Welcome to The Bards Tale, a story of a mighty prince, Matis, seeking to marry a princess and unite two major powers under a commonwealth: The Rudawa and Arcadia Kingdoms! Everything is fine until a sorceress puts him in a time loop the day before his wedding, hoping he will perish, breaking the bond. Can you help Matis escape his fate and restore order to the medieval kingdoms of Rudawa and Arcadia?
In this game you have a time limit to complete the story or the day is reset. You will get reset a couple of times which is absolutely normal as the game relies on you remembering how to perform tasks, in order to complete it faster. That is how I implemented the theme of "stuck in a loop".
@jegus9 Thanks so much! :smile: I really appreciate that you enjoyed my music and most importantly the art which took a lot of time so I'm glad it paid off!
Now the blank box would usually have resolutions in it but since you played the web build it cannot access monitor resolutions and leaves it blank, not sure how to fix yet. :laughing:
As for the items, I could not replicate them respawning when leaving the room only when the player runs out of time (which I should have stated in the game) and loops back to the start of the day (hence the theme) but I will look into it a bit more to try and come up with a fix but it may just be the buggy web build which I need to take down.
Finally, yes, the dialougue should have come up without typing as it does take a while sometimes. Also the story dialogue takes forever to kick in (like 3 or so seconds) which is also not ideal.
Glad you spent some time checking it out and good luck in the jam! :slight_smile:
Nice! Would definitely say that if the player is directed to the inn, only having one inn would likely be good as that was confusing. Like the take on the theme, though.
This was a fun little game. The music was pretty good and it was very simple and had a decent story. The artwork was pretty cool too. Theme was well executed too. I'd love to see what this would be like if it was a more fleshed out product. I think you have a great idea here! Keep up the good work!
Looks great! I think the tiling on some of the background could be toned down a bit as it's a bit high contrast and busy, but I like the color palette and general art direction. Great work!
Music is awesome. You are really great composer. Eventhough I am not a big fan rpg games I have spent lots of time playing your game and had fun. Very good entry for a 48h compo game.
I'm very happy that you enjoyed the game and creative direction I went for. The 48h time limit really was tough as I had to rush the finished product and not expand the quests to be more interesting than just fetching but I definitely want to bring out some updates post jam to fleshen out the game a bit.
@dharby Thank you very much! I spent a good while on the art so I am extremely happy you like it! :smile: I agree some tiles are very high contrast like the bricks for example but I'm hopefully improving over time haha.
@rgilpt Thank you! :smile: I really appreciate you like my work, I am so happy those 2 very long days were spent well! Honestly, the theme idea came to me randomly and I though it was alright but nothing special so I am over the moon that so many of you like it!
@tayfun Thank you, you are too kind! :smile: I really appreciate you spent some time on my little project, I never knew others would enjoy it as much as I do so thanks for being part of it! I really cannot express how much this means to me! Enjoy the rest of the jam! :joystick:
In the story of the game, when explaining the dude's curse, it says "He must relieve the past day" Just a heads up, you might want to spellcheck stuff in the future, I know I've made my fair share of typos in LD games in the past. Neat game! I wish there was a timer somewhere to let the player know when the day was going to loop. Great work!
@blobo :smile: 8h sleep for 2 days had its toll on me, I'm surprised that was the only one. Oh and I just ran out of time to add a timer, everything is set up for it too! I am very happy you liked the game though and thanks for the feedback! :smiley:
Not a bad game! I was able to beat it with only resetting once, which was good, because I really didn't want to have to do the first set of things a third time ^_^. The inconsistent use of keyboard/mouse bothered me - I pressed E to start talking to someone, and then pressed E again thinking it would advance the dialog, but I guess it started a new dialog and/or reset the current one to the beginning, too me a while to realize I had to use the mouse to advance! A timer would have been nice. I liked the style of the art and the music fit very nicely.
@Jimbly Thanks, glad you enjoyed! The repetition is intentional as part of the theme but I do see why it would get a bit irritating. :smile: As for the mouse controls, I definitely agree with more keyboard control over the mouse, I will work on that post jam for sure, thanks! The timer idea was in the mix but I just ran out of time to implement it! :sweat_smile: I'm very happy you liked the art and music too, it was something I worked a while on.
Hi. Great job on the story ! When i reset the day, controls are broken :(. I try to return to menu and launch the game again, but i've got the sound in twice. Anyway, concept is clear, music fit nice and story is cool. Good job.
@fax Glady you like it! I am very sorry that the controls broke and the music duplicated. I will definitely look into it as I have not ran into these problems yet so thank you for letting me know! :smiley: I hope the experience was not all buggy. :sweat_smile:
There's a fair bit of polish in this game given it's made over a weekend, and I really got into the story, so I think you've accomplished something pretty great with this. Solid entry, good time had.
@judgezedd Thank you so much, I am so happy the story was enticing and you enjoyed the experience! :smiley: A lot of work went into this so I am over the moon that you liked what I made. The polish still needs polishing though, especially UI! :smile:
@leora Thank you! Glad you like the art, it took a long time! :sweat_smile: I am sorry the inputs bugged out, I will definitely fix that post jam so thanks for pointing it out. :slight_smile:
This is an ambitious scope for a weekend jam, and I think that's the game's biggest weakness. For all of the time that must have gone into making the art and setting up the story, the gameplay isn't much more than a series of fetch quests.
@john-gabriel yeah the art and story took a while though for the 2 days I didn't really know what else to implement apart from some fetch quests. :sweat_smile: Definitely would be better to to have other quests though I agree, maybe some puzzles?
I loved the art and music. I didn't love the way the dialog text scrolled out of the center of the box, though. That caused the letters to slide around as they filled in, making it very hard to read until it finished. For animated dialog fill, it's better to use left-aligned text so that the letters stay in place as they're added.
I really liked the art style and the music fits the game nicely. Sometimes I had to press the E button multiple times before the dialogue popped up which was a bit weird but overall a really solid entry! great job
Really fun game! The artstyle and the music are both cute and well-suited for it and the concept is great, even if a bit frustrating at times. As others have said I didn't love the text, I think a classic rpg style would have suited it a little better. Overall great job!
Ah man I tried to get this one working, but I couldn't get past the story text after going into the building. Just kept freezing on me at that point sorry.
@pizzasgood Thank you, glad you enjoyed! :smiley: I agree with you about the dialogue its kinda trippy. :smile: I was thinking to even delete the effect because the game is time based. Thanks for checking it out!
@bredera Thank you very much, I worked hard to make it visually appealing! :smiley: As for the E interactions, they seem to be a bit slow on some runs and I'm not sure why. It was my first time doing dialogue though so I definitely will try and polish my skills. :smile: Happy jamming!
@lid Thank you very much, it means a lot! :smiley: I really wish I had implemented a day timer to give the player a better experience and some idea of how long they have left. Also, I agree about the dialogue. Will definitely be removing the typing of the letters to give it a better feel.
@letterafterz I apologise for that. I have not seen that error yet, all I know is that the story text stays around for a short while (10-30s I can't remember) before letting you play the main game. I have just released proper Mac and Linux releases if that would help (I did not realise the others were not suitable). Hope it works if you give it another go! :slight_smile:
I liked it! The music was on point, the graphics were perfectly fitting, the theme was there, it was interesting, it was funny...
But it was way too simple, I only had to loop once. By the way, a way to track how far along the loop you are and an animation when looped would have helped a lot. I feel like it was your main mechanic, so it would deserve more polish.
I liked the art and music of the game. As for the story, I think it fits the theme pretty well. For the gameplay, it is pretty basic but I still enjoyed it. Though for certain things like the UI, it was kinda slow, but that you have already mentioned in your game description.
One thing I would like to point out, is that during the end part when we are talking to the sorceress, the game resets again to a earlier stage. But this time the character isn't able to move. So I have to restart the game again. Though on the plus side when restarting the game, it looks like the game data is saved, so I have repeat all tasks only once. Thus, after two restarts, I was finally able to finish the game.
But anyways, I really liked the pixel art, music and story of the game. The gameplay was pretty basic but still I liked the resetting of the days. A chill and relaxing game, I liked it.
@greytyphoon Thank you very much! :smiley: I am happy it was a good experience. As for polish yep definitely needs a lot more. I was meant to have a timer which tells you how long till a reset but I could not finish implementing it before the deadline. I see what you mean with Half-Minute Hero, I have not heard of it it but looking at the steam page really does bring about similarities. :smile:
@skyvastern Thanks so much batman! I am so happy you enjoyed it and got to the end! :smiley: I have to thank you for the bug report too as I just realised what it would be. The game resets you but since you were interacting the game has its player controls jammed so you cant walk away from the interaction making it impossible to move. :smile: Gotta fix that after the voting period. Happy jamming!
first thing i noticed was the soundtrack was simple but very fitting to the environment, and art-wise, you are onto something.
i explored the "settings" tab and it seems there is an weird empty drop down there?
also, items laying on the ground seem to respawn once you leave the room.
last thing to mention is that the fading of the dialogue is fancy, but kinda slowish.
anyway good work and keep it up!