Tearful Heart Retrospective
This time around I didn’t included any items of equip because I felt like a short experience like this game wouldn’t need them and they would be a distraction for the player, and me trying to design them. But wat if those kind of rewards are actually beneficial for the player? what if those rewards don’t need to be actual of any value for the player to enjoy them? Like when Diablo shower the players with gray/green items or gold just because it’s fun fun to get stuff? And what if instead those reward would actually be impactful and reward the player who gets them with something game changing? like some equip that would change in interesting way the game balance or how the battle system works?
too much degenerated strategies (but prolly wasn’t completely obvious and most players dint’ noticed it)
but beside that I think that most skills were pretty useless (not even situational)
it was pretty clear which skills were the best for your bucks in term of ’tears’ energy / turns
Haven’t had too much views/plays on my Itch.io page outside the Reddit ads period. The game “creatives(?)” and screenshots (and probably even the game itself) are just not interesting enough to warrant plays from rando on Itch.io
‘cry’ was kinda op. not much risk in using it so kinda like a no brainer using all your tears in one turn and at the end of that turn just cry to recover all your power
i think the story came out ok but I had some improvements and new scenes that I couln’t add because I made most of the assets on the fly (even before refining story/dialogues) and changing them/creating new ones was super costly
gfx custom 100% except some skill effects that are edit form mv built in animations
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Push Golf and the Unreal Engine 5 Petit Contest: From Nostalgia to a Game Jam (Part 1)2021-09-21 RPG-2021-b: It’s time to start sketching this game’s characters. I had this idea that instead of having a village of Onion People, we can have only two: An Onion Man (Cipaul) father of an Onion Girl (Cipoulette). They both live alone in the center of the wetlands. Cipaul’s wife is dead or missing so they live only the two of them alone in a house on the river. Since it’s raining nonstop for months now, Cipoulette is molding (Black Curse) and bedridden. Cipaul is really worried and he’s trying to find a cure. After trying out a few things, he finds out that eating mushroom soup seems to alleviate the symptoms. Unfortunately, those mushrooms are not so easy to find and Cipaul spends most of his day looking for them in the Wet Rivers. One day he’s out looking for mushrooms and he finds The Kid unconscious somewhere. Maybe in the Wet Lands grotto? And maybe the Grotto’s boss is a Ghost Pirate? Too cheesy perhaps? It’ll be just hinted at in the game (not explained in a clear way) but the Mushroom Soup it’s just a placebo, it’s not really a cure for the Black Course (mold). Also, at the end of the game is revealed that Cipaul is also molding. Cipaul is early-stage molding while Cipoulette is mid/terminal… Wow, this is really sad…
2021-09-24 Thinking real hard at RPG-2021-b’s battle system. What can I do to improve it? Right now the only way to recover ‘Energy’ is to use the ‘Guard’ command. Doing so it ends a turn and recovers +1 Energy. Feels kinda crappy to not be able to do > 1 energy ‘skill’ moves unless you start spamming guard. I have this idea of introducing a new command called ‘Cry’. This command will end the turn but give you back all your Energy. There’s a catch tho. If you ended your turn using ‘Cry’ your unit will wake more damage until the start of the next turn. ‘Guard’, instead, won’t recover any energy but increase your def until the next turn. I was also thinking about giving a free energy pass for the enemies, like, their base attack will require 0 energy (just like Kirara Fantasia). I don’t know tho, It may seem strange to the player. Only playtesting will tell…
2021-09-25 Serendipity: people don’t understand what they cannot see. WYSIATI. And that’s true for game mechanics also. You can’t expect a player to understand some hidden rando mechanics you have put in your game. #gamedev #realization #serendipity RPG-2021-b: I needed to tweak enemies battler rules & behaviors. For example, right now an enemy can randomly decide to use all his Energy and attack multiple times or guard or whatever. Wouldn’t it be better if his behavior was a little more predictable? For example, the enemy could only attack 1 time per turn (action attack) and accumulate Energy. When he has accumulated enough he uses it and that’s it (like Kirara Fantasia). So I worked my ass off and created the Battle System Prototype v2 I’m happy with Battle System v2 so far. Especially since I managed to pull it off in less than a day. Changes:
- [Enemies] Basic Attack doesn’t require Energy
- [Enemies] 1 action per round
- [Enemies] Never Guard or Cry
- [Enemies] Skill priority System
- [Party] 100% Working Guard skill
- [Party] 100% Working Cry skill This is huge, now the enemies are faster and their turn takes less time (only 1 action per enemy per round). Also, their behavior is more consistent since I changed the Skill priority system (called Skill Rating in vanilla MV) to my likings. I also come up with some more interesting skills (on Google Sheet) which I can’t wait to implement and test in-engine.
2021-09-26 Then I realized that I wanted to really simplify the game experience so I’ve hidden every stat except for HP/Energy(MP)/Attack/Defense. Then I got inspired to simplify the game: no restorative items & no full restore places(like beds, inns, offspring, etc). I want the player experience to be as streamlined as possible. This is only a 30-minute demo after all. I don’t want the player losing himself in details or stupid menus. So I made that the party gets full HP/Energy(MP) after every battle, like FF13. So since there are no restorative items, maybe we should also remove weapons & equips? I removed the Item/Equip/Formation from the menu. Now the game is simpler and more focused. Of course, for a longer experience, equipable stuff would be great but this is a really short one so why bother. Since stuff like Magic Attack & Magic Defence are no longer visible to the player, I changed the spells formulas to use regular Attack & Magic instead. Looks good so far, I need to playtest and tweak the encounters more to check if Battle System v2 is really fun or not.
2021-10-04 Good progress RPG-2021-b. I’m working on the Prison Dungeon tileset and as always, once I get started, pixeling is a lot of fun. Man, I fucking love doing art. I want to be a game artist. If not a career artist, at least as a hobby or indie. I’ve done the floor and one kind of wall. I’m kinda pleased with the results so far but there’s still a TON to do.
2021-10-06 RPG-2021-b: I’m starting working on the player sprite. I want to have at least The Onion Man sprite (4 directions plus rough animation if possible) before making other tilesets. I just sketched it with Aseprite but it’s going to take a few tries before producing something that I really like. Also, man 24x24 pixels is tiny. I may get away with it for The Onion Man but I decided that the Kid is going to be 24x48 pixels.