VXAce - Dog Quest

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Started by sleepy_sealion 4 posts View original ↗
  1. sleepy_sealion
    #1 Source
    Dog Quest!
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    A game about dogs. A short 20 minute game, made for the one map challenge. And also my first game on the site!

    Synopsis:

    You are a dog, and one day, you find yourself mysteriously lost in a strange woods, with no idea how you even got here. What you do know however, is that there is a sense of danger in the air - and you need to get home! Unfortunately - the woods is also full of animals that seem to hate your guts! You won't be able to get out of there alone. You'll need the help of new friends who also have ended up in the woods one way or another, only by working together - can you and your dog friends make it through the perilous woods and make it home.

    Your a dog - so the only weapons or items you have, are your teeth, and your friends.
    You'll need to learn to keep everyone in top form using only the skills you have and your environment.

    Explore a large map where you can run, jump, and dig to get through - and fight an assortment of nasty critters with dog based skills and tactics.

    Gameplay:

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    Meet powerful allies who will unconditionally love you! Use team oriented game play to get out of duck country! Like you - poor dogs have gotten caught up in the woods, and will join you on your return trip home. Make use of their abilities to create a fighting style suited to your needs!

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    Explore a huge map where your free to zip around to your heart's content. Gather abilities from friendly dogs to access new area's - castlevania style. While not having to grind super hard - as encounter rates are kept low to deep grassy area's giving you plenty of room to just waltz around.

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    Drink from any body of water, to keep you and your pack healthy! Don't be afraid to go all out in battle - when a full Mp restore is just a few steps away. Take advantage of your environment.

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    Fight unspeakable horror's from the heart of hell's forest! Battle an assortment of digitally drawn baddies from Lovecraft's nightmares. Learn to exploit their weaknesses - and their dirty tactics, and then beat them with your even dirtier tactics!

    With an Mp restoring defend command, both dog and beast will try to duke it out defending and attacking to rain supreme! Inflict your foes with status ailments to render them kind of poopy. And constantly keep your buddies alive with priority healing and hectic combat.

    Dog Quest! A quest for dogs, not by dogs - but made with dog's in mind! And for fun!

    Credits:
    Spoiler
    Enterbrain, Gambit, TheoAllen, VictorSant, Fomar, Crystal Noel, Lone Wolf, Tsukihime, sleepy_sealion, and secret friends - who helped a ton on this and I would have died alone in the frozen ice flow without them, and in general just everybody that helps around here - there's also a proper credits sequence somewhere late in the game, but I won't spoil the ending.

    Download:
    Spoiler
    https://www.dropbox.com/s/xgaww9i2ht070l9/Dog Quest.zip?dl=0

    Patch notes:
    8/3/18 -
    Some sounds hadn't exported correctly have been fixed.
    Dogoon Dive's priority has been changed. It should go before the Hedgies charge move.
    Random Encounter rate was slightly raised up.
    8/4/18 -
    Somehow the evasion sound dodged the fix from yesterday. It's added now. Sorry about
    that!
  2. Latefallen
    #2 Source
    The game looks really nice. The dog sprites are absolutely adorable, but judging by the screenshots they don't really fit the RTP tiles. Maybe make, or look at getting, more fitting tiles?

    I'll download it and give it a go later however!
  3. Vox Novus
    #3 Source
    I just finished playing, this is your first game right? Not too bad a job for a first go.

    Spoiler
    I liked the premise; although maybe it could have used a little more context. Your artwork was enjoyable to see, I'd like to see the game (or a game) sometime completely in your own style; I'd think it would be quite charming. As far as this goes it does go without saying (as I'm sure you know) there is just too much of a contrast between your style and the default and it is quite noticeable; they aren't quite in the same ballpark so to speak.

    I didn't really notice any major flaws other than some rough mapping which is pretty common to new users; its definitely something you get with a lot of practice and learning from others. There is some logical flaws with placement, like trees looking like the roots are growing from rock (near the cliff edges in some spots).

    I liked part of the challenge of the game was using the skills of the dogs to get through the environment and got you thinking about which way to go next when you got a new dog; it feels like a throwbark (I mean back) to rpgs like wild arms where each character sort of has a map skill to get through the environment, fun game element! It also seems like a good choice for a contest where its meant to highlight one map.

    As far as the battle parts of it; again I didn't see any major problems other than maybe the scope of what you were trying to do was a little too big for the limitations of the game. In a 15-20 minute game 5 characters seems a little too many, especially so when you can only use 3 and a couple of them are in the 2nd half of the game. Game balance seemed okay relative to the encounter rate I came across, there was only a brief moment where I ran into a same leveled enemy early on (a lvl 3 otter) and I was having a hard time inflicting any decent damage to it so the battle dragged, apart from that one battle things flowed pretty nice but I didn't particularly find a great deal of challenge in the game but sometimes that's okay to.

    About the oddest decision to me though was the monument where you get 2k exp. It seems without sort of finding this you'd be a bit under-leveled for the lvl 15 rabbit boss and essentially it would feel like a bit of a grind just to have to be strong enough to beat the boss coming from the last dog you get; which doesn't seem conducive to this being a short game. I would have probably left that out and just toned down the rabbit boss' over-all damage dealing potential to be more in line with where the player is at after getting the last dog. I found the final boss a bit underwhelming to for the only boss of the game; it just has good defensive stats and damage dealing potential, it doesn't seem to really use a strategy or anything, mostly just a basic attack.

    That's about the sum of my thoughts for this, it was a nice effort for a first project where you had map limitations.
  4. CG-Tespy
    #5 Source
    I like the art style. It's pretty cute, and I can tell a lot of love was put into each individual sprite. It'd be a lot better if things were a lot more consistent; the simple cartoony style of the custom overworld sprites clashes quite a bit with the RTP tilesets.



    I also appreciate how you implemented various ways of traversing the overworld, showing that you don't always need scripts to add cool features. It shows a good understanding of the engine itself.



    As for a couple ways I would improve this game... one would be to get a proofreader. I noticed a lot of text errors such as misspellings and punctuation misuse. Another would be going with a more stylish, appropriate yet royalty-free font. This game deserves much better than the rather plain one it went with. I think Delius or Amaranth would fit this game pretty well.



    There's a lot more I could say about this game, but I don't want this post to get too long, so yeah.