Swords of Chaos [New demo coming soon!]

[Hungry Chao]

 ​

Demo
 
*Currently unavailable as a new one is being made!*
 

 

Spoiler

In a world known as Somnium, there are 5 great cities known as Haruo, Natsuro, Akiro, Fuyuro, and Shizon. These cities once waged a great war long ago, and during this war, a huge, ominous tower emerged, from which a dark creature emerged, and razed many villages. 1 man from each city settled their differences, and teamed up to kill this creature at the cost of their lives. In sorrow over the lost of these heroes, the leaders from each city stopped fighting. For centuries, the cities lived in peace.... However, this era of peace slowly fades away as conflicts between the cities, particular Shizon and Haruo, progressively escalate. Eventually, Shizon City decides to send an army to Haruo City, much to their astonishment. They request help from Natsuro City, thus beginning Ryuu's journey...
Ryuu and his friends must deal with the political and warfare issues between the cities, but with the seeds of war sown, they also must conflict with several enemies who are intent on sprouting these seeds

 

 

Spoiler

The world is called Somnium, and it has multiple continents, which most of them are centered around one of the 5 great cities, who control their own territory of other towns and villages, forming nations which share the city names. Some cities have a very prominent social hierarchy, while others not so much. Every city does have a 'royal family', whose role is almost always serving as leaders of their respective cities.
In every part of the world, monsters are abound, who every now and then, invade small villages. Usually, the monsters are easily defeated by the average mercenary, but for some unknown reason, recently, monsters have become far more powerful than usual and are growing in numbers and have been getting increasingly more daring, even attacking the 5 great cities.
Additionally, in Somnium, there is a legend of 5 legendary swords called the "Demon Swords", which are very malevolent weapons that each have its own very unusual power:

- reduces its victims abilities
- causes its victims to see illusions
- twists and turns and can split into multiple blades
- carves patterns into whatever it makes contact with
- creates darkness and cuts through anything

Other than general descriptions, these swords are mostly shrouded in mystery.

 

 

Spoiler

Ryuu

Gender: Male
Age: 17

Ryuu comes from the royal family of Natsuro City, but Ryuu simply brushes off this title as just a flashy name and he prefers that people refer to him casually. Although usually seen as a bit arrogant in terms of combat and cynical, he does deeply care for his friends and has a strong sense of justice. Has a bad habit of rushing into action when people are endangered. Ryuu has a younger brother named Tsura, who is a bit of a flirt (and tends to use words like "trolling", much to Ryuu's annoyance). Ryuu's father made it a point to ensure Ryuu has fighting skills before he was allowed to leave home on his own, but he was not taught very well in regards to history or geography. Ryuu is sent by his father along with his 2 friends, Sho and Akina to help defend Haruo City from its invaders.
Ryuu specializes in using swords and fire and water magic.Note about Tsura: He has a yellow eye and a green eye (heterochromia) in the demo, but I decided to change it to just green eyes, due to ultimately deciding that the yellow eye was too strange-looking.

Akina

Gender: Female
Age: 18

Ryuu's level-headed friend. She is generally kind and caring to all, but she does have an aggressive side when angered. She tends to scold Ryuu for his bad attitude. Akina lives in Natsuro City to live with her uncle, a fairly wealthy businessman, as her parents died many years ago, and Akina's grandfather traverses the world to record the various monsters plaguing the world. She is very knowledgeable of various worldly circumstances, and is often exasperated by Ryuu's cluelessness in such matters.
Akina specializes in using bows, but she also has some skill in healing spells. She has all around stats, and many of her skills are cheap and learned fairly quickly in comparison to other characters.


Sho

Gender: Male
Age: 17

A very shy and easily frightened friend of Ryuu's. Even though Sho at heart wishes to help his friends, his fearful nature often hides that. Sho's mother runs the inn in Natsuro City, as his father is no longer alive. Despite his weaknesses, Sho eventually agrees to partake in the journey. Sho seems to harbor secret feelings for Akina, although he is unsuccessful in hiding it from Ryuu. Sho and Akina had been good friends for a very long time, well before they met Ryuu.
Sho specializes in using healing magic and later, light magic. Great power in magic, low defenses.... your basic white mage

 
Features

-Ziifee's Wait Gauge Battle System, making the battles real-time
-Many, many hours of gameplay
-Many different characters, of varying strengths and weaknesses in both personality, and combat
-There are 3 different endings: Good, Dark, and Neutral.
-There is a karma system, which is increased or decreased base on your choices in the game. The karma points will affect which ending you get
-You can choose from 4 different difficulty levels. The demo comes with 3
-Uses Modern Algebra's Reserve Party Script. All your party members will gain the same amount of experience, even if they are in the reserve
-Can go up to lvl 250
-You can synthesize items
-Lots of sidequests, ranging from simple fetch quests, to intense, optional boss fights
-Fishing Feature
-Large selection of equipment, especially in terms of accessories
-You can change your windowskin
-ALL open books are readable!

Screenshots:

Spoiler

 

A forest maze shrouded in thick fog. Getting lost here can be deadly
 
 

A house... probably better described as a mansion
 
 

A look at the main character's home, Natsuro City
 
 

A damp forest... the perfect place for a crap ton of mushrooms
 
 

A look into one of the early dungeons of the game
 
 

A mountainous trail with a cave to explore
 
 

Suspicious stuff...
 
 

Autumn themed places have always been my favorite in games

A look into the battle system. Black battleground is due to taking this screenshot in the battle test

Crazy monster thing
 

The following maps depicted are not available in the demo!

Blue flames are never a good sign
 
 

 

A fog-covered town of uniform design

 
 

A forest with evident civilization effects
 
 

yays, ice/crystal areas. Another personal favorite of mine, as long as they don't have sliding ice puzzles

 
 

Puzzles from hell!
 
 

Another puzzle from hell! Perhaps quite literally

Credits:

Spoiler

You, player, for taking the time to try out my game!

Akod, for his immense support, especially when it came to finding bugs and other errors

Tilesets

Ying

Lunarea

Recife

fmce

Celianna

Soruve

Sprites/Faces/battler graphics

Lunarea

Aindra

GrandmaDeb

Butler

Famitsu

Sketcy-Sketch

Apoc

http://lud.sakura.ne.jp/index.html

Scripts:

KGC

Ziifee

BulletXt

Synthesize

Woratana

ModernAlgebra

Midget Man

Mr G & W

Anaryu

Yanfly

DP3

OriginalWiJ

And of course, all those excellent musicians, composers etc who made the music I use for this game (music from other games is used) (Although not specifically credited here to avoid spoiling the music that is going to be used, they will be credited in the game's credits of course

)

 

[KanaX]

Seems you got some good variety in there. I'll download the demo and give it a shot.

 

[bgillisp]

Looks like a decent start. One thing that I did notice though was you have two of the same maid on the same map. You can fix that by using recolors by Haydeos (that's the username who made them), they recolored the maid so that you now will have 8 different maids you can use. That way you don't have two of the same sprite on the same map, in view at once.

 

[Hungry Chao]

Looks like a decent start. One thing that I did notice though was you have two of the same maid on the same map. You can fix that by using recolors by Haydeos (that's the username who made them), they recolored the maid so that you now will have 8 different maids you can use. That way you don't have two of the same sprite on the same map, in view at once.

Thanks. I knew I should've made the recolors, but I never got around to actually doing it

Probably wasn't the smartest idea to splice and recolor so many sprites in a short period of time. It made me sick of having to go back and do it some more. Curse the need to make a whole new set of sprites for snowbound areas

 

[bgillisp]

Thanks. I knew I should've made the recolors, but I never got around to actually doing it

Probably wasn't the smartest idea to splice and recolor so many sprites in a short period of time. It made me sick of having to go back and do it some more. Curse the need to make a whole new set of sprites for snowbound areas

Maybe this link will save you some time: http://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/index.php?/topic/36346-my-recoloredanimated-sprites-icons/#entry360686

 

[Hungry Chao]

I was a bit reluctant to show this screenie due to it also not being in the demo, but I might as well, having already shown it on other sites before, and I already have few screenshots not in the demo anyways

Spoiler

btw, I apologize for the shadow error near the furnaces in the two upper rooms. It was fixed after the screenshot was taken

 

[literarygoth]

Downloading your demo. I'll give this a go once I'm done patching my own demo.

 

[KanaX]

I'll be honest with you. After reading a pompous title and seeing some very custom tilesets being used for a game about ancient battles between good and evil, I didn't expect much. I also am not a big fan of games with battles. Especially where the don't use sprites.

My opinion made a 180 degrees turn.

I'll start listing my impressions based on the order I made them:

Nothing special about the Splash and Title screen I press new game.

I made a huge mistake and said "Screw it, let's go Mania"

A very basic scrolling text giving the lore of the world. Don't get me wrong, I have a sweet tooth for this grand ancient epic journeys, but I have seen them SO MANY times, executed SO POORLY that it didn;t made me any impression. Still, I tried to keep down as much info as I could.

Ryuu's father approaches us and talks about the city's impending doom and informs him about his quest (more like kindly asks him to do it). I think that he must be a little more brass in that situation. Ryuu MUST go Haruo City. Bringing up "figureheads" makes me realize that there is going to be political strife to some extend and that the game might develop more the the usual "good vs evil" pattern.
 

The BGMs are pretty nice.

We meet our companions and friends (nothing notable about them as of yet) and the journey begins.

This is where my opinion changes drastically.

SO MANY DETAILS! The city's roads are full, lively and everyone has their own thing to do and their own worries. They don't just exist to acknowledge the player. EACH AND EVERY ONE OF THEM.

The city is BEAUTIFULLY separated to the Embassy/Palace area, the commoner's residence and the slums! The design choice is incredibly apparent and it was surely NOT by accident.

So. Much. Lore. From the citizens/guards/maids around, to the random books you find you can learn advanced historical details about the cause, participants and complications of the ancient war and other DELICIOUS details like the Town's mineral resources (which I hope it comes in handy later on), racism against immigrants, the horrible state of the Fuy mother and children in the slums, the disappearance of her daughter 6 years ago (dear Lord please let the Fuy family be a nice, dark sidequest).

Amazing character development! Ryuu's courtyard, the hints thrown around at the inn, speaking with the woodcutter. Not only do I learn things about the protagonists, but I'm hungry for more.

OKAMI-okami-okami-okami

I'd only wish I could see more of your later on variety in maps.

I don\t know what that evil book is, but I want it.

Battle System

Remember when I told you I don't care about battles? This one kept me on my feet. Because it's not precisely turn based I am force to always check for the most viable solution as quickly as possible. I cannot get bored and I cannot complain that it is simplistic.

I also noticed some differences between Mania and Normal. There is a well where I can grind within the town (easy save and heal) instead of going outside and get slaughtered. A VERY nice touch. The experiece bonuses are also different. I gain more EXP in Mania, which I DESPERATELY need.

Errors

While not severely besmudging the general image of your game there where some issues:

I can walk around when the monster attacks and we are asked to kill it. I can basically do whatever I want except leave the city.

Some NPCs show distress when the monster attacks, while others don't.

Ryuu's father's bedroom is ridiculously small for a king. You could argue that he is a modest man, but there are even bigger bedrooms around.

On some locations I can see the two friends frozen into position, not talking. Like in Akina's room. or the slums.

I trained at the school's basement, but while my HP was refilled, my TP wasn't.

You also made a spelling mistake. The teacher says "Choas" while she should say "Chaos"

The borders at the ends of the town (palace and slums) are not visible. There are no walls, the floor just ends.

The monster graphic (first battle) has nothing to do with the actual monster. You could at least change it to a dragon.

Especially in the slums, there is an ugly tile you have used. When you want to show cracked wood, you often use the tile that reveals bricks inside the crack, That doesn't make much sense to be honest,

You have messed up the bridge in the lower side of the outskirts. I can walk on it if I step right or left.

Why does everybody know and love the woodcutter??? I don't complain, it's really sweet. Although, how does he supply and ENTIRE city with wood???

Overall

The best ancient, epic, journey game I have played and probably one of the best of its kind. Yes, it lacks luster and it won't be as pretty as other games, but with some TLC it is going to be GRAND.

I'd also like a hint as to what so I do after the fight with the Unknown Man in the forest.

 

[Hungry Chao]

Thanks for the critique. I hate to admit it knowing about it, but the demo does have that annoying error with the characters just randomly standing there (shame on me). Unfortunately, that error was not spotted until after I had made a lot of progress after releasing the demo, so it would've taken a lot of work to release a new demo without being an unnessarily oversized file, so sorry about that

The error is caused by a careless failure to turn off the switch that causes the characters to appear during events, but it does fix itself once another one of those events occurs. I do believe there is an event where the characters walk kinda funny though. Minor problem, but annoying and unprofessional

Also, since you want to know about a sidequest with that immigrant family... yes, there is a major sidequest involving them.

I'm glad you appreciate the life I've given behind several of the NPCs and the lore. That is one of the main reasons why development for this game is so slow. I have to sit down and think of unique lines for each NPC (and give them new lines when major events happen!) and am very careful to avoid plot holes (done by having a big plot detail chart next to me at all times when writing dialogue). Not sure if you've done the mountain events yet, but in hindsight, it is a bit pathetically cliche'd, and it disgusts me. But I can't think of a better way to handle it

Did you encounter Ryuu's brother yet? On a similar note to my disgust with certain aspects, I changed his dialogue a bit from the dialogue in the demo, mostly to tone down his perversion because I thought it was very silly and immature in hindsight.

Yeah, not a good idea to jump right into mania mode

That was meant to add replay value to somehow who wanted a serious challenge out of the demo. It's designed to be very difficult, and there are two bosses I know are particularly difficult (they're tricky even in normal mode!)

 

[KanaX]

I really want to continue though. Where is the Elder?

 

[Hungry Chao]

I really want to continue though. Where is the Elder?

the elder is found in the mountain village (Forsetti) to the south of the outskirts area. His house is pointed out once you get there

EDIT: You follow the path across the bridge, which leads to Forsetti mountain. Just keep heading south from there until you reach the village (you'll fight a slime trio miniboss on the way)

Let me know if this helped solve the problem.

 

[Hungry Chao]

PROGRESS UPDATE

Much of the overworld mapping is now completed. I'm having trouble with a dungeon atm due to hitting a wall in coming up with creative puzzles (without scripting)

 

[Hungry Chao]

There are now plans for an updated demo.

it will most likely take a while to release the new demo, but I'm aiming to do so in the summer... Preferably early summer...

Any more feedback on problems with the current demo will be of course greatly appreciated so I can go and fix them if I haven't yet spotted them

 

[Hungry Chao]

It's been a while since my last update. I intended to finish the new demo a long time ago, but... life happened, so I've been out of commission for a while. Sorry about that 

Progress is going smoothly again

I've taken down the old demo, as the new demo will have a lot of updates, including some dialogue changes. Most of it is minor, but there are a couple fairly significant changes.