A Sworded Tale by Snowdrama
After uncovering an ancient evil and it's protector, they both escape their eternal imprisonment. Upon inspection of the wreckage of the stone prison. You find a Sword.
"Your presence has allowed my brother and I to escape. My brother is corrupted and needs to be stopped at all costs. I imprisoned him before along with myself acting as a guardian just in case he ever escaped again. My Centuries of slumber have left me weakened, I need to feed in order to maintain my strength. I sense my brother's presence, we must head to the volcano, inside is a temple where he will prepare the ritual to destroy the world as you know it! Quicly we haven't much time!"
Upon touching the sword, you begin to bleed but heal imediately.
"I have granted you blood magic, using this powerful technique, you can fight your way to my brother. Be careful however, as blood magic is both powerful and dangerous, Using it recklessly may cause your demise!"
You take the sword, and head off through the city.
Controls
Keyboard:
Arrow Keys: Movement
Space - Action
Left Alt - Cancel
Z/X: Zoom In/Out
C/V: Zoom In/Out
Gamepad:
Left Analog Stick: Movement
Right Analog Stick: Camera Zoom and Rotate
A/Cross - Action
B/Circle - Cancel
Snowdrama's Suggestion: Use A Controller
Ratings
| Overall | 902th | 2.91⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 869th | 2.737⭐ | 40🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 852th | 2.724⭐ | 40🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 476th | 3.526⭐ | 40🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 815th | 2.868⭐ | 40🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 425th | 3.197⭐ | 40🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 652th | 2.574⭐ | 36🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 633th | 3.176⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 39🗳️ | 39🗨️ |
Congrats for finishing everything. I liked the music a lot :musical_note: !
I can really feel the passion you put in that game. Keep up the good work !
@metalfox-dioxymore Thanks for the tip, I actually agree with you. We wanted more NPCs for example but unfortunately just ran out of time. It would've helped make the maps feel a little more lively.
I love the way the game looks, the 3d camera and world just feel really good to me.
Battle scene background doesn't quite match the perspective tho haha.
Amazing Game!
@dizzy Thank you!
@niborious Thanks! The plan was to have a 3D battle scene, but it was cut for time. I wanted to do camera pans and such as well and unfortunately that just never ended up happening.
@bendev-games Thank you! Yeah that was something I considered fixing It was originally SUPER fast so fast that you were almost twice as fast as enemies, If I speed the enemies up a bit, I think I can also make the player move a bit faster(I might sneak this into a 0.6 build in a few hours. Small buff to speed counts as fixing a bug to make the game playable right? Haha)
@miltonsilva Google translate did a pretty bad job with this one :/
@wheatleyscience Thanks! Yeah the project was super ambitious, so we didn't realize we wouldn't have enough time for all the content and such. There was so much more planned but it got cut to make sure we'd finish.
I would love to see some more cohesive art assets, making sure the style of the characters fits well within the environment. There is a lot of potential here so I hope you keep working on it!
I managed to find the dungeon, but died to a pesky monster. Some more variation would have been nice, but I understand that it was a challange with the time constraints. I especially liked the transitions between scenes, that was cool.
Keep it up!
Pros :
- "High" production values, with a true 3D JRPG feel
- Nice low poly graphics and character sprites
- Great soundtrack
- Blood-based mechanic totally fits the theme
Cons :
- Keyboard controls scheme id a little confusing... Players should take your controller advice at heart :)
- Slow text during dialogues
All in all, great work !
@popdaddygames Yeah we learned a ton! I only recently learned the tricks I used for the cutscene system. And this was my first time implementing them so there were some pitfalls I learned there.
@joramwolters Yeah haha super ambitious, thanks for playing!
@okuar Yeah I took the night after to sleep haha, I streamed for 13 hours that day so when I passed out at 5 am tuesday morning I was done for a bit haha
@johara-dutton that's an issue we definitely struggeled with, It was a challenge as we had a new artist on the team, and I did the 3D models this time(usually I only dabble in 2D and UI stuff) So there was lots of issues. I also struggled with texturing otherwise I could have had the models done and we could have gotten the battle scenes done in 3D which would have definitely helped with that. The enemies and characters were also done by different people so there's an even bigger disconnect. So I totally agree. Thanks for playing!
@tacohej Yeah same I wish there was more variation in enemies. I also wish there was more to the combat like experience or unlock-able skills but we definitely ran out of time for any of that.
I don't think I'd have done anything different per-se but I would put more focus on content and less on the environment, as good as the environment is, the hours I spent working on all the non essential models in the game could have been time working on scripting more dialogue, more NPCs, there was even supposed to be a second town between the dungeon and forest.
@jlv Thanks! We tried to give a psuedo-retro-modern hybrid feel, for example the music was inspired by Final Fantasy and Golden Sun. As for the controls I think personally I struggled finding one that works well. I mapped it to the default GBA emulator controls(at least VBA) ZX being the GBA AB buttons, and AS being the GBA left and right triggers. But yeah controller is definitely better haha. I also agree the text is super slow, I appreciate you pointing it out. I'll add that to the next patch to increase it a bunch.
@eddie-li Thanks! Yeah sorry the keyboard controls were kinda tough to figure out since we needed essentially 6 buttons and a d-pad. Apprecate the feedback though. We'll see if we can make it more bearable.
I like the visuals going on in this game. The 2D sprites in the 3D world actually fit in surprisingly nicely, and I like the transitions from roaming states to walking states.
I think this game could have benefited from a bit of tuning, though. The maps you roamed around it were way to big and sprawling, in my opinion. You probably could have just scaled everything down to half and it would have been much more digestible. Enemy spawns also seemed out of control and impossible to avoid, which is frustrating since, from what I could tell, there was no EXP or level up system, which meant that every battle only served to be a drain on my resources (namely my health). So unfortunately the combat mechanics and the roaming encounter mechanics were kind of at odds with each other, rather than working together to create a cohesive experience.
Despite all of that, though, this is very ambitious for what it is, and I'm impressed with what y'all have been able to accomplish in a short amount of time. I'm a big fan of the genre you decided to go with, so it was a pleasant surprise to see. :)
We definitely agree with the pacing. Movement could've sped up. We wanted to add an exp system, but as they say time got in the way. Maybe next time we decide to do a turn based rpg ;)
@ninnec Thank you! Yeah I totally get where people are coming from with it being kinda boring, the open world is cool and all but there's nothing there, so it becomes hard to want to explore anything. Hahaha I'm glad someone got a laugh from it!
@coleslaughter Thanks! We had a lot of stuff going on with the graphics there. For sure, the original plan was to hide skill stones, items and other things that gave the sprawling levels more purpose, unfortunately that ambition came with a cost, there just wasn't enough time for more content. I gave the enemies a speed buff in 0.6 because it was possible previously to just walk past everything skipping all combat entirely you walked twice as fast as the enemies so it was a cakewalk to avoid everything. We also buffed the healing on 0.6 and fixed a bug where you weren't actually healing but apparently that wasn't enough to make the combat easy enough. I also realized we didn't explain the health recovery well especially due to the tutorial being vague. I appreciate the feedback and thanks for playing!
@fzillo Thanks! I wish I had more time to create more NPCs and flesh out the world a bunch more. It was a struggle for sure, that ambition came at the cost of content sadly haha. Thanks for playing!
@mirsakka Yeah the keyboard controls definitely were a bit of a challenge because of the camera and such, Honestly, I totally understand why so many RPGs have fixed cameras or cameras that you can't directly influence. We worked super hard on the graphics and music so thank you!
I salute you for making an rpg in a game jam.
It really reminds me of early 3d rpgs and some of the adorable stuff they did. I like that the town is a painted picture of a town on a plain xD
@arron-fowler Where were you standing? The Camera system has some whisker raycasts that go from the camera to slightly left and right of the player that cause the camera to turn to prevent the player from being obstructed by buildings, trees etc. If you were standing in a corner somewhere that at no angle these raycasts weren't hit, it will spin until it finds a location where the raycasts aren't hit. Also did you have a controller hooked up. Some controllers cause issues as their analog mapping is different than the configured axis. It's possible that due to another input that isn't the keyboard, the other input method was constantly pressing the camera turn axis.