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Pinebox Games

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A member registered Dec 08, 2017 · View creator page →

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This looks to be quite a long game, with quite a lot of variety in the enemies and environments, boss fights and a new gimmick in each stage. I only played up to the middle of the second stage, but the variety was already quite clear to see. In this way, the level design is very good, but it is also rather unforgiving. Make the wrong move and you may end up right back at the start of the stage.

The music creates a disquieting effect in the first stage and a more relaxed sense of mystery in the second. I enjoyed the second stage's theme music more, personally. The artwork evokes a dense, expansive forest. The animations for the bounce fruit and the player character are particularly good, e.g. the dash.

While the player character has a variety of actions available, the controls are somewhat unresponsive and the key bindings a little awkward. I would have appreciated being able to use the right Shift key to dash as well as the left, as the rest of the control keys are also on the left. I can understand the choice not to make the right Shift usable, given that attacks are bound to the mouse buttons. The overall control layout was not really to my liking.

With the variety in enemies, level design and music, I feel like this could be a really enjoyable platforming adventure with a little tweaking of the controls.

(I recommend playing this game in a window. Press Ctrl-Enter and resize according to personal preference.)

Sorry for the late response. Haven't logged in on itch for quite a while. (The Bundle for Ukraine brought me here.)

So I'm guessing that's a bug? Should definitely have the whole party, the whole way through.

If you see this and remember any details, I wouldn't mind hearing about them. If not, never mind, and thanks for playing this little game jam project! Hope you got some enjoyment out of it, bugs and all.

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Thanks so much for recording that! That was a mammoth effort on your part. 4hr20m is a marathon stream.

I'm really glad you enjoyed the game so much, and got so many laughs out of it. It was a heckuva lot of fun to watch you having fun.

Sorry for forgetting to cap the Lamia's HP integer! It kept going up whenever you used the Bard's healing move, which is why she was so hard to kill...

You forgot to check out the Voyeur Mode after picking up some outfits for the Bard, though! (^_^)

Thanks for the very thorough feedback, Adriano!

I've done a lot of work on responsiveness and overall gameplay since releasing the version you played. Currently I'm just waiting for the game jam judging period to end before I can upload the latest version. Hopefully you'll feel that the sense of delayed movement you mentioned, and the attack timings have been improved upon if you try it out again after the updated version is released. 

Brief clip showcasing the following features...

- Secondary attack (human form) : Wave a lit torch around to scare enemies off a little
- Destructible props
- Pickups
- Using pickups to transform
- 1st Beastfolk form; the Ox
- secondary attack (Ox form) : Stampede to damage all enemies

Use "run"+"attack" to activate transformation after getting both pickups in the first stage.

Sorry it locked up on you like that. Did you come back to it and get past that point?

As you were playing in your browser, it might've been an issue with loading the picture of the Bard in whatever outfit you'd equipped.

Thanks to all who rated, but I gotta say that the #100 ranking for "Uniqueness of Metaness" seems a bit inaccurate. Where else have you seen/played a game that objectifies a sexy male character in a deliberate satire/critique of the way the male gaze permeates video games?
(Intended as a rhetorical question, but if anyone can show me examples, I'd be pleased to see them.)

I mean, I get where all the other rankings/scores would come from, but that one kind of irks.

Anywho...

(3 edits)

Things to try out in this demo:

  • Beat up Beastfolk (obviously)
  • Smash portable metal cabinets
  • See what using 1 serum pickup does
  • See what using 2 serum pickups does
  • Try out the secondary (special) attack, in both of the player character's forms
  • Make it out of the lab in each of the player character's forms
  • Do some sightseeing in the jungle; Can you discover something about the island there?

  • If you don't do this (below), you're not doing everything you can in the prototype...

Nice job, overall. The asteroids look great, in particular. 

That long, rotating asteroid belt kept me waiting though, sitting on one of the stars until it passed by, for what felt like an awful long time. 

Also, the pause once you clear a stage is a little odd. Maybe some visual or audio feedback to let you know that you've cleared the stage while you wait for the fade-out would be a nice addition?

In general though, a solid constellation-themed puzzler!

Quite fun! Somewhat tentative connection to the "zodiac" gamejam theme, though. (-_^)

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Yeah, the torch move doesn't harm enemies, it just makes them all back off a bit.

The novel's storyline is quite different from the game's, but the basic premise is essentially the same.

What would you suggest to improve the timing on the player's attack move?

Thanks for the kind words!

Awesome! Great work! Love the aesthetic and pretty much everything about it.

A couple of little suggestions, though...

  • The music sometimes gets out of sync with the changing colours of the gates and bridges; could probably do with a little tweaking, as the player comes to rely on the audio as much as the visual  prompts for their timing.
  • Going back to the main menu at the completion of each stage is a little jarring. Might be better to just go on to the next stage as you clear each one?

Otherwise, seriously great work, on all counts!!

The look of it reminds me of Parappa the Rapper. Looks great.

A solid experience.

Very cute, with an interesting core mechanic. However, you can generally jump between the islands without having to change the stars! Might want to make them a little further apart. (^_^)

Hey, thanks for that!

In a full version of the game, we'd definitely have more Bard outfits. Tried to fit the classics into this gamejam version. "Elephant pants" also came to mind as something that could find its way into a more... ambitious... version.

Gorgeous low-poly. Nice work.

Charming visuals and fun, innovative platform mechanics. The Spyware kicked my butt, though!

Mage and Rogue can both clear the "orcs". It helps to either hold down Shift (to run) to get them, and/or try and corner one or two of them in an enclosed area of the farm, as they'll respawn pretty close to where they're killed.

That being said, I usually have to give it 3 or so tries before I can clear that stage myself, so I'll post an update with a lower quota.

Thanks for playing, and for the feedback! Much appreciated.

Nice work! I'm glad you put in the option to skip to the final cutscene, though. One of those rooms just kept kicking my butt...

Sorry you ran into that trouble. I've posted a couple of updates trying to fix that bit up; it's a known bug. Hopefully there's been some improvement...

Thanks for playing, and for the feedback!

1920x1200

Default resolution is too large to be playable. Might need to make resolution scalable, or lower. Cannot rate at this time.

No idea how to progress. Picked up a Switch, but nothing else seems interactive. Screenshots indicate there's a lot more content here, but how any of it is accessed is a complete mystery.

Don't feel that I can accurately rate this, as a result.

Little bit of guidance?

Produces this error upon launch and  does not run:

############################################################################################
FATAL ERROR in
action number 1
of Draw Event
for object grass:

Fatal Error: Can not create vertex buffer of size 589824 bytes
1363 vertex buffers allocated with total size of 784768 KB
at gml_Object_grass_Draw_0
############################################################################################

Sure! This is the link.

There are no conditions in setting up a campaign for a game. Kickstarter take a 5% cut, and there is a 3-5% payment processing fee. Payment will be made directly to your nominated bank account; Kickstarter take care of collecting pledges from your backers if the campaign is successful.

The best way for me to answer your first question is with a picture...

To set up your own Kickstarter campaign, start with the Kickstarter website. They provide a lot of useful advice and guidance in the first steps. My own advice in having a successful campaign is...

  • If you don't already have a community behind your game, start building one.
  • Promote on Twitter and Instagram.
  • Reach out to bloggers & YouTubers, no matter how small, who might want to write/talk about your game.
  • Friends and family are most likely to be the backbone of your campaign, so advertise to them.
  • Set a realistic funding goal.
  • Offer potential backers rewards that they will really want. I found that offering to make backers into NPCs worked well.

Hope that helps. Best of luck!

So I ran a Kickstarter campaign for Future Ghost, and it was successful!

I've also done a lot of work on improvements to the demo, which is now available.

For more details, you can check out the devlog entry I posted just a few minutes ago.

Here's one example of the countless environment interactions that've been added to the demo. You can click on almost everything, or tap it, or press Enter or the A button next to it, and the protagonist/s will react to it. World-building! Texture! Banter! All that good stuff.

And here's a fight clip, showcasing the addition of status icons and more rapid command entry. By default in RPG Maker MV, you have to confirm your input for everything except "Guard", but as you can see above, I've made it so that Song gets into "Counter" mode as soon as you select "Counter", etc.; no need to confirm. This, with much shorter in-battle animations than previous, really speeds up the battles, as far as JRPG-style battles go.

Got it working well on Android now, using this method. The APK of the demo can be downloaded from this link (102MB), but please note that it's a debug version which must be run in Developer mode and cannot load savegames (no storage read permissions).

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So I customised the "walk here when I click on this spot" destination indicator with a yin-yang icon I was initially intending to use as a "mouse over" indicator over clickable objects, but that didn't work out, so instead I made the clickable things flash when you prompt an NPC for a hint instead, as you can see below.

These updates, along with a full reworking of the first two fights, feature in the current release of the demo, v1.04, which you can download for Windows and HTML5 from here or from my itch.io project page. A Mac version is also available from my website, FutureGhostGame.com.

Discovered, through as thorough a play-through as I could manage on a Samsung S4, that the standard package for Android you get by following the official steps for RPG Maker MV just isn't really good enough. Also was not able to get it running at all on my LG K10.

Time to test out some alternate HTML5 wrappers, and failing that, try making a pared-down version of the game for Android. Really don't want to do that, though...

Howdy.

I've got a demo posted here on itch.io for my game 'Future Ghost'. It's a point 'n' click adventure with JRPG-style fights, telling the story of a semi-retired kungfu master who gains immortality very early on in the game, and then goes on to work through what that means for him, and to fulfil certain responsibilities he feels obliged to carry out.

Here he is at the airport...

No, not the big guy in the blue t-shirt. The one with the red jacket and the backpack.

Anyway, it'd be great to hear from people who might take the time to play the demo, which goes for 20-30 minutes, and I'll continue to post here from time to time with updates. For now, if interested, you can check out more screenshots and a video preview on my itch.io project page (same link as above).

The engine I'm using, by the way, is RPG Maker MV.

Thanks for reading.

"Square Onix". Heh.

BTW, checked out your preview/trailer video on YouTube. While I really dig your visuals, I have to say, I think I'd play it with the sound off if that's the music you're using in-game...

Hi, and thanks for taking a look at 'Future Ghost' here.

I'm hoping to gauge interest and receive feedback on the demo, so please let me know what you think if you do take the time to play it. It goes for somewhere between 20 and 30 minutes. You'll find links to pages with demo downloads and a preview video below. But first, a little about the game...

Blurb

Point & click adventure meets JRPG as a kungfu master deals with the consequences of immortality.

Features

  • Complex narrative
  • Deep characters
  • All-original 2D graphics reminiscent of "Broken Sword" and other old-school adventure games
  • Point & click gameplay (also keyboard & controller-friendly)
  • Pumping soundtrack of instrumental hip-hop and drum 'n' bass from the very best Creative Commons producers (full credits in-game)
  • JRPG-style turn-based combat, with a range of powerful starting moves
  • Story-driven gameplay with common-sense problem-solving "puzzles" inspired by reality & fights that are intrinsically linked to the narrative
  • Timeline that fills in as you progress
  • Manual levelling-up to allow custom stat-based character builds

Links