-way passages. So you know you are always on the right direction.
No dead end, nothing really hidden, I have found several exits.

There is tilesets problems with events showing on top of the stall roofs (the viking who broke something, and the items for the lotery)

Things I liked
Things I liked less
Remarks
Bugs

# My experience

I feel like the days left when you posted your submission could have been used to homogenize the game.
And spend more time on details that misses. The messages after the minigame completion, the mapping, pay more attention to the faces you use ...
Every things for me felt like made in a hurry.
The game have been released 10 days before the deadline.


As I like to illustrate what I say with ideas, I will submit one.
Of course, it doesn't mean the game would be any better with that idea, but you can get more easily what I say.

You could have put the rats more in front of the scene, progressively.
First, you have just a rat in the lobby, talking about the rabbits (the one on the northern map for exemple)
And the more you progress in the game, the more they are present in the minigames and in the lobby.
just a variable that increment after each games.
The minigames will increase in difficulty

For the fishing game as exemple, the more you have completed mini games, the more rats will swim in the pond to steal your baits.
And why not break your rod ?
If it's the last minigame you complete, you can have a bigger rat to catch, which will give you a bonus for the end.
Each minigames could have that "last level"

This way, the player will have to make all the minigames once for the progression, and redo them after to unlock all the bonuses
And the minigame will be a bit different each time.

Also, for the graphics stuff, I see in your credits you took pictures in a lot of different places.
Maybe just asking someone for RTP edit could have been enough.
Some things are easy to do, and make it look much better.

Spoiler

I did that in maybe ... 5 minutes
It still have weird parts (the lower step) but it looks more adapted.

 

[Canini]

Thank you very much for playing my game and for a fair review!

- that was super fast. once again, everything feels unfinished.
- A lot of minigames are way to easy (the dance, the fishing contest)

The intention of this compilation is mainly to showcase minigame ideas more than provide the player with a challenge (although I originally wanted to provide difficulty tiers for the minigames) so I wanted to err on the side of caution to make sure everybody would make it through. That said, it is not good that you can apparently pull a "Luigi wins by doing absolutely nothing" on the dancing minigame...

I am sorry that it was not better communicated that the character creation was not important to the game. Once again it was more to showcase the idea. I will update the OP to better reflect this.

 

[hiddenone]

I gave this a try, but I ended the game feeling disappointed. A game full of minigames can be fun but unfortunately I think the number of minigames worked against this game.

Spoiler: Feedback

So before writing out this feedback I checked this thread and saw that the Character Creation is there just to show it off and has no impact on the game, and I really thing that's the wrong way to go about it. If there's no reason to include something, just leave it out of the game, especially for a jam like this where time is limited. Instead of taking time to implement it, you could've worked more on the minigames to make them all work well.

I'll go over each minigame in the order I played them:

First up was the Shield Surfing. Unfortunately it seems like that whole minigame was broken, because I had total control of the character... So instead of trying to hit the targets while sliding down the stairs, I would just stop and take my time to aim at each target. That took all the excitement out of the minigame, so the only thing limiting me was the timer that wasn't visible. I think it's important for the player to be able to know how much time they have during minigames like this, since knowing how much (or how little) time there is left can really up the tension. You could even use the default timer in the upper right corner and that would be enough. There wasn't any indication of how well I did when the game ended, so the only reason I assumed I had won was the fact there was a new baby bunny on the main map. It was disappointing to not have a message telling me how many targets I hit though.

Next was the Werewolf Hunt. This one confused me, since I rarely saw a werewolf on the screen at all. I ended up just spamming 'A' to hop around the map like a crazy person until I'd spot a place where I needed to use the hookshot, and ended up at the exit in a matter of seconds. The concept of the game is sound (having to avoid enemies by planning out a route can be fun after all), but the implementation just didn't live up to the idea. You could improve it by making the open areas a lot smaller and also increasing the number of werewolves (or having them move faster and try harder to actually get the player).

Third was fishing. The lack of a tutorial really hurts this minigame, Galv's script is good but not every player will be familiar with how it works. It would've been good if the player was given a simple rod and some bait at the beginning, and had a short tutorial before being told to catch the biggest fish. I wandered around until I realized that I had to buy my own rod and bait. I only bought one piece of bait, but that was enough since the fish I caught ended up being the biggest purple fish of the day somehow... Which was very surprising, but since there wasn't any apparent competition I guess the size didn't really matter. I don't think the minigame itself was bad, but the fact that I didn't have to compete with someone else made it so I didn't have a real reason to fish more than once.

Dancing wasn't really a minigame at all. I thought it would be like Simon Says where I'd need to hit the arrow keys in the same order as the main dwarf, but instead I just hit <- and -> a few times and won... This is the minigame that really disappointed me, it could have been left out of the game entirely and it wouldn't have made a difference. I think if you want to have a bunch of minigames they should all be able to stand alone and be fun, and this is the one that really drags the quality down. Don't be afraid to cut something that you haven't been able to give enough attention to, the idea of a dance minigame is nice but it's just not implemented properly here.

Last up was the Race, which wasn't really a race at all. It was more of an obstacle course. It wasn't terrible, but the rats were slow enough that they didn't really feel like a danger so I just focused on not crashing into things and won without much effort. I think it would have been more interesting if there were other competitors, just some NPCs also racing along so that I could feel a sense of accomplishment each time I was able to pass one.

Overall, I get that you wanted to show off a bunch of minigames, but unfortunately it seems like you went for quantity over quality. It's okay to have only a few mechanics in a game as long as they're polished, so I hope going forward you'll make sure any minigames you include function how you really want them too and aren't just there for filler. Good luck with your future projects!

 

[Canini]

Thank you very much for the review and the advice!

Last up was the Race, which wasn't really a race at all. It was more of an obstacle course. It wasn't terrible, but the rats were slow enough that they didn't really feel like a danger so I just focused on not crashing into things and won without much effort. I think it would have been more interesting if there were other competitors, just some NPCs also racing along so that I could feel a sense of accomplishment each time I was able to pass one.

The implication of the race I wanted to come across was that the other rats just signed up for every other available slot or just scared all of the other racers away in order to get at the vikings. That said, it would be funny to have one or two other racers at the starting line being completely bewildered about what was going on.

 

[hiddenone]

The implication of the race I wanted to come across was that the other rats just signed up for every other available slot or just scared all of the other racers away in order to get at the vikings.

I didn't pick up on that for the race, but it does make sense. I do agree that having a couple other racers who react to the rats would be hilarious though, maybe they even quit and run off the screen.