Save Point

A little late to the party here, but hi! I'm Ylzor and I made a game for the contest: Save Point. I'm really not good with this whole "present your game" thing, so I'll just copy past the description I put on rpgmaker.net. :p



Story
A group of young hunters are trying to go back home after hunting a rabbear. Sadly for them, a terrifying beast blocks their path and kill them. Well, that's what they thought anyway; they don't seem to be able to die. Trapped in the forest, they decide to look for another path.

Gameplay
Save Point introduces a dynamic battle system mixed with a classic ATB system. The player has to choose an Auto Action, which will automatically cast itself repeatedly until the player changes it. This Auto Action can be any skill the player has learned before, but are slightly different than when they're casted as a normal Action.
Each character can have a maximum of 4 Auto Actions equipped. That includes enemies, who will use them as well. They won't target anybody though, as each party member generates anger towards enemies whenever they perform any kind of action.
It is worth noting that the game supports controllers (I only have an Xbox 360 one though, but it should work with others as well). Default keys are:
Enter/A: Confirm
Escape/B: Cancel
Shift/X: Special (used in battles to change Auto Actions)
Control/Y: Menu
If you don't like the default controls for the keyboard, please feel free to change them in the options menu.

Screenshots and Video




The game was made using Game Maker Studio and you can download it here. Tell me what you think about it, any criticism helps!

I hope you get some fun out of this. :)

Hey, I actually wasn't able to finish this because of a bug.  I was able to jump onto a cliff face and get stuck, and I hadn't saved since the beginning of the game, so I ended up moving on instead of replaying the twenty/thirty minutes I put into it.  Here were my thoughts from what I did play, though:

Thanks! I'm confused about the bug you're talking about... You say you jumped and got stuck? Was it on this map?



I tested the game a lot and never got stuck with jumps, but this map got changed at the very end and I see one tile that would cause this... (EDIT: I uploaded a new version of the game, this jump should be fixed... Link doesn't change)

As you said, I prioritized mechanics over story. I tried to give some personality to the characters, but the dialogs were made in the last 2 days. I really wished I had more time (who didn't?), as it's also the reason why the enemies' variety is so low at the beginning of the game. I wanted to add another enemy to mix it up a little, but simply didn't have time to.

Now for the auto actions, they're not really that interesting at the beginning, I have to admit. At first it's simply an additional attack here and there, but it gets more interesting as you level up. Almost all skills are different when used as auto actions. For example, Precise Strike, a skill you get early in the game, makes the target bleed and stacks 3 times. When used as a normal action, the bleed deals a set amount of damage every second for 12 seconds. When used as an auto action, every stack decreases the duration by 5 seconds (so when you put 3 stacks, it lasts 2 seconds).

Simply put, when used as an auto action, Precise Strike deals the same amount of damage it would have done in 12 seconds, but in only 2. But since it only lasts 2 seconds and its cast time is 2 seconds, you can't change the auto action without losing all stacks.

A lot of skills work that way; you simply have to choose what auto action is better at the time.

For the character size, it wasn't exactly a choice, actually. I had an amazing pixel artist working on the tileset and enemy sprites, but I had to do the rest. Sadly, I'm not really good with this, so keeping small characters with low details was the only choice I had. I think it looks alright, but I would have preferred slightly bigger characters. Something I regret not doing is putting a small cursor on top of the character, because I noticed it's pretty hard to find him sometimes.

I'm really annoyed you couldn't go further, as you didn't get to get your hand on other skills and fight other enemies... Oh well. Thanks a lot for giving it a try anyway, I really appreciate it! Oh and hum, sorry about that useless wall of text. :p

I actually already uninstalled it, so I'm not sure if that was the map--that might have been it, though.  It was the map right before the tile sets changed (I think they generally got browner).

I just finished your game and I have to tell you that I really liked it. I want to begin with the things I liked.

The start of the game is good. I liked the humor and the characters a lot – it has some kind of anarchic feel to it and therefore I wasn’t surprised that there were some “touching in the dark” jokes (I enjoyed them as much as you’re characters seemed to enjoy them).

A lot of games have awful tutorials but you did well with yours. It’s short and you can start battling right away. There was only one part with too much text, I think it was about the auto-action-arrows. 

Your maping is good, some solid RPG-maps. But I think your game lacks some unique things and I don’t quite got a feeling of being inside of a world with a history (you added some ruins but they don’t really come off as anything and I didn’t had the feeling that they add to the history of the world)

The sounddesign is good, too. I like the music and it really adds to the atmosphere.

But what really stands out as the best part of your game is the battle-system. You really nailed it! Battles are smooth thanks to the auto-attack. The combination of auto-attacking and manual-attacking is awesome. And that healing is provoking the enemy shows how much effort you put into this system.

So, now what I think you could improve.

I just told you how much I like your battle-system. But I think there are too many random attacks. Fighting makes fun but after a while I lost interest in checking everything in the surroundings because to reach a chest means having to fight a lot of battles. And I would love to see one or two more battlers and combinations of battlers.

One thing about battles annoyed me after some time. If you haven’t reached a very high level battles against 2 or more healers are frustrating and taking a long time. Especially in those and the very last battle I wanted to have enemy stats. Or at least a hint that an enemy is near death.

After the fight against the tree I would like to have a shortcut to that location. I couldn’t win against the beast and wanted to level up in the later locations. But I had to walk all the way there again which was frustrating...or did I just miss the shortcut??? ^^

Then there is this thing with walking behind trees. You have to walk behind trees a lot. That’s not a problem on it’s own. But sometimes I found it unnecessarily complicated to navigate on your maps because of this. Especially if you were standing behind a tree when a fight starts. After the fight you literally have to search for your hero on the map.

And despite the slightly too dark locations near the end there is only one more thing I want to see improved: More conversations! As I said in the very beginning: Your characters are good, the jokes are fantastic. But why did you not let them talk a lot more? After the very beginning until the tree you have a lot of maps where you don’t have dialogue. Maybe you should add some. And by doing this you could improve the thing about a world without history, too. Maybe they talk about the ruins and stuff like that. You would improve the story a lot and maybe you can think of a better aim than just passing the beast. I mean, let them miss home or something like that (something more creative than this suggestion ;) )

Well so much about things you could improve. I found some bugs, too. There is a small island with a chest. I hope you know which one I mean. You can walk into the water at one point. Is that supposed to happen or is this a bug?

Then I found one bug in the dark part of the forest. I couldn’t move after I had been teleported to the next map. I think I passed the teleport too far on the right side of the way and was teleported on a stone or a flower that was not meant to be walked on. I had to reload and that was super frustrating since I did not save once...I made a screenshot just in case you want to have more details about this problem (I'm too stupid to add a screenshot in this comment -,-).

And then there is one other thing. I am not quite sure if this is a bug too or supposed to be like it is. When you have died fighting against the beast and go there again Kale and Shael stand where the cutscene took place before the first fight against the beast. Is it supposed to be like this?

Again, I like this game a lot. In terms of gameplay it’s the smoothest game I played in this contest and I think the battle-system is one of the best in this competition. With a more detailed story it would really kick ass. You have a good sense of humor (“He really is boy?!” “What? Let me check!”) so use that strength wisely =)

I hope this feedback helps. And I hope my english is making sense...

Thanks a lot, it does help! I'm glad you liked it. Now, about the things you didn't enjoy:

- Too many random battles and not enough enemy variety (and something someone else mentioned to me: no escape possible). I really wanted to add more enemies, but I just didn't have time. Balancing the game around with only a few enemies is really time consuming, so I just couldn't add another enemy. I wanted to though, especially in the early maps where you only fight rabbears. As for the "too many battles" part, I don't think that's the problem. I think I just made the maps too large, so the player has to travel too much to get to a chest. But I agree that not having a village/dialogue between fights tend to bore the player.

- I'm guessing you're talking about the plant monsters that heal themselves. That's another problem I had with the game; the balance. I had to make sure a player that just wanted to finish the game without getting every chests could beat it, but at the same time making sure the game wouldn't be too easy with all those chests. But that's really hard. :/

- There's no shortcut to the dark part of the forest. I wanted to change the starting area by cutting some trees or something (the dark part of the forest is actually directly west to the starting area), but again, didn't have time. Look at the map (lots of things aren't rendered), you'll see what I mean:

(Hah, just realized this is an older version... Some maps have changed, but you can still see what I'm talking about)

- Those trees were a pain, you have no idea. I made sure the player NEVER had a tile where he couldn't go without seeing it. So this means there's never any kind of rock or plant behind the trees. This is a nightmare to map. Again, I wanted to add a little cursor above the character (think FF7), but guess what? No time!

- For the story, it's really not something I wanted to work hard on from the beginning. I never wanted to make the game about its world or story. My main goal was to make an enjoyable battle system, but I guess I could have added a bit more story to the game. I'm glad you liked the joke, but I really didn't want to add any more than this. Someone actually told me it was a bit too much, and I kind of agree. More would have hurt the game, I think.

- The bugs... Urgh. I'll check the water problem and the teleport bug, it's not supposed to happen (surprised, huh? :p ). Same with Kale and Shael, they're not supposed to be here. When did this happen by the way? At the end of the game or at the beginning?

Again, thanks a lot. Maybe I'll update the game at some point to add things. I will at least update the game once I get rid of the bugs.

yeah, it could be that it's just the size of the map. But I think you can change rate of battles easier than resize the map now ;) But then you would have to rebalance everything so maybe just leave it as it is.

The plants and the shamans. It wasn't a big problem at all. It just seems like being stuck in a battle because you get the feeling you're not hurting them more than they can heal. But eventually they die after a while. And this happened to me only twice (so I gues when your past...say level 8 your fine).

Did you have the dialogue with the tree take place in a black screen because of the lack of time, too? I was waiting to see the tree after battle but just got teleported, quite disappointing ^^

Well, about the story. I'm fine with this game being more of a battle-system-tech-demo or whatever you want to call it. As I said, I like the battle system after all. I just enjoyed the beginning and the dialogue and I missed some throughout the game. You could have indeed shortened the touch-joke, that's true. But I don't see some more dialogue along the way making this game not better. So you have to deal with contrary feedback here ;)

The Water problem should be solved very easily. I noticed that there is a wrong tile placed at the top of the island. Just have a look at this screenshot:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/75xggqxbek7gdhh/Bug1.png?dl=0

That bug with Kale and Shael happened after I defeated the tree and fought the beast for the first time afterwards.

And the most important bug to fix:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/q2g4miilfog7vzy/Bug2.png?dl=0

that's where I couldn't move anymore.

I'll lower the encounter rate and increase the EXP gained. I'm thinking about adding an enemy or two to add some variety, we'll see. The black screen was indeed due to a lack of time. I didn't have a sprite to represent the tree on the map, so I just decided to make the map black. Kind of a lazy way to do things, but I really didn't have any other choice.

Thanks for the screen. On the one where you couldn't move, it's the tile where the character's standing or is it somewhere else?

Edit: Nevermind, found where this is coming from. :p

Good idea, didn't thought about more EXP ^^
I did some black-screen-dialogue due to the same problem, too. I can fully understand that ;)

What was the problem with the tile where I couldn't move? Glad you found the problem

Basically, you were able to move at the same frame the "event" saying to teleport the player was triggered. This means the player would slightly go to the left or right (by 2 pixels). The way the game is coded makes it so that you can't move anymore if you're not on the 16*16 pixels grid.

I just changed a few lines to make sure the player could not move when the event was about to be triggered.

Anyway, bugs should be fixed. I'll update the game after I change a few things here and there. :p Thanks again!

Version 2 of Save Point has been released. This new version comes with a lot of changes, bug fixes and a general re balance of the game.

Here are the changes:

• Added a new zone that links the beginning maps with the latter maps. Some zones have changed to reflect this change.
• Added "Tamed Rabbear" and "Infected Rabbear" as new enemies.
• Added actions description in combat. 
• Added enemies' health bars in combat.
• Added "Enraged" effect, disabling normal actions but increasing the speed and damage of auto actions.
• Added a new scene early in the game and changed a few scenes.
• Enemies encounter rate has been reduced. Exploring should be more enjoyable now!
• Added a small cursor above the player's head to easily find him.
• New encounters have been designed through the whole game.
• Rebalanced the game so that unlocking new skills is faster and combats are shorter. Enemies and playable characters' stats have been changed a lot.
• Fixed a bug where the player could walk on water.
• Fixed a bug where the player could get stuck after jumping or teleporting.
• Fixed a bug where music would not play after the party died.

New screenshots!

You can get the new version here: http://www.mediafire.com/download/qh62xkoayx4rj0g/Save_Point_V2.exe