RMMV [RPG] Galdmaril (Alpha demo available)

[TWings]

Here's a short preview on the project I've been working on since august 2017.
It's my first RPG, based on my ideas, various stuff and some of the games I enjoyed from the last 30 years.
Since I'm not really good on design, it's still heavily using RTP.
Pretty much everything is still work in progress, but I'll give it my best untill and after public release.

SYNOPSIS

Spoiler

The story takes place in Galdmaril, a fantasy world,
where the 8 main sentient races are living in a precarious peace brought by the Elmy.
A mysterious alloy discovered accidentally a few centuries ago.

You'll start your adventure as the typical nobody decided to finally do something with his life.
Soon enough you'll end up in the middle of a global conflict about mysterious relics, initiated by the most powerful human kingdom in the area. You will have to build up your strength and seek strong allies in order to be able to fight back, for the issue of this war may decide the fate of the world.

FEATURES

Spoiler

• Genre : Fantasy
• Engine : RMMV
• Combats : Classic SV + Tactical battles
• Duration : More than 15 hours ?
  
• Release date : 2019 ?
• Current Version : Pre-Alpha v0.0.40

Some of the game's main features :

• Choose between 2 starting characters (man or woman).
  Each with its own background and starting point.
  As the adventures goes on, the potential party members will also be slightly differents.
• Be a savior or a tyrant.
  The player choices will have repercussions.
  Will you help people, spare your enemies or will give in to bloodlust and revenge ?
• Customize your home.
  You'll be able to "build" and manage your kingdom.
  Repairing houses and shop and growing your local population
  will give you a more lively town and increase your tax income.
• Search for about 50 characters to help you achieve your destiny.
  About half of them are fighters, the other will have different purposes (additionnal options, tactical battles...).
  Part of them will also be available for some romance.
  Except for the characters directly linked to the main plot,
  a lot will be optional, a few missable, some easy to find, some hard to get.
• Meet the 8 races.
  Wander the world and uncover its myths and legends, make new friends
  and alliances to help you fight your enemies.
• Play through multiple endings.
  All the choices and options will induce a lot of branching in the main and side quests,
  giving hopefully a good replay value to the game.
• Explore a diferent world at night.
  People do have lives, so they might be elsewhere and say other things depending on the time of the day.

CHARACTERS

Spoiler

There will be a lot of characters so I'm just gonna list the 2 main ones (their names are temporary and modifiable, their design is still subject to changes).
It's a delicate part to balance as I'm trying to give a place to everyone,
whereas the main character can draw its own personality from the player.
But they still have a story and some secrets.

• Gultr
  A simple human guy. He's a bit weird, living alone in the mountains.
  And he loves to get a drink every now and then in the local village's tavern.
  His drinking buddies like him, the other town people not so much.
  Yet he dreams of another life of fame and wealth,
  such as the adventures he can hear from time to time while drinking in town.
• Telena
  A simple human girl. She loves to read stories from books and doesn't go out that much.
  She lives alone in a small town. People like her for she's a quiet neighbour.
  At least once in her life, she'd like to live some exciting adventure
  and find some forgotten treasures.

SCREENSHOTS (work in progress)

Spoiler

Title Screen / Social Status :

A mysterious place / Characters Collection :

Battle Interface / Trade Shop :

Casino / Town Manager :

Arena / Reworked Menu

Tactical Battles / Weapons Upgrade

LINKS

Spoiler

A free Alpha Demo is out :
Galdmaril on itch.io

You can also enjoy this free spin-off oriented on a short multiple endings story made for the One Map Challenge.
It's focused on telling the simple story of 2 characters not directly related to the main game storyline. There are no combats, no fancy plugins, pretty much none of Galdmaril's mechanics. I'ts more to me like a sandbox where I was able to try out a few things.
Memories of a silver Dragon

CONTACT & SUPPORT

Spoiler

• Feel free to post your feedbacks here or on the game's itch.io page.
• You can contact me using private messages. A Discord server has also been made available to talk about my games and plugins either with me or with others.
• If you wish to support my work, you're welcome on my P.atreon (twings).

Thanks for taking a look at my project. Nothing fancy here, but I'll do my best to make it an enjoyable experience with a lot of replayability.
Hope you'll enjoy playing it.

EDIT 18/05/10 : Download link to the spin-off "Memories of a silver Dragon".
EDIT 18/05/30 : Screenshots section updated.
EDIT 18/06/26 : Download link to the first Alpha Demo version.
EDIT 18/09/21 : Day/Night feature.
EDIT 19/02/18 : Screenshots section updated.
EDIT 19/05/18 : Contact & Support section added.

 

[starlight dream]

Wow lots of interesting ideas. I like the 50 character recruitment, and how choices affect the character's personality. Good luck with your game. I'll be following its progress.^^

The screenshots show versatility in the game play and battle modes. And those cat-people are really cute.

 

[Nightblade50]

Pretty nice looking! I like the title screen a lot. I'll be waiting for a demo!

(BTW, I just saw that your profile says you speak French. I speak it as well )

 

[starlight dream]

BTW, I just saw that your profile says you speak French. I speak it as well

That makes three of us

 

[Nightblade50]

That makes three of us

And @Marquise* I believe! XD

 

[TWings]

@starlight dream : Thanks !
There sure is a lot in it. To be fair I have to thanks the Suikoden and Star Ocean series that inspired a lot of those ideas.
At some point I was worried that was maybe too much especially for a first RPG, but everything makes sense in the game universe, and I've already implemented beta versions for most of it. So I'm confident I can do it.
The hardest part will be managing to properly add what I call the "evil path", as it implies a lot of changes from the standard "good path" which I'm close to be done with.
Aside from that, I'd like to add some mini-games in the casino and why not a card game, but that'd be a lot of additionnal work so It stays in the potential ideas list for now.

@Thomas Smith : I don't know if it's nice looking. I suck very badely in the design department and did my best to do something remotely ok. That beeing said, I'm really glad at least one person likes it. It's supposed to illustrate the light vs darkness with the 8 races in the center (actually their gems) united toward the Elmy.
I have already coded a lot of stuff and have some people alpha testing it. I really don't know where I'd begin to make a demo honestly. It seems hard to cut a part of it, but I'll think about it. For now the combat part is far from ready, as I'm focusing on the maps and events. So I'll have to make som progress there first. I could actually make a demo of the begining of the game, but most the interesting stuff kinda comes after that... lol
About the french part, hopefully I'll be able to also write a french version of the game when I'm done as it's my first language and I'll feel more confortable with it.

 

[VisitorsFromDreams]

"Galdmaril - The RPG" is a really odd choice for a name when nobody could possibly know what "Galdmaril" is.

Sounds ambitious, best of luck.

 

[TWings]

Well the official release name will just be "Galdmaril".
"the RPG" is actually because I've already created a web game called Galdmaril about 15 years ago that built this universe.
But yeah, it was a very small underground french game played by at most a hundred players, so chances are nobody here knows about it.

 

[TWings]

I released a new update for my alpha tester, so the game version is now v0.013 !
I try as much as possible to deliver an updated version every week if enough meaningfull progress has been made in the development.

Meanwhile, I'm gonna give you more informations about part of one of the main features : the ~50 characters party.
To keep track of everybody and give that collection feeling to the player, I created a "Fate Tablet" plugin (beta). Those of you who played Suikoden games should be familiar with the Tablet of Stars, well that's the idea with some customizations.

Spoiler: Screens

At some point in the game the player will be handled the Fate Tablet, that will unlock this option.
It lists of all available characters with pictures, names and profile when the character has been found.
If the character is yet to be found, it will display some "?" instead and a hint about the character.

Of course you will also be able to interact with everyone at your HQ, but I'll tell you about that another time.

 

[TWings]

As I'm about to release the newest version for alpha testing (v0.014), I'm starting to give some thoughts about what I can put on a short demo.
The good new is I've already decided on the small part I could show, so it's definitely "on its way". As for the bad news, I really need to do a lot more work on at least 3 different game mechanics, so it will still be some time before it's ready. I don't really have a timeframe yet. It depends on how I'm progressing on the game itself, but if I have to guess, I'd say it won't be out before at least another month.

Meanwhile, I'll keep you updated on some more informations about the game.

 

[starlight dream]

It's ok take your time, you gotta work at your own pace Everything takes time, game-making requires lots of tinkering.
Always fun to get development news.

Enjoy the game making

 

[TWings]

Not much to show yet as I'm still focusing heavily on concluding the main plot (spoilers ).
I can tell you I'm almost done. It's only missing the last boss cutscenes (the endings will be done later).
It doesn't mean I'm close to be done concerning the whole game, since I've done some "fast mapping" in the last few dungeons to get as directly as possible to the cutscenes and boss battle part. So most of the maps are still missing details, battles, puzzles, and probably a few rooms (lol).
There is still also a lot to be done in other areas as well !

Meanwhile, I sometime waste hours on some stupid game mechanics, but why not
Here's what I've been doing this weekend :

Spoiler: Screenshots

The idea is you need to activate 3 switches in different "rooms" to open the way, but the switch goes up if you step of them. So you'll need to let 1 of your 3 team member behind until you're all alone, making in the process the battles more and more challenging (they'll join back once the path is opened by the 4th switch).
The hard part was figuring out how to event that (without using any plugin), while keeping in mind that every player won't have the same party members, nor activate the switch in the same order, nor picking the same choices. I also needed to have the selected members properly staying behind on the switch.
Anyway it was a nice challenge. It's finally done and it works !

 

[Jeremiah Eastman]

Hey there that Fate Tablet plugin you made looks great. I too am making a game with a ton of recruitable actors and didn't know how much I needed that plugin. I was just wondering if there was any chance you would be releasing the plugin to the public? At any rate great work, I look forward to seeing how it turns out.

 

[starlight dream]

That's a fun mini game
It has the feel of old classic RPGs where they had entertaining little areas like that!

Glad you're doing well, waiting for more! ^^

 

[TWings]

@Jeremiah Eastman : Short answer : yes, but probably not while I'm still working on this project.
I'm really thinking about releasing at least part of my plugins at some point. However that will require some work to enable their use outside of this game and add parameters options/plugin commands or documentation to make them user friendly. Not mentioning people will probably need some support at first to use them anyway. That's something I'm not ready to do yet while I have still so much to work on.

Today's bonus :

Spoiler: Sneak peek at the improved title screen

 

[GuanyuMaker]

That something I want to play! I like your ideas. I miss the classic RPGs, people are doing everything but rpg on RPG maker nowdays. Will be watching this =)

 

[Jeremiah Eastman]

Hey TWings, that's totally understandable, I will be keeping an eye on things. The game looks like it will be fun I look forward to getting to play it and if and when you do decide to release the plugin I'll be waiting. Keep up the great work bud.

 

[TWings]

Thanks !
It is challenging in many levels, since It's a one man project and my first RPG. I hope I'll be able to make it fun and interesting enough. It certainly won't be perfect. lol
It would be better if I had the budget for customised illustrations and sprites, but with more than 50 characters and no money coming in, it's not an option right now. Yet I don't exclude the possibility to update the graphics later.

Some more sneak peeks :

Spoiler: Bad guys opening

Spoiler: Fan service

Just because a proper JRPG must have some bath cutscene (really ?). lol

 

[Jeremiah Eastman]

I see a lot of similarities between our projects. We both are the sole developers, have a ton of actors you have my favorite battle system hehe. Both of our games have a building type system and management aspects, multiple endings, high replay value. It is nice to see someone who thinks so similar here. There are other things too but I don't want to point them all out hehe. I will definitely be watching this one, can't wait for a demo.

 

[Drago9]

I'll give this a try when I'm out of this university's final crisis mess.