We finally packaged the game for Windows ! You can download it below.
WARNING: If the game complain about missing "vcruntime140.dll", you must install the "Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2015" (x86). For this, you must execute "vc_redist.x86.exe" wich is provided with the game if you chose the first link, or download in there: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=48145
"I am Akhua of Normood ! And you... you killed my brother, prepare to die !"
First off, a little bit of fluff :
Ten years ago, the dark forces of evil gathered over the world of Gaea. Nobody dared to stand and fight for their freedom. The world was falling into darkness...
Until a simple man, now known all over Gaea, stood to defeat the dark forces. His entire village had been set on fire, his parents murdered and his little sister kidnapped. He fought to save her, and sent back Lord Draegerorn into the darkness. The Great Hero Talgarr then returned to his village, rebuilt it and lived peacefully with his little sister Ahkua.
The years passed quietly, and Ahkua grew to become a beautiful and strong woman. She and her brother healed their wounds, and turned themselves towards the future...
But the forces of evil had never vanished. They merely waited for the right time to reappear and take revenge against the world. They attacked the village and murdered the Great Hero Talgarr. Lord Draegerorn thought him to be the only barrier to his domination over Gaea. When she came back from her training, Akhua found the dead body of her brother. Thus, she took his sword and swore to avenge him and kill Lord Draegerorn.
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In our game you will play, obviously, as the Dark Lord Draegerorn. A group of adventurers will come to defeat you. They are ill-prepared, and will certainly fall swiftly under your mighty blows...
...however, this is no mere dark fantasy story. This bland universe you live in happens to be that of a hastily-crafted JRPG. And thus, before you get the chance to gloat over the dead bodies of your fallen enemies, the player will reload the game. He will head to GameFAQ and learn a couple new tricks to improve, farm up his party for a while, then head over to your dungeon and try again. And again. And again... eventually, with no auto-levelling or fancy glitch left to help you, his powers and skill will outmatch you. Your goal is to delay the inevitable for as long as you are able, killing and hurting PCs, and frustrating the player into making more mistakes until he just mashes the attack button and faces yet another Total Party Kill.
Just like most every boss since the dawn of video games, the PCs only see a chunk of your actual health bar. Your true form will unveil, and your powers will grow twice before the players can finally kill you.
In combat, you have access to several curses : you can strike a single player, cripple them (possibly preventing physical combat techniques) or drain their soul (depleting their mana and possibly disabling their spells altogether).
As your draconic form becomes revealed, you become able to switch your active element. Elemental strikes and storms will deal more damage, and you will grow immune to your current element. However, the opposite element (thunder vs. acid and fire vs. frost) will hurt you more in return. (For example, if you switch to thunder, you will inflict more damage to unshielded PCs ; their thunder spells won't affect you, fire and frost will deal normal damage, but acid will hurt you a lot more.)
Finally, additional curses will unlock, allowing you to slow all players by turning the arena into a pit of mud, or use vorpal strikes that deal lower damage, but have a chance to decapitate your target, killing them instantly.
But remember : after each party wipe, your enemy will reload the game, and reappear with more experience and improved strategies...
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Technical information : as of now, the game is only tested to compile and work under GNU/Linux. The C++ sources should compile under Windows, but this is not tested yet.
We will try to provide binaries for both these OSes shortly - in the meantime, GitHub hosts the source which should compile with cmake+make. Sorry for the inconvenience ! :)
The lair library required by the game is also hosted on Draklaw's GH.
It's a shame that you didn't fully export the game, it looks brilliant. I'll come back if and when you manage to create a proper exe file. I see the game has some good lore behind it and certainly has the potential for a great game.
Looks nice, but given that we're all looking at dozens of games, building one from source isn't going to happen. Looks like you've put some time into this so I'll check back later in the voting period.
Nice game! Really liked the JRPG style! Graphics are nice but I miss some more visual feedback, or some animation... Music and sfx are fun ^^ Also very cleaver to make the same party attack you over and over xp The Storm curse always hits everybody, including dead chars, so every time you cast Storm you can hear the dyeing sfx xp Anyway great job!
Very cool idea. It feels like maybe you didn't have time to implement it fully though? The strategy of the heroes never seemed to change, they just dealt more and more damage, and had more and more HP. No one ever cast any spells for instance, so soul drain seemed useless. Maybe I didn't make it far enough but... not really sure what I could have done to survive longer.
Also, the damage numbers really need to be more visible... or maybe also include them in the attack description text ("Ahkua attacks for 50 damage", etc.).
Anyway, I really like the idea of a jRPG villain simulator though, nice work.
Given that this is a jam entry and there is only one thing going on, the bugs stand out for me. Dead characters are affected by multi-affect spells, Storm killed a character but his sprite remained; when defeated, the next party was already visible while it said "They were never seen again", and the text used male pronouns for clearly female characters.
I think what is missing is one or more of the following: - a set of graphics/animations for the various attacks; - actual strategies employed by the heroes. Now it's mostly mash-until-dead behaviour; - Visualised status effects, maybe even some cross-hero banter in text balloons.
It feels like you ran out of time, a post-compo version would be cool to see, keep going!
Comments10
The Storm curse always hits everybody, including dead chars, so every time you cast Storm you can hear the dyeing sfx xp
Anyway great job!
Also, the damage numbers really need to be more visible... or maybe also include them in the attack description text ("Ahkua attacks for 50 damage", etc.).
Anyway, I really like the idea of a jRPG villain simulator though, nice work.
I think what is missing is one or more of the following: - a set of graphics/animations for the various attacks; - actual strategies employed by the heroes. Now it's mostly mash-until-dead behaviour; - Visualised status effects, maybe even some cross-hero banter in text balloons.
It feels like you ran out of time, a post-compo version would be cool to see, keep going!