RMVXA [RSE] The Cube Trail

This is technically my third game, but first published. It’s supposed to be very down to earth and limited, unlike my other two games which are both much larger in scope. It uses a bare minimum of custom resources, mainly just scripts and icons.

Spoiler: Story

Alfus, the Demon King, has ruled over an unnamed island for a long time, thanks to a magical artifact known as the Cube. It’s said to control destiny, and has blanketed the island with an aura of misfortune. Because of this, all attempts to travel the Cube Trail and defeat Alfus have failed sooner or later. Adventurers fall to even the most basic of enemies, like bats, or run out of money through resource attrition. There is no hope of resistance amongst the island’s inhabitants, until one day, a mysterious masked person washes ashore…

Spoiler: Characters

Charles: No one knows where Charles came from, but he seeks to uncover the mystery of the Cube. He is a Warrior, who specializes in hand-to-hand combat. He is chivalrous, obsessed with nature, and can be a little too verbose at times, much to the detriment of his party members. His golden hair seems to have an effect on women, no matter friend or foe.

George: No one knows where George came from, but he seeks to uncover the mystery of the Cube. He is a Mage, who specializes in using offensive and defensive spells. He is a drama king, both arrogant and greedy. Nothing will stop his resolve to defeat any enemy that is unlucky enough to cross his path.

Clair: No one knows where Clair came from, but she seeks to uncover the mystery of the Cube. She is a Healer, who specializes in healing and offensive magic. She is very bubbly and cheerful, not one to be beaten down by any bad situation. She can make friends with nearly anyone.

Sophie: No one knows where Sophie came from, but she seeks to uncover the mystery of the Cube. She is a Rogue, who specializes in using Fate itself to gain an advantage during fights. Opposite of Clair, Sophie is the most negatively affected by her arrival on the island, and is constantly worrying about home. Still, she holds out hope that someday she can find her way back.

Spoiler: Mechanics

Four playable characters, each with their own unique dialogue and personalities. Some can avoid fights that others can’t.

Tightly Focused Scope. No huge world map, no endless side-quests, no mindless grinding, no gear treadmills, charmingly small maps that contain only the necessities.

Teeth-gritting combat. Every enemy will test your luck, no matter how basic and unassuming. You think fighting a rat will be easy? Disclaimer: Yes, combat is supposed to be a little infuriating. The plot revolves around good and bad luck, so it is vital to the experience. If you have other ideas to improve the system don't hesitate to comment.

Visible Enemies. What you see, you can fight. No hidden encounters.

Spoiler: Screenshots

Spoiler: Credits

Scripts: Yanfly, Dekita, Mr. Bubble, modern algebra, Victor Sant, Casper Gaming

Download Link
http://www.mediafire.com/file/acnaf35p4u7jigr/The+Cube+Trail+1_2.exe

 

A few small but important updates, with an updated the download link. Version 1.1 includes:

• Buffed hitrate to 70%, multi-hit skills are still 50%. This should combat some of the frustration, while still making combat dangerous.
• Each class now gains 1 HP on level up.
• A few other small things, like typos.

 

I gave this a try, though I ended up being trapped after finishing the Seaside Sentinel since I couldn't seem to leave that map. I don't know how much more of the game is there, but I think I got enough of a taste to give some feedback.

Spoiler: Feedback

First thing I noticed is that the light window background makes it hard to read the white words, especially if the tiles under it happen to be light-colored as well. People with better eyesight may not have a problem, but it started to give me a headache after a bit of reading so it may be a good idea to either outline the letters in black or darken the window so that the white letters stand out better.

The intro is short and lets me get to the gameplay quickly, which is nice, but it seems like it may be set to parallel process instead of autorun since I could turn the character in place while Dereck walks up to me. I do think that giving a lot of controls at once is a mistake though. Since the first time I can fight is after the intro, I had already forgotten what had been said about the which parameters affect what. Instead, having a tutorial fight where those details are explained would make it easier to remember since the player can see how things work.

Speaking of a tutorial fight, I really think that would be a good idea. There's the fight with the slime, but nothing is actually explained during that fight which felt like a waste to me. It took me a few battles to realize that the skills are only available once per fight, which would have really helped when I was trying to figure out a strategy for the fights with the bats. I also would have loved if 'Impacted Armor' had been explained. It felt like another name for 'Miss' to me, since I couldn't see any rhyme or reason to when it happened, but if there was some reason to it I wish I had known it so that I could have tried to use it to my advantage. Having luck affect battles is fine, but it's important to let the player know how it affects battles and how (if at all) they can do things to get Lady Luck on their side during a turn.

Once I got used to battles the bat fights in the Seaside Sentinel weren't too bad, though a bit more variation in the troops would have been nice.

As I mentioned at the beginning, I was stuck after reaching the top of the Seaside Sentinel. I had the Ring of Recall, but I had used all my Souls to recover after my first few fights that went poorly so I couldn't use it (well, I could use it to go to "Previous Place", but that just caused the game to crash because it didn't have the data for Map000 ). I went back outside of the tower, but there didn't seem to be any map transfer that I could find. It's important to make it obvious to the player where transfers are so they don't get stuck like I did, so maybe add a path where any transfers are. Since I didn't find a way to leave, I stopped playing there.

I ran into a few things that seemed odd to me, or could use some adjustments. The dialogue scrolling when there's more than four lines in cool, but it seemed strange that the faces would scroll away too. I assume that's due to a script, so I don't know if you can fix it but it would be nice if the face stayed still while only the words moved. I was unable to use the Soul Wheel, which was a shame since it seemed like it could've been fun but the guy only talked about playing it and never gave me the option. Personally I found the tint in the Seaside Sentinel too be too dark on my monitor, as it was hard to see where the bats ended and the walls began during battles. Instead of making it just dark, you could make the tint more blue or purple to make it feel darker without actually making the screen hard to see.

The intro to the town was set to parallel process like the beach intro, but unlike on the beach I was able to move... Which meant that I could walk to the church and enter it before the map finished scrolling. So the town intro didn't finish properly, and it restarted once I left the church after removing the mask. Setting the event to autorun should fix that issue.

Overall, even though I got stuck pretty quickly and wish there were some more details about battles, this was a fun little game. Best of luck improving and finishing it.

 

Thanks so much for the feedback! I am definitely going to go through all your points, you made a lot of good observations I hadn't thought about. Thankfully, there was pretty much no content past the Seaside Sentinel except for some quest-finishing dialog, so you didn't miss much if you only played 1 character. Nice to hear that you enjoyed it, even though there were a lot of issues!

Pretty much all of your points will be fixed in the next update.

 

New update! Thanks to some feedback, I made a lot of changes that should help. Original link is updated.

General Changes:

Added a new combat tutorial quest.

Ring of Recall fixed, now you can't activate "return to previous location" unless already teleported.

You are now fixed in place when the Cube Town map pans.

You cannot turn yourself around on the intro beach.

Changed window tint to increase readability.

Seaside Sentinel Changes:

Made the exit from Seaside Sentinel map clear.

Added some enemy variation.

Changed to tint to make things more visible.