RMMV Grief v0.2

[Sir-Drass]

Disclaimer: This project may contain some religious elements; though that's up to interpretation and they are tertiary at most. This project also contains darker themes and a few dirty words, so it is not recommended for young children, or people with a sensitive disposition.

posted version: [Beta] v0.2 (estimated 2.5 hours of content) https://www.dropbox.com/s/b42h4i35uhfy0wh/Grief V0.2.zip?dl=0

Spoiler: V0.2 Change log

Change log(in order of when I did the thing):

-Fixed several soft-locks, namely in the starting room and the room with anxiety

-numerous bug fixes (numerous to go)

-Redesigned Fort Magrad to be less big and empty

-Rebalanced duty, obsession, and avarice to be more of a puzzle

-fixed the battle backgrounds for all fights up through Fort Magrad

-added a few background tracks for some areas (Center area and Fort Magrad)

-Redesigned L.A.H.S. to be less empty.

-Redesigned secret areas for game balance and to connect to each other

-redesigned the enemies in L.A.H.S. to be more of a puzzle (Sans cowardice, who still needs more work)

-Removed the statue bosses in the secret areas

-added new requirements for best gear and best end.

-Added and subtracted a lot of flavor text (I lost track of specifics)

-Changed warp tiles to be more convenient

Cumulative hours of work: 78

Added plugins from http://yanfly.moe/

Added sounds from https://freesound.org/

Added music from http://freemusicarchive.org/

Grief is the working title for this project as I am still trying to come up with a better one, and my first attempt at making a game. You play as Luke, a college student who wakes up in what appears to be a collection of disparate spaces connected to each other by a nexus that appears to be a mash up of a dungeon and his own apartment. You are informed by a shadow figure that you are a prisoner in this space, and can only free yourself by saving the other inmates from their own inner demons made manifest by the power of this place. The game play centers around making progress through each area through exploration to find new tools, and growing stronger slowly through combat with the inmates' inner demons. Combat is stripped down to be more of a puzzle than a slug fest, with each enemy using its own strategies that need to be overcome, and minimized stat numbers for ease of understanding. To progress, You'll need to pay attention to your surroundings, read up on each location, and search every nook and cranny for hidden items and demons. Equipment outside of weapons is focused largely on the idea of incomparables, so that there is no one strongest piece of gear, and you'll need to adjust your gear to counter your opponent's strategies. Progress is a mix of linear in terms of level and areas opening up to you, and nonlinear in terms of each area past the first being open to multiple angles of attack. Apart from a few key instances, losing a battle does not result in a game over, but instead sends you back to the nexus to compliment the puzzle element of each fight. There are no random battles, and almost every enemy drops something needed to progress, a new piece of equipment for you, or a shard of their own power; which you'll need to progress as each teaches you an ability that will be invaluable in future battles. Progress through larger areas is aided by warp points which lead back to the nexus to avoid re-traversal becoming too much of a slog.

I'm hoping to get some feedback here. I have a few people I know in person who have done some testing for me, but schedules are an issue. It's close to a state that can be called "Finished and working" in that it functionally plays from start to end, I just need to change a bunch of the aesthetics of the game. That being said, I want to make this as good of a game as I'm able, and will attempt to improve or change for the better almost anything brought to my attention. It will be a free release if and when I finish this thing.

Known Bugs:
-There is a warp in Fort Magrad that transfers the player to LAHS instead of the secret area.
-refighting avarice is possible
-progress past the church is impossible due to a tile issue



To-Do list (in no particular order of importance):
-Update screenshots once I'm finished map building
-expand secret area to be its own dungeon
-Replace all enemy sprites (and replace text referencing appearance as needed).
-Flesh out sound effects
-Replace state and attack icons with own images
-Finish encounter balancing
-Always more QA to find and fix bugs
-Should probably also make my own tile sets for each area, but may be out of my scope.

Spoiler: screenshots

 

[hiddenone]

I gave your demo a try, and it's pretty interesting. I enjoy all the little comments Luke makes about stuff, and the details that give me an idea of what's really going on.

You do have a few major issues where the game freezes that need fixed though, but I was curious enough to keep restarting to see where the story would go. The first one I ran into was when I tried to leave the room through the right passage before talking to the shadow creature, Luke made a comment and then the game froze. The other time was a much bigger problem, you can't enter the attic again if you have to leave it (be it voluntarily or by losing), when you try to enter the attic you are stuck on the entrance. Also, you can actually grab the papers in the attic without fighting Anxiety if you approach the desk, which would be okay except that you have to fight Anxiety to be able to win the next fight.

I did like that the early battles were more of puzzles than just 'attack, heal, repeat', in the beginning, but unfortunately the later fights didn't have as much of a puzzle feel to them. I'm not sure if it's just because you haven't gotten to them or not, but many of them just came down to hitting the enemies with Rage and then healing or guarding until Luke could attack again.

It'd be a good idea to spend some more time double-checking your dialogue, since there are quite a few spelling mistakes. Here are some of the ones I spotted:
- 'Appiances' instead of 'appliances' on kitchen shelves
- 'Cieling' instead of 'ceiling' in the first area's closet when heading to the attic
- Duty says 'buisiness' instead of 'business'
- Obsession says 'and interloper' instead of 'an interloper'
- Bones in the guard room says 'inspectioin' instead of 'inspection' & 'skrews' instead of 'screws'
- Lucky Coin descriptions says 'coind' instead of 'coin'
- Note near broken glass says 'firend' instead of 'friend'

I found a lot of the maps after Mary's house to be much bigger and more maze-like than they need to me. Instead of keeping me thinking and planning what to do next, I was grumbling because I had to run down empty halls. I think you could keep the weird and broken feeling for the maps even with smaller ones. Also, this is personal preference but the randomness of the carpets takes me out of the game since I end up thinking about how the heck someone could make a rug like that (I know the place is pretty much a magical space, but it doesn't stop my brain from wondering).

Currently I'm stuck on Lethargy's fight, it keeps uses its strong attack repeatedly so I can't find a way to keep Luke alive. I'll probably give it another go, but figured I could give you some feedback now.

 

[Sir-Drass]

@hiddenone Thanks a ton for taking the time to play and get back to me, I'm pretty sure I know exactly why the game softlocked on the right passage, but I'll have to dig a bit to figure out what's wrong with the attic.

Good spots on the typos, I'm sure there's at least a dozen more I need to chase out past those. I'll get right on fixing them after I get the bugs you mentioned hammered out.

I plan to downsize the areas at least a little bit too. I have planned to make the fights more of a puzzle like the first three, too, as I feel that's where the game concept is its strongest and stands out the most. The biggest issue I've had is scripting fights to reduce randomness. The reason Lethargy is giving you a hard time is probably just RNG, unless I'm an idiot and fixed his MP after exporting instead of before. The base idea behind the fight was to make him a tank that does a heal halfway through to restore his MP, which feeds back into his rage ability which is the only thing really making him a threat. As it stands, I don't have a way to time turns without scripting the entire battle turn by turn. Its a matter of finding the right turns and starting over with the base idea again. I think Avarice (Bones) was the last true "Puzzle" fight, so I'll start reworking the encounters from there.

As for the carpets, they're mainly there because I needed to visually separate the four directions, but they're more placeholders for now for when I start improving my tile sets beyond the default. Again, thanks a million for taking the time to give feedback, You've given me a lot for my list of improvements.

 

[Sir-Drass]

Bump for V0.2, change logs in the OP. Significant improvements across the board.

 

[hiddenone]

I played through v0.2, great job improving things! I did end up stuck in the church though, as there was no way for me to reach the hole in the back of the room. I thought I'd need to walk past the gold railings, but that's impossible since they're probably set to X passability.

There are a few new bugs from the changes, the only one that was a big problem was if you entered the hole in the wall in Mary's house there was no way to leave (unless you already had the key and fire extinguisher). As for the smaller issues, Avarice reappears if you leave and then re-enter its room (not a huge problem for me since it meant I could grind and level up there, but I assume that's not supposed to be possible). I went over to the school early and the lockers and shutters acted like I had the Transmorphic Key even though I hadn't gotten it yet. Once I had the hook and rope I climbed up the hole next to the queen's coffin, but when I climbed back down it dropped me into the middle of the school. Lastly is just a minor graphical error, in the cell after leaving the cave the pile of silver dirt is missing the bottom right piece.

The smaller maps were a lot nicer to travel on, so thanks for adjusting them. I think you should look into adding tints to the maps, since it could add a lot to the moods of each room. For example, you could have the cave tinted a deep red until the player defeats Rage, and then have a softer tint later. In fact, having different tints for each room with an enemy could be a really nice touch, so consider adding some.

The fights were much more interesting, and it made me quite happy when I realized how to defeat each foe. Though, and I'm not sure if I should even say it since I had so much trouble before, Lethargy's new fight was way too easy since it completely ignored me and just healed each turn. Maybe the RNG just favored me for that fight, but I hit it with Shame and then Rage and it went down easy.

 

[Sir-Drass]

@hiddenone Thanks again for the feedback. I fixed the church issue in the last QA session I had with a local friend, so it should be up in v0.3. Its as fortunate as a bug can get though, since I've not rebalanced anything past that yet. I think I know exactly what went wrong with the hole in Mary's house, and it'll be a simple event check to fix things. I'll definitely have to fix avarice right away since level is one of the things keeping Sarah's school gated off. I might do something cooky and plan for a sequence break like that, it would be pretty simple to impliment, I've got plenty of accesories left over on the cutting floor from the rebalance to the main combats, so it'd be a nice way to reward the player for exploring. I already know of two ways to do it (Drop apathy's defense, then rage her once you have appealing glamour, or there's an exploit I've left in for the time being where rage still deals regular damage even if you're holding the pick axe).

I actually love the tints idea, it would also help differentiate each area to have its own feeling too.

Lethargy is definitly getting tweaked. I was rushing to get v 0.2 done before my friends came over for game night so I could test the build, and the most I did to make it harder was to make sure you couldn't 100%-0% it with a single rage (it deals 25 at that level and with best available focus, and he has 26). I'm definitly going to buff his health, but I'm thinking of adding an MP cost to shame to make it somewhat more ballanced (will have to do major tweaking to vanity if I do, but I'll figure it out.)

Thanks again for sticking with this so far, you're input has been invaluable to improving things ^^