Vampire themed game (Demo available^_^)

[ItsBuffy]

GAME HAS NO TITLE YET.

 
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[SIZE=18pt]- Little story & Description -[/SIZE]
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This game will be about Yuki, a young woman who has almost finished her degree in music. During the week break, she decided to go on ''the Trip of her life'' with her friends to Ste-Adele, a very big, modern city. Unfortunatly, shortly after her arrival, she gets kidnapped by a vampire. The vampire brings Yuki and 3 of her friends back to her den. Another, more ancient vampire named Sebastian turns Yuki and release all her friends without harming them.


This game will be a semi open world RPG (the first 1~2 hours are linear) in the modern era with a variety of main and optional quests (you will have a quest log). Most of the game will happen in the huge city of Ste-Adele. It will be filled with intense, touching and funny moments. Packed with moral dilemma where you will be the chooser. Most vampire show/games ive seen make becoming a vampire look like it's no big deal and in some case it seems like it's the best thing that could ever happen to you. This game will deeply explore how a real human would feel towards himself, his friends and family. I will do my best to make you feel the bloodlust struggle and how deeply disturbing it would for a fledgling. Don't worry, it won't be a whining fest !

[SIZE=18pt]- Feature -[/SIZE]
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[SIZE=12pt]This is very early and it is very very subject to change. There's likely more ''special feature'' than will be displayed.[/SIZE]


[SIZE=12pt]- Yuki and other vamps have 2 or more action per turn in fights which allow more depths and strategy. [/SIZE]


[SIZE=12pt]- Sneaking[/SIZE]


[SIZE=12pt]- Quest log[/SIZE]


[SIZE=12pt]- Several out-of-battle vampic powers. The power of compelling humans and seduction are the only ones that are 100% confirmed to be there. There will be more for sure.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=18pt]- Other notes -[/SIZE]
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This game is meant to represent the hard, bloody and unforgiving life of a vampire. As such, for immersive purposes, the game will be made difficult. The foes will be strong and well equiped to fight you. The bosses will be unforgiving with an advanced AI that will adapt to the battle. Don't expect to just fight everything you see and steamroll the game. I want you to feel the struggle with Yuki. When you will beat a boss or a difficult area, I want you to feel happiness and the pride of overcoming a seemingly impossible challenge. That being said, I might do an easier (and an harder if resquested...? ;-])version of the game eventually.

[SIZE=12pt]My sources of inspiration for this game are (in order of importance) : [/SIZE]


[SIZE=12pt]Vampire the masquerade : bloodline (game)[/SIZE]


[SIZE=12pt]True blood (TV show)[/SIZE]


[SIZE=12pt]Silent Hill (game)[/SIZE]


[SIZE=12pt]Skyrim (game)[/SIZE]


[SIZE=12pt]If you have played VM:Bloodline, you will notice obvious similarities with it. The rest will be more subtle.[/SIZE]


[SIZE=12pt]_______________[/SIZE]


[SIZE=12pt]The main character (Yuki) art is from an anime called Vampire Knight. I havent seen this anime so the similarities are very likely to be only their appearance. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=18pt]- Couple screenshots -[/SIZE]
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Crappy Vampire Hideout
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Forgotten treasures
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Yuki begging to be spared.
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Battle against a giant fish. Battle are going to use those kind of background
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A small part of the sewers
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Yuki taking a walk in Ste-Adele
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A club in the city. The dance floor is further to the right !
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[SIZE=18pt]- Demo Info (read before downloading) -[/SIZE]
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Estimated playtime : between 6 and 10 hours


Size : ~370mo. I really did my best to make this small. It was at 900mo before :s


There are 17 quests total right now. 7 of them can't fully be completed due to the game being unfinished. So don't bother trying. Here is the complete list :


 


- Metting at the bar


- Shopping for a prisonner


- Magic Errand


- Voyeur's eyes


- Missing employee


- Treasure hunt


- Fertilizer quest

WARNING : Some characters in the game express themselves with strong and crude langage. The strong langage is used for immersive purposes by some characters and I won't censure or limit myself. However you will never see any racial slurs ; not in the demo and not at any stage of the game. [SIZE=medium] If swear words offends you, please do not download this game. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=18pt]- Demo Download -[/SIZE]
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https://www.dropbox.com/s/tpmpvh2uzft8rfh/Yuki.exe?dl=0 
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- VLOG -
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Obviously this contains spoilers of the game. You should really just watch this if you're stuck.
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A quick view of a part of Ste-Adele.
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[SIZE=18pt]- Critique -[/SIZE]
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If you have any suggestions or comments, please feel free to post them. If you have anything to say regarding enemy/item/spell balance, please do comment. If the story is unclear or you feel like there's too much talking or not enough, you can also comment on that.  if you find any bugs tiny or big, please report them.


Catching important english grammatical/syntax errors ? Please take 2 seconds to pm me them.

 
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- Credit -
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[SIZE=16pt]Scripts :[/SIZE]


[SIZE=12pt]Fomar0153[/SIZE]


[SIZE=12pt]V.M of D.T[/SIZE]


[SIZE=12pt]Yanfly[/SIZE]


[SIZE=12pt]TheoAllen[/SIZE]


[SIZE=12pt]Hime[/SIZE]


[SIZE=12pt]modern algebra[/SIZE]


[SIZE=16pt]Music : [/SIZE]


[SIZE=12pt]Michael Ortega[/SIZE]


[SIZE=12pt]Vampire the masquerade : bloodline[/SIZE]


[SIZE=12pt]Perfect dark[/SIZE]


[SIZE=12pt]Illusion of Gaia[/SIZE]


[SIZE=16pt]Yuki Art :[/SIZE]


 [SIZE=12pt]Vampire knight[/SIZE]

- CHANGELOGS -
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-ENEMIES-


 


General :


 


All sewers enemies attack and magic attack have been reduced by 1


 


Rats :


 


HP have been reduced from 156 to 110 


Rats are 20% less likely to poison


It is two times more likely to get an item from a rat


 


Jellyfish Monster  :


 


HP have been reduced from 320 to 210


Armor reduced by 2


 


Radioactive Fly : 


 


HP have been reduced from 170 to 130


 


Fishbone :


 


Fishbone are 20% less likely to attack twice


 


 -ITEMS-


 


Used katana cost went up from 220gold to 265gold. 


The used small sword cost went down from 280gold to 255gold and has +1dmg increase from it's previous value.


Bloodbags recover value have been reduced by 10%, except the pigblood that remains unchanged.


 


 


-Characters-


 


Yuki seduction duration has been sligthly decreased


Seduction no longer reduce crit chances or evade chances


 

 

[arayproductions]

Your story sounds quite interesting and not cliche, that background graphic in the battle scene looks awesome, and I'm intrigued to see how the "out of battle powers" will work.  I look forward to trying out your demo once you've got one up.

 

[ItsBuffy]

Thanks man I appreciate the compliments ! Hopefully the story will deliver, I really did put in a lot of work/sweat and a bit of my soul on it.

As for the out of battle powers, I've a couple cool power ideas but only the compelling power is assured to be there. You will see between 1 and 3 compels during the demo (depending on how you're playing) but it's gonna be during scenes, you won't be able to decide when to use it. However in the actual game, you will have tons or opportunities to use it if you wish it or not if you don't.

 

[CrazyCrab]

Hi, since there isn't a demo I can play I though I might give you some feedback based on the screenshots.

-In the one where Yuki is in prison the picture is really, really weird by being in this frame - I'd suggest photoshopping it and not cutting it by making it a square but by just cutting around the character.

-Why is there a shovel icon next to her during combat? Is that some skill? It looks a bit confusing.

-The mapping is quite decent, but you have some really empty areas, like the one in the house. I'd recommend making it smaller or adding more details.

The theme is promising though, I like proper vampires and there aren't that many games that let you be a vampire.

Good luck 

 

[ItsBuffy]

Hi,

thank you for the feedback I appreciate !

For the first point you're right but unfortunatly i'm very novice when it come to that kind of stuff. I tried long ago with a free program to cut the background and leave only Yuki but what happened is the character edges were heavily pixelated and it was way worse than just leaving a tiny background. I also judged that pictures with a background is better than no pictures at all. I'd even say that in some case, the background actually add something positive to the game. I will eventually learn it but for now I'm forced to leave the background unfortunatly. I try at least to have somewhat fitting backgrounds. For example you won't see a snowy or raining background when it's not snowing or raining.

The shovel is part of the thing that need fixing. It's on the list.

The screenshots were not being taken in a normal game enviroment which means all switches were off. When it isn't the case, the maps are more NPC-filled.  They also have been improved with more decoration/doodad since the screenshots 

thank you for your interest

 

[ItsBuffy]

Demo is up !

I really hope you will enjoy it as much as I enjoyed making it. I hope it will be appreciated. Looking for feedback

 

[cane_danko]

I played the demo up until the sewers where I got owned pretty hard by the jellyfish and bonefish. My thoughts so far...

The game starts out rather slow for my taste. Alot of talking for a while with no action and just hanging out with friends and stuff which wasn't all bad but then again I felt like some of the dialogue was a bit pointless. The biggest problem so far is the bad english from the characters sound awkward and the phrasing makes the characters unbelievable at times. I liked the modern setting of the game. The characters personalities were good and like i said with a better translation and a bit more polish I think the begining could draw in the player with the story. The combat I did not really like because i got owned the second fight. The first fight with the rats was way to easy and the fight with the jellyfish was way to hard. I don't understand why the shopkeeper only sells two things and there is no way to refill hp if the fights are suppose to be really hard. Other than that I will have to try playing more in order to see what else I think of the game.

 

[ItsBuffy]

Yeah I won't lie I was a little bit scared that some might find the time between the start and the first battle to be a little exausting. I will wait for more opinion on this matter before thinking about cutting anything because I think it might be a matter of taste.

I'm sorry to hear that my english isn't satisfying. Since you're american you're probably well placed to judge. I truly thought it would be alright. This can't be fixed with simple triggers however but I will review the whole thing and do my best to find mistakes and correct them.

For the game difficulty, I'm a big fan of very challenging/competitive games like Dark souls, Skyrim on legendary difficulty, Starcraft 2, chess etc. I want my game to be on par with Dark Souls as far as difficulty is concerned. Demos are made to show a preview of the game and for demonstration purposes, making it too hard defeat the purpose of a demo. However tuning the demo down too much would misrepresent what you can expect from the game.

I did the mistake of making this game for myself. What I mean is I know every enemy, chest, trick and I know Yuki very very well. Expecting somebody who never played this game before to know right off the bat how to play optimally or almost optimally at all time was a mistake. All this to say I will reduce the game difficulty.

The shopkeeper wasn't really a shopkeeper. It was a dude working for the hotel trying to sell you hotel's stuff (thing hotel owns, not him) he had on his hands illegally. That's why he only had 2 items. What I just said, was it clear for you when you played the game or should I review the dialogue ?

Edit : Demo 1.01 is out with the changelogs info

Edit : Demo 1.01a is out. It's the same as 1.01 but with a lot of grammar/syntax errors corrected.

 

[ItsBuffy]

New demo version is out ! This includes the removal of portraits background and a small battle tutorial. You can download the new version now in the OP

Here is the complete changelogs :

Spoiler

NEW :

- A very basic battle tutorial has been added.

General :

- Most portraits background removed.

- Couple minor glitch corrected.

- Still found a some french text left over. It's been translated.

Balance changes :

- Fixed a glitch where life steal was dealing more damage than intended to bone fishes

- Security guards basic attack is slightly stronger 

 

[ItsBuffy]

Ok so I tried playing the downloaded version of my game and apparently, about half of the images still had their backgrounds. I didn't noticed it before because it's working fine when I'm playing my game through RPG maker it only happens with the downloadable version. I guess in the future, I should always test de downloadable version instead of the rpg maker one. Anyway I'm currently working on fixing this issue (i think i know why) and I will post an updated demo.

Also, I've always thought that my prologue could be a little too long for some. By prologue I mean ''the time spent playing before your first battle''. My game in general will be filled with hopefully interesting stories, characters, lore and scenes. However I've always felt like the prologue was a little bit too heavy time-wise. The problem was I never knew how to make this shorter as I felt like every scene were essential either for the demo or later on in the game. I've finally managed to cut at some places without cutting anything important. 

As I keep working a little on the demo, I work mainly on pursuing the game. Since the game after the demo is quite world open it's gonna take a very long time before I can post a longer version of the game. Will update the thread with some youtube video and screenshots from time to time though.

Here are the changelogs :

Spoiler

General :

- Most portraits background removed. (for real this time...!)

- Couple minor glitch corrected.

- Still found one word of french left over. It's been translated. Could be the last word !

- The prolgue (time spent playing before your first battle) has been reduced by 15 to 20%.

- Some maps esthetic have been improved

I'm looking forward for some feedbacks. You can download the new version in the OP

 

[whitesphere]

Some other powers vampires might have:

- Flight (i.e. teleport to known locations perhaps)

- Drain Life (take HP from opponent).  Useful in battle.

- Mist Veil (target % chance reduction)

- Curse (weaken opponents in battle)

- Super Speed/Strength - Gain the ability for some turns BUT the player is weaker/slower than normal after the boost wears off

And other limitations:

- Can vampires go onto holy ground or enter a house uninvited?   If not, what happens if they try?

- Can vampires cross running water?  In some mythos, they cannot.

- I vaguely remember in Masquerade, vampires had to keep their vampirism a secret.  I assume this plays a factor in your game.

 

[ItsBuffy]

Some other powers vampires might have:

- Flight (i.e. teleport to known locations perhaps)

- Drain Life (take HP from opponent).  Useful in battle.

- Mist Veil (target % chance reduction)

- Curse (weaken opponents in battle)

- Super Speed/Strength - Gain the ability for some turns BUT the player is weaker/slower than normal after the boost wears off

 

I've thought about flight. Well not exactly flight but some sort of blink where you could teleport a couple squares further. Teleporting to other location would be kind of useless in my game since all the city will be conveniently connected through a subway system.

 

Life drain is a classic and it's there already !

 

It won't be called curse but there is already stuff that will weaken the opponents and there will be even more later.

 

In my game, vampire have between 2 and 4 actions per turn depending on how old they are instead of the classic one action per turn you see. This is my way of adressing the super speed thing 

 

Not sure exactly what you mean with mist veil

 

- Can vampires go onto holy ground or enter a house uninvited?   If not, what happens if they try?

 

They will be able to enter holy grounds but they won't be able to touch anything really. They will feel very unconfortable, weaker and looked upon. To quote a vampire from my game : ''All that is religion, avoid it like the plague. the jewelry, holy water, churches and especially the priests. In movies, priests are almost always weak, fun to kill and prey. Not in real life. More pious is the priest, the more difficult he is to overcome. Their blood is often equivalent to drink holy water. Others are so pious that just touching them will make you burn.''

 

You can't enter an house uninvited. This includes your former house if you were living with your parents. Your parent will need to invite you. You still can enter motel and hotel rooms. Squatted appartment/areas might or might not count depending on the situation. That ''magic barrrier'' also immunes the owner from compelling. 

 

- Can vampires cross running water?  In some mythos, they cannot.

 

Never heard that one. Yes they can.

 

- I vaguely remember in Masquerade, vampires had to keep their vampirism a secret.  I assume this plays a factor in your game.

 

Yes it does, violating the secret on purpose is punishable by death by the vampire community. Later in the game, there will be a faction you will be able to join if you desire that hunt vampires that violate the masquerade and humans that knows too much.

Punishment for violating it not on purpose vary from case to case.

 

[Setheim]

First let me tell you I LOVE Vampire lore, and I try my hands at every-vampire-stuff that happens to cross my way.

So... I just tried your demo up to the sewers and I have a few thoughts.

-Dialogue feels a bit stiff, it should be a bit more natural, the characters feel a bit bland because of that. 

-Also, don't use dialogue when you should Show things. Don't tell us how Yuki feels, make her do something that communicates the same thing, this is not a book, it's a game, show it to us and even make us go through the whole experience.

-There's no need to tell us everything in one conversation, let things flow and tell us about your world and the Vampires bit by bit. 

-The biting's scenes could be improved, 

-I loved your outdoor maps, they indeed reminded me of Bloodlines. 

-Speaking of The Masquerade, you should read some of the books, they are perfect to get into a "vampiric" feel. Also some of them like the Core Rules Book or The Storyteller's Handbook give some amazing tips on how to guide a Vampire story.

-I didn't know what to think of you battle music... it feels... off. 

And that's it. Keep it up, I'll try to finish your demo tonight or tomorrow morning.

Cheers. 

 

[ItsBuffy]

Hey thank you for trying my demo. I think having people trying it out is by far my best shot at making this game better. 

Would you care to elaborate on what do you exactly mean by stiff ? Would you like to tell me if you added the word ''bit'' to ''a bit stiff'' and ''a bit bland'' to be polite ? do you feel like it's indeed just a bit problematic or do you feel like characters are completly bland ? Just so I know if I'm really in need of finding ways to improve or if I should just rework some dialogue

Edit : Do you mean a little bit too mechanical ?

Point 2-3 I think you're right. Point 2 since it's a 2d game I can't really do animations or at least I don't have the knowledge that's why I did narration in some spots but I think I can reduce the number of time this occurs. Point 3 is true I was just craving to talk about it I guess Will reduce it's too much info and most of them are not really needed right now. Reading all this in 1 shot also might bore the player

Glad that you liked the maps design so far

Music is personnal taste really and I'm aware that's not conventional. Game difficulty will be on the higher end and I feel like those type of music fit well with challenging fights. I like trying new/unconventional stuff when possible. I might change them later on for something a little bit more standard for that type of game

Thank you again for the critique. This will not only make the demo better but it will also guide me a little through the whole game

Tell me how you liked the rest of the demo when you're done with it

later

 

[whitesphere]

In my current work-in-progress ("Rise of the Daywalkers"), I use some more classic vampire mythos.  For part of the game, the players are vampires:

- Vampires CANNOT use healing spells (which kind of cripples the healer, good thing he can learn necromatic spells from the Spellkeeper vampire).  For gameplay ease, they CAN use healing potions, which is a point of confusion for the vampire Alchemist (i.e. I lampshade it).

- Vampires take HP damage if they go in somewhere uninvited, out into the sunlight, or if they venture into a TRULY holy place.  

- - Note:  It's a plot point that NOT all churches are religious, if the sincere faith and belief in the Divine is not there, the church is no more holy than the public square.

- Anything which is undead (i.e. vampires, ghosts, etc) is in constant pain by virtue of living in constant stress between this world and the next one.  I don't simulate this for the players, but it does drive some significant characters in the game.

- - The good vampires keep to themselves and have self-created creature hunting grounds where they can drain life force and remain sane

Mist Veil?    It means "Make the target much harder to hit".  In-game this causes the Target percentage to drop and the EVAsion to raise significantly.  Once the target is hit, the veil dissipates.

The reason:  in classic vampire mythos, vampires would be able to exert control over their victims and in some mythos, they are able to conceal themselves from everyone except their intended victim. 

 

[ItsBuffy]

Interesting stuff.

Well to me healing it depends. If healing is holy for example a monk or a priest, vampires will will actually take damage (50% of the full effect) from it instead of being healed. But if let's say it's some kind of druid, they can heal vampires.

In my game you have about 10 minutes in the sun before fainting and then progressively dying.

Yeah your church ideas are similar to my squatted appartement concept. If it's a traveller who just stop for a week in an abandonned apartment, vampires may enter but it's an homeless guy living there for 5 years and he truly feels like this place is his home (even though in theory it isn't) then vampires won't be able to go in.

 

[ItsBuffy]

Okay I've another version. Sorry for such a quick reupdate I worked 8 hours on it today I think the changes are worth a reupdate. So I did several things on it. Including a rework of dialogues and scenes to make them a little bit more immersive. The time spent playing before your first battle has been once again reduced by maybe 10%. There is almost no narrative text left now and scenes have been slightly improved.

Also, for the music I had the Idea to give option to the player to have either the defaut battle music and if you're not happy with the style, you can now go in a save box and change the music to something more standard for a RPG.

Did a little bit of rephrasing here and there and corrected a couple of spelling mistakes.

I will also update the OP with a new screenshot and in maybe one week, I will post a youtube video of me exploring Ste-Adèle city just to show/explain a little bit how the actual game will work.

Changelog :

Spoiler

NEW

You can choose between 2 style of battle music

General 

Rework on the dialogue and revamped couple scenes.

One of the vampire had really a mechanical/bland way of explaining things. It's been improved

Intro is slightly shorter

Corrected spelling errors and reworked some sentences

Still looking for some feedbacks. You can download the game in the OP

 

[ItsBuffy]

 

I will also update the OP with a new screenshot and in maybe one week, I will post a youtube video of me exploring Ste-Adèle city just to show/explain a little bit how the actual game will work.

Like I said I would, it's now there ! A brief tour into a part of Ste-Adele, the city where the game will be played in. I also explain a little bit how the game in general is going to work. 




I also took the time to do little modifications on the demo. Here are the changelogs :

Spoiler

DEMO V1.05

NEW :

 

Bloodbag effect ! There's now a little special effect when Yuki drink blood from bloodbags

 

General

 

The treasure hunter will be more important/useful than I first intended him to be. Therefore I changed the Treasure Hunter appearance so he can look a little bit more unique.

The game and vampires lore has been somewhat changed to set my game further from the game vampire the masquerade : bloodline. The VtMB feel of the game still remains there though.

Fixed couple bugs

Fixed one music change issue

Still found french... I hope it's the last bits now.

 

Balance

 

Enemy guns are ~15% stronger

 

Soon I will add more tutorials to the demo such as ''how to equip weapon/armor'' tutorial or what is Att/def/mag att etc. I don't really think it's needed for people on this forum though but I'll add it anyway.

When I will have more parts of Ste-Adele, I will add another video of me doing a random quest to show better what a quest's gonna look like.

That's it for now ! If you have any comment on the demo or the video, please feel free to post there so I can improve.

 

[ItsBuffy]

Been a very long time since the last update! 

The game has now ~8 hours of content with 17 quests. The city is divided with subway stations. There's 4 available ''city parts'' you can explore plus a large cimetery. 

I made drastic changes in the sewers regarding the enemies. A huge early enemies nerf. It is aimed at making the first sewer level significantly easier than before. Since it's more like an intro/demo/tutorial level than an actual dungeon, I feel like making it relatively easy so the player can actually move on to the ''real semi-open world game'' faster and experience what the game actually is. I didn't made the sewers overly easy even though that is what I initially wanted to do because I don't want the player to feel a huge difficulty spike once out of the sewers. The sewers still requires the player to think before attacking. It's very important that I show the player right away that mindlessly mashing the attack button won't get him anywhere. 

If you want to know more about this go in the OP and check the changelogs.

Aside from continuing the game developement, my plans for the future of this game is set up some kind of recipe system. A couple of food recipe but mostly magical item recipe. I'm also thinking about adding more offensive items in general. The game is lacking some. I will also : 

 

- Adding a lot more sound effect to make the game feel more alive

- Adding a couple of special effect if I find a good spot to do so.

- Making the intro cutscenes skipable.

- Improving the sewer mapping

- Improving Rebecca & Sebastian appearance 

I'd like to learn how to make custom art. I really would love to be able to the art by myself. Im completly clueless on the subject right I hope it's not too hard. 

Anyway the new game demo is up ! Look in the OP in the demo download section.

I'd like some critism and impression before moving too much forward to make sure that the game basics are solid. 

To finish a couple screenshots

Police station 



The cimetery entrance 



An abandonned factory 

 

[ItsBuffy]

In this game, the city is divided by parts and those parts are attached by a subway system. You can't roam everywhere at all times for game balancing reasons.

you need to ''unlock'' a subway station in order to be able to get there. A new station is usually unlocked when you get your first new quest in said station.

However I was curious to see what the city would look like so far if I attached all the stations ive done so far thogether.

It looks like this from a ''plane view'' :



All the city is also connected through a sewer system that is not shown here. If you're curious and courageous enough, you might find new city stations using the sewers before even unlocking it !