Dragon Quest by Zathnic

[raw]
made by Zathnic for LD33 (JAM)
This game is an RPG based on leveling your skills, in which you play as a dragon hatchling who lives on a mountain with many other dragons. Your hatchling likes to explore around the mountain, or leave it to fly over the seas to other places, to find those precious rubies that are scattered around the land. But you are still young, and need to gain a lot of strength by training on weaker monsters before you can head off into the more distant, dangerous locations!

This game features a somewhat unique (inspired by Tibia) and rather interesting combat system based on attacking multiple monsters, running around avoiding them and breathing fire like a true dragon!

-----

Tools used:
Code: Java (eclipse), no libraries were used
Art: GraphicsGale, Paint.NET, MS Paint
No audio this time :3

Approximate coding time: ~50 hours (what!)
Pre-made assets used: none (aside for quick reference)
Small after-deadline bugfixes / balancing:
- Changed enemy respawn time from 5 seconds to 60 seconds
- Made defending much less and fire breathing a little less effective
- Increased some monster speeds
- Made combat a little stronger for the player only

I hope this game will not lag too much, because for some reasons that I don't quite understand this seems to be my most resource-intensive game so far. Tried optimizing it but couldn't find any code spots that looked too bad.

-----

Controls: Arrow Keys + Enter
You need to extract the game's folder somewhere to start.

Ratings

Coolness 93% 2
Overall(Jam) 2.73 925
Audio(Jam) 2.00 667
Fun(Jam) 2.47 939
Graphics(Jam) 3.00 701
Humor(Jam) 2.22 810
Innovation(Jam) 2.63 821
Mood(Jam) 2.69 836
Theme(Jam) 2.83 912

Feedback

TheRuseman
25. Aug 2015 · 01:07 UTC
Doesn't really fit the theme at all. Just because you're a dragon doesn't make you a monster. Game was pretty dull, and I feel it would be more fun if it wasn't centered on collecting rubies, but I liked the inclusion of RPG elements.
mryamz
25. Aug 2015 · 02:36 UTC
I think it's fun. It fits the theme. I like the art.
Caspila
25. Aug 2015 · 09:31 UTC
That's Tibia right there. Gameplay was a bit clunky, i hope there would be hotkeys to use each skill.

Good job anyways, you certainly got the Tibia feeling there. Great job for a jam!
DarthThomas
25. Aug 2015 · 10:09 UTC
Nice simple game.
DruhinM
25. Aug 2015 · 15:36 UTC
Simple game. Simple take on the theme
johnhattan
25. Aug 2015 · 16:45 UTC
It's a good start. The animation and scrolling is nice and smooth (on Windows 10 at least). It's definitely a good playground for adding more features and characters and sounds and such. As it stands, though, it's pretty minimal.
Gravity Games
25. Aug 2015 · 19:11 UTC
I frankly didn't find the game to be very fun. There really needs to be either some sort of hotkeys to allow you to attack faster, or the game needs to be turn based instead IMO. There was also quite a bit of screen tearing when the player character moved, you might want to look into that. I assume that it has to do with the way the drawing calls work. Also, I don't really see how it fits the theme, but maybe it's just because I didn't make it far enough.
dancingmad
26. Aug 2015 · 18:47 UTC
Enemies take soooo long to kill... The best strategy is to fly over a lake and breath file, but it takes 15-20 tries to kill them. Apart from that, it's pretty cool.
🎤 Zathnic
26. Aug 2015 · 21:21 UTC
About the theme: I agree that this game doesn't fit the theme very well, that's because I originally planned to give the game a "raid people for treasure" kind of feel, something like this: Dragons in the starting cave aren't actually aggressive, they live alongside each other and you may interact with them by asking them for food, or gift them food making it less likely for them to turn against you, or asking them to train your skills on them. Some of the dragons might become "traitors" and try to kill you, but mostly the cave would be harmless. Then you would raid out into the world trying to gather food and gemstones, and you might kill tens of people just trying to get a single ruby, making you quite the "monster" I didn't have time for this and went into a different direction with the game.

I actually liked the idea of having actions only accessible from the chatbar that you first need to open. I haven't played the "old" Tibia but I know that you had no hotkeys for potions or runes and you had to master your mouse skills to survive, an idea that I find quite fascinating. This reminds me of that: You cannot move when you have the actions opened, so you need to practise selecting the right action and closing the bar again quickly if you don't want to get hit too much. If I remade the game, I would think about adding hotkeys or a similar system though.

@dancingmad: True! I increased the strength of only the player a bit, not that much because the training aspect of this game is important, but it should be quite noticeable in the beginning.
tweedle
26. Aug 2015 · 23:28 UTC
I liked the simplicity of this game, and the turn based aspect of attacking. Super retro!
sorlok
27. Aug 2015 · 00:34 UTC
Very nice! I like how you can fly around (and some NPCs won't attack you while others will) and I liked the area-based combat. Found it very difficult not to die!
Mutt
27. Aug 2015 · 00:38 UTC
Yeeah, I'm the sideways dra-gon, doing my sideways thing!
Bitches I fly with my feet!
Uh, oh, the sideways people coming to get me!
BURN LITTLE SIDEWAYS PEOPLE BURN!
ripter
27. Aug 2015 · 00:39 UTC
The game play was preventative and boring. I think the theme was fine.
euske
27. Aug 2015 · 09:50 UTC
I collected 10 or so Rubies but eventually gave up. The knights are too strong.
MechanicMoon
27. Aug 2015 · 12:01 UTC
The idea (8 bits rpg game) is cool, but the gameplay is a combination of options-menu with real time.. that makes the combat a too hard experience. Maybe with a turn based combat the game would be more enjoyable ;-)
crucknuk
27. Aug 2015 · 22:16 UTC
Your game is really hard!
bradur
28. Aug 2015 · 15:03 UTC
Nice rpg system and world. Maybe bind the attacks / spells to keys since selecting the spells and then using them was quite tedious. Well done for 50 hours!
Vaiaphraim
28. Aug 2015 · 21:21 UTC
Wow, these controls... Really hard to get used to them. About the game itself... it's really easy to grind your skills against a single soldier, or maybe 2 civilians at the same time, but even then - if you venture out for rubies, you're really likely to get surrounded and trapped. I think a minimap would be great, too, so that you know where you yet have to search.
All in all, I think that it's an awesome concept, and with a bit of polish the game could get even more enjoyable!
Demy
29. Aug 2015 · 16:08 UTC
The story about dragon who found out that if you fly you can kill whoever you want just because they can't walk on water. Nice atmosphere, it feels like a standard RPG game.
HotBoxGames
29. Aug 2015 · 16:09 UTC
I've got to admit, the grainy texture on everything hurt my eyes after 10 minutes trying to focus on things.
Other than that, I enjoyed the challenge once I got the hang of what I had to do, good work!
Nurbs
03. Sep 2015 · 23:26 UTC
Didn't like that moving and using skills was mutually exclusive. Otherwise it's pretty okay. Pretty grindy.
nihilaleph
13. Sep 2015 · 22:53 UTC
Wow, such Tibia!
Interesting concept! It gets time to get use to combat, but I found really interesting. Just maybe not get the option always get back to >Do Nothing...
Graphics are really nice, so Tibia xp
It was really hard, you start so weak.... Couldn't get all the rubies ^^;
The theme link is a bit weak, but it still fits I think.
Anyway it was fun to play, great job!