Crystal of Destiny [IIAW4 Winner]

[DrassRay-Jacob 183]

Though the comet in the sky has been around for ages, the majority of people on the planet do not realize it is headed their way. Soral, an orphan boy who was rescued by a lonely old man in the woods, has been having visions of the event. During a hunt, he happens upon a princess, named Leanne, who knows of a powerful crystal that could very well be the key to saving the planet.

Characters:

Screenshots:

Animated Battlers:

Main Characters:

Created by RLMurphey
Enemies:


Battler Art by Vibrato
Animations by JacobM

Download Demo 15-30min of Gameplay.

This is the Indie in a Week entry version that has been updated with more skills, enemies, and various fixes.
Let me know what you think! Development will continue on this project!


The graphics are pre-rendered 3D backgrounds using the Ancient Dungeon Tileset as textures. The trees are the only thing that I made the textures for.

I am currently in the process of creating my own custom textures and having custom charcter battlers made for me as well by RLMurphey. 

 

Credits:

Story:

Jacob Mann


Music:
Jacob Mann
Enterbrain


Prerendered 3D models:
Jacob Mann
Ancient Dungeon Tileset: Celianna
RTP: Enterbrain

Animations:
Timmah
RTP: Enterbrain

Scripts:

Quasi
Moghunter
Yanfly
Aramis-IX
Galv
Kaus

Enemy Battlers:
Vibrato

Animated Hero Battlers:
RLMurphey

Faces:
Ruruga
http://fayforest.sakura.ne.jp/

Naramura
http://naramura.sakura.ne.jp/

Special Thanks:

For the contest: Jackus
For feedback:

HuntingSwan

Yuugami

KaisoAri

Whiona

Edited June 30, 2016 by JacobM

[Seriel 830]

Yay! This looks like a great game, yet I haven't actually got to play it since that one time my computer threw a fit at it because it's MV xD

 

I will certainly play it soon, it looks promising!

 

I hope you had fun with the contest!

[Tsarmina 2,612]

I love the 3D rendering! It's very well executed and looks appropriate for this situation c:

[Whiona 310]

Wow, it's very neat how you did those maps! Good luck continuing with this. I'll try playing the demo sometime, but I have quite a backlog of RM games to check out, so it might take a bit...sorry.

[DrassRay-Jacob 183]

@Jackus - sounds good to me, and ya I had fun, just catching up on sleep now

@Tsarmina - Thank you!!  

@Whiona - Thank you, and awesome, can't wait to see what you think. I should mention the game in it's current state should only take you about 20 min to beat, so if you are looking for a quick game to play, this would be one of those.

[+ Takeo212 1,079]

Firstly, those graphics looks so unique and weirdly amazing.

I am gonna give this ago tomorrow (I like the mix of resources too. Really makes use of the arsenal!)

 

Secondly, I love her name Leanne is totally the best name ever~ hehehe

[Nirwanda 323]

Cool new additions, Jacob. The extra difficulty makes things more interesting and the surprise at the end was really neat. BTW I found a typo, Leanne calls knight guy bodygaurd.

Keep up the good work and good luck with the project.

Edited June 3, 2016 by Nirwanda

[DrassRay-Jacob 183]

@Takeo212 awesome! Thank you. The art style was a trial of sorts. I'm glad it worked out! I eagerly await your feedback.

 

@Nirwanda Thank you! I'm glad you liked the changes. I hope I may continue to please!

[+ Asharonapaul 276]

is this a matter of fact mr jeli?

[Rikifive 3,411]

It's a nice game considering, that it was made in such a short period of time.

 

3D rendering is a really nice touch and the effects look amazing. However, sometimes the perspective/scaling gets really weird. Some maps are handling that pretty well, but some are leaving the character nearly as big as the tree etc.. Larger maps seem to be not a good idea with that perspective, but despite that it was really done well. If you could add scaling the character with distance ~ then it would be perfect.

Aaaaaanyway, that was still much better than the default RTP maps and the quality and details in general were high. Great work with these.

 

As for the plot and stuff like this ~ it all was pretty chaotic to be honest ~ events weren't nicely connected~ It definitely would need more work, but I understand that since I know, that the time was heavily limited.

 

So, as for a game made in a week this is really well done ~ there's effort visible and that's good. ^^

[DrassRay-Jacob 183]

@Shejookie (chungsie)

 

Yup! =P

 

@Riki! 

Thank you very much! Indeed the perspective for me is the LARGEST issue. As I get better at it I feel like it will only get better and better. It will just take time to develop those skills. 
As far as the story, I completely agree... it's disjointed in a lot of ways mainly because of the time limit.

I plan on having the intro be a dual start option, you can start with either character but eventually, you'll see how she ended up in the woods as well as how he found her. There's a lot of points to cover but I do hope I can make a more fluid story flow as I continue!

[+ Asharonapaul 276]

you should feature your wicked art for sure. also, do you have any killer bees as enemies? or even big mean bears?

[DrassRay-Jacob 183]

@chungsie

 

The plan is to have custom textures. As nice as the ancient dungeon tileset is, I chose it to save time for the contest. Having custom higher res textures will really make this project shine. That is something I can do. As far as enemies I know how to alter pixel art but I'm not great at making it from scratch. That being said I do know some good options and I think a killer bee or bear is totally doable for the future of this project. Thanks for the suggestions.

 

Edit: also I hope to have fully animated enemies and plan to experiment with that. Yanfly's action sequences make it really fun and interesting to make such things.

Edited June 4, 2016 by JacobM

[Tarq 746]

Hey JacobM, I just finished playing the entry you submitted and thought you'd like some feedback, although you sound like you've kept working on it so how much of this is still relevant I can't say.

 

First of all, loved it! It walks the line of convention really well and felt like an old classic.

I don't mind the whole 2D on 3D mishmash thing, if anything I quite enjoy it. Would have liked to see a little more detail in the maps though.

The saving crystals are a little redundant with a save option in the menu.

The cb was perhaps a touch easy but reasonably well-balanced. The turn announcer in the corner was nice touch.

 

The only bug I found was a doozy, I'm afraid; the tnt didn't add to my inventory and I was softlocked out of the game!

 

Anyways, like said, I really enjoyed what I got to play so I hope you do keep working on it

[+ Asharonapaul 276]

well I suppose it depends on what lands the game takes place in. if it were a cave in the Carolinas for instance, killer bees would be in the surrounding mountains, and just about anywhere with mountains would have some sort of bear den. naturally there is the classic rtp bat for caves with ace.

[DrassRay-Jacob 183]

@tarq

Thanks for playing! In the updated version of the demo there is no tnt. But instead, you do have to craft a bomb in the crafting menu and the demo is available on the OP. It will require a replay and if you played the original entry I've made the battles a little tougher since then.thank you very much for the feedback! I do plan on continuing the game and actually have some updates to share in the near future.

 

@chungsie

You crack me up. I really dont have too many ideas as to the "lands" you'll traverse, put I've joined forces with a buddy of mine and we are planning things out!

[+ Asharonapaul 276]

hey now, my jokes aren't free. I demand tribute in the form of someone's free resources... specifically npc ships lol

[Yuugami 252]

Since Jacob was nice enough to export a Mac version of the game for me to play, I will do him the favor of sodomizing his game while stroking its head lovingly, or something sick like that. I will also separate the criticisms and stuff, for better organization, especially since I wrote a messy laundry list on paper when I was playing through it.

 

Dialogue/Storytelling

 

 

1) The introductory cutscene lasted less than a minute - while for some people, the quick jump into the gameplay is welcome, I find the transition to be too quick, and almost jarring. The scene with the meteor falling was definitely cool, and looked less like a meatball than I remembered it when you showed the image while you were developing your contest version, but at the same time, I just thought to myself "why?". I know absolutely nothing about the setting, and then all of a sudden, I see this giant meteor flying above the forest where the game takes place. My main issue with this is that you didn't start with the meteor - you started with the crystal, and I assumed we were going to learn a bit more about the setting, but instead, there's just a giant meteor, and my only reaction was "wait, what?". You'd have to expand a bit more on the setting, or just open with the meteor and show a bunch of people reacting to it, like being horrified or something, because as it is now, I'm not feeling the conflict here. 

 

2) As far as the old man's dialogue is concerned, here's some proposed grammar changes: "good-for-nothing", "And quit calling me 'old man'!", "...wake-up call! Now scram.", "dilly-dallying". 

 

3) The dialogue in general is very choppy, and it jumps all over the place. Part of it is from a lack of transitions between ideas in the sentences, but another is just how quickly your characters seem to change the emotions in their words. It reminded me of one scene in the Digimon movie that was released in the West (which was a p bad movie) - Davis started crying after listening to Willis's story, and when the latter tells him to stop crying, he immediately stops and smiles again. It's too quick for me.

 

4) When we run into the princess, the bunny frolicking in the patches was a very nice tough - I appreciated that. It was cute, it was appropriate, it was a very neat touch. That said, when I returned to that area, the bunny was there again, and repeated the same behavior, so unless that's on purpose, I thought I'd let you know. Also, when the princess wakes up, the leaves falling down and the trees blowing was super cool. When you return to the village, when the old man sees you and Leanne and returns to his house, locking the door and not letting you come inside, that was also a neat touch as an event that occurred while you're still actively playing the game. The game felt more organic in that moment.

 

5) When Soral explains to Leanne his past and then Bron suddenly appears, there's some other changes in grammar that I want to propose: "I was ten when...", "I nearly starved to death.", "bodyguard".

 

6) On the topic of that same cutscene, the reveal that Leanne was the princess was very sudden, and there was no build-up to it. Also, the exchange that went as "The dream." ... "I thought I was dreaming." is a really poorly-written exchange - it makes Soral seem really simple in his words, more simple than he even came off before. Also, Leanne seemed pretty confident about going inside of that cave, despite there being no indication as to why she thinks the crystal would be in a cave, which is more or less a lack of world-building. This was also an issue when Soral met Leanne in the forest, because we got dumped some location names that didn't really mean anything because we didn't understand the geography of the setting - we have no idea how far Leanne traveled, and the lack of world-building is hurting the chances of this setting being sold to me.

 

7) When they arrive at the cave, I think Soral mentioned that the "entrance caved in long ago", except if that happened, how did they enter the cave to begin with? Was there another entrance that someone failed to mention. Also, the appearance of the crafting recipe on the ground was sudden, but we have no idea why a recipe in making a bomb is just lying on the floor near the entrance of a cave, and we're not even told about how crafting even works in-game or in the game's universe. The game just assumes we know how they're going to craft a bomb without having some sort of crafting set or anything - I don't think you needed directions to tell us how to craft, but a little bit of a stronger introduction to what I assume will be a bigger mechanic sounds like a good idea.

 

8) When Bron appears for the final battle, you forgot a period in the line "This is the end of the line, Leanne". Also, he suddenly appears right after we see the crystal. There's no pause for us to even admire the crystal, or a sound to indicate the coming danger of Bron. That being said, the scene where Soral is energized by the crystal was pretty badass. I'm not going to comment on the ending though - it's the same as everywhere else with expository cutscenes.

 

 

 

Gameplay/Graphics

 

 

1) I don't have any praises to say regarding the render work you did for this project, because everyone pretty much said it. My biggest and only criticism regarding the 3D-esque assets is that at times, maybe because of the way it moves, the trees sometime feel really out of place. I didn't get this feeling in the cave, but with how the trees moved, I felt like I was going to see a 3D model of a character reminiscent of the Nintendo 64 days. I'm not sure how to best marry the 2D and 3D to fix this issue, and it might even be a nitpick - I'm not sure if cleaner textures on the trees or cleaning up how the leaves and branches moves will be the solution.

 

2) When you move around larger maps like the area between the bridge and the clearing where you find Leanne, as well as the town itself, Soral seems to move unbearably slow compared to other maps. I'm pretty certain his movement speed hasn't actually changed, and this has to do with the size of the map, but if there's a running option/running model for your characters at some point, it would greatly speed up these slow sections of moving around town. On the topic of the town as well, the leaves on the ground feel out of place and poorly matches the grass textures - this might be because of their different colors, but I think the shapes of the leaves make them appear to float off the ground in certain spots.

 

3) Exploration in the town is pretty poorly done, I think. Treasure were located in the drawers, but because of how the drawers were rendered, they felt like parts of the background instead of a place where I'd look for something. This was later rectified in the cave though - the little patches of dirt where you found buried treasure were very cleverly done, because even though they blended in the background and were appropriate to the cave, they catch the attention of anyone looking for hidden items, and distinguish themselves as locations worth investigating. On the map as well, there are also no indicators to show if an enemy saw you on the map, outside of their increased movement speed - further clarity here would be more appreciated.

 

4) You have save crystals - that's nice and appropriate for this game. But why do I still have the option to save in the menu? I think you should just have more save crystals and get rid of the menu saving entirely, because it feels pointless to have both at the same time in any capacity.

 

5) In a few instances in your game - two that come to mind are when you're walking back to the village with Leanne and in the middle of the explosion animation from the bomb you set on the rock blocking your path - the enemy would just suddenly respawn, and this was strange, considering enemies didn't seem to respawn. There was another instance in the middle of the cave where the scorpion enemy map sprite suddenly reappeared - I'm not sure how respawns work in this game, but I also suggest having all your enemies respawn on a regular basis, especially if you want this game to be a larger project. Constant threat of combat during exploration is pretty important to a RPG atmosphere, especially in RPGs such as these.

 

6) The spells of Leanne feel oddly balanced. Arcane Bolt, for a 1 mana cost spell, does a lot of damage and feels way more efficient than Fire and Ice, which do slightly more damage at 12 times the cost. Ignite also feels weak, and I feel like it should be learned AFTER Fire, because the debuff element where some enemies take more damage from fire damage feels useless without having the Fire spell on hand, and I feel like that might be the main draw of the Ignite spell, since the total damage dealt by Ignite is less than half of an Arcane Bolt's on the same enemy (slime or scorpion, can't remember, but it was pitifully low). That being said, combat overall wasn't broken, and the entire combat experience was pretty tight. I think more RNG as far as the enemy abilities are concerned would be better appreciated for a more interesting experience, but that might be nitpicking (I still think it's something worth considering).

 

 

 

And that about sums it up, I think. Overall, a neat experience - thanks again for exporting the game for Mac so I could play it.

[DrassRay-Jacob 183]

@Yuugami

I'm so glad you played this and spent so much time really digging into this short demo. This is really going to help me think through explaining how\why everything happens in a way that will make sense to the player. Thank you for that!

A lot of what you pointed out in the gameplay section were things that I had to throw together to have a slightly more complete demo than what was provided to the judges. But now, I can reflect and work really hard on fixing a lot of those issues. For instance, making exploration and finding items a little more obvious in the houses. 

 

It's been said before, but a lot of what the game currently suffers from a lack of time due to the contest. Leave it to me to be overly ambitious for a game that was supposed to be made in a week. But I'm super glad that you and others have enjoyed it as much as you do, it encourages me to stick to it. I can't wait to hear more feedback as the project continues! 

 

I will have a progress report soon! 

[KaisoAri 78]

I took some time off to check this out. I gotta say, it's pretty good! However, I did find some things that didn't seem right... I'm not very good when it comes to reviews or critique since I mainly like to point out any possible bugs, glitches, inconsistencies, etc. So, I'll try to sum them up the best way I can. They will be in this here spoiler. Most of these are nitpicks, so don't mind me!

 

 

 

Pretty much like everyone else has said, the 3D rendered graphics looks really good. The only thing that bothers me is the huge contrast between the 3D rendered background and 2D sprites. Of course, this has also been mentioned in the previous post.

 

Once an enemy is killed, it doesn't respawn. That's okay and all, but it would make grinding for EXP a lot tougher if this was an actual full game... Then again, this was a very short demo, so I can't dock you that much for that.

 

The enemy grouping is a bit weird. Well, at least to me. You run into a scorpion to fight and end up fighting... 2 spiders with only one scorpion? I guess it's to save time from making up a spider sprite, but it certainly threw me off when I was fighting off mobs in the cave.

 

Whenever you pick up the crafting scroll for the bomb in the caves it's stuck in your inventory and is blacked out. I noticed the crafting recipe was already learned, so shouldn't the scroll have already disappeared from my inventory? Or, at least let me have the option to learn it myself instead of having the recipe already learned once I picked it up?

 

There's a save option in the menu, but when I try to use it to save the game in certain places allow me to save. Also, if there are going to be save points scattered on the map, wouldn't having a save option in the menu be moot? Either go with one or the other.

 

I've noticed some sprite flickering (where the sprite would momentarily disappear and then reappear) when meeting Leanne the first time. Not sure if that is caused by the rendered backgrounds, but it wouldn't hurt to look into trying to fix it.

 

Some items don't have any descriptions to them, making it hard to tell what they might do. Of course, I could just say that a potion could heal HP and magic water would heal MP, but how do I know for sure?

 

Whenever Leanne levels up she learns a new skill, but there is no text saying that she had learned any new skills. This has thrown me off on a few occasions when selecting skills to use.

 

Sometimes there are dialog boxes with at least 2 lines of text while others have 4 lines of text. Just a personal nitpick, but maybe having two lines of text per dialog box would make it a lot easier to read. And with an increased screen size (which I thank you for, by the way) expands the text box a little more. Either try to fill it or shrink it down so it won't be so hard to read.

 

There weren't many typos I could find, except one from the old man saying, "Don't make saving you a waist by getting yourself killed out there!" I believe you mean waste?

 

Lastly, the "plot" between Leanne and the body guard doesn't seem to flow all that well. It was way too sudden and had little sense other than "she's the princess to the King and must be taken back to the kingdom" and so on. I'm no master at the art of plots and story telling, but it felt pretty rushed. But, what can you do since this is an Indie and a Week entry and having little time to come up with a plot is hard enough as it is.

 

 

 

Either way you look at these, I did enjoy this small demo! Not a lot of RM games I see that use pre-rendered graphics. Hopefully you will still work on this even after the contest is over. Best of luck!

[DrassRay-Jacob 183]

@KaisoAri 

Wow! Another great review. I love it! Thank you so much. Much of what you pointed out has be touched on but none-the-less, thank you VERY much! There's no explaining the joy I feel! I'll be sure and seriously use every bit of feedback as I see fit, so no effort is wasted! 

SOooo this next image will basically sum up what I have been working on so far:

Animated Battlers 
The enemy battlers are by Vibrato. I've been going in and making individual animations for these battlers. I really want to make battling super fun but also flashy! Each monster will have their own set of attack, damage, crisis, and death animations. There's a possibility for more depending on the enemy type and their skill set.

The tall Leanne battle sprite you see is by RLMurphey! Isn't she amazing?! I couldn't be happier with the results and I'll be sure to show off the full extent of the animations and other characters once I have them!

Battle Background\Maps
So the main problem I had with the textures I was using before was the contrast and color. I wasn't able to make the colors blend well and that was mainly because of the textures I was using before. I've decided to make my own textures for the ground, grass, and soil, as you see here. But I plan to go further, all textures in the game will be custom and higher resolution to suit the quality I want in the game!

Edit: I notice some of the color and stuff on the gif changes on some of the parts of the animations, this is unintended.

Oh and I'll leave this here too. I worked on the game during a dev stream.

Edited June 18, 2016 by JacobM

[+ Asharonapaul 276]

no offense, but the dragon looks forced in its movements, there is no bending of the knees or neck, and it looks rudimentary in motion as opposed to flowing. but otherwise, sweet a freaking dragon

[DrassRay-Jacob 183]

Haha it's not my favorite animation that's for sure! I'll have to play with it some more to get it too look more natural. I'm also pretty new to this animation business, all of these battlers are the first time I've tried animating a static image, so the feedback is very welcome! No offense taken! =P 

[KaisoAri 78]

Can't complain about animated battlers. Makes things a little more interesting to look at! And I agree that Leanne's battle sprite looks pretty amazing. =D

[DrassRay-Jacob 183]

@KaisoAri
For sure! Visual interest is something I've always been best at, now if only I can master this story stuff. XD

Updated the OP with the following:
 

Animated Battlers:

Main Characters:

Created by RLMurphey

Enemies:

Battler Art by Vibrato
Animations by JacobM

 

 

Edited June 23, 2016 by JacobM