I’ve decided to stop about 2 hours before the end, mostly so I can rest a bit, and eat some food. There shouldn’t be any bugs, although the game balance still needs some work, and there really should be more monsters to fight (there’s only two here, and I don’t really have the time or skill to draw more)
Here for the game and source. Created in Windows with C++ and SDL. Good chance of working on other systems. Let me know.
There’s some simple sound effects created with sfxr. Basic controls are arrow keys to select a command, any other key will activate that command, escape exits the game. Advanced controls are listed in the readme (including save/load)
Cheezy graphics, but I'm guessing that is the point. Minimalist, in the sense that it does strip one element of the RPG genre down to it's bare minimum. This reminds me of one of the early games in the "Alone in the Dark" series ... it pretty much amounts to choosing attack or heal. Once you get enough XP and hit points, attack-attack-attack seems to work just fine, out to infinity. Increasing difficulty in monsters would make the progression harder. I'm not a huge fan of the 'hardcore' DnD-inspired RPG (although I do enjoy some roguelikes and some 'softcore' RPGs like Zelda) ... this game pretty much illustrates why.
Wiering nailed it for me with his comment, "I lost (or won?) several times, but I didn't have any idea what I was doing. Probably just not my type of game..."
Seeing the numbers underneath Magic and Heal, I thought they might level up at some point... so first I played just bashing things to death (like others, once I finally got past the "dead in 2 hits" stage, I wailed on the buttons using level-ups to heal me, until the numbers covered half the screen. Fun for all the same reasons RPGs always are!), then I started over and tried it with only magic attacks. Total failure. They don't get any stronger. That was very sad.
Anyway, minimizing an RPG down is a fun idea for this minimalist contest.
Had to replace all the backslashes in the file paths in main.cpp and gameObj.cpp with forward slashes to make it work in Linux (fyi, forward slashes in paths should work in Windows too), and it crashed when I attempted to go fullscreen, but other than that it seems to work.
The game doesn't seem finished though. Random RPG battles for battle's sake aren't usually my idea of fun in any case (needs story, or challenge, variety, etc), but it was sort of fun-ish in the beginning to do different things to avoid dying. However, it was pretty easy to get to the point where I could kill things in one hit and have no chance of ever dying again, and no different or stronger enemies appeared, but by that point I'd really lost interest anyway.
I never had use for potions, btw. I did try the magic attack a few times, but since it didn't seem much different from the regular attack I stopped using that to save the mp for healing in stead.
The balance is way off as as been said and the sound can get a tad annoying but I love the concept and to be honest I turned of the sound nd button bashed my way to a bottom screen full of numbers to the point of illegiblity :)
well, as others before have mentioned, seems games biggest problem was not having a chance to balance the play after the first few levels. Liked the sound effects chosen and seems like this minimal rpg battle type game would have some promise after another iteration.
Pretty neat idea, minimalization of an RPG battle. Way too easy though. There's a little bit of decent gameplay in the beginning, but after you get a few level ups you can just mash attack. The magic missile was useless after a few level ups also.
Pretty nice idea, but I had big trouble running the game. For some reason on my computer the game started crashing when the blue flan type monster came on the screen and/or I tried to heal. After that it wouldn't go past the title screen without crashing. :(
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Anyway, minimizing an RPG down is a fun idea for this minimalist contest.
The game doesn't seem finished though. Random RPG battles for battle's sake aren't usually my idea of fun in any case (needs story, or challenge, variety, etc), but it was sort of fun-ish in the beginning to do different things to avoid dying. However, it was pretty easy to get to the point where I could kill things in one hit and have no chance of ever dying again, and no different or stronger enemies appeared, but by that point I'd really lost interest anyway.
I never had use for potions, btw. I did try the magic attack a few times, but since it didn't seem much different from the regular attack I stopped using that to save the mp for healing in stead.
So, Attack and Heal are the only useful things, and after a while Attack is enough.
Spent more time on it than I would have thought though. Easy leveling is always fun.