RMMV The Five Guardians 1.0

[Brn]

Hi everyone,

This is my very first game ever released, I hope you guys will enjoy it as much as I did making it !


Story.

In a country of the Eline World, named Oderma, the people are living peacefuly in their respected region. Moutains, forests, deserts and swamps are what this country is made of, and threat can come from anywhere, but the dwellers are well prepared to face wild animals and natural disasters such as sandstorms, snowstorms or earthquakes.

Unfortunately, a dark mistery is keeping everybody awake, haunting them with fear : Strange phenomens appeared , the dead are coming back to life and more and more people are reported missing.

It's in this context that the player will have to play a role, but which one ?

You'll have to figure it out.


Screenshots






NB: Feedbacks and reviews would be highly appreciated for my own good. Knowing if my game is liked by others is always good, and advices on every aspects will be as well good for me, I'll listen to what you have to say, if it is in a constructed way



Thank you for your time and have fun !

Download link : https://www.dropbox.com/s/25ndrtak48ohr5s/The Five Guardians.zip?dl=0

 

[kaisielizen]

What kind of battle system does this game have?

 

[Brn]

It has the basic turn-based battle system of MV, with battlers made by Aekashics.

Just give it try and let me know your thoughts, it would really help me .

 

[bhindi1224]

I get a 2.5gb file called Game_boxed.exe that doesn't seem to do anything when I open it. It appears that it wants to load something, but nothing comes up on my screen. It seems this was packed with Enigma Virtual Box. I must be running out of memory. I have 16gb of RAM

I could not install the game from the Game_boxed.exe file but I did manage to extract it and play it that way.

I am through the intro and a little into the town with Grandma. I noticed a few things you might need to be aware of. I swear I am hearing Legend of Zelda music for one while running around, is that ok even in a non-commercial release? The second thing is that you also included these directories into your package.

Spoiler: Directories inside the Virtual Box package

\FINAL FANTASY XIV - A Realm Reborn
\Skyrim Special Edition

There were some spelling errors in the intro, but I did like the scrolling text. When I move the mouse to click on things after just entering the houses, it usually moves me one square to the side which makes me leave the house immediately.

Edit: Will update with more info later.

 

[kaisielizen]

It has the basic turn-based battle system of MV, with battlers made by Aekashics.

Just give it try and let me know your thoughts, it would really help me .

Sorry, but I really can't stand MV's vanilla battle system :[

 

[bhindi1224]

Sorry, but I really can't stand MV's vanilla battle system :[

Could you confirm that it even works for you? I'm trying to figure out if it's somehow my computer.

 

[kaisielizen]

If it's an exe, I can't run it bc I have a Mac.

 

[Brn]

@bhindi1224 @kaisielizen
Hey guys, thanks for your replies. I've corrected the problem and the game can now launch (though it takes couple seconds).

About the Legend Of Zelda music, I also uses it in the main city and the houses, but I have to admit I have no idea if I'm allowed to use them even in a non-commercial game. I'm going to make some research about it and change the musics if it causes any issues.

Thanks for telling me I included files that shouldn't be in there, propably a miss-click. It should be fixed now.

About the transfers in houses, it's because I built this game around using the keyboard mainly, so if you are using a mouse, I think it automatically takes the shortest way, which seems to be the square to the side. Try with using the keyboard and let me know if it works (it does for me) .

If there is too much spelling errors don't hesitate to tell me so I can then correct them, I still have to improve my english.

Have fun !

 

[Freank]

The plot looks interesting

 

[Brn]

Thanks. I think the story isn't that good and I could have done more things but I was more focused on the terrains.
It's still good in my opinion, but i can't really judge my own game.
Give it a try and let me know .

PS : Sorry for the late reply.

 

[Roninator2]

I downloaded it and the first thing I tried was to save the game, but I get the "the program doesn't have access to the folder" sound.
Can't save the game, I'm not going to try it very much.

 

[Brn]

To solve the problem you must create a new folder and name it "Save", in the folder in which the game is.
Then when you are in-game and try to save, it should work (it does for me).

I hope this will be helpfull.

 

[Kyattchan]

I gave the game a go today and while I didn't play a lot honestly, I decided to leave my thoughts here for now..

Spoiler: Gonna put everything under a spoiler tag because I'm not sure what could spoil people or not lol

First things first, it seems like this is going to be a long game, like a long epic quest! so I think you should find a quest system to add to the game. It would make the game a bit more interactive, you could add more to the story by using hints in the quest description and ofc it's a easy, cool way to always remind the player where he needs to go and what he is doing.

I noticed a few typos in the text right at the beginning, one punctuation typo in particular caught my eye with a empty space followed by a dot
(" .") <- something like this
The typos were nothing too bad just things you should be careful with.

I thought the maps looked nice, didn't find any bugs or tiling errors at least! ^^

Now on to my opinion about the story..
The story was ok enough in the beginning, I liked getting to see granny and cleaning up for her too (haha) and it started to get really intriguing esp. when the night arrives with growls!
But after we get rescued you lost me honestly. >_<
I think all that went by a bit too fast and I was left feeling confused about what happened with the undead and the guy that put me to sleep.. And it was like it was an everyday thing for our character, as if seeing some undead was something he was used to.
I wished the events after we got rescued were a bit more developed, that we got a bit more out of Romero, like what they think happened, how he found us, well who he is actually because I just knew he was friends? with Clara and the son? of Irma? Wth is Irma though, you know? XD
And then he are sent to some guy in Volantis who we have no clue who he is but our character knows and he hasn't seen him in a while so it's ok... not really. I feel like as a player we should be a bit more inside of the story. It's cool to leave some things to the imagination to keep the suspense going but too much makes the players confused and in some cases it makes the player lose interest. Gotta be careful with that.

I noticed that after we leave Romero's house, if you go back inside again Romero won't talk anymore, dunno if it was on purpose but I went back to him thinking maybe he would give me a hint about where was Volantis (up or left? lol) but he wouldn't say anything. T^T

And a bit after I also didn't get any help on how to get back to the village to get the permit, most of the guards wouldn't talk back and the npcs I came across didn't talk (apart from the old man that we encountered right in the beginning but he also didn't gimme any directions!! lol)
So I got no clue where I am and now I need to go back home to get the permit and.. I really got no clue where to go..
And this is where the battles started to annoy me. XD I'm not a big fan of random encounters in games really and I'm really not used to getting into battle with guards and npcs right next to me. But it's kind of frustrating to find your way when you keep getting attacked. >_<
(This is ofc a personal feeling on this)
I do think one sign with some clear directions to other villages/towns would help a bit in these maps. I just remember that one sign that warns about the monsters. lol

My main thought while playing the game was that the game is ok at a starting point but there's room for a lot of improvement, especially where the story meets gameplay. You need to go deeper into the story, the dialogue in some parts lacks impact and clear meaning, something that can easily translate into players feeling confused and bored.
And then when you feel like you have enough attention from the players remember to put more interaction in the maps' objects! I'm the type that loves to interact with everything in a room! haha I was really excited to see the horses outside in the beginning, the computers in some rooms, the baby and the crib, bookshelves and the tvs!! I like how you make the rooms seem more lively and I would love to see our main character expressing his thoughts on all these things, you know? It feels like a bit of a waste to have all these cool things in display to not see any type of interaction with them. But ofc to me all this should come after you have a clear story going on, to me the focus on any game is always the story! XD

Oh! PS!! Something I almost forgot, in the map where we start, there's that huge tree (that later gets burned?), I'm not totally sure if the tree is really important to the story but it felt like it was to me, so I would like to suggest for you to make the space around the tree more visible.. maybe put some more flowers around it or something, just try to get the player attention to it more. I didn't really see the tree the first time, probably because of all the green (the grass and then the tree) but when the monster burned it, I realized that this might be an important clue to the story. XD I actually loaded up my first save after that and went to interact with it because of that. ^^'

I hope you'll continue working on this game. Visually it looked rather nice to me really, you just need to work a bit more on the story now to make it more solid and then focus again on the gameplay. Really consider what I said about a quest system too. I'm not sure if you plan to have side-quests in this but even if you don't, having a sort of quest tracker in a game like this is always good in my eyes.

Good luck! I look forward to see you posting in the thread as you work on the development of the game~

 

[Blue Symphony]

Well, hello, first, congratulations on finishing your first game! That's not something many people can say they've done.
I decided to give it a try. I'll leave my thoughts on about things that bothered me the most, as well as some advice.

Spoiler

[*]It started wrong, with a dump of info to the player in the form of slow scrolling wall of text. You just don't do this, you just don't. What you should do is check out these couple pages talking about do's and don'ts: 4 ways to tell you backstory without scrolling text and How NOT to Start a Game. Checking those blogs and channel will help you improve a lot.
[*]The first enemies you encounter do zero damage, that trivializes completely the combat, nullifies the feeling of danger. Combat plays a major role in these type of games, if it’s not engaging, the game is dead.
[*]After the interaction with Romero he wouldn't talk to me. And the girl just dissapeared? Small inconsistencies kill of games.
[*]After you leave Romero's house, the player gets absolutely no clue on how to get back to get the permit, that isn't that bad but...
[*]The worst of this is that there a lots and lots of characters that are just plain ornaments because I can't interact with them. Interations are important for gameplay, and MEANINGFUL interactions are key for the success of a game, talking to an NPC just saying "Hey it's a great day" tends to be incredibly dull and meaningless. Make your characters interesting, all of them.
[*]The spider battles are really annoying, paralysis is an ok state. But when your party consist of one man, It's just nerve wracking, besides, spiders give 0 exp so...
[*]The initial battles with the bugs are practically impossible to beat when there are 3 of them, or when one of them uses it's super OP drain skill. And if one of them is 2 levels above you, you can't escape, and from then is pure luck if you survive. You just don't start hard right off the bat, you need give the players time to get acclimated to the gameplay, maybe it's not hard to you, but that is because it's your game.

But hey, not everything is hopeless.

Spoiler

[*]The overall idea of the plot and the cutscenes after the dissapearence of grandma keeps the player questioning themselves what is happening and what is going to happen, that's good, though the bad writing overshadows it.
[*]Skeleton invasion was really cool concept. It started really well, and managed to pick up my attention.
[*]The mapping looks sweet, that's not my area of expertise so I can't critique it much. But I they seem alright.
[*]The fact that the event labels for appear only when your coming close to them is pretty sweet. I love that, and I'm not totally gonna steal the idea.

You posted a poll asking if the game is fun to explore, I have to say:

Spoiler

No. Look, I can get over bad writing, I get it, it's really hard, it's really not a big deal to me, but when the game lacks proper balance and interaction, it's impossible to enjoy. Not because it makes it hard, but because the lack of testing shows immediately. No matter how pretty the maps looks, or how good the music is, no matter if the writing is bad, poor gameplay kills it all.
Hopefully you check out the extra credits youtube channel and the rpgmaker blogs.

This is all from my part, keep it up.

 

[Brn]

@Kyattchan @Blue Symphony

Hey, first I'd like to thank you both for your comments and the time you took to write them.
I have to admit that I was aware of the combat system that seemed a bit hard to begin with, but as I was struggling with balancing it I decided not to touch it... which was stupid indeed.

For the fact that not enough informations are given to the player about how to get back to Vallberg and get the permit, I thought it would be a good idea to "close" most of the paths, let only one open and not give a clue where to go to ensure that the player explores a bit the map around the city. But I guess this wasn't done well enough to be understood.

But to think globally, after looking back at my game, I clearly see that I was too much involved in making great-looking maps, and was not focused enough about how to communicate information to the player, or how to get a flowing story. I'm gonna have to work on this and try to make the most improvements as possible to make the game more enjoyable.



So thank you guys as well for your advices, I don't know if I will have time to work on the game for now as I'm busy at College, but I'll let you know when it'll be updated.


Have fun !

 

[Kojagiri]

@Brn 1.1 Gigs is a little too huge to download comfortably. Can you look at optimizing the game significantly so those with bandwidth trouble can get a copy in good time?

My connection is 100meg optic fibre so no issue; but I've felt the pain of bad connectivity too often.

I shall share my feedback soon! Thanks