Hermenegildo by Johnsensei
HERMENEGILDO is a top down 2D dungeon crawler created for the Ludum Dare 43 game jam. The theme of the jam was “Sacrifices must be made.” The game works in the opposite of traditional games where upgrades occur as the game progresses. In HERMENEGILDO, the player starts out fully upgraded and must sacrifice one upgrade at each step of game progression.
Team
John Gale - Programmer, Narrative
Michael Morrell - Music, Initial Idea
John Hellrung - Level Designer
Tools
RPG Maker MV - main game engine and art assets
Photo of San Hermenegildo from Wikipedia: By Francisco Herrera the Younger - [1], Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=259293
Orange HUD plugin by HUDell: https://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/index.php?threads/orange-hud.47186/ http://hudell.com/blog/mv-plugin-orange-hud/
Keep Title Music Plugin by pareidolon: https://rpgmaker.net/engines/rmmv/utilities/109/





| HTML5 (web) | https://johnsensei.itch.io/heremenegildo |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/hermenegildo |
Ratings
| Overall | 422th | 3.533⭐ | 17🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 594th | 3.167⭐ | 17🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 531th | 3.133⭐ | 17🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 154th | 4.033⭐ | 17🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 126th | 3.821⭐ | 16🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 154th | 3.656⭐ | 18🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 269th | 3.633⭐ | 17🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 13🗳️ | 17🗨️ |
1. Allows the player to skip the beginning tutorial and narrative sequence.
2. Adjusts the Max HP down to 100 for better game balance.
As with any game, there are still a bunch of things we wanted to do but didn't get to. There are about six actually:
1. Lantern effect when glasses are sacrificed.
2. Teleport to a random dungeon so that each playthrough is unique.
3. Custom windows and fonts.
4. Custom Game Over artwork.
5. Different facial expressions for character dialogue.
6. Be able to choose any piece of equipment to sacrifice in any order. This is the big one. It would require three more dungeons, and if my calculations are correct, around 6 to the sixth power variations in the character art.
But we achieved what we set out to do: make a complete game loop based on the theme by the end of the jam and hone our skills in doing so. Well done on that. See you all at Global Game Jam 2019.
Pros :
- Really nice writing : my main motivation throughout the game was to go forward to keep enjoying the story
- Thematically adequate take on the genre
- Using RPG Maker makes for a really polished experience (+ great use of included graphics)
- Great audio
Cons :
- Gameplay was a bit dull (still enjoyable thanks to the level design, but I wish there were some more things to do), but that's something I can't really criticize, as I've never been good at that sort of thing either.
All in all, excellent work !
Great introduction, good music and fun storyline. Well done! :smiley: