Tungsten

[EFizzle]

Tungsten

Tungsten is an RPG inspired by the Earthbound/Mother series and it's also very loosely inspired by Pokemon as well. It's a short game, roughly 30 minutes of content, but it should still be fun and enjoyable!

Story

The game takes place in the town of Tungsten in the year 20XX. You follow Ron and his friends Lissa and Rick on a misadventure to save the world from an extraterrestrial threat. With the help of his father, a community college professor, and his lab assistant, Alexa, the group gains strange psychic powers, the key to defending the Earth. Will Ron and friends succeed or will the Earth be destroyed? Can pizza truly save lives? Will Rick find true love? It's up to you to decide their fates!

Characters

Spoiler

Ron: A highschooler with nothing better to do than play video games at home. He's been dating Lissa for 8 days, 3 hours, 6 minutes and 43 seconds.  His father is a community college professor and his mother is a writer for some hippie health blog. He loves money and has a phobia of common household pets.

Lissa: A highschooler with a strange addiction to pizza of all things. She's a little bit of a tom-boy and is secretly a nerd and can name all the Pokemon up to Gen 4.

Rick: The kid's got an ego the size of the moon. He's also head-over-heels for Lissa and refuses to listen when she says she's dating Ron. He's also a great street fighter too, taking inspiration from Skullomania.

Screenshots

Spoiler

Features

• Clever and quirky characters!
• 30-minutes of gameplay!
• An all-too-familiar default battle system!
• Makes use of the Old-School Modern Graphics Pack!
• Catchy tunes!
• Many hidden secrets! Can you find them all? Have you checked your fridge?
• Teenagers with psychic powers!
• Under-paid college professors with secret labs!
• That grumpy old neighbor that you hate so much!
• Aliens are real!
• Bullet Points Rule!
• ...
• Profit!
• And many more!

DownloadTungsten v1.0(No RTP) [4MB]

With RTP: Tungsten v1.0 [190MB]

Credits

Graphics: The Old School Modern Packs 1 & 2 by Jason Perry, Enterbrain

 

Scripts: Enterbrain, Moghunter, Zeus81, Fomar0153, Craze, Yanfly, Hime, Kread, Mithran, Jet, Yami, Neon Black, Modern Algebra, Pacman

 

Music: Freedom House 2nd (fhouse.s17.xrea.com), Enterbrain

Known Issues:

• There's slight slowdown on a couple of maps. I'm aware of this and I'm still figuring out ways to work around all that.
• It begins abruptly and ends abruptly. Before I touch on that, I want to hear people's thoughts on the game itself.
• It's missing a lot of flavor text for items and equipment. I'm still trying to figure out clever things to say about bread.
• There also might be some grammar/spelling issues here and there that I missed. Tell me if you find anything!
• Will definitely be more...

It's content complete, but it's not 100% finished yet, it's missing the spit and polish that it so desperately needs! I was also planning to continue this game, because there's so much more I want to do story wise, but ran out of time due to final exams.

Found a bug? Have something to say? Did I forget to credit your work? I want and need your feedback!

 

[Dalph]

Shhh... I got what you need.
 

Spoiler

Finally a good game! What to say? It was pretty good, a bit on the short side but overall enjoyable under almost every aspect, you really hit the Earthbound\Mother style spot on. The storyline is classic but it's not an issue since you plan to expand it, I'm fine with clichès as long as they're well used and apparently you used them well. Speaking about the characters now, I believe that Rick stands out more than the others, despite his arrogancy he's likeable and funny. Ron and Lissa are ok and I haven't seen enough of Alexa to care about her. All the battles are balanced enough, I didn't grind or anything and the final boss was decently challenging. 
Here's what I liked and disliked about your game:
 
Liked:
+ Mapping. Very good use of The Old School Modern Packs.
+ Good music choice. Everything fits very well with the theme of the game, especially the battle tracks.
+ Rick is a funny and interesting character.
+ The various secrets encourage the exploration (I found the Cat's Collar too).
+ The final battle against The Alien was challenging enough.

+ The game is short, to the point and has potential.
 
Disliked:
- Standard skills effects and standard animations. I would've liked something different for a good game like this. Either change the skill animations or just the effects (if you will do both the things you will gain two good points though).
- Standard SEs for the Menu. Changing this will make your game look more unique for sure.
 
Bugs\Issues:

Missing character when I cast Offense Up I or Defense Up I (a square appears instead).
 
There's also this other issue and I have no idea why it happens:
Ron gains a level after he defeats Rick, but when I kill The Experiment I get the message at the end of the battle that:
Ron is at level 2 (again?).
 
There's also a typo (I think?) when you fight The Experiment the 2nd time.
Lissa during the battle says: Bring it on ugly dastard!

Not sure if you mean bastard or dastard there (since dastard is actually a word too).

Here's a suggestion:

You wanna make the characters a bit more distant from each other in battle, they are too close in this way and it looks a bit weird, look how close Rick and Alexa are. Also I would've prefered them to not be half cut by the battle window, that's a personal preference though so feel free to ignore it.
-
Like you said, the game ends abruptly and begins suddenly but that's not an issue since it's still in development, I personally would've liked an intro with Ron at school, or with Lord Zog appearing as as a shadow (like an unknown character).

I didn't experience any slowdown in the maps btw and my PC isn't that recent.

Overall it's a solid game (I liked it and I had fun), fix these small things and you're ready to go.

I'm looking forward to see the rest of the story. Good job man.

 

[sabao]

Why did this slip into the second page?

Spoiler

tl;dr: It's pretty good!
Seriously. With VX Ace's stock graphics leaning more toward an anime medieval fantasy theme, obviously most projects will go the same way. That's not to say anything else would be impossible to make: Producing assets to match the feel of anything else thematically would just be a little challenging, especially for those less inclined to produce them on their own. That said, good work going down the less beaten path. Some might say it's not the most original or thought-inspiring concept around, but it involves a large amount of effort to pull off all the same.

Making a game based on Earthbound using Despain/Jason's graphics that were inspired by Earthbound should've been no-brainer; I'm surprised so little (if any) around here have really tried. This is no discredit to you, however. Any given concept, original or otherwise, is only as good as the one executing it. The music you've chosen, the sprites you've thrown into the game, the wit and humor of your writing all drip with the look and feel of an alien B-movie or a saturday morning cartoon, very firmly rooted in the '90s. Very well done.

Rick may have come off as an interesting character for Dalph because, at least in my opinion, everyone else just seemed to lack personality. This may just be an overall lack of screen time in the demo to really get anything substantial done, or Rick may be eating up all the nice spots for anyone else to throw a quip in.

 

[EFizzle]

Woah woah woah woah!!!! Dudes, thank you so much for even seeing this page! 

Why did this slip into the second page?

I lost hope when my topic ended up lost and unseen in the second page. Thank you to both of you for giving my game some of your time!

I'm overwhelmed that you both found my game enjoyable and my characters(or at least Rick) likable! To be honest, I put the most time into Rick's dialogue and character, while I can agree that the lack of screen-time hurts my other characters. I planned on giving Ron and Lissa more screen time, especially in the beginning, and Alexa in the end, so hopefully I can get on that. 

Shhh... I got what you need.

I'm also glad that you spent time exploring and found some secrets! Especially the Cat's Collar. 

So now for the nitty gritty, Dalph:

• Glad you liked my music choice! 
• I wish Rick wasn't the only character you liked... but good to know! I'll try to bring up the rest of the crew personality wise
• The SE and Animations are only the default 'cause I'm too lazy to change them, BUT since they're actually being noticed and being a detriment to the game, I'll look into finding new animations and replacing the SEs with more "retro" beeps and boops. 
• I'm glad my secrets are getting noticed! But I've been meaning to add more here and there. and of course more diverse type of secrets other than money.
• Ah yes, the notorious square when you cast the buffs... TBH I have no idea how to fix that...
• Ron reverting back to 1 was a complaint all my friends brought up too so it's a bigger deal than I thought lol
• for the bastard/dastard thing, I wanted to make it family friendly but... I dunno? I'll just re-write Lissa's line during that battle then and avoid the word altogether
• Space between the characters? Hmm, I'll try to make em' more spaced out then
• And thanks for playing my game! I'm so glad you enjoyed it!

and for sabao:

• Man, what a well thought-out post!
• I'm relieved that you thought I pulled off the modern/earthbound style, that was the big #1 thing I had to get right.
• I'm glad that all the resources I used worked together to give the feel of the inspired game, even if it's different enough to not be a complete rip-off

• The music you've chosen, the sprites you've thrown into the game, the wit and humor of your writing all drip with the look and feel of an alien B-movie or a saturday morning cartoon, very firmly rooted in the '90s.

  You don't even know how happy that makes me. As being a 90s kid, and a lover of sci-fi B-movies, I never really planned for Tungsten to give that feel, yet I'm glad it does!
  

So all-in-all you both have reinvigorated me to get back to work on Tungsten. I was about to go the way of the cliche anime-medieval style that is super popular thinking that'll be what will get my work noticed, but I think I'll stick to my guns and continue being different.

 

[Kes]

Here's the official fix for that stray character.  It's because of a bug in Yanfly's Battle Engine

Go to line 312 and 313 and look for these:
:add_buff   => “%s{“,      # Appears when a positive buff is applied.
:add_debuff => “%s|”,      # Appears when a negative buff is applied.
Just retype %s but don’t add { or |. There’s an invisible letter between %s{ that you can’t see unless you can see Japanese text.

 

[Davi Felipe]

This looks pretty cool. I love the graphics.

I'll play it soon and post a little review here.

 

[Artificer]

Greetings traveler, you now i was once a game developer like you but i check your awesome game:




Here is some feedback.

I think there is not much bad things to say so I will start with the recommendations and stuff, the first time I load the game it turns black entirely like, the intro screen and after that it just continue into black, like the end transition command does not trigger at all or something but when I try it again it works flawlessly. When you are trying to exit the town after the first parents reward and all the map feels empty maybe because there are not spirits in the area in comparison with the others is like the brain of the player say something like: wait usually there is more stuff in a map; Other thing to mention is that the cinematics are not so credible and feels ok but for me is like force the situation like fight a homunculus and then it let you just stare and wait until you got your power up. The history on the game is freaking good, but if you allow me to make a point, is predictable and short of silly that the others are just around the main character, there is no sense in the scenes of why Ron is the only one that can enter a building on fires and then the firemen just stares. I got tricked by the crystal before the extraterrestrial because I thought that it save the game automatically but when I die I have to do all again, and I am sure that some of my items disappear or does not work properly in the last battle (maybe is just my imagination) And is pretty common waste your items just for arrive to the next scenario with all your status fixed I think is because the shop are before and not after you got all your stats recovered I was like: ….. but I just spend my money…

For general I does not give the 1 rate into the music or graphic unless the developer make is own resources in some way, could be entirely or just a part of them.

Well that is all, the music is one of the best aspects of the game, the graphics give it a new perspective for users like me that are not seeing this type of titlesets, making the game flow so easy, and the balance stats for battle are precious for me, I feel it smooth and cool, I have this feeling like “ah is just another rpg maker game is ok I will play it just for five, ten minutes” and when I finish that line just look the clock of my computer and I was playing more than the hour, and if Skyrim teach me something is that if you lose the perception of time for a game then that game is something friend, yea, you got a nice hard-work there!