Vengeance and Affliction

[Chaos Avian]

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Vengeance and Affliction​

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OVERVIEW:​

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A humble man and his loving wife live unaware within a pocket dimension separated from the world while it progressed to current day level. While the man Norman was out gathering materials, their house was broken into by a mercenary like warrior. Seeing his house in shambles and the man standing over his wife's seemingly dead body, Norman charges at the man but is quickly injured and put down. After being carried away, an invention by a witch gives Norman a new life within a new body.​

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Now he must traverse the deadly forest, gaining power and allies to take revenge on his fallen wife by taking the head of the human and monster slave trader the; Demon Queen Arianna.​

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A short but challenging Dungeon Crawler with a simple story that spawns 3 major areas and as most can be a tad grindy. Difficulty curves are gentle once you get used to the flow of the game and there is a fair amount of exploration to be had.​

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CHARACTERS:​

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Norman (Nora):​

The man with an infallible determination to take revenge on the man that ruined his life and his Queen who orchestrated it all. Norman is a very strong individual who's hunting and stamina has gave him great proficiency with a blade and firearms. Somewhat of a one track mind he can sometime overlook details and often shows a no nonsense demeanour. ​

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Ivy:​

An alruane that lives in the forest outside the rule of Queen Arianna. After an encounter with Norman (and a dislike for Arianna) Ivy joins Norman in hopes of taking down Arianna. She employs the use of supportive and disruptive abilities due to her plant and life energy. Although she can have a bad temper, she often doesn't take all situations seriously and enjoys being a tease to Norman much to his dismay.​

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Magnus:​

A dragon prince that became trapped within the pocket dimension and begins training to become strong enough to defeat Arianna to regain his freedom. After testing Norman and Ivy he joins the duo. As a drake, his physical ability is amazing and has many offensive skills. Though somewhat simple minded, he is honourable but has a poor view on women altogether which doesn't always sit right with Ivy.​

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SCREENSHOTS:​

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Features and Notes:​

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- A stat point allocation system.​

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- 8 spirits that bestow useful passives/ abilities to find. ​

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- Manage 3 item stock slots in battle.​

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- 3 - 5 hours of gameplay.​

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- Be smart with stat allocations as this is a fairly difficult game.​

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- Remember to head back to the witch to buy items.​

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- Learn enemy weaknesses as they have a chance to stun them.​

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Stat Breakdown:​

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POW - Increases Sword skills.​

VIT - Increases physical resistance.​

INT - Increases Magic attacks.​

FCS - Increases magic resistance.​

AGI - Increases action speed/ turn order.​

DEX - Increases Gun skills.​

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Credits:​

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- Enterbrain​

- Celianna​

- Aaron Krogh​

- Yanfly​

-Moghunter​

- Kread-Ex​

- Tsukihime​

- TMS​

- Mr Trivel​

- Mr Bubble​

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>Download Link<​

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https://www.mediafire.com/?53aafajf1evqbbd​

 

[Alistair]

This looks very interesting. I usually don't like short games but I'll definitely try it out.

 

[Mage Heart]

I'll have to try this out later. Looks interesting.

 

[Grinn]

I'll download it now and give it a play.

Edit: I only had a few min at lunch to play it. I got the the first save point (like 5 min in or so).

Some notes, mostly editing things:

• "Whoa **** the hell" (What did you mean to say here?)
• I get he can't see anything, but the intro part where it's just black kinda jars with the exciting music and people talking.
• Why does the protagonist have headphones on if this is like medieval?
• The text kinda "pops" up in chunks, rather than flows out like normal.
• "..."fro" her own reasons."
• Heather also tells that until ("also tells Norman"?)
• It's kinda jarring how we go from narrative to literally talking about game mechanics like POW and DEX.
• "...mana applies skills, but your body isn't adept at magic, but it's still great for..." (2 "buts" in the same sentence).

 

[Chaos Avian]

Thanks for pointing those out Grinn, I applied those points and made a few more changes:

- Changed the text dump at the start.

- Altered intro to flow more.

- Edited the dialogue.

- Lowered encounter rate.

- Altered ending scene of the game.

New download link in first post.

 

[hiromu656]

Got the latest version. Some things that could use some attention is that Stat Distribution, you should give a description on what the stats do. Also, why is it that I sometimes get a double turn? I'm not complaining but it's hopefully not a bug. Gonna keep playing, so far I really like the Soul system and am very interested in the new abilities I will learn further in

 

[Chaos Avian]

The double action isn't a bug, it's a chance due to the MC being solo for a while. Plus I thought the stats were fairly obvious, though I could add a read me or something similar...

 

[Grinn]

Thanks for pointing those out Grinn, I applied those points and made a few more changes:

- Changed the text dump at the start.

- Altered intro to flow more.

- Edited the dialogue.

- Lowered encounter rate.

- Altered ending scene of the game.

New download link in first post.

Awesome!

I'll look at it when I get a chance.

 

[hiromu656]

Well I suppose it's obvious what the acronyms are referring to, but that doesn't make the stats themselves obvious. For instance "POW" seems to increase my physical damage but it ALSO increases my HP. Where as VIT probably just increases HP. There's no way I could have known that without first putting in a point into POW. FCS, AGI and DEX are all the same in my mind, I'm not too sure what any of them specifically do for me. I can guess that FCS affects my gun damage, but I could be wrong because you don't say. The DEX and AGI I would assume affect turn order, but then why would there be 2 stats for that. So a description is needed for your stats.

I played for just a little bit more and got one shot by the first Boss she did some sort of rock smash and landed a critical, then I was dead. I'm level 6 at the moment, stats are:

POW: 36, VIT: 13, INT: 8, FCS: 10, AGI: 18, DEX: 12

The rock attack did +200 damage, I unfortunately only have 197 hp , I guess I'll grind for another level or so, then try again.

 

[Chaos Avian]

Ah right I can see the issue of confusion. You want to be around Lv10 for the boss. As for the break down of the stats, POW, VIT and AGI increase your HP by 2, 3 and 1 respectively while INT, FCS and DEX increased your MP by 3, 2 and 1. FCS is your resistance to magic attacks which probably explained why the boss's crit killed you. Your Gun skills are based off of your DEX (the normal gun shot does mention it in the description). I did have a breakdown in the first build but it was too jarring and didn't re implement due to hearing that they are self explanatory.

General stat breakdown (I'll put this in the OP):

POW - Increases Sword skills.

VIT - Increases physical resistance.

INT - Increases Magic attacks.

FCS - Increases magic resistance.

AGI - Increases action speed/ turn order.

DEX - Increases Gun skills.

 

[SquallStorm]

Whoo, you're making games again!  Still waiting on Ruby Chronicles EWC2 to update, but this will probably satiate me.  I'll post my thoughts when I see the credit roll!

 

[hiromu656]

Another quick update on where I am in the game, not much further however. I killed the boss, I was able to get her in a Losing Balance loop (so she was perma stunned). I just spammed her with Burning Edge (which caused the stun) and when my health got low, I would use Blood Snap (which is incredibly powerful) and regain it all back. I did grind up to level 10 before fighting her, but she never had a chance to hit back this time, especially with the occasional double turn I would get. 

My stats at Level 10:

POW: 55, VIT: 13, INT: 8, FCS: 14, AGI: 34, DEX: 12

Should I keep doing these small updates on my progress/ Are they helpful? If you like I could just you know, finish the game first then give a more in depth "review" of my experience.

 

[Chaos Avian]

Hmmm, yeah I quite like the small updates, keep them coming! (Also, you may want to beef up your DEX )

 

[Vox Novus]

Been playing this so I thought I'd share what I think so far:

Pros:

-Artwork is nice and quite unique looking, definitely a sort of look I haven't seen anywhere else.

-Speaking of artwork, some of the enemies enter the battle in an animated way; that's just really cool!

-The stat point allocation system is fun, you might want to put in some event in the first area (like a book or something) that clearly lists what each stat does. I figured it out eventually with some experimentation but something like that would clear up confusion. Arguably that breaks some of the immersion of the game but in one part you have sign that tells the player what level they should be before entering an area so I don't see why you wouldn't tell them right out what the stats effect.

-I like that there are two types of skills you have to think about although I feel the characters end up in specific ways regardless. Nora is more sword attacks, Ivy is a mix of status and "spell" and Magnus is just a really powerful attacker with boosts for support. It would be cool if my development of the characters stats sort of effected how they were actually being used, as it is the enemies kind of force you into fighting one way. I pretty much gave up on gun attacks and stats after I entered the lake area because I could only hit them with nora's fire sword skill.

-You equip items to use them in battle that's interesting...

-The animal souls added a nice sort of additional customization as well as something to find It's sort of a shame they only teach skills to Nora though.

Con's:

-Some of the sound effects you chose were really jarring to me, fortunately you have the option for the player to adjust the volume, I nearly turned them off completely.

-The critical rate seems a little to high on enemies, speaking of that there is absolutely no reason why the enemies should be able to critical hit me in the beginning when I have only one character. There's nothing quite like entering battle and a few seconds later getting nailed with a critical hit and having to reload because it wiped me out for more than my entire health bar.

-The difficulty of the game is all over the place at times, sometimes its really difficult then other times its easy. The fight against Ivy is really broken I spammed the fire sword skill the entire time because it kept stunning her, she almost never even hit me.

-So I ran out of items in the lake area, I'll just buy from the merchant that's near by...Oh wait I got to go all the way back to the witch at the start of the game. It would be nice to have an option to buy items somewhere else, maybe you can communicate with the witch to buy stuff with that orb before the fight with Ivy.

-Got to one section in the lake area, the enemies are ridiculously strong lowering my offense so I don't even damage them and then they boost there offense. I got wiped out...Reloaded and ran around some more to train and found the third character by accident, apparently that's why I couldn't handle the enemies; I needed Magnus. You might want to block off that area or something or make it clear somehow you shouldn't be going that way without "extra help."

-Battles in the later part of the lake area become really dull and repetitive ; they lower my offense so I barely scratch them then I use Magnus to boost offense and lower enemy defense so I can do some real damage to them, uh-oh they lowered my offense again...Guess I got to boost my offense again with Magnus. Not to mention they seem to be immune to most types of damage Nora can dish out other than his fire sword skill...

-You have a few problems with descriptions, the water soul says it adds the charged shot skill but it actually adds hydro bullet. Likewise Ivy has a multi-hitting earth "spell" but in the description you say it only hits "an enemy" not all enemies (don't remember the name of the "spell").

Got as far as the fight with Erikus it was actually fairly enjoyable for awhile after that repetitive lake area because I was free to use more skills. Then all of a sudden he hit me with a bunch of mult-hit attacks that wiped me out of nowhere. Also is there a reason his sprite before the battle doesn't match the battler? Maybe its explained after the battle, just wondering...

I'm assuming I'm somewhat close to the end of the game so I might pick this up again soon and try to continue further. Overall I feel like there's an interesting idea here.

Edit-Forgot to mention that the game sometimes crashes when you get a double turn and use skills in combination with Nora's Quickshot, it shows a script error afterward (sorry should have wrote down the script and line no. error)

 

[Chaos Avian]

Thanks for playing! Interesting that you gave up on Gun skills because I actually favoured them, good to know that people have found more uses. And to address the cons you've brought up:

- The crit rate for enemies being high is interesting. I've based it on a formulae that draws from the LUK/ DEX stat. For enemies I tend to make it pretty low and crit evasion is the same formulae but with AGI added it.

- Hmm, I planned to have it get harder as you progress but how you allocate stats depends on how fast you progress. The Ivy fight is an interesting one since the stun chance for hitting weaknesses is 25-35%. So sometimes it's an easy stun-lock win, others it's quite the challenge. The RNG must have been in your favour (The Ivy boss is the one I play-tested through most and it's always fun to see who had it easy and who struggled.)

- I did think about getting back to the Witch's Keep quickly without all the back tracking and thought that the monolith in the first lake area would be enough but after reading your comment I should of made a buyable item that transported you back to the Witch's Keep.

- I wanted to promote exploration more in the game but I suppose I left things a little too ambiguous at points. My bad.

- I do agree that the lake was quite dull as well. I wanted to add more variations in tactics to make it distinct from the forest area. I do admit that what I did with the ghost enemies was rather stupid. I should have given them more than 1-2 ways to defeat them easily. They don't pose much of a threat, more so a nuisance.

- As for the descriptions I did forget to update some of the text now that you mention it. With the charged shot, later during development I gave it Water element and forgot to update. Same for Ivy's AoE earth spell, it was initially single hitting. (Damn it Chaos!)

- I couldn't find a 2 tile high sprite version for Erikus so I went with the closet thing I had. Glad you enjoyed the Erikus fight, it's one of my favourites (and yeah he's tough).

- Yes, you're near the end of the game. Beating Erikus nets you about 80% complete. As for the Double turn combo wit Nora's quickshot, I actually don't know why that happens and haven't been able to find a fix for that which sucks. If anything if you use it, use it on the first turn instead of the second.

 

[JeffPAWA]

Hey Chaos Avian,

Really good game , i've made a let's play of it! Here's the link to the first one of 3 videos that will air this Friday so tomorrow!

(only if you're interested of course )




And if you don't want to, or too busy or.. i dunno eating ice cream out of a volcano and whatnot, here's the written summary!

So loved your concept, Nora is really interesting, it's fun to be in control of a character that, if he/she had a choice would not bother with details and go straight to the boss.

While i'm at it, i really love you're character design and i want to see them in full ok?

I loved a lot of things about your game, so I could keep going for a while but too keep it short, it's awesome!

here's what could improve it (i think)

Stat descriptions in the game for idiots like me, because i'm a big one

i've missed the Drake character and i don't know why! maybe it was obvious and maybe not enough...still!

Maybe make it obvious that the lake is certain doom if you're not ready because i was not...and yeah, voila i died horribly

Anyhow, Great game great character and great everything 5 stars 3x thumbs up and i can't wait to play your next masterpiece!

Have a nice one!

 

[Chaos Avian]

Ohoo~ Very nice, thanks for the Let's Play I enjoyed watching that! And please upload all 3 parts ^^ I was ambiguous with what stat does what and there's a breakdown of stats in the OP since you missed them. (You'll need more DEX and VIT believe me )