Harbingers of Woe

[Matseb2611]

(Logo design by Hyde)​

Death: "There's more to this place than just demons. Everything here will try to break us physically and mentally."​

Features:

• Challenging battles are the main focus of the gameplay.
• Play as the Four Horsemen of Apocalypse and confront various demons in the Underworld, including some from Ars Goetia.
• Approximately 2 hours in length.
• Visible Encounters.
• In-game achievements with rewards.
• 4 difficulty modes: Hard, Hard-bitten, Hardcore, and Hardochistic.
• No revive spells or revive items. Reviving can only be done at Restore Shrines, so don't lose your allies in between.
• No towns. The game is a dungeon crawler.
• Similar battle system to my recently released commercial game, Atonement, but with some new mechanics to take into account, like managing your energy regeneration, finding ways to maximise your critical rate, and watching out for execution speed of skills.

Download Links (game updated to v1.1):

Non-RTP version ~51 Mb

RTP-inclusive version ~101 Mb

Leading Characters:

Screenshots:

Music:

Some custom-made tracks in the game, by Scythuz.

Check them out here

Media:

Spoiler

All bosses run (by Lymmet)

Credits:

Spoiler

DEVELOPED BY:

Matthew Ashworth / Matseb2611

SOFTWARE:

RPG Maker VX Ace by Enterbrain

ART:

Enterbrain

Sherman 3D

Ksi

Candacis

Timmah

Avery

Hyde

Matthew Ashworth

MUSIC:

Benjamin 'Scythuz' Carr

Darren 'Desperate Measurez' Curtis

JDB Artist

SCRIPTS:

Yanfly

Dekita

Galv

Modern Algebra

Shaz

Neon Black

STORY and CHARACTERS:
Matthew Ashworth

 

[Dalph]

This is so adsffasgddsggsgewetewg. An rm game about the 4 Harbingers is a brilliant idea, can't wait to see how you will develop each one of them. Death is obviously the best of the best. Good luck with this one Matseb! Can't wait to play it.

 

[Matseb2611]

Thanks man. This idea came to me when I was making those horsemen for ReStaff, and so I decided to make a short-ish game about them. I am also thinking of publicly releasing any other sprites and animated battlers that I end up making for this game, as well as edited facesets.

 

[Susan]

This game looks interesting, what with the tiles and animated you made.

I want to try this game, then I saw this :

4 difficulty modes: Hard, Hard-bitten, Hardcore, and Hardochistic

... ... ...

 

[Matseb2611]

Hehe, yeah, I've decided to use a lot of my own resources in this in addition to other cool stuff. It will also give me some practice making larger animated battlers. That battler of Eligos took me a while to do, and I've skipped a few poses too (like victory pose).

As for difficulty modes, this is what they are:

Hard - Restore points available, can save anywhere.

Hard-bitten - Can only save at restore points.

Hardcore - Saving is fully disabled. Must complete the game in one sitting.

Hardochistic - Saving AND Restore points are disabled. Once a horseman dies, they're gone for good.

 

[Nirwanda]

Man, watching you game make is a humbling experience. Do you ever take breaks?

Anyway; very nice looking game, I love dungeon crawlers and this definitely looks like one of the good ones...

 

[Scythuz]

Hardochistic eh?  Bring it on I say!  Bring it on!

 

[Matseb2611]

@ Nirwanda: Well thank you. Game-making is something that I love very much, and when I do it, hours go by.

@ Scythuz: Yeah. It's so hard that it's masochistic, and hence hardochistic. XD

Some more screenshots (the first one is a title screen which actually scrolls):

I should be able to release a demo with first 3 (out of 7) areas pretty soon.

 

[Matseb2611]

Heya guys.

The demo is here!

It contains first 3 dungeon areas out of the planned 7 - Blood Plains, Prison of Nightfall, and Cave of Aversion.

It's approximately 1 hour long already.

Link: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/63155786/Harbingers%20of%20Woe.exe

I am still not entirely sure if it's possible to complete even this section of the game on Hardochistic difficulty, since it disables Restore Shrines, which not only prevents you from recovery outside of items, but also prevents any form of grinding, because Restore Shrines revive enemies as well (like Dark Souls bonfires). I might tweak a few things in the future, though generally this difficulty is meant to be for players to see how far they can get without saving and without Restore Shrines.

Also, as I promised before, I will be sharing a lot of resources that I make for this game, in particular the animated battlers, so I've already put up first few things on my Resource Thread. The new things are the faces of all 4 Horsemen, and some animated battlers (all the ones starting from 'Eye (single)' till 'Demon Flauros'). I will put up more stuff when the game is finished.

Enjoy guys and let me know what you think of the game so far!

 

[Alkorri]

How could I have missed this? Damn you work pretty fast, Matseb! Slow down for us older folks, will ya? ;>

 

[Matseb2611]

That's all right. Maybe because I haven't added it onto my signature yet. This game will be fairly short anyway. It's sort of a bit of a break for me before I begin doing Incitement 3. Long epics can be a bit draining, especially if they're commercial, so I wanted to do something short that concentrated purely on dungeons and battles (the aspect of game-making I love the most).  

 

[Susan]

This game is great!

I was expecting something morbid, but there are quite a few humorous bits sprinkled here and there.

The horsemen are really likeable.

The dungeons' style are reminiscent of Diablo.

Really cool tracks adds on to the game's mood.

Issues:

Spoiler

- It's odd that Pestilence had to move up to the enemy to attack. It's just pure aesthetic though.

- It's also odd that Pestilence would be able to catch a disease, since he's, well, pestilence. ^^

 

[nio kasgami]

can you tell me how many freaking  game you have U_U'?

seem a good use of the fourth apocalypse knight : D! 

 

[Susan]

Matseb is planning to take over the world with his games, nio. ^^

 

[Nirwanda]

Hey, Susan, about that achievement you got..couldn't it have been "find all the chests in blood plains" instead of the all wepaons gotten one?

 

[Susan]

I got it after I have received the 'Find all the chests in Blood Plains' achievement.

I will have to see if I can get it again so that I can get a screenshot of it.

Edit: Oh, well. I can't seem to replicate it, so I'll just take it out.

 

[Matseb2611]

Oh wow, a lot of feedback. Thanks for playing the game, guys.

Yeah, Pestilence moving in for close range does seem rather illogical, though hopefully it's not too much of a problem.

What achievement were you guys having an issue with? Perhaps I can take another look at it, since some of them did require a bit of complex eventing and I might've made an error somewhere.

The weapon collection ones aren't achievable yet in this demo since I am yet to include the remaining weapons in latter areas of the game (so far you should be able to have 2 weapons for each horseman). There are 10 more achievements in the game already that you could get in the demo.

Edit: Oh and to answer your question, Nio, let me see... hmm... I think might be somewhere like 8-9 (if we count this game and Just Face It, both of which aren't fully finished).

 

[Susan]

I received the Scythe achievement message after retrieving the first scythe weapon from the chest (even though it did not appear as complete in the status menu). It was before receiving the 'Hidden Treasure 2' achievement, and I still had 2 more chests to go. I remembered opening the achievement menu to see if there was any changes, but only 'Hidden Treasure 1' achievement was marked as complete. I was unable to replicate the incident, so I just removed it from my list. ^^

 

[Matseb2611]

Thanks Susan. I'll look into that. Usually it takes just one error to throw everything else into disorder.

Edit: Just checked everything and it all seems in order. Just wondering, when you got the scythe, are you sure the message said you got the achievement or that it said you just got the scythe? And in regard to Hidden Treasure 2, do you recall how many chests you opened in the prison area when you got it? The prison area only has 5 chests in total.

 

[Scythuz]

I've not had a chance to play much just yet but I'm just popping in to say that I agree with what's been said about Pestilence.  Maybe do something similar to how how Final Fantasy 2 or 5 do their bow animations?