RUIN FRONTIER

[OceansDream]

Lore 
At the height of mankind's intergalactic expansion, the frontier was discovered: an endless, uncharted alien dimension of infinite sky and floating landmasses, full of resources, life, and promise. Rapid colonization ensued, and soon a diverse, prosperous world was born. However, humanity changed little, despite its advancements and discoveries... 

Story so far 
To the mercenary trio known as the Crimson Edge, the city-state of Hope Station wasn't anything different: a quiet frontier town that boomed when rare ores were found, and is now under siege by a powerful corporation that they've been hired to defeat. Seasoned professionals and skilled mech pilots, they've seen same old story many times, the greedy fighting over a besieged city in a world full of them. It should be just another easy paycheck, but sometimes, the same old story turns out differently 

Battle screen​

Features 
Brought to you by Team Outta Time (Actual Team Chat/Meeting) 



We have

: 

-Title screen 

-Maps 

-Music 

-Words 

-Colors 

-Run on Windows

+Sci Fi Setting - The Frontier is full of strange and dangerous casts. 
+Play as Mechs Pilots, Customize their Weapons and Gears to prepare for battle ahead. 
+Spoils goes to the victors.
+ALL BURNING ROBOT ACTION!

DOWNLOAD HERE​

Team Out of Time Credits:

Spoiler

Maps/Tilesets:

Ocean

Sprites:

Aethers

Writing:

Jihaus

Scripting:

Fomar0153

 

[Simon D. Aelsi]

Ahahaha, so YOU'RE Ocean!

Very cool looking game, man. I like how it reminds me of old SNES games, or even a "newer" NES game. What engine is this for?

 

[Scythuz]

Awesome!  I'll be checking this out soon!

 

[OceansDream]

Ahahaha, so YOU'RE Ocean!

Very cool looking game, man. I like how it reminds me of old SNES games, or even a "newer" NES game. What engine is this for?

RPG Maker VX Ace! And.... it's another Ocean

 

[Simon D. Aelsi]

Surprise surprise! To be fair though I didn't know of you until AFTER the name change and someone was like ".... ARE YOU OCEAN?!??!" because apparently I'm also a gourmet. :B
Yeah. Following this! Hope to see more from you!!

Edit: Whoaaaaa.  Looks like you've quite the collection on you already!

 

[sabao]

Finally a good looking mech game! Downloading!

 

[gRaViJa]

Wondering: Why aren't you going commercial with this? Looks awesome!

 

[Matseb2611]

You've got a nice-looking game there, so I've decided to try it out. My thoughts and impressions below.

The Presentation

The presentation is very nice. The graphics style is nice and nostalgic of the older consoles and the music is pretty fitting to the setting and does its job. I quite like those battler graphics and the UI in combat especially. The sprites of characters when they're in the office though is a tad blurry, but that's just my opinion.

The Setting

The setting seems pretty cool. Any sci-fi game is always a plus in my books. At the moment I'm about 1 hour in and so far I don't really find myself caring for the characters much. The female ally, Lucinda, annoys the hell out of me. She just tries too hard to act like a bloke and always complains about everything. It's a bit of a typical cliche tomboy personality. The others seem all right though, but I wish there was more to them than just simply being a group of mercs who only care about their paycheck.

I notice chests being scattered around the map. It's a bit strange to see huge mechs opening chests. Also there was a lot of terminology that was offputting to me. For example the 'KO' state in this game is called 'Death'. Doesn't seem like an appropriate name for when you destroy a mech.

Then we have a weapon that does cold damage and 'silences' an enemy. Again, how does a mech get silenced? It doesn't make sense to me. Also, why would cold hurt the machines? They're machines. Cold wouldn't really damage them. Another weapon deals 'poison' damage. I have no idea how a machine gets afflicted with a poison. And then some machines raise their Atk power with an ability called 'Temper'.

And then there's a character called 'Ignis the Water Princess'. I almost imploded when I saw that, because I didn't even know where to begin to get annoyed. Firstly, why is there a princess in a supposedly capitalistic society ruled by powerful and rich corporations? Secondly, why is this princess associated with a water element? Are we in a medieval fantasy tale or something? And thirdly, why is her name 'Ignis'? Ignis means fire, which makes her name the exact opposite to her title. I just don't understand any of it.

The Gameplay

The gameplay was generally pretty fun. The combat flowed nicely. Visible encounters that are not mandatory to fight are always great. Really appreciate that. Though they can't initiate a fight with me if they bump into me themselves. Only if I bump into them. I am guessing it's set on 'Player Touch'. Maybe an 'Event Touch' trigger would make more sense here. Just a suggestion.

If there's one thing I could criticise about the gameplay is that the battles are extremely easy. Most of them can just be done by spamming attack. The AP points are acquired too easily and I can always use my better attacks. Most battles do not really require any thought. Even the two boss fights I've experienced offered no challenge at all. The first guy went down in like 3 turns and barely dented us at all. The Water Princess lasted slightly longer, but she didn't even get to lower us below half health. I kept stunning her the entire time, and then I got to use my 8 hit attack and finished her. That 8 hit attack seems kind of overpowered to be honest. Maybe a 4 or 5 hit attack would be more reasonable.

I noticed that regular 'Attack' is listed among the offensive skills. Is there any point to that? Same for 'Guard' being listen among the support skills. I have a bit of a mixed opinion about the idea of being able to attack and defend within the same turn. It's a bit weird. It's nice in some ways as you can heal and buff allies and attack at the same time, but it makes the battles too easy, I think.

When I select a healing item to use on an ally, I can't see who it is I am selecting. The bars and names gets partially obscured by some other part of the HUD.

Another thing I am curious about, how come the enemies always go first and how come they get to have 2 actions in a turn? There were times when I had 2 enemies unleash 4 AoE attacks on me. Not that it was hard or anything. It just feels extremely cheap that you get bombarded by a barrage of enemy attacks before even getting a chance to do anything.

Otherwise the battles were fun. The battle animations were well done. It's so refreshing to see unique battle animations with unique sound effects in an RM game. And most battles were appropriate length (though boss fights could certainly be longer, I think).

Overall Impressions

The game is polished and doesn't seem to have any bugs or glitches and it's a very smooth ride so far with a nice presentation. Right now the two major issues for me are the difficulty being too easy and some of the terminology being immersion-breaking for a sci-fi setting. But I find the game fun and interesting enough to want to play it further.

 

[Indrah]

I loved the game so  far (played the first are) in a stream, will continue playing soon. You hos better finish it, or I'll cut u >:U If it ends in a cliffhanger I'm gonna throw a fiiiit *clings to Lucila*

 

[OceansDream]

Long post, and appreciated!

Presentation part- Thanks! We tried hard to give the game its own feel so I'm glad that worked out

The setting- There's really a lot more backstory to it that Jihaus has that because of time constraints, could not be put in the game or adequately explained. We were rushing to meet the deadline of 3 weeks! I mean, I don't wanna be that person that waves over all criticism due to time either though, so sure we'll have to find a way to get the relevant info. I don't really know Ignis' backstory too much myself, but I am 80% sure that Water Princess is a self given title, and Ignis, yes we are aware! She's red and got a fiery temper, which makes her self given "water princess" title an obvious contradiction in how people perceive her and how she perceives herself.... I THINK. Don't take any of this as fact or lore or whatever, but anyway it's something that can be addressed in a completed version of the game. We just wanted to make the deadline as is! (I was pretty hands off with story so basically to quote a silly phrase I put in a previous community project... "I DUNNO I JUST MAP")

As for weapons and naming conventions, yeah. Most of that can be fixed with simply renaming it. I'm not the most sci-fi minded person, ahaha... Poison could be Corrosion or such, we definitely have battle system stuff to address anyway. Some ideas that didn't make it in or need to be balanced. 

(and hey I like Lucinda D: )

Gameplay- Yep yep, balance issues, and system issues. Not enough time to fix for then, but yeah I've been getting a few comments (plus my own testing) that Lucindas skill is OP. It was meant to be only really strong if the enemy had low defense but a high enough attack power on her makes her a complete powerhouse in that regard. Things like Stun should not have affected Ignis, and was prob my forgetfulness in adding the resist state. I'll look into that!

" noticed that regular 'Attack' is listed among the offensive skills. Is there any point to that? Same for 'Guard' being listen among the support skills."

-This is because if a player got muted, then they would not have been able to use anything in the skills command so I had attack be there to avoid being completely stuck in a battle with nothing possible to do. Some scripting and fiddling around with it will fix it but that's gonna go to the drawing board. I mean, keep em coming though, it's stuff we will bring up in our own lil chat so we can discuss it and see how to improve it!

"Another thing I am curious about, how come the enemies always go first and how come they get to have 2 actions in a turn?"

I don't really know myself! Well actually, the enemies tend to be faster than you (6 speed compared to your mechs 5) but the 2x attack is a bit of a mystery. I think it's that the player has 2 turns as well but it is split between the attack and defense phase while the enemies are not set up as such. Will need to look into it!

Again it's all stuff I wanna talk over with the team before I do anything else so I wouldn't expect an updated version of this for now, but it'll be stuff considered for the future! 

 

[JIHAUS]

Hello, I am JIHAUS, the writer and setting guy for RUIN FRONTIER. I wanted to see about clearing up some issues regarding the setting and story of our game as well as answer any questions anyone may have. I'm writing this mostly in reply to Matseb2611's post but it could help shine some light on some aspects of the plot.

First of all, I want to apologize for the rushed and nasty state of the writing. We definitely hope to improve this in subsequent builds and definitely appreciate any feedback you give us. Due to time constraints and in the interest of simplicity we skipped out on a lot of exposition regarding this unusual setting and this may have caused some issues with the overall experience.

Of course, SPOILERS

Spoiler

THE SETTING

Although this is a futuristic setting, there is a lot of diversity in the cultures, nations, and city-states in the Frontier. The Frontier is a vast, infinite plane that is being rapidly colonized by an intergalactic human race, one that isn’t entirely united as one giant space empire and is instead, like our world, divided into countless independent societies. This reflects similarly in the Frontier itself, where you have places that are blatantly dystopian (Hope Station) and places that are utopian (Convergence). This is how we have the varied and eccentric so-called “nutjobs” working for Aurao Industries like Ignis, Cane, or Judas.

With regards to Ignis, she’s a ruler of a city-state with archaic monarchy titles that controls the water supply to a particularly prosperous section of Convergence, hence the title of Water Princess. As for her name, well parents don’t know what job you’ll have in the future when they name you, and also because that symbolic literary names hilariously break my suspension of disbelief far more than humanoid robots, teleportation, or sound effects in space (plus this is a loaned character from a friend that I assigned a role to, not one I designed from the ground up to fit into a role).

THE MERCENARIES

The mercenaries are not really meant to be completely cold and amoral bastards but are instead meant to be just like many of us working class adults stuck in horrible bureaucratic structures. As a personal example, in my job, I’m in a position of some power where I can directly influence employees below me yet have to answer to several people above me. There tends to be a balancing act between pleasing the higher ups so you can keep your job, helping the ones below you because it’s the right thing to do, and getting something out of it for yourself so you don’t go insane. Often, these things are at odds with each other so you have to make some decisions that aren’t inherently good, but you don't necessarily have a choice in many cases, and these three things are personified in our three protagonists.

Phosfor the professional is mostly concerned with getting the job done because the group's reputation is at stake and because, frankly, their client is practically a dictator and it's not really wise to agitate the situation. Lucinda the greedy is the self-centered one, who's out for self-preservation and making the group some money, and any heroics will complicate those goals. Antonio is the heroic one in the group and believes that everyone should do their best to help and tries his best to do so, generally thinking that the arguments such as the ones by the above team members are just excuses.

The other thing to consider is that these guys are not newbies but seasoned professionals, so while they all have their strong personalities and beliefs, they're not so strong that they'll recklessly jeopardize the mission or the well-being of their team - they'd be a bit smarter about it. They've worked with each other for a while and have faith in each other despite their quirks. The story is about this sort of conflict and where these protagonists draw the line and how much they'll let happen before they step in, but of course it's in a rough and incomplete state at this time. We were thinking of things like letting the player decide how to proceed, once we implement the nonlinear aspects of the game.

Of course, if you didn't get any of that from the dialogue and story, then we can blame my bad writing for failing to send the message, heh.

 

[Takuto]

I love Mecha games. I'll download this and play it through, then leave feedback on this post when I'm done.

Can't wait for a full, non-rushed version. The graphics themselves look great, not to mention the enthusiasm of the writer and mapper.

 

[Matseb2611]

Fantastic. Thanks for clearing everything up. The setting now sounds much more interesting. Can't wait to meet those other two nutjobs, since their names are quite intriguing. You're quite right about names with an accurate meaning being immersion-breaking, because it seems too coincidental when that happens. Though I wouldn't have thought Ignis would be named so ironically. That too feels almost too coincidental that her name is the exact opposite to her role.

Now that you've described the mercs, they too sound more interesting. I did notice that Phosfor was very goal-oriented and just wanted to get the task done. He seemed the most rational and level-headed of the bunch. Antonio seemed like a kind guy of the bunch. I didn't really notice him being into heroics. Maybe that gets revealed later. Or maybe he just seems like someone who is most likely to do the right thing. He kind of stands out in a way. I'd expect a guy like him to be a merchant who sells gear or a medic who takes care of his comrades rather than being on the battlefield. Lol.

And I have a question about Lucinda. When the first boss guy offered to pay us double, why did Lucinda decline it? Right after that boss fight she claims she doesn't care about anything other than getting her paycheck, and yet if that was the case, you'd expect her to take up an offer with more money. Unless of course there's something more to the situation, like maybe she is lying about caring for money more than her friends, and perhaps she just says it to try and act tough in front of the guys. Yeah, totally a personal opinion here, but I don't really like her. If I had someone like that working for me, I'd transfer her out of my team. You can't trust a person like that. She is too hot-headed and selfish.

I think it'd be good to see some more clashes of opinions in the group, since they all have personalities vastly different to one another. The writing of the characters wasn't bad. Just that I'd like to see more situations that define them and their personalities. Right now they just fall into the overused archetypes too much (the serious guy, the kind guy, and the girl who pretends to be a guy). Maybe more will come up later in the game. I'll see.

" noticed that regular 'Attack' is listed among the offensive skills. Is there any point to that? Same for 'Guard' being listen among the support skills."

-This is because if a player got muted, then they would not have been able to use anything in the skills command so I had attack be there to avoid being completely stuck in a battle with nothing possible to do. Some scripting and fiddling around with it will fix it but that's gonna go to the drawing board. I mean, keep em coming though, it's stuff we will bring up in our own lil chat so we can discuss it and see how to improve it!

Oh I meant the other way round actually. The attack command and the guard command in the command menu make sense. I just couldn't understand why they were listed in the special skills menu as well.

Anyways, thank you both for answering the questions and best of luck in updating the game.

 

[JIHAUS]

That same point with Lucinda and the double pay was brought up by someone else so it sounds like I didn't write that as well as I should have.

Spoiler

That conversation wasn't an issue of whether or not Lucinda likes money (which she undoubtedly does). That was more to lampshade the fact that corporations are always promising to pay mercs like them double when things go sour as an emergency way out, to illustrate another line that Lucinda said somewhere else, that corporations have more money than actual talent to throw at these kinds of things. Lucinda herself is not someone who just works for the highest bidder, rather she's best classified as an opportunist, always looking for ways to maximize gains in any given transaction or contract. Liking money a lot doesn't make you a backstabber after all.

 

[Aethers]

Greetings, I am AETHERS and this is my first post here. I worked mainly on graphics for RUIN FRONTIER (as you can see from my profile picture) together with OCEAN and HAUS.

Like the others said, the game is still rushed because of 3 weeks limit but nevertheless, I am glad you guys enjoyed them.

Anyway, just want to thank you for the kind words at my parts. I'll try to make em better looking in the future (some of them look like side view enemies instead of first person).

 

[Marrend]

This is, seriously, the best game out of the McBacon Jam #1 games. Glad to see it here, an get more exposure!

 

[AlliedG]

Left my review on rpgmaker.net but this was a great little gem from mcbacon jam and importantly it was highly accessible as well.

Considering the tight timeframe and the to be continued I'm looking forward to future addition like choosing missions, expositions and more character development outside of battles.

 

[SpiralSigil]

Absolutely love the look of this!  Especially in the last screenie, as it really gives off the vibe of being in the cockpit of a Mech.  

As a small aside, Ocean, I THINK I might have followed alot of your older RPG Maker work back in the days of 2000/2003 being the new thing, if you're the same Ocean I recall from back then.  I used the username Strife543 back in those days, though I dont quite recall what the forum we all used was called (Pretty sure it isnt around anymore regardless) Either way, if you're the same one its good to see you're still doing this, you always had tons of skill and great artsy abilities!

 

[OceansDream]

Thanks! Name sounds familiar actually, so yes it is the same Ocean from ages ago, back in the 2k/3 days! Good times.