MV - [RSE] Dark Slayers

In the year 212X on a parallel Earth a strange portal suddenly opened allowing demons, and supernatural creatures into the world, called Vaidaloids. They terrorized people all over the world. However, there is still hope. The only way these fiends can be sent back to their realm is by demon slayers with the gift of magic.

This game was originally based on a manga I made years ago, and a story I made in High School for my Creative Writing Class. I thought it would be a fun idea, so I made this game for IGMC.

Jake Ashguard:

Age: 18 Height:

6'3 Weight: 160 lbs.

Soul Weapon: Blood Bane (Katana)

Profile: Jake was only five years old when his father disappeared. He never actually got to know his father. So his mother raised him. Now he is renting a house in Downtown Lyon with his twin brother, Kelvin. However one day after visiting an old mansion he wakes up with strange markings on his arms, the demon slayer markings. He is kind at heart, but he cares deeply for his friends especially his brother.



Kelvin Ashguard:

Age: 18

Height: 6'

Weight: 155lbs.

Soul Weapon: Venom (Arm Blade)

Profile: Kelvin is Jake's twin brother. Unlike Jake, he is more timid. He doesn't like being put in situations where he has to hurt anyone, or anything. Most of the time he tries to hide the fact that he actually doesn't want any part of being a demon slayer.



Chris Varaint

Age: 19

Height: 6'4

Weight: 160 lbs.

Soul Weapon: Phoenix (Gun)

Profile: Chris is Jake's best friend. He has known the Ashguard brothers for fifteen years. He is upbeat, and cheerful. He would do anything to protect his friends, and would not hesitate to kill demons, despite his gentle nature.




Tom Klovis

Age: 18

Height: 6'2

Weight: 158lbs

Soul Weapon: Sol and Luna (Duel Daggers)

Profile: Tom is another friend of Jake. He likes to practice martial arts, and with daggers. Tom actually became a demon slayer long before Jake, and the others. However ever since his ex boyfriend went insane last year, he has been trying to find away to help him, though, he doesn't like to talk about it.



Rickter Zerheart Age: 18

Height: 6'5

Weight: 168lbs.

Profile: Rickter was once a demon slayer. However he went insane, and turned into a monster. He eventually was able to turn back and forth, from human form to monster form and back again, at will. Rickter has became cold, and calculating over the last year, and would do anything to take out the demon slayers.

Graphics:
Kodakawa
MV Character Generator(Just for the sprites)
Scifi Battlers Pack 1, and 2(will be used in later release)
Menu, and battle Graphics are copy right free futuristic GUI's from Open game art
Menu background is from futuristic battle backs pack
A dragon from KH Lords of Darkness Pack
AEkashics for the battlers http://www.akashics.moe/

Music, and sound:

Inspirational Music Pack 3

Music from frontier works futuristic heroes pack

One of the sound effects is Shower, A.wav" by InspectorJ from (www.jshaw.co.uk) of Freesound.org
Scifi Music Pack
CF_Horror4, and CF_Battle2 from Audio Stock Music Vol 1 Pack
Plugins:
Kodakawa's Title screen plugin
Yanfly's load custom fonts plugin
Yanfly's Core Plugin
Yanfly's Equip Core Plugin
Yanfly's Message Core
Yanfly's Quest Journal
Mog Hunter's Scene menu, and menu picture plugin

Yanfly's Battle Core

Yanfly's Animated Enemies
Yanfly enemy levels
Yanfly Difficulty Slider

Mog Hunter's Scene menu, and menu picture plugin

Mr. Trivel's Luminous Arc Status Screen plugin

Olvia's Side Battle UI plugin

Olivia's Victory plugin

Ok, so here it goes, starting up the game...

Interesting artwork!

The beginning is a bit too “tell” instead of “show” for my taste, with the character saying things “I hate that my classes run so late” and such. Is he talking to the cat or himself?

I am not sure the message window is working aesthetically – it looks 1.) out of place due to being more sci-fi in nature, and 2.) very blurry as if it was small and then forced to be larger.

Not bad mapping overall so far!

So far, only a few minor grammar issues within the dialogue, mostly comma placement/usage.

I like how the main character basically just volunteers Kelvin to go to the mansion without Kelvin ever getting a say in the matter.

Jake saying that he doesn’t think the mansion is haunted but some kind of magic is at work… is magic a known quantity in this game world? Is Jake somehow specially attuned to magic?

Ah – Kelvin explains that Jake is attuned to the spiritual side of things. Then I guess the first question remains – is magic normal here? Does anyone find it odd that Jake can sense these things?

Ok, gained control of the character. Some sort of prompt (even just something saying “use the arrow keys to move” or whatever) would be useful to let the player know that they can now take control, which up to this point they have no control.

Looking at the main menu, it looks pretty neat! Still not sure the whole sci-fi theme is working out aesthetically with what the game has shown me thus far. I like the rotating bit in the top right corner!

Yay! I can dash! I hate it when people arbitrarily disable dashing.

Time to explore this haunted magical mansion!

Random battle! I really like the creepy battlers! I also like that the battle tutorial is optional.

Looking at the messages again, I am really not liking the blurry sci-fi message window. The text font is also not really making my day either.

What are the actor battlers doing? They are moving back and forth so much it looks like they are trying to dance! I am assuming this is the idle stance.

Ok, looking through the available skills – there isn’t much variety. The characters all seem to be able to basically inflict “bleed” and “paralyze”, so not much to differentiate them from one another. Also, the same attack animation is used for a lot of skills it seems. Maybe more variety would be good here? I’d also re-think some of the skill effects to give each character a bit more unique flavor.

Battle over – not too bad, a bit lacking in variety sure, but overall it works fine.

Now… onto the Hallway of Dolls! Because that’s not creepy at all.

Interesting and creepy maps, but there is almost no reason to veer off the straight path from room to room. Maybe some more interactive items out and about? Otherwise what’s the point of these “in-between” areas other than filler?

Another battle – using the skill that causes Blind gives a heart icon for its status effect over the enemy?

It seems like status effects rarely ever land. A bit disappointing.

It seems like just using “Attack” is the way to go. Does higher damage and the status effects from the special moves rarely land anyway.

Just noticed an error with Kelvin’s spritesheet in combat. During the idle animation for waiting to use a skill, half of his image from the next frame pops into view, making it look like there is sometimes 1.5 of him there.

Onward! The piano room… Some random bloke standing up in the corner, gonna see what that’s about.

Ah, it’s Tom! Mystery solved, now we can all go home, right?!

Right?

Damnit Tom.

Hey, a cat! Is this the same cat as from the beginning of the game? Why does the cat want to give me a test?

Ok, that’s not a cat. Well, it’s no cat that I’ve ever seen!

I am enjoying the battle music you selected!

Looking at the new magical skills – Heal and Heal Well have inconsistent descriptions. Heal says it gives “20” health to the party, and Heal Well says it heals “a medium amount” – maybe have both give numbers or have both give general statements, but having one of each is confusing.

With multiple spells across several characters doing the same thing, there could be a bit more variety here.

Ok, I think there was an error with the heal well skill… it literally killed everyone.

Looking at the bizarre death animations of the characters, I am thinking your sprite sheets are not lined up properly. It looks like they are wiggling all over the floor!

Aaaand game over.


Final thoughts:

I think you have an interesting skeleton of a game here that needs more fleshing out. I am sure, story-wise, if I were able to continue past the point where I killed my own party with a heal spell, the story would unfold and that aspect of the game would be fleshed out. But what feels like needs more work are the skills and spells - they are all too similar to each other, there is not much actual variety. On top of that, the debuffs very rarely land even against just regular creatures you fight in the hallways, making them not very fun or useful. Aesthetically, the sci-fi themed windows don't really fit. They look cool, sure, but don't really fit in with the theme or the aesthetics of the rest of the game.

The sound effects and music all work well.

The characters seem to have promise - I am sure I would have gotten to see more of their personalities had I not mass murdered everyone with a heal spell.

With more attention to the combat system, I think this could be a very fun game.

The way the story was laid out seemed strange to me. In medias res can be a great way to start a game, but it's more for getting the player right to the action and not just putting them in what feels like the middle of a cutscene. Starting with Jake in the middle of a call could work if he was suddenly attacked by the vaidaloids, but since he makes it home safe and sound I don't understand why it didn't just start at the beginning of the call. And jumping suddenly from the call to the Men's Dorm made me feel like anything said during the call probably wasn't important, because apparently nothing else the player should know was talked about. The conversation about the mansion and Tom missing was better since it gave me an idea of what I'd be doing, though the tiny message box really hampered the dialogue. Then while at the mansion, I was shocked that the boys didn't comment on walking into a fully-functioning laboratory even though they had just been in a fancy mansion. Is that just normal in their world, which is why they didn't stop to say "what the heck?!"?

I mentioned the tiny message box, but I think it should be mentioned again. You have chosen a large screensize for the game, so why not use it to its full potential? You could have larger message boxes and still have busts, all without covering the entire screen. If you really want to keep the small boxes, then at the very least please make sure to double-check your dialogue so that it doesn't get cut off, like it did with some of the guys' comments in the dorm:

Spell-check is your best friend when writing dialogue, since there were some (admittedly amusing, I assumed Ms. Ursa wields flamethrowers) mistakes that could have been easily caught:

All the maps seemed much larger than they really needed to be, the Men's Dorm was huge! I have to assume that all of the boys who live there are super rich, because no normal student could afford to live in a building with that much empty space. There's a guideline to help make sure you don't make too large of rooms when mapping, just think of each tile as a 3 foot by 3 foot square... If you think of it like that, then the dorm is enormous. Of course, you don't have to follow that guide to the letter, just try to keep room sizes reasonable.

I don't have much to say about the battles, personally I found the default difficulty fine if a bit on the easy side. Skills seemed to do less damage than normal attacks, so I mostly just spammed Attack to win. Since I didn't get magic until the end of the demo, I couldn't really play around with hitting enemy weaknesses which was a bit of a shame. If magic had been added sometime earlier (perhaps at the beginning of the lab section), then I would've had more time to really get a feel for it. I did have trouble with the way menus overlay during battle, it's a neat idea for sure but I found it hard to read the skill names because the message box was light enough to let the main menu's words seep through. It may just have been my bad eyes, but if you could up the opacity of the message backgrounds then that problem should be solved.

Overall it just felt like the whole game is at a very early stage. That's not a bad thing, since it means that you can easily tweak and adjust things right now without having to start all over. However, it does mean that you've still got a lot of work ahead of you. Just take your time to make the game the best you can. Good luck making your manga story come to life in this project! :rwink: