RMMV Unwritten Journey

[kaleemmcintyre]

Beta Release:
http://www.mediafire.com/file/38r86hnks1bk2bq/A+Journey+Unwritten.rar
Windows Version 1.3

*Bug Fix 1.1
Fixed Window Color

*Bug Fix 1.2
Fixed Elemental Wind Class Change Battler

*Bug Fix 1.3
Fixed Battlebacks in Frozen Tundra

Synopsis:
Ancient lore tells the tale of the demon lord, a powerful figure who rules over darkness, demons, and monsters. Raining despair down upon the golden age which existed over eight hundred years ago, this entity was brought down by the hero of light. However, the battle between these two titans of light and darkness had a lasting effect on the world which can be felt all throughout the world. And now, nearly one thousand years later...the demon lord is about to revive from the sleep of death. But where is the next hero of light?

Characters:

Found wandering the forest of a local sanctuary, you are taken in by a kindly old priestess. But...who are you? And...where do you come from? And more importantly...where are you going?
This is you. Who doesn't happen to know how you got to where you are. Why you're there. Or anything else about yourself or the world around you. You do have on this ring, though. It won't come off your hand. And...these clothes. They seem to never get really dirty. They repair themselves at will. And they change to fix your disposition. Strange.

Setting and World Development:
At first, it seems as though you are living within a medieval world growing into modern technology, as there are castles, and kings, princesses, and dragons throughout the land...but digging deeper into the lore there's something odd about this world. As though...it has a history that's been somewhat forgotten by most...but not all as remnants of a lost age and dead culture lay scattered about. Plus there's demons vampires, and werewolves in various countires.

Main Features:
Classic Turn Based Battle System
Side View Battles
Single Player (no additional companions)
Open World (you can go anywhere in the world from the start...except that mysterious chain of islands to the far east)
Class Changing System (which opens as you play through the game)
Fast Travel (via scrolls)
Fast Dungeon Exiting (via scrolls)

Credits:
Program:
Kadokawa
Enterbrain

Battlers:
Katakura Hibiki
Thazalon
Ækashics

Scripts:
Yanfly

Sprites:
whtdragon
hiddenone
Flirion
Caz
Avery

Music:
http://www.rpgmakerweb.com/products/music

 

[hiddenone]

I gave your demo a go, but decided to quit after the fairies kidnapped the girl who joined me in the forest.

Spoiler: Comments in a spoiler because I am long-winded

The first thing I noticed is that the message box background is a very light color which made reading the white text a little hard. I don't have great eyesight, so I'd start getting a headache as the game went on and as I tried to keep reading. Which was a shame, since the story seemed like it could be going in an interesting direction. If you could darken it a lot it would be a lot kinder to players' eyes.

Battles weren't fun, which is a big issue. Hero started out with no skills and didn't get a skill until I was a level 10 Freelancer. That meant that I wasn't paying any attention during battles, because the only thing I could do was use the normal attack. The hidden skill could have been an interesting mechanic, but I really couldn't see any rhyme or reason to when it would happen, so I ended up just treating it as a critical hit. Even boss fights just boiled down to using normal attack and maybe a healing item if Hero's health was low, there was no planning for them. By the time I stopped playing I was just being annoyed by battles since the random encounters were pretty common and I could easily beat all the enemies I met on the world map.

The mapping overall was okay for non-dungeon locations, but there were some choices I found odd. The inn in the town didn't have any doorways for the different rooms, which seemed odd since it means that anyone could wander up to someone who was sleeping. Greenland Castle has a fountain on the grass right in front of the entrance, and I would have expected it to be in the center of a plaza. The interior of the castle seemed a bit random, there were oddly sized rooms that were empty and the stairs to the king's chamber weren't where I'd expect them to be, close to the entrance. I wasn't a fan of the dungeons in the game, since there wasn't a way to leave them once finished, so the player has to trudge back to the entrance and fight weak enemies after fighting the boss (there are dungeon exiting scrolls according to the features list, but I never came across one of those or a fast travel scroll). Also, I noticed there weren't many tints used on maps, which is a shame since they can add a lot of atmosphere to towns and dungeons. I expected the dragon's cave to be dark and creepy even when using a Orb of Light, since it's underground, but once I used the orb it looked exactly like I was still out on the world map. Try playing around with some tints, they could really improve the different feelings you want in each area.

Speaking of the Orb of Light, I had some problems with it. It seems to be on a timer, which wasn't great for me since the one I was using ran out while I was still in the cave. Without it, I couldn't see at all so my only option was to quit and restart from my last save, and that meant that all the fighting I'd done was wasted. If there's a time limit to the orb, give the player a way to tell how much longer they have so they can try to plan for how many they should buy. In the beginning I had issues getting money, so I had to make decisions about either buying armor or buying some Orbs of Light, and without an idea of how long the orbs would last I made the call that armor would be more useful. Later I could afford to buy lots of extras, which made me wonder why they really existed at all.

I noticed that Matilda was pretty much the only place that I could save. That made saving pretty annoying, since I had to travel all the way back to the church to save (and I couldn't run on the world map, so it took even longer than I would've liked). Having either more save points, or having an item that can be used to save would have been quite useful.

There's a bunch of lore in the game, unfortunately it ended up as overwhelming to me since every npc seemed to have a lot to say about the world. If instead there were books that I could choose to read on some shelves it may have helped stick better, but personally I couldn't recall which npcs had important things to say.

I noticed a few spelling mistakes and errors in the dialogue. I forgot to make notes on all of them (sorry), but here are some of the ones I noticed:

• Matilda has a weird sentence, "But do be careful on your way to now." Either remove the 'to' or add in where I'm supposed to be going
• Little boy with the fox says "Bad doy!" instead of "Bad boy!" when talking to his fox
  
• Guard at castle says "going to the tower hwest of here", instead of west when telling me to bring back the emblem of justice
• Guard says "You need to and speak with the king!", is missing a 'go' when I talk after getting the emblem
  
• King says "a item" instead of "an item" when talking about the emblem to me

Overall the battle system is the biggest problem with the game, and made playing not enjoyable for me after the first few fights. I wanted to see where the story would go, but I just couldn't bring myself to keep dealing with the fights.

 

[kaleemmcintyre]

I gave your demo a go, but decided to quit after the fairies kidnapped the girl who joined me in the forest.

Spoiler: Comments in a spoiler because I am long-winded

The first thing I noticed is that the message box background is a very light color which made reading the white text a little hard. I don't have great eyesight, so I'd start getting a headache as the game went on and as I tried to keep reading. Which was a shame, since the story seemed like it could be going in an interesting direction. If you could darken it a lot it would be a lot kinder to players' eyes.

Battles weren't fun, which is a big issue. Hero started out with no skills and didn't get a skill until I was a level 10 Freelancer. That meant that I wasn't paying any attention during battles, because the only thing I could do was use the normal attack. The hidden skill could have been an interesting mechanic, but I really couldn't see any rhyme or reason to when it would happen, so I ended up just treating it as a critical hit. Even boss fights just boiled down to using normal attack and maybe a healing item if Hero's health was low, there was no planning for them. By the time I stopped playing I was just being annoyed by battles since the random encounters were pretty common and I could easily beat all the enemies I met on the world map.

The mapping overall was okay for non-dungeon locations, but there were some choices I found odd. The inn in the town didn't have any doorways for the different rooms, which seemed odd since it means that anyone could wander up to someone who was sleeping. Greenland Castle has a fountain on the grass right in front of the entrance, and I would have expected it to be in the center of a plaza. The interior of the castle seemed a bit random, there were oddly sized rooms that were empty and the stairs to the king's chamber weren't where I'd expect them to be, close to the entrance. I wasn't a fan of the dungeons in the game, since there wasn't a way to leave them once finished, so the player has to trudge back to the entrance and fight weak enemies after fighting the boss (there are dungeon exiting scrolls according to the features list, but I never came across one of those or a fast travel scroll). Also, I noticed there weren't many tints used on maps, which is a shame since they can add a lot of atmosphere to towns and dungeons. I expected the dragon's cave to be dark and creepy even when using a Orb of Light, since it's underground, but once I used the orb it looked exactly like I was still out on the world map. Try playing around with some tints, they could really improve the different feelings you want in each area.

Speaking of the Orb of Light, I had some problems with it. It seems to be on a timer, which wasn't great for me since the one I was using ran out while I was still in the cave. Without it, I couldn't see at all so my only option was to quit and restart from my last save, and that meant that all the fighting I'd done was wasted. If there's a time limit to the orb, give the player a way to tell how much longer they have so they can try to plan for how many they should buy. In the beginning I had issues getting money, so I had to make decisions about either buying armor or buying some Orbs of Light, and without an idea of how long the orbs would last I made the call that armor would be more useful. Later I could afford to buy lots of extras, which made me wonder why they really existed at all.

I noticed that Matilda was pretty much the only place that I could save. That made saving pretty annoying, since I had to travel all the way back to the church to save (and I couldn't run on the world map, so it took even longer than I would've liked). Having either more save points, or having an item that can be used to save would have been quite useful.

There's a bunch of lore in the game, unfortunately it ended up as overwhelming to me since every npc seemed to have a lot to say about the world. If instead there were books that I could choose to read on some shelves it may have helped stick better, but personally I couldn't recall which npcs had important things to say.

I noticed a few spelling mistakes and errors in the dialogue. I forgot to make notes on all of them (sorry), but here are some of the ones I noticed:

• Matilda has a weird sentence, "But do be careful on your way to now." Either remove the 'to' or add in where I'm supposed to be going
• Little boy with the fox says "Bad doy!" instead of "Bad boy!" when talking to his fox
  
• Guard at castle says "going to the tower hwest of here", instead of west when telling me to bring back the emblem of justice
• Guard says "You need to and speak with the king!", is missing a 'go' when I talk after getting the emblem
  
• King says "a item" instead of "an item" when talking about the emblem to me

Overall the battle system is the biggest problem with the game, and made playing not enjoyable for me after the first few fights. I wanted to see where the story would go, but I just couldn't bring myself to keep dealing with the fights.

Thanks for playing as long as you did, and for feedback on some of the issues!

 

[LostFonDrive]

Gave it a shot and while it has issues, I can see the effort that's gone into it. Some thoughts:

Dialog is generally quite good, but firstly there are a few mistakes here and there (nothing major but happens more than a few times), and IMO a lot of the dialogs should be divided into smaller chunks instead of having the whole textbox filled with sentences. Break it down a bit. Especially when there's so many NPCs to talk to - it's pretty cool, but not ideal when every one has like a whole paragraph to say and it appears mostly at once. Also I saw you use "less" instead of "lest" twice so I'll assume that one wasn't an accident but just a misuse of "less".

Mapping is decent but you need to break away from the RTP (at least with edits), and the castle mapping was odd since it felt a bit sparse and empty. More decoration would be nice. At the fight in the Holy Glade there is a tile mismatch; the grass at the edges of the river thing clashes with the rest of the grass. Also, what am I supposed to do after the fight? The guy said he was heading home and now I don't know what to do since I'm still supposed to be finding the prince apparently. Matilda says to train with the Knight Captain. Have I missed something?

As has been said, combat needs a lot of work because it seems to be just spamming attack with little beyond that. And imo the escape rate is too low but maybe I was just unlucky (and why does the game refer to your character as 'it' when you fail to escape?). Add some more battle scripts, there's some great ones out there.

A minor thing that bugged me; why is there an item called "poison remover" instead of "antidote"? If it's because antidote implies curing a specific type of poison, couldn't you have just called it something like "detoxifier"? I'm being nitpicky but "poison remover" sounds tacky.

Overall good effort. Only serious issue here is the combat, everything else I mentioned is quite minor.

 

[kaleemmcintyre]

Gave it a shot and while it has issues, I can see the effort that's gone into it. Some thoughts:

Dialog is generally quite good, but firstly there are a few mistakes here and there (nothing major but happens more than a few times), and IMO a lot of the dialogs should be divided into smaller chunks instead of having the whole textbox filled with sentences. Break it down a bit. Especially when there's so many NPCs to talk to - it's pretty cool, but not ideal when every one has like a whole paragraph to say and it appears mostly at once. Also I saw you use "less" instead of "lest" twice so I'll assume that one wasn't an accident but just a misuse of "less".

Mapping is decent but you need to break away from the RTP (at least with edits), and the castle mapping was odd since it felt a bit sparse and empty. More decoration would be nice. At the fight in the Holy Glade there is a tile mismatch; the grass at the edges of the river thing clashes with the rest of the grass. Also, what am I supposed to do after the fight? The guy said he was heading home and now I don't know what to do since I'm still supposed to be finding the prince apparently. Matilda says to train with the Knight Captain. Have I missed something?

As has been said, combat needs a lot of work because it seems to be just spamming attack with little beyond that. And imo the escape rate is too low but maybe I was just unlucky (and why does the game refer to your character as 'it' when you fail to escape?). Add some more battle scripts, there's some great ones out there.

A minor thing that bugged me; why is there an item called "poison remover" instead of "antidote"? If it's because antidote implies curing a specific type of poison, couldn't you have just called it something like "detoxifier"? I'm being nitpicky but "poison remover" sounds tacky.

Overall good effort. Only serious issue here is the combat, everything else I mentioned is quite minor.

Dialog - I'll work on trying to break up text, but a lot either has to do with 'storytelling' for the game and/or history, so somethings can't really be separated lest you lose the concept of certain stories.

Mapping - I was going for a minimalist style gaming. Nothing over the top. Just go from point A-B-C etc. I find that people either A, get lost easily, or B, don't really care enough about the mapping to be extravagant. I will work on making maps a bit more detailed in the future.

As has been said, combat needs a lot of work... - Combat opens up as you play the game. There are several hidden skills you can acquire throughout the game, and you can get several elemental based classes which come with magic skills, plus magic rings which let you tap into these classes abilities. I'm of the mind that you work for these things instead of being given them.

Also, what am I supposed to do after the fight? The guy said he was heading home and now I don't know what to do since I'm still supposed to be finding the prince apparently. Matilda says to train with the Knight Captain. Have I missed something? - The prince was who you fought in the forest. Now you just need to go back to the castle and go over to where the knights are training at the tall logs. The knight captain will appear at the head of them.

why is there an item called "poison remover" - Because I got tired of seeing 'antidote' in every other game. Also does detoxifier seem to 'new age'? XD Kidding.

Thank you for the feedback. I really appreciate it.