Play game
Realm Defender's itch.io pageGame Engine Used
Unity
3rd Party Assets Used
Ink, Character-Unity-Plugin, Synty Fantasy Kingdom, Synty Fantasy Characters, Gaia Pro, GeNa, PW Fantasy Kingdom Spawner, PW Game Ready Level, Ink, Bird Flock, Emerald AI, Everyday MoCAP, EveryDay Motion Pack, GUI Pro Kit, Kevin Iglesias animations Malbers Elemental Dragon, Movement AnimSet Pro, Pegasus, SuperUnityBuild
How long did you spend
Approx. 35 hours for the game (and an unkown amount of time for the music, ask JCoop)
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Comments
i am sorry but i have 0 patience and therefor games like these are not my bag of cats, however:
it looked good, it sounded good, and im sure the story is great!
That’s perfectly fair. Not everything is for everyone.
This was engaging and I felt suspense about whether I'd save my fiefdom or not
That’s awesome. Thank you.
Enjoyable game! Haven't played many games like it but it really took my interest. Great work.
Thank you. I look forward to making something like this that isn’t purely text. But I enjoyed learning the branching story technique here.
I liked it a lot! Music was pretty great, and I like what you did with the atmosphere. Bonus pts for using Ink! :D I think it broke at the end, just a black screen, which didn't really feel like an ending. I also would have liked sometimes to speed up the text when I was able to read faster than it was typing, and yet a couple of times it faded out to the next screen before I was fully ready. I also like how you included non-fiction elements in there, very cool.
Thank you for the feedback. I did add a “press space to finish the text” option but it was right at the end and there’s no indication that you can do it unless you try out of frustration!
You can also scroll back to if the text flows off. I think made the scrollbar colors too indistinct though, since you missed it.
I agree re the ending. I didn’t have time to do the proper animation for the endings so I went for the Black Adder goes Forth ending. It felr good to me, but then I watch Blackmagic UK play on his stream and he had the exact same experience as you. Good learning in that one for sure.
I’m glad you liked the factual stuff thrown in. As I was making the game I thought the format might be an interesting teaching tool. I threw those in to experiment. There’s actually about 15k words of Wikipedia content in there, but I only exposed the very first interaction in this version.
Thank you for playing. Thank you for the feedback. Most importantly, thank you for the inspiration since it was you who suggested someone do an IF game. I learned loads!
Oh… And yes the music was awesome. I’ve never worked with JCoop before. I will do so again, I hope.
I didn't think there was enough choice in the storyline, and I don't know if you can actually affect the ending in a more positive way, but the ending I got seemed incongruent with the ruler I was.
My biggest gripe though was not being able to move through the text fast enough, seemed to be a pretty big delay after you clicked that you were done.
There are around 8000 words and 170 choices in the game. There are two endings and about 8 major paths and a further 10 minor paths through the game. As with most interactive fiction most players will only see a very small percentage of the game on each playthrough. For someone who hasn’t written any fiction for over 30 years I thought that was pretty good for a game jam :-P
I’d love to know (on discord) which ending you got, which major choices got you there and why you figured it to be incongruent. I don’t claim to be a writer so your feedback on the writing would be helpful.
What I aimed for was to have one path which gives the expected outcome if you play as the ruler of the utopian land you start in. That is if you maybe the decisions I believe a benevolent dictator would take. The other ending occurs if you take a different path. Perhaps you took the different path? This is interactive fiction, so you decide the outcome. With more time there would be more outcomes, but time is the key resource in a game jam.
Thanks for playing. I’m not a fan of interactive fiction in this format, but like all game jams I enter I wanted to learn how to do it and I am proud of what I managed in <40 hours. With a better writer I now know how to build genuine branching stories into my games. With or without text.
Thank you for following up with me on Discord so as not to share any spoilers here. Here’s what I learned from BunnyVikings experience (with spoilers redacted):
That’s super helpful. Thank you.
So it seems a few people want an ending in which [redacted]. I was planning one, but never got the time to implement it (you do get to ask about [redacted], but you don’t get to follow that path as it’s not written). The only two endings right now are [redacted] or [redacted]. Had you tried to hide the dragons existence from the populace you would have [had the other ending because….]
I read somewhere that in an IF game a typical player only sees about 20% of the content. That seems to be true of the few playthroughs I’m aware of. That I was prepared for, but what I had not realized is that this meant that if you only have a 8 major paths they are only going to hit a couple of the real story changing decisions. Which is what you describe.
That’s cool though. I now know how much content one needs to create a true interactive fiction game. I now understand why games like Fallout have so much “action filler” content. Make a decision to take a quest then spend ages in a traditional FPS until the quest is complete then have some story while you find the next quest.
Thank you for taking the time to give me more feedback. This is super helpful.
Visual novels are not really my thing, but I liked the story and the visuals / audio worked really well. Youl should add audio naration as an accessibility feature, or jsut for lazy people :) I know you can do it :)
Seems like you often come up with different approaches to themes, which I like a lot.
I could do every character in a heavy northern English voice, that’s for sure :-)
Glad you noticed my rather eclectic style in game jams. I always try to learn something new.
Thanks for playing.
Not going to lie this was brilliant. it was super engaging and i really enjoyed it. Down side was there wasnt any more to do at the end, which in some ways is also a compliment :). Again this was super fun so good job!
Also i reviewed this on stream and we all chose together so that really made it special :)
Thank you for your kind words. And I love that your played and choose together on stream. I’ll have to check that out. I think that’s probably the best way to play a game like thus.
I just watched the VOD, very entertaining. You added alot to the story with your acting and side plots. Loved it! Folks should checkout your channel: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1306729992 (that’s to the VOD, but check the channel too)
I don’t think I play tested the path you took, so super happy it worked ;-) I’m a little disappointed you didn’t visit the goat herders house, that was a primary branch in the story with a couple of animation paths in there (just trying to get you to replay!).
Thank you so much for making it more engaging with your antics. If I do another I should have you voice act it.
not a problem ill deffo play it again in that case :) I did the voice acting in our game also so if you liked it id be more than happy :) like i can be serious too haha :P
Just played your game… not only voice acting but I believe you “wrote the theme song, sung the theme song” too
haha that theme song was Bardakys entry but I did write all the text hehehe
Text-based games isn't really my cup of tea but I did have a go with Realm Defender. I'll say that what the game lacks in gameplay, it makes up for the really nice narrative, audio and worldbuilding. The scenery managed to take my attention and made me interested to the story, as well as impacting the decisions I make. Overall, nice job.
Thank you for checking it out. I’m with you on the text based aspect, not normally something I would do. But that’s what game jams are for, learning something new. Worth another few weeks I’d add a controller and provide some interaction with the world. Mind you, I don’t see this particular story being very action packed.
Thanks for kind words.
Beautiful game! The soundtrack is relaxing and the visuals compliment the story. The story builds up in a fantastic way for my taste. Great balance of choice but you can sense there is a point to it all. The writing is to the point, clear and at times mysterious
Wow that is very nice. Thank you!
I like the Text base adventure nature of the game, very beautiful to watch scenery.
Thanks, this was a very new direction for me. As ever I learned loads.