RMMV [RSW]Thing in the Dark (Alpha 1.2 avaliable) - MV 1.6 Update + fixes

[peq42_]

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Spoiler

You are a boy, 18 years old, raised in a Modern city where you lived for several years, made friends, grow up and studied until high school. One day, it happened that your parents, for work reasons, decided to move to a more rural place, far from the city, and you ended up losing contact with most your friends. You notice really fast that this house seems different from the one you were before: It's older, having candles and candelabrums, and many mysteries.As you explore, things get more and more weird, and so they will keep until you discover the biggest mystery, which lies inside of you.

As a horror game, you can expect things like: Blood, jumpscares(not many, as it's horror not jumpscare genre), suspense,etc.

Spoiler

Spoiler

This released version is just an alpha(And this file will work as a DEMO if I think it's good enough to sell and find a good place to do so), so it's unfinished. I was planning to develop it all without posting about or telling anyone, but It's been under development since the beginning of the last year and still less than 50% complete, so I decided to post its Alpha/demo to see if I can get some opinions, ideas(The main plot won't change, by ideas I mean "things to add", like puzzles, how to improve the development of a character ingame to make it more real/alive, even ideas of scary places for me to base on,etc), and help to find problems(Like grammar). The full game will be avaliable in Portuguese(Brazilian) and English, but I may add one more language if I find help and power of will to do so, since translating everything(Even what I've until now) requires a LOT of effort and hours of work . The game will be avaliable first for Linux and Windows(May come later for Mac and other platforms)

If you like the project, post your comment and give your opinion. If you wish to help with it somehow, you're more than welcome to PM me!

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Spoiler

Story
Elpeleq42(Gabriel)

Visual Art:
Elpeleq42(Gabriel)
Avery
Mlogan
CrazyCrab
Enterbrain
Kadokawa
com_sho
PandaMaru
Indrah
Cyanide
ArcheoFox
Rhino
Cvrtis
The Infamous Bon Bon
Yanfly
whtdragon
purpledragon42
000web(font)
Promocyja(font)


Programming:
Elpeleq42(Gabriel)
JavaHut
Chau/chaucer
Iavra
Khas
Galv
Tor Damian Design
Atreyo Ray
Alanderson Zelindro da Rosa
SumRndmDde
Yanfly
MOGHunter/AtelierRGSS
Hudell/Orange
LadyBaskerville
Tsukimi
PrimeHover
Biud436
Kadokawa


Musics:
Day of Chaos
Evening of Chaos
Steel and Seething
Unseen Horrors
Windswept
All made by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/


Sound Effects:
Mike Koening(Funny Boy Laugh,Walking Away,Footsteps,Computer Error Alert Sound,Bathroom Sink Sound)
Caroline Ford (Eat Chips)
The Baron(17 Evil Laugh)
OwlStorm(Grassy Footstep 2,Hard Female Footstep (3))
Daniel Simion(Tree Fall Small Sound)
Kadokawa
-All above are under CC 3.0-





Made using RPG Maker MV ©2015 KADOKAWA CORPORATION./YOJI OJIMA
(If any credit is missing, PLEASE tell me and point what/where is it)
(More art work, musics, sounds,etc are going to be added soon)

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[hiddenone]

I gave your demo a try, and managed to break it a lot. The idea itself seems fine, but there're quite a few things that need tweaked to make the game funner to play (and actually playable, in a few cases).

Spoiler: Feedback

I'm sure translating everything is difficult, so I'd recommend finding a native English speaker to help. Right now the dialogue works well enough, but there are some sentences that are awkward when reading.

One thing that I would've loved to know about early on was how saving worked. I only found the save point during my last play-through, and it was on accident since I went into the living room after grabbing the candle but before checking on the kitchen door. That was the first time I saw the sparkle that told me about how I could save there. Every other time I'd walked through that room there hadn't been a sparkle, and since I'd checked out the picture in the beginning of the game I hadn't considered that the picture could be important. It would be a lot more player-friendly to teach them about it being a save point closer to the beginning of the game.

If you're going to use autosaves, make sure that it autosaves relatively often. As I mentioned, I didn't know how to save, which meant that every time I got stuck I had to restart from the 'watching a movie' cutscene (and seeing that again and again was rough after I got to the basement section and then the game broke .)

Spoiler: Points where it breaks

So, there are a lot of points where you have to do things in order, or else you can't progress. The first time was when I clicked on the bathtub after seeing the bathing cutscene, interacting with it would put Evander back in the tub but wouldn't have the cutscene play, so I was trapped in the bath.

Second time happened because I decided to talk with the dad first, and then take a bath. Apparently a switch is placed wrong, since talking with the parents makes Evander say that he'd already taken a bath... But since I hadn't triggered that event I was unable to go to bed. So I had to restart and then make sure to do the bathroom cutscene first and then talk with the parents.

Thinking I was safe from breaking things, I went into Evander's bedroom and triggered the 'going to bed' cutscene. Unfortunately, I entered via the left stair tile and it ended up walking Evander into a wall (I assume it's because it uses the same move route as the other entrance but there's a plant in the way so the character gets stuck). Restarting and making sure I entered via the right stair tile let me continue. That's actually an easy fix, just have there be only one event to enter the room.

Next time I got stuck was exploring the windmill, I looked at where the mannequin had been and saw the flashback, but it warped Evander into the wall and there was no escape.

The next break point was when I entered the bathroom while exploring. I knew I was supposed to go into the basement, but I thought I'd check out the bathroom first... Which was a mistake because it seemed to send me to the wrong map when I left. All the blood on the floor was gone, and Evander just said that there was no reason to go into the basement.

That issue ended up being a major problem later on, when the game tells me to go into the bathroom to fill the bucket. It sends me to the wrong place again, and there's no way to get water so I had to give up playing.

Spoiler: Graphical issues

First thing I noticed is that all the rooms in the house seem huge and kinda empty. You may be able to shrink all of them down without losing details. For example, Evander's bedroom is has that huge empty space in front of the stairs that could safely be removed without losing any important parts of the room.

In the back yard, Evander's reflection can be seen on some of the long grass and not on any of the water.

Evander misses his dead(?) father after unlocking the room in the basement by a few tiles.

There were also a few spots where the tiles put on top of the walls let me walk onto the wall.

Overall, once you get all the bugs that break the game fixed this could be an interesting game, but currently it's not a lot of fun since there are so many places where the player can get stuck.

 

[peq42_]

Aww I can't believe i left so many things without fix after testing it so many times....
I will fix then and upload the alpha/demo/prototype/game again

 

[hiddenone]

Don't worry too much about missing things, you do know your game the best so it makes sense that you'd be doing things the 'right' way. No matter how much you test, players will find new ways to break things (I just happen to be really good at it ). Just do your best to fix things when they're discovered.

 

[peq42_]

Ok I think I got all the bugs and problems you reported fixed.

-Walls you could enter: It was because of tiles that are supposed to be used in the ground, but I was using in walls. So I removed some and fixed others.
-Those problems with map transfer: At first, I developed the game to be 816x624, but then I changed it to be 720p(1280x720), so I had to increase the map size of ALL maps, and seems that some I forgot to fix the transfer events. Only those that should trigger at night weren't because of that, but I also fixed them(During tests I changed a variable requirement to trigger the bath scene, and forgot to put it On again, causing lots of problems if you go there first. Now It should be fine).
-Reflection on Grass: I had to remove that reflection feature, because that animated grass was made using animated tiles, and all animated tiles seems to trigger Reflection(And since I couldn't manage to make reflection work on tiles above instead of under too, it was really useless for me)

-I Also changed one dialogue which had double meaning in one part, but my knowledge of english don't allow me to find anything beyond that, so If anyone find something, don't forget to report via PM/Comment!

-About the room layouts: I'm trying to make them big, so it look better in a 720p resolution. I did my best to make it as full as possible, without adding stuff that wouldn't make sense, but if more people think it's too empty I will try to fix that too in a future update.


--------Future Update & plans--------
As I can see, this game won't be any good without help to test and opinions, so I decided to do the following:
-I will keep updating this game here until it be 100% complete, with all features and maps working. Every update will change the version in the Title.
-Even if it be paid when finished, I will let people that were here helping and testing have their free copy of the full game, because without help It will certainly be full of bugs and problems once released.

About the Next update:
-For the next update, I will try to make the plot more clear. Until the very end, I won't tell exactly what it is all about, but I promise it will be at least an interesting topic. You will know more about main character's "friends" and a bit of the past.
-Next mission will be based in Fnaf(1/2). I'm trying to work to find a way for it to be as much similar as possible to people enjoy, but I can't really promise that will be perfect.