RMMV Vita Unlikely

Check out the Vita Unlikely website!​

STORYLINE

Having been expelled from medical school just one day shy of graduating, Vita Fletcher returns to her hometown defeated, and without a clue what her future looks like. Then the lifeforce responsible for all life in the universe--universes, according to the lifeforce--shows up in her room to let her know giving up isn't an option. Vita has exactly one week to speed-run key friendships and relationships that have defined her and helped her conquer evil in all of her other iterations. The lifeforce (nicknamed 'Void Ma') gives Vita powers that let her go back to key moments in these people's lives to make sure they become what they're all meant to be--fixed points throughout time and space, and the guardians of life itself.

DISCLAIMER: As the game has a big theme of finding friends in unexpected places, there are some adult themes. There’s a huge element of in-world politics, and some scattered sexual content. (To the level of your average romcom.)


SYNOPSIS

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Vita Unlikely is inspired by old puzzle based RPGS, King’s Quest VII, Quest for Glory 1&2, Myst, Riven, and Monkey Island. It’s primarily an RPG focused on recruiting unique characters with unique abilities to tackle increasingly difficult logic puzzles. Variables such as time, Recruitable Characters (RCs) locations, shop items available, etc, are all set to model a living, breathing town. For example, the shops will close in the evening and while some RCs might go home, others might go to the tavern, etc. Therefore, the player should choose strategically how they want to spend their time, who they want to speak to, what order they want to do things in, etc; since the next puzzle challenge is always just around the corner.

Story and characters are the driving force of Vita Unlikely. The better you know the RCs stories, the better you’ll understand how the world works. There are multiple in-world mysteries that can be solved by careful snooping, too! If played well enough, the player might be able to identify what the great evil coming is before it’s revealed--everything is within the player’s reach!

Gameplay is like a traditional JRPG in terms of interaction. It makes use of the limitations of such games (no diagonal movement, no jumping, etc) and implements them into visual logic puzzle dungeons. “Battle” is another puzzle, too. The character in the fight has a certain number of HP, a certain set of skills, and a certain number of turns. The objective of the fights change, too. It may be to dodge all attacks, to stay alive, or to kill a specific NPC, etc. The faster the player achieves these objectives, the higher their score. The higher the player’s score, the more access they have to the character they used in the puzzle/battle. This includes more knowledge of their story, easier recruitment, new skills, etc. This is used in place of levelling.

There are bonus chances to increase scores available, too! Mini-game puzzles, fetch quests, and other little non-plot oriented missions that are light hearted and geared towards learning the characters and world better.

There are 20 RCs available to be recruited (although it isn’t necessary to recruit all of them). All of them have unique romance, enemy, and friendship opportunities with each other. You can choose which relationships flourish or sour. A completed relationship of any variety gives a bonus skill, increased trait, or other unique advantage to both characters in the relationship.

IMAGES/SCREENSHOTS

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Maps in progress:





Character Reference for Vita Fletcher

CHARACTERS

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All recruitable/Playable characters:

• Vita Fletcher -- Expelled medical student, adopted daughter, aggressive optimist, the mom-friend to end all mom-friends, and fearless scientist. Vita is a testament to bravery, idealism, and never giving up on how many southern sayings you can stuff into a sentence. If you condensed the raw emotional appeal of every anime friendship speech you've ever heard, the stubborn refusal to give up of glitter attaching itself to human skin, and the curiosity that famously killed the cat? You would have a fraction of the sheer force of nature that is Vita Fletcher.
• Jaye Arthur -- The newly crowned King. He's young, and extremely charming.
• Damrod Churnet -- King's guard that's dumb as a brick, but about as sunny as you can get. Damrod has a heart of gold, even if his head might be full of lead.
• Mika Serillo -- A young Winter Court Unseelie fae that works as a companion at the town tavern and brothel. They're extremely popular with their clients, and it's not hard to see why. Their looks could leave anyone speechless. Aside from being pretty, they have talent with a lute, with dancing, and of course, they have impeccable taste in fashion.
• Agnes Paladin -- Half-Orc fighter who gave up the life of being a mercenary to run a bakery instead. It's called Bread. She really likes Bread.
• Hylas -- He's a 4' tall frog that can speak. He's a scientist. Don't think about it too hard.
• Thalia Colfax -- A local who's been there as long as the city has. She's the town Jeweler.
• Julia Rihadi & Zahra Rihadi -- Sisters. Julia is a well travelled merchant, and Zahra is a hopeful for taking the position of Captain of the King's Guard's once the grouchy Edwin "Buck" Buckley's finally retired.
• Murdock Van Niele -- Royal secretary and archivist. Remember the "paperwork, Wazowski" lady from Monster's Inc.? Ever wonder what her origin story looked like? Murdock is about as close to that as you can get. A grouchy librarian in the making.
  
• Nixë Elkhart -- A Winter Court Unseelie fae; the prince of them, in fact. Nixë is here on behalf of their parents (the King and Queen) to track down a dangerous war criminal and nasty piece of work, the infamous Yasu Meetra. Rumour has it that despite being fae, Yasu Meetra can lie. For a race of people otherwise incapable of lying, this could have devastating effect on trade, diplomacy, etc. Along with being wanted for several hundred murders, Yasu Meetra must be taken in and taken care of before they destroy the relationship between fae and mortals forever. Y'know, no pressure though.
• Nico Redleaf - tba
• Violet - tba
• Trent Moreno - tba
• June - tba
• James Karumi - tba
• Valeria - tba
• Oberon Tengku - tba
• Vanya Fletcher - tba

Villains/Important NPCs/etc will be added to this post later on.

SETTING AND/OR WORLD DEVELOPMENT

DEVELOPMENT PROGRESS TRACKER [Percent Complete%]

• Full cast of characters classed, stat'ed, etc [100%]
• Character relationship compatibility [100%]
• Sprites, headshots, and references for all characters [60%]
• 5 Act structure and hour-by-hour timeline [90%]
• All plot outcomes/choice consequences mapped out [100%]
• Skeleton RTP maps for base designs/Set for modification/repainting [100%]
• Maps re-painted/animated/and ready to implement [7/40]
• Overarching events/variables such as time passage, easy/medium/hard/nightmare mode set up for easy reference [15%]
• Challenge specific conditionals/success-failure switches and variables set up [0%]
• Custom Menu/in-game tools and resources made [0%]
• Dialogue/Written Content [0%]
• Logic Puzzles (need to calculate how many needed) [4 puzzles polished and ready for implementation]
• [NOTE TO SELF: update character cast + update progress percentage when you're ready to do ~math~]

FANART/FAN CREATIONS

• A drawing of Nico by Finnuval

 

Reposting this response here as requested!

@AmieLK You've got a lovely map there! You've got an issue with the new stuff not being cohesive with the other tiles, but I think one fix would be easy and make a huge difference. Well, it will if you have the file with all the layers intact, if you did destructive editing this will be harder. The original green stuff has a loooot of hue shifting and is very saturated. You can fix this in one of two ways. 1. Take that hue shifting and saturation down until it's in line with the rest of the assets. 2. Change everything else to have more hue shifting and saturation until it matches the new stuff. Personally, I think extreme hue shifting makes something look more fantastical or dream-like, and the one without would be more realistic and grounded. I made an edit to show what I mean.

Spoiler: Lowered hue shifting and saturation

View attachment 110760

Spoiler: Increased hue shifting and saturation

View attachment 110761

 

@Sharm Thank you kindly!! I appreciate it a bunch. Also, your art is fantastic. Spent a bit poking around and I loved it.

 

Aw, thanks! If the work on here is yours, you're quite skilled as well, I love the easy flow of the linework.

 

@Sharm It is mine, yes! Thank you, that's sweet of you! It's a strange transition to pixellated/heavily stylized work, that's for sure. Especially since I've been edging closer and closer to American Comic Book styles over the years. I definitely keep wavering on saturation the most. And living without heavy inking will be the cause of 90% of my grey hairs during this project, I swear.

 

If you're planning on doing parallax maps anyway, why not ditch the tiles and draw everything? Then you can play to your strengths and have all the lovely linework you want.

 

Mostly because I'm not sure my style would suit top-down. I think it would look janky rather than intentional. Which really only matters with the buildings, but. Enough that I thiiink it'd be distracting. I am trying to customize the tiles I do use, though.

But to be honest? I'm not sure. I keep wavering back and forth on it. What do you think?

 

I think you should do a trial map. I mean, your worry is that you don't know if your style will work with this or not. The only way to find out is to try it. But honestly, people really love original stuff, even if it's not great, which yours would be. Doing all original art will be a huge draw towards your game. I'm more about pixel than normal drawn stuff, but if you decide to make tiles in your art style and need help figuring out how to do that, I could help with that too. You can PM me or ask for help from everyone on the forums. The resource support section under general resources is a great place to do that, and a great place to find out if your art style is working on the maps or not.

 

Okay, yeah! I'll try a mock-up of the slums map today to see how it looks!

 

Three new bases for maps made! Gonna replace the current screenshots with these babies since I've decided to go with hand-drawn everything. These are just the bases for now--gotta spruce them up/paint'em/make them actually pretty lol. But critique and commentary is always welcome!

 

Some portraits done, plus Vita's sprite! Portraits are under the spoiler cuz they're BIG up close.

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Mika's portrait


And, of course, Vita's.

 

First draft stage of an official world map! Lots of changes coming soon. <3

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I absolutely love everything about this game and I can't wait to see more. I'll surely follow you for updates and I hope to see more of it soon, including possible concepts.

 

Aaaaaa! Thank you! I'm so glad to hear that! I'm working my way through basic maps at the minute so I can run collision tests before painting. I'll likely put a demo up for people to just walk around and see if anything looks funky! Then it's on to puzzle design, spriting, etc. It's gonna take a bit, but I hope it'll be worth it!! So thank you for following--it's very encouraging!

 

Another new map done!

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Aaaand more map-work~

Only 33 (external) maps to go. Whew.

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Last one in the list is an update, but hey. I'm pleased with it.

 

Cool! That's the way to go. Count on me for it.

 

Took a break from mapping to doodle out an art piece for one of Mika's potential LI's! still p rough and obviously not painted yet, but. It's new content and therefore exciting, right??? Right!

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slooowwwly finishing lineart for outside maps. If anyone says a peep about inside the houses/buildings at the minute, I can't promise I won't swoop in and smack'em. Don'T WaNNA tHINK aBOUT IT~

Been checking off the maps in my shoddy world-map for progress, too! It's satisfying to see the little green marks. and lots of the maps are just open scenery, too. Waayyy less work. I'm trying to get through the stuff with buildings/river/cliffs/etc first.

Spoiler: World Map + Ugly Notes and Crossed off Segments

Spoiler: Vita's house lineart!

 

I like the art so far!