[IGMC 2015] Tales Across Time

[CriticalGames]

Hi everyone!
 

I just wanted to add my IGMC 2015 entry to the RPG Maker forums. I've spent the past few days looking at some of the other entries (particularly the ones on here), and I'm really impressed! This is the first game development competition I've participated in, and making an RPG in a month has certainly been an interesting challenge (I only just made the deadline haha). Speaking of which...

Story

My entry is called Tales Across Time. It's comprised of three 'short-stories', told using traditional RPG mechanics. Each tale takes place in the same location, but separated by hundreds of years. In this 1 hour+ adventure, you will explore ancient ruins, help a woman save her fiancée, and be hunted by a masked man.

Keep an eye out for this year's theme of growth, too! I utilised growth as a framing device to connect each story through the passage of time.

Gameplay

Enjoy a custom-made take on the turn-based battle system! There are 10 unique enemies to face, and no random battles. But don't forget to seek out hidden Crystals to increase your stats!

Gameplay boils down to three things in Tales Across Time: exploring the world, battling fierce enemies, and interacting with the people you meet!

Screenshots

Spoiler

Download

If you're interested, please take a look at the game here: http://contest.gamedevfort.com/submission/721#.Vcg0wvnaQTb16

Credits are displayed in the game, but (given where I'm posting this) I just wanted to mention that the bulk of graphical assets came from Jason Perry's incredible Time Fantasy pack (available on the RPG Maker store). Special thanks to him for creating such a great asset pack!

And thank YOU very much for looking! I hope everyone enjoys the game =)

 

[Vox Novus]

(Also posted this on your IGMC Page)

Here's my review for this:

I'll start of first by saying that you use the Time fantasy set well enough and that the music and sounds fit very well, custom font was a nice touch to. I like the idea of events being connected through time although I was hoping for something more like Osamu Tezuka's The Phoenix but none the less nice idea, I should also say I thought your dialogue was well written to. What I enjoyed the most about this game is the battle system and having to manage different attack types to recieve higher increments of AP or not; reminded me of my favorite game Chrono Cross in some ways.

Suggestions for improvements:

-The first character's skill which causes stun seems a little useless; eventually I gave up on using it since most of the time it didn't inflict stun and even when it did it only lasted for a turn.

-I felt like while you use growth obviously with the tree but it wasn't really a necessary part of the game; I feel like if you took the tree out the game would mostly be the same.

-You start out so strong with plot and the battle mechanics in the first story only to really drop it down in the second with claire. I felt like her story is almost disconnected from the other two other than the minor connections like the mask and the tree, not too mention there is only one battle. The last story picks this up a bit but still fails to live up to what you achieved with the first story. Much like in cooking when you pair a multi-tude of different things together you need to make sure each individual component is really adding to the whole experience without taking anything away from the others.

-I didn't run into any of the bugs jtrev23 did but I ran into these; one time when the masked man used Over Here the game locked up and I had to restart, during the final battle with the masked man in his four-armed form the game kept locking up at the start of battle and I couldn't even enter any commands (this happened three times in a row and eventually I gave up on it so I never did finish the game).

-Not necessarily something I feel you have to do but there is potential here to make use of different tile-sets/tints to help distinguish the vastly different time periods.

Over all again, nice idea if you go back to this game iron out those bugs/glitches and maybe make the other characters segments live up to what you set-up in the first one.

 

[CriticalGames]

Hi Vox Novus,

I posted this on the IGMC page too, but thank you very much for the review! Chrono Cross was definitely one of the inspirations for the battle system haha.

I really appreciate the detailed review - a lot of good points and ideas here! I mentioned my concept with Claire's story in my reply to jtrev23, but overall I completely agree. The second story was made in about 4 or 5 days, and the third story was within 48 hours, so I just ran out of time unfortunately.

Actually, that's interesting to hear about the tree, because it's actually where the idea started from. It's basically a framing device to show the passage of time and tell the player that they're still in the same location - otherwise I think that might have gotten a bit confusing haha.

Finally, I'm very, very sorry about that bug in the final boss! That's definitely a new one, I'm afraid.

Regardless, thanks again for taking the time to check out Tales Across Time =D