[Unfinished Project] Geistritter: Machinendrachen Arc
Lt. Luminia of the Imperial Katzenreich Army was sent to the city of Ostkatzen, the easternmost city of Katzenreich - which also happens to be Luminia's hometown. Find out what calamity awaits Luminia and her town.
I must say I really messed up this jam... This is the first time I made a game of this size - I have only made mini games for game jams that are 2-7 days long before.
In the two months that I was given I couldn't manage my time well at all - the first two weeks I spent my time barely doing anything, then for the next four weeks I worked at a very slow rate. As a result this game was submitted in an unfinished state.
I was aiming for lore heavy action platformer JRPG, so when I realized I had messed up my time management, I focused all my efforts into the story and NPC dialogues. As a result, the story is finished and you can play from the beginning to end, has got HP power ups, armours, treasure chests, potions, and the NPCs change dialogues -- but the dungeons themselves still have no enemies and only two (out of the planned five) boss fights were done. Also you can't save - though I reckon you need it when playing/testing considering this game is only about 30 minutes long.
Control:
WSAD: move and interact
LMouse Click: attack
Esc: Pause/Inventory
I humbly submit this game. Please enjoy and thanks for playing :)
P.S.: Please let me know if you find any bugs. I have playtested it from start to finish and debugged some obvious issues, but I'm not sure if I had managed to debug them all.
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I'm a game developer of The Quiz. You won 1st place of Music category because I refuse Music category to win for my game. I apology to the category winner and I never won 1st place of Music category because there's no music of my game.
I understand. Personally I also feel unworthy of becoming the winner of music category since I am very amateur in music composition.
Though does it matter who won...? I mean... that was just a small game jam with only quite few submissions iirc...
I know you're too good to make music. You're the winner of Music Category of Summer RPG Game jam
Hey there! I see you are continuing your characters' stories as well. An RPG of this scope is quite a bit to take on, so what you have finished is pretty impressive.
The game gives me a Zelda 2 (NES) feel, which is a good thing! I like the overall look of the clean graphics, especially in the town. Luminia's attack animations look pretty good too. I can tell you focused on the story and dialogue, there is quite a bit of it! I tried to make sure I found all of it across town and throughout the game. You definitely succeeded in creating a game that gives off a JRPG feeling!
The only bug I think I encountered was a small one. The door on the wall in the blacksmith's house is in the foreground, not the background as I think it's supposed to be. Your character is blocked by it if you walk over it.
For suggestions/critiques, I won't focus on things that were obviously due to running out of time. I do have a couple suggestions based on what is there though.
First, I'd love to see the jump revised a little! An animation, or even still jump frame, would sell it better. It seems a little slippery on the landing, and it's also really high. I know you need that for some of the levels, but that brings me to my next suggestion.
Second, I think the levels could be compacted a bit. They are really huge. And mostly empty. I know enemies would make this better (which you didn't get to add), but I still think it doesn't need to be such a giant layout. Shrink the whole layout a bit, and make the player's jump smaller, and I think it would be an improvement. The caves in general really frustrated me. Huge, mostly empty, and confusing. I was right about to quit when I finally stumbled onto the door. (Believe me, I understand level design is tough... when making Escape from Magic Reform School I had a really hard time building the level out. I WAY underestimated the amount of time and practice it takes to make a satisfying, good looking level.)
Third, I'd love to see smoother action. The attacks look nice, but freeze the character to some degree. Maybe some limited ability to continue controlling movement while attacking could make it feel better.
Ok, I said I wouldn't bring up unfinished things, but I must say, that boss music started and I was *hyped* for that final battle! And then THAT dialogue popped up. Doh! haha.
Anyway, very solid start to a bigger game! You clearly have a lot of ideas for these characters and world, and I'd love to see you continue to work on this. At the very least, I'm interested to see what's next for these characters. Despite my critiques, I did enjoy playing through this. Nice work!
Hello. Thanks for taking the time to test the game. And very big thanks to the constructive criticisms - I really appreciate it. The improvements I made in this game compared to my previous similar ones are all thanks to the criticisms you and some others gave for the small ones I made for the Weekly Game Jams.
The door bug in the blacksmith's house... damn that is so embarrassing to say the least - I actually noticed that but forgot to fix it.
And then about your suggestions: For the jump frame I will make sure to add it if I make future games as sequels continuing this. I had been considering that too
The level and jump height... I know exactly how to fix both of those issues for future games, but for this already made ones... I think it's already too late to implement the solution I had in mind. The issue is that I made the tile way too big. The character's height is 64px and I make the tiles also 64px×64px. When designing the levels I noticed the issue but it was already too late. Had I made the tiles 32×32 I could've made the levels smaller with no freedom loss. Also I'm sure I will also add double jumping/wall jumping in future sequels to compensate for lower jump height necessary for better feel of this genre.
For your suggestion on attack I think I know an easy way to fix it: I'll make the post-attack freeze slightly shorter in future sequels/update (can't update until rating is over)
Yeaaah totally sorry for the final boss. Forget the fight itself, I didn't have enough time to even make the idle animation :(
Anyway thanks for playing and I'm glad you enjoyed it - tho I kinda hoped you got some of the references I put into the NPC dialogues XD
I think 32x32 tiles would be much better! It would allow smaller, more detailed levels. Definitely worth exploring in future games. Yes, I did notice many of the references in the dialogue. :)