MV - Mana Engine (Demo Available)

I tested it and looks good so far, but 2 issues before 2025.

Sorry I was out of town during new years!

Good catch on the weird sprite glitch @ShadowDragon ! Investigating it, I think it's a bug in Mog's Character poses when the image is changed in a move route and they have different frame counts. This one goes from 8 frames to 3 when this happens. The little Dimp Shamans will do the same thing sometimes. I just saw this working on an updated trailer. I think I've worked it out.

Updating the fishing and cooking is on my to do list for the first of the year as well as adding swimming. I'm working on the fishing now. It now has 8 regions corresponding with different directions that activate the ability to fish like you suggested. The pop up balloon that alerts you that you can fish now only happens once per map when you first enter a fishing zone until you leave and renter said map. Everytime I would change directions it would pop up and it was annoying, so that's fixed. You can still move fast enough and maybe get a cast off before it shuts fishing off but it's way less likely and better now, thanks for your input!

I'm changing how the fishing works just a little. When you hit a fish, its still mash the button but if you succeed, you now have to reel it in by holding it. Also I wrote a small plugin that changes screen shake to vertical when a switch is on. So when you're setting the hook by mashing the button the screen shakes slightly up and down and then when reeling it in, it shakes lightly left and right. And then I've blinking animations to the fish when you're hooking it and reeling it in as well as Guy to give a little bit more visual feedback.

Now I have to change the regions on a bunch of maps and playtest a bunch before I push it out as an update.

you can also do if the player is NOT moving, cast it, else do not :)
or a 30wait frames to avoid this.

it's just a matter of testing around, but 4 regions for face directions should do
the trick, rather than 8.

whatever works, I just report and feedback :)

Just played your demo!

I got INSANE amounts of Chrono Trigger vibes, your game is really well made! The world, the characters, the story, all of it hit me so hard (In a good way!) I went the orphen route at the end of the demo and let me say this:
YOU KNOW HOW TO MAKE ONE HECK OF A CLIFFHANGER!!!!:awink:

I noticed no bugs during my runthrough, I cant wait for the full game!

P.S I named the guy Crono, because he looks so much like him!


Also The protagonist gives me the most Chrono Trigger vibes.

Glad you enjoyed it, thanks for playing!

You made my day!

Oh goodie, it's been 24 hours, I can post this:

V00_08_01 Update! The Cooking & Fishing Update!
Itch.io Download

Huge Thanks to everyone who's downloaded the demo so far!

I've been hard at work reworking the Fishing and Cooking systems. There was nothing inherently wrong with them, I just thought the Cooking needed to flow and react better with the rest of the game, it felt a little disjointed to me. For the Fishing System, I really liked ShadowDragon's suggestion of limiting the player to only casting into a fishing zone instead of just all willy-nilly everywhere by water. I also had some ideas to make it a little more engaging.

With the new Fishing system, it's less likely for the player to cast away from water. The only instance that it happens is when the player is moving or turning at the same time they cast. I had to rework the entire logic to account for 8 different casting directions but it's better this way and was more tedious than difficult to implement. For example: "can cast to the right" can cast to the right and down" ect. The biggest change to Fishing is now after "setting the hook" like before by mashing the Z/ENTER/"A" button you have to hold the button to reel in the fish. I changed the color hues on the Fishing Progress bar that appears above the player. Some feedback said the red color made them think that the fish was getting away rather than caught. So now during the "hook" phase the color is Yellow and during the "reel in" phase it's green. Then to spruce things up and make it more tactile, I've added more sounds, blinking animations on the fish while being hooked and reeled in as well as the player. I also added a mild screen shake that goes up down during the "hook" phase and left and right during the "reel in" phase. The RMMV only supports horizontal screen shaking by default so I wrote a small plugin to be add vertical shaking as well as change the shaking on the fly with a game switch.

The old cooking system was a map masquerading as a menu and felt a little sluggish and also a little detached from the game. The new system is a picture based menu that flies up on the map screen and is a "bajillion" times more responsive. I had to completely rework how I handled the cooking though. The old system had a dozen or so events timed very carefully to display relevant info and one main event to handle the logic. Now it's one streamed-lined common event handling just about everything. I also reworked the food drops you get from cooking to make more sense as well as added some food items that I had not used since early testing. The QTE bar is lengthened and the speed reduced a little to compensate for this. The overall visual representation has been improved with animated text for the names of the food cooked and upscaled icons. Mouse support is limited as I continue to improve the cooking menu. I have the scroll wheel working to change the selection, and clicking anywhere on the screen will select that selection. Might leave it this way if people like it, if not, I'm going to have to work in a picture button plugin somehow. During the QTE bar, you can click the screen and it acts the same as a button press.



Other improvements are added code to make the Menu loop back around when at the end or the beginning list of commands. A few more spelling corrections, lol.

This was a lot to do, and is a lot to test! Please report any bugs and I'll get them sorted ASAP!

I played the first 30 minutes of this so I'll just comment on that.

I like the old-school PS1 JRPG vibes (the aesthetics and atmosphere nail it) and the nods to Chrono Trigger while being its own thing. The presentation is quite polished. In that first 30 minutes it was just cutscenes, dialog, and walking and talking around town with the only gameplay being catching a fish and cooking a dish, then finally the airship battle at the end. I feel like it could have had a short battle or some kind of gameplay earlier on to break up the dialog and keep the player engaged. The dialog made me laugh a couple times so it was a nice mix of serious and humorous.

I also found a couple of the characters hard to see against the background. It could have also benefited from either some face graphics or if not, the character models reacting more to the story. It's harder to feel the character emotions when you can't see anything reflecting it. Also minor nitpick: I think the festival music could be a little more festive or upbeat.

(I did record my play session but it bugged out trying to upload to YouTube and I lost the video. However I dont think it would've been much different from any other "first 30 minutes" video).

Thank you for playing, Aqua! Really appreciate the feedback. I'll work on making the NPCs more expressive and bringing more attention to what is happening at the moment. I'm also trying to improve my music production/writing so I'll try to make the festival music more upbeat. Glad it's only a minor nitpick since before this project, I haven't made music in 4 years.

Sucks you stopped playing after the airship as that is where the gameplay really starts. I would love to hear what you think about the rest of the game if you have ever time, but I understand. Time is always hard to come by so I really appreciate you taking the time to check it out and give me feedback.

I will definitely play more of it, especially since it uses Chrono Engine and I like to see how people use it. I am just trying to do at least five games for the feedback festival (this was #3) before the deadline.

In one of my next updates, which is probably a pretty big update, I'm changing the mini/card games up. As of right now there's Match 3 from mjshi, and Blackjack from Mac. They're both fine but I wanted something a little more unique, so I've modified the Blackjack plugin from Mac. I call it Dragon's Dozen (like a Baker's Dozen) where you're trying to hit 13 instead of 21. There's some negative cards that will lower your score, and +13 cards that can sometimes cause you to instantly go over 13. It's fairly fast paced for a card game.

Since I'm not much of a coder, I've separated it into its own little html game on itch.io so no download is necessary as it should work on most browsers, including mobile. It's pretty simple and short and can go on indefinitely as long as you don't run out of money. It's so simple, I'm not sure it warranted its own thread. Huge thanks to Mac for the plugin.

Sooooo... here it is. Would love some feedback on it. Was it fun, boring, too derivative of Blackjack, did you hate it, etc. ?
Dragon's Dozen

Big thanks to everyone who played my demo and left feedback. Hopefully I'll finish this someday. Keep up with progress on itch and where ever the winds blow us to.

May your own projects be bug free and you find the success you deserve...

Much love and adios,
-Slaughty