RMVXA The Relics of Oobria

[beamus]

This is my VERY FIRST project. Please give me ANY feedback the good AND the bad so I can continue to grow. If there are any mistakes in the game demo please let me know ASAP. I MIGHT have overlooked something in the process.

​

The Relics of Oobria

SECTION A: SYNOPSIS

• 
  The Relics of Oobria takes place in the land of Oobria. Play as Carric, a wood elf from the village of Tappen Shire. He and the friends he makes along the way are on a quest to stop the lich, Haseid, from taking complete control of the land with his undead army. After he acquires the new found relics, the Helm of the Ancients and the Blade of the Damned he is no force to take lightly. Haseid must be stopped before history repeats itself and Oobria is left in death and decay once again.

IMAGES/SCREENSHOTS






SECTION B: CHARACTERS
Carric- An orphaned Wood Elf who lives with his sister Ara in Tappen Shire, a small village in the Northwest part of Oobria. Their parents were slain during a war with the expansion of the orcs. Therefore, Carric was forced to raise Ara since she was only a baby. Carric is a gentle, well mannered elf, who cares much for Ara and his only family member, Aunt Adrie.

Pashar- A Turami human from the island of Brazos. He lives in Tappen Shire for reasons unknown. The only human in the village. Though, not an elf, but very respected with all of the elves who live in Tappen Shire. A little bit of a drunk, but very keen and quick with his daggers. He'll lay his life down to defend the elder of Tappen Shire, Theren, from any harm.

SECTION C: STORYLINE/PLOT
The Lich Haseid, able to take the dying breath of anyone and raise them as an undead is destined for great, and unspeakable things. After he acquires the Helm of the Ancients and the Blade of the Damned his army becomes unstoppable. His power becomes unmatched. Everywhere he goes the ground and life itself dies and withers away. Every place he walks become a burial ground for death and decay. It seems history is repeating itself once again. Will Carric and his comrades be able to stop Haseid before it's too late? Or will the world die and wither away?

SECTION D: SETTING AND/OR WORLD DEVELOPMENT
The story takes place in the land of Oobria. A fantasy settings with elves, dwarves, humans, giants, and etc. Oobria is home to many branches of races as well. Wood Elves, Dark Elves, Mountain Dwarves, Plains Dwarves and even countless number of human settlements. Oobria is made up of two continents the Eastern Realms and the Western Homelands.

DOWNLOAD LINK
Game Download:
http://www.mediafire.com/file/4kirdcfnqgdg5jb/The_Relics_of_Oobria.exe/file

Credits for game creation go to:

 

[TSR]

Seems interesting, I like the look of the game.
I can’t play it though, I’m on Mac...

 

[beamus]

aww what a shame... I'm looking forward to someone playing my little short demo and giving me some feedback. I put so many hours into this thing!

 

[RCXDan]

aww what a shame... I'm looking forward to someone playing my little short demo and giving me some feedback. I put so many hours into this thing!

I'll play it for you, fam. Just wait a few for my thoughts.

I was actually gonna question you about how long this is, but if you say it's short then I'm cool.

 

[beamus]

Yeah it's super short.... id say it's about 30 minutes of gameplay? maybe more depending on how much you want to explore. The game stops abruptly at the dock, btw. The guy will ask if you want to go to Amador, but nothing will happen when you select yes

 

[RCXDan]

Oh dear I've already run into a problem without even playing the game.

Mediafire won't let me download the whole thing. If I try to download the folders, it shoots a "you have to pay premium for bulk downloads" message at me. Maybe you should compress the game into a single executable, cause I kinda don't want to download every file individually.

 

[RCXDan]

Alrighty. *claps hands*

I've played all of the demo and I just gotta say: what you have is cool and has potential, but it's also kinda rough right now.

Lemme list out all my thoughts:

Pros -

Spoiler

+ I like the mapping a lot, easily the strongest thing about this. You put a lot of detail into your maps and they're not too big.
+ Your NPCs actually going around and doing things is a detail I love
+ I like the worldbuilding - a fire goddess that also embodies nature is super neat. Also, the lore/backstory with the elder that went crazy was... well, crazy. That bit where she immolates an entire army was badass.
+ The eventing was solid overall
+ The dungeon was really neat, especially with how you have to use sticks to light torches. Could have used a mid-boss or even an actual boss to spice it up, but as it is, it's fine.
+ The writing is overall solid and makes sense, but... I'll say what bothered me in the cons section.
+ Combat is easy, and I consider that a pro because the fights aren't frustrating.
+ The plot twist with the aunt turning evil was actually kinda cool. If you develop their relationship with the protagonist more via flashbacks and stuff, you can seriously hit the heartstrings with this.
+ I do like the opening where you learn about the family

Cons -

Spoiler

- A few typos (Nonesense), a lot of places where commas should be used but aren't, capitalization issues and so on. Other than that, I didn't see any major discrepancy with the actual plot. You just gotta clean up the grammar.
- During the scene when the lich shows up, "retchet" isn't a word. You're looking for "wretched."
- ... Okay so, at the start when you get to walk around... talking to Ara crashes the game cause the game doesn't have a portrait for her or something. This is fortunately the only game-breaking glitch I've found.
- The lack of a boss theme for emotional impact kinda hampers the evil aunt fight
- A bug I noticed in the dungeon: the gates don't have direction fix on, so interacting with them will make them go down but they don't become un-solid until you light all the torches.
- Combat is easy, and I consider that a con because the fights aren't all that interesting. It's mainly spam attack so far. For the regular random enemy fodder, that's fine, but if you plan to have bosses you should give them interesting gimmicks/patterns. Like Boss has two minions that heal and defend him, so you gotta kill them first, etc. etc.
- The random encounter rate can bear to be reduced a bit. Let the player walk around a bit more before they get ambushed by a random monster on the dungeon.

SUGGESTIONS -

This is gonna be meaty, so...

Spoiler

* Have the opening dialogue be a dim background instead of transparent. This is because the white text on top of the relatively bright background makes it hard to see.

* At the start when the skeleton shows up to attack, maybe have the aunt actually move towards it so it's more obvious she actually attacked it and it just didn't die out of nowhere. In the movement route for her event, do "through on -> speed 5 -> move down x2 -> through off" and have it marked as "skip" so it doesn't like, softlock the game

* If you want to have text to have more weight to it, you add short pauses. What I mean is like, putting \. in the text. \. signifies a small stop. These little pauses allow the text to flow like if the characters were actually talking.

* "Who are you to speak to our elder that way!? (pause) I'll cut your tongue out!"

* It's a bit jarring to have the characters talking, but they're not facing each other. So when Carric has to say his goodbyes to his aunt at the start, he should actually look at his aunt. The way I do it in my game is by a script call in the movement route "turn_toward_character($game_map.events[x])", with the x being filled in with the event's ID number. Saves a lot of time, especially if you name your events to differentiate them.

> Having Carric look at Pashar when he joins the team would be nice, as well as a short jingle for party members joining you

* Something I found clever but might go over other peoples' heads - the rat shows you the entrance into the dungeon. Having Carric pay attention to the rat and say something about it would help a lot

* I would seriously recommend getting Himeworks's Region Event as that allows you to increase the area a single event can be activated on. That way you don't have to copy-paste the same event over and over.

* For emotional impact you could benefit from having pauses and the music fade out.

Like when Carric loses consciousness, you should have it work like this: Fade out BGM 1 second. Fade out screen. Have the game wait around.... 160 frames to really sell the idea he got knocked out. Inner dialogue. Then wait a bit more and then replay the music when the screen fades back in.

* When you talk to Beiro during the start I'd fix his message. It should read more like "Do me a favor, Carric. (pause)" -> new text box -> "Stay away from Adrie. (pause) She's no good for you and your sister due to how she fills your head with stories."

* Getting Galv's Camera Control would also help quite a bit, as that streamlines the process of moving the camera around.

* Killozapit's Word Wrapper will also help reduce frustration when it comes to working with text boxes.

Overall, I enjoyed what I played and hope you work on it more :3

 

[beamus]

very nice feedback! I will definitely soak all of this in. One thing I do struggle with his enemy/boss creating. I've toyed around with it a little bit, but I find it sort of overwhelming trying to balance the monster out with the player's level/power. This is something I will be playing around with a bit for a while. Everything you've said is noted down. thanks a lot!

 

[atoms]

Hello @beamus I played through the short demo, great job so far. This may sound a little funny but my pros and cons are more or less the same as what @RCXDan has already covered, and they covered it far better then I think I could've at the moment.

I put everything in a spoiler tag.

Spoiler: Spoilers For Current Demo

I think it would be nice to revisit battles a little more, I.e. In the temple dungeon having a proper mid-boss would be nice, but it's not essential in any way, everything, as it is, is already almost all very nice. I just can think of suggestions to add too rather than taking anything away.

Lowering the encounter rate a little on some maps including the temple is a very good idea. It didn't feel extremely beyond high, but the encounter rate still felt higher than I wanted it to be on the forest and temple maps. In the temple, it bothered me a little bit, only because I wanted to roam around the maps more between the encounter rates, but it wasn't too bad or anything like that. I still advise lowering the encounter rate a little.

I liked the mechanic with the stick and lighting it with fire, I thought it had potential and added a lot of fun to the game for me, it may be something quite simple but I found it very fun!

I really liked all your maps too, I thought they were well detailed and the town layout and structure was a nice surprise, it felt fresh, original and a very well thought out town map! I agree it's good the NPC's so far felt like they were apart of this town doing their own things, it does add a lot of life to the town.

Battles already have that pro, that they're easy enough to fight through. I agree with the con that we could do with more skills and a proper mid-boss fight perhaps. Reworking the troops a little so the skills we have can be a bit more fun than just spamming attack. It's not too bad as it is, but I think it's good to improve on them.

I liked the pacing of the story and where it is going, I agree to develop that relationship between our protagonist and the aunt a little more. It was a nice surprising plot twist for me.

It looks like you know what you are doing with the story and writing, good luck carrying on with what you've got!


One thing I really thought would be nice, is if we can gain items by interacting a bit more with the objects in the house, you can limit it to pots and barrels, but it would really encourage exploring everything in town more and I think players would like since I definitely would.

That's all I can think of, everything else and the bugs have been noted and covered for you. It's more or less the same feedback, but I tried to point out where I think improvement could help make the game shine further.

I'm looking forward to where you go with this! Good luck.

 

[beamus]

great feed back! I am currently mapping and developing the "next part" of my game before i revisit the beginning. I'm going to develop more character relations, especially between the aunt and the main character to give the player a more "emotional" feeling when she changes. I can do this with flashbacks and etc. I will be changing up the battle system to make the monsters more entertaining as well as putting a mini boss in the first temple. Thanks for all of this feedback!

Hello @beamus I played through the short demo, great job so far. This may sound a little funny but my pros and cons are more or less the same as what @RCXDan has already covered, and they covered it far better then I think I could've at the moment.

I put everything in a spoiler tag.

Spoiler: Spoilers For Current Demo

I think it would be nice to revisit battles a little more, I.e. In the temple dungeon having a proper mid-boss would be nice, but it's not essential in any way, everything, as it is, is already almost all very nice. I just can think of suggestions to add too rather than taking anything away.

Lowering the encounter rate a little on some maps including the temple is a very good idea. It didn't feel extremely beyond high, but the encounter rate still felt higher than I wanted it to be on the forest and temple maps. In the temple, it bothered me a little bit, only because I wanted to roam around the maps more between the encounter rates, but it wasn't too bad or anything like that. I still advise lowering the encounter rate a little.

I liked the mechanic with the stick and lighting it with fire, I thought it had potential and added a lot of fun to the game for me, it may be something quite simple but I found it very fun!

I really liked all your maps too, I thought they were well detailed and the town layout and structure was a nice surprise, it felt fresh, original and a very well thought out town map! I agree it's good the NPC's so far felt like they were apart of this town doing their own things, it does add a lot of life to the town.

Battles already have that pro, that they're easy enough to fight through. I agree with the con that we could do with more skills and a proper mid-boss fight perhaps. Reworking the troops a little so the skills we have can be a bit more fun than just spamming attack. It's not too bad as it is, but I think it's good to improve on them.

I liked the pacing of the story and where it is going, I agree to develop that relationship between our protagonist and the aunt a little more. It was a nice surprising plot twist for me.

It looks like you know what you are doing with the story and writing, good luck carrying on with what you've got!


One thing I really thought would be nice, is if we can gain items by interacting a bit more with the objects in the house, you can limit it to pots and barrels, but it would really encourage exploring everything in town more and I think players would like since I definitely would.

That's all I can think of, everything else and the bugs have been noted and covered for you. It's more or less the same feedback, but I tried to point out where I think improvement could help make the game shine further.

I'm looking forward to where you go with this! Good luck.

 

[atoms]

@beamus That all sounds great, I look forward to hearing more news about the game's development!

One more thing I forgot to say, it's more or less was mentioned and what you are now saying but I want to make it clearer in case making it clearer can/possibly help you further...

In spoilers again.

Spoiler: Clearer Tip For Improvement Feedback

The main character, in the current first demo, didn't react immediately to what happened to the aunt, there was no dialogue for him until he met her a second time in the temple. I think creating a clear reaction for the player to see would be good. If you want it to take some time for that to sink in for our character and that's the reason he is silent on the matter, then that's fine but please give us a clear view that's the case. Otherwise, it would be great to see a bit more of our main character reacting to events that happen at the moment they happen.

I know you might have different characters doing most of the dialogue then, but even just one moment of dialogue showing us a reaction, or after everything has happened and our heroes left alone, thinking and reacting to what happened, just a reaction of some kind, from our main character, I think would improve upon the story too.

And the point I'm getting with this is just making sure any other major events and even minor events in the story we can get some reactions from our main character, or at least sometimes when it makes some sense to have a reaction we do get one, from our main character and maybe other main characters if/when they get added.

I hope that tip can help you too!

Best of luck!

 

[Nico_Yazawa]

Looks neat! I'll definitely be sure to check it out. I'll give you my feedback on it once I'm finished with it. Good luck!

 

[beamus]

as the cutscene and the aunt/main character development stands i am not completely happy with it at all. I need to develop the whole situation better. to me it feels rushed and didn't "build up" appropriately. not im too sure what im going to do i just know that whole thing needs to change haha

@beamus That all sounds great, I look forward to hearing more news about the game's development!

One more thing I forgot to say, it's more or less was mentioned and what you are now saying but I want to make it clearer in case making it clearer can/possibly help you further...

In spoilers again.

Spoiler: Clearer Tip For Improvement Feedback

The main character, in the current first demo, didn't react immediately to what happened to the aunt, there was no dialogue for him until he met her a second time in the temple. I think creating a clear reaction for the player to see would be good. If you want it to take some time for that to sink in for our character and that's the reason he is silent on the matter, then that's fine but please give us a clear view that's the case. Otherwise, it would be great to see a bit more of our main character reacting to events that happen at the moment they happen.

I know you might have different characters doing most of the dialogue then, but even just one moment of dialogue showing us a reaction, or after everything has happened and our heroes left alone, thinking and reacting to what happened, just a reaction of some kind, from our main character, I think would improve upon the story too.

And the point I'm getting with this is just making sure any other major events and even minor events in the story we can get some reactions from our main character, or at least sometimes when it makes some sense to have a reaction we do get one, from our main character and maybe other main characters if/when they get added.

I hope that tip can help you too!

Best of luck!

 

[beamus]

Looks neat! I'll definitely be sure to check it out. I'll give you my feedback on it once I'm finished with it. Good luck!

awesome! go light on the whole cutscene with the aunt turning evil and what not... that whole development between the characters needs to be brought out further.

 

[Nico_Yazawa]

as the cutscene and the aunt/main character development stands i am not completely happy with it at all. I need to develop the whole situation better. to me it feels rushed and didn't "build up" appropriately. not im too sure what im going to do i just know that whole thing needs to change haha

Like you said about the Aunt and Main Character development, it did indeed feel rushed. Now, I'm no "Super, Amazing character creator!" but yes, it did need to be drawed out more.

Like I said, I'm no pro character creator, so I can't give much help. One thing I'd like to suggest though is try to think about it, draw it out and plan it. That's what I do when I'm stumped. Don't put it in there just because you need it for plot purposes.

 

[beamus]

Like you said about the Aunt and Main Character development, it did indeed feel rushed. Now, I'm no "Super, Amazing character creator!" but yes, it did need to be drawed out more.

Like I said, I'm no pro character creator, so I can't give much help. One thing I'd like to suggest though is try to think about it, draw it out and plan it. That's what I do when I'm stumped. Don't put it in there just because you need it for plot purposes.

haaha that's exactly what i did... i needed something drastic to happen to the aunt for the purpose of a plot twist, but didn't realize how underdeveloped it was.

 

[Nico_Yazawa]

haaha that's exactly what i did... i needed something drastic to happen to the aunt for the purpose of a plot twist, but didn't realize how underdeveloped it was.

Anyways, great game nonetheless. I'd love to see the game when It's finally finished. This has a load of potential. Good luck!

 

[beamus]

ill upload an update to the beginning sometime this week (hopefully refreshed completely and engaging) then going to hold off for a while before upload a 3rd update. i WAY underestimated just how much goes into making a good rpg maker game.