itch.io

One of the first things I saw opening the game was someone posting the entire script of the Bee movie in the in-game message board.

While hilarious I think I'll hold off on playing the game as someone might post malicious code in the message board.

For a first project the animations and effects, especially the ones messing up the map/UI, are really well done. The atmosphere is also spot on. 

From the overall feeling I can't tell if it's going to be more of a "real and imaginary" world type of game or if it's going full Yume Nikki, hopefully the next parts coming up will clear it up a bit. 

Can't wait to see more of it!

A cute and short game. Pity it ends so soon.

10/10, would break spacetime again

Pretty fun game, but I dread to think about what these guys' family tree looks like

That was a pretty cute game. Glaba-gla!

Looks really promising, though I'm a bit bummed out by the fact it stops just as it seems to start unfolding. Here's hoping there will be more updates!

Took 6 hours. Was pretty fun all in all, the final moment where all the layers cascade together to rocket you to the end is always satisfying.

Game is really monotonous, you keep doing the same things but with bigger numbers over and over.

Plus sanity gain is way too slow (even worse that sanity upgrades don't increase your current sanity) and the game has no real ending...

I didn't see any screens of the second ending...

CHE DOVREI A FA'? The wait was worth it!

This brain melts my game.

The big question, though:

Can you shoot yourself from a catapult?

I'm glad to announce that I've finally released a demo of my game I'm happy with, getting out of the alpha "sneak peek" versions.

https://zorothegallade.itch.io/pinnacle-the-five-kingdoms

Pinnacle - The Five Kingdoms if a Strategy/Management game where your upstart mercenary captain wanders the no man's land in search of wealth and glory, while the surrounding kingdoms are still reeling from their last war. You'll engage in tactical battles alongside a large and diverse cast of heroes, each with their own personality, while gathering recruits and weapons to form your own army and liberate various locations on the map and unlock new areas to explore.

Each hero has a unique combination of Species and class. humans, dwarves, therian, elemental mongrels, dragon, and many more species that populate the game world are represented in the cast of recruitable companions!

Heroes have their own Affinity stat - it will raise and fall depending on your actions and your performance in battle. If it gets high enough, it may lead to something good: let it fall too far and they may leave your party at a certain point.

Training (non-mission critical) battles can be fought repeatedly to gain experience and materials, and winning them will spawn a random event that will give you the chance to gain extra resources: if you clear them with a good performance (win in few turns, don't use too many skills or consumable items, don't let anyone get downed) the rewards will be even better!

Every hero has a limited number of skill slots that increases as they level up. You can either use them to slot active skills to use in battle, or passive skills that give an array of benefits.

Battles can become hectic affairs where every advantage counts: strike enemies from the side or behind for more accurate and damaging attacks, take cover in advantageous terrain like tall grass for a defensive bonus, and use the unique innate skills of the 11 different classes in the game to give yourself an edge.

The game's lore is rich: Reading books scattered around the towns or chatting with your party members at resting points will give you a wider view on the world, its entities and its history.

Plans for the future

The demo includes the first chapter of the game's story, including 6 story battles and plenty of optional side content. The future plans for the game include several features and story beats, such as:

• Building your own fortress and conquering/allying with nearby settlements for a steady resource income
• More unlockable events featuring your companions, including romance questlines for some of them (with diverse orientations included)
• A storyline centered on the upcoming war between the Five Kingdoms, with choices leading up to one of six different paths (allying with one of the five kingdoms, or staying independent)
• And of course, plenty more treasure, heroes, troops and side battles to find!

As an extra aside, the Stone Rain ability was slightly buffed: now its minimum damage is 0.5 per troop (instead of 0)

Thanks!

A very short but still adorable and interesting story. I recommend it if you're a myth buff or just interested in mythology in general.

Though parts of the game can be very rough around the edges, it has enough content and challenge to last for many hours of gameplay, and the presentation and minigame sections have been polished enough to make it way more varied than any other game made with the same engine.

Hello and thanks for the comments and donation!

For the army battle, the game uses the same battle system for the regular battles, but with changed damage formulae so that armies could use them. The main difference is a simple switch that only allows you to select heroes in regular battles and armies in army battles.

Armies behave mostly like heroes programming-wise, and there are 20 slots in the player character roster to create them. Their level attribute is used as the troop number, and their damage dealt, healing done and DoT received is multiplied by that number in calculations (For a very simple example, if an army with 10 troops and 8 strength hits an army with 2 defense, they deal 60 damage before factoring weaknesses, resistances and positioning).  I also edited the methods that govern taking damage and healing so that if used on an army they deduct from the number of troops or replenish them up to the number you had at the beginning of the battle, respectively.

For everything else I set up a small database that determines what class of armies each Troop item turns into (such as Militia item turning into troops for a Militia army) and the rest is mostly done via the events you access at the barracks.

The main plugin I used is GubiD's Tactical Battle System, which was unfortunately incomplete in its VX Ace version, so I had to patch it up with my own additions, such as differently shaped area attacks, terrain effects etcetera.

Other scripts I've used include Hime's map screenshot (for the terrain window), NeonBlack's large sprite fix, UI and message scripts such as Yanfly and Galv's, and Szyu's crafting system, though I tweaked most of them to adapt to the game's needs (such as adding shortcuts to craft in bulk).

Giocato appieno, e non posso che apprezzare i passi da giganti fatti in termini di presentazione e di gameplay.

Con l'eccezione delle fogne, abbastanza ripetitive, ogni location del gioco ha una sua identità e riconoscibilità, specialmente alcuni luoghi ricorrenti. Il combattimento è semplificato a sufficienza da non essere un grande ostacolo nella storia, anche se alcuni sistemi aggiunti sono superflui, come le skill (di quelle di Krystal l'unica utile è il doppio attacco visto che permette di sconfiggere in un colpo i nemici che normalmente necessitano di due: Ruba diventa inutile dopo le fogne visto che ho tentato di usarlo su letteralmente ogni singolo nemico e a parte un paio nell'overworld nessuno di loro ha niente da rubare, e infliggere sanguinamento a un nemico non serve a molto se lo sconfiggerai comunque con il secondo colpo a prescindere).

Anche la vendita di equip è un sistema superfluo visto che salvo due oggetti specifici tutto quello che puoi comprare nei negozi sono oggetti che possiedi già dall'inizio. Dato che i combattimenti sono comunque così semplici, avrei direttamente rimosso il sistema di equipaggiamenti e usato i negozi solo come decorazione o località dove interagire con NPC, cosa che ho visto hai già fatto con gli oggetti in esposizione.

A differenza del combattimento le sezioni stealth sembrano molto più azzeccate nel gioco e non mi sarebbe dispiaciuto vederne di più, magari con l'aggiunta di distrazioni o NPC aiutanti per accedere ad alcune zone che altrimenti sarebbero troppo sorvegliate, magari anche sfruttando NPC aiutati precedentemente come la moglie del soldato o l'ortolano per avere una copertura.

La storia è tutto sommato interessante e ha molto potenziale, ma la sua pecca principale è che viene esposta e sviluppata in molto poco tempo e molte occasioni per aggiungere contesto o presentare la storia sono andate perdute per via di time skip. Salvo le due protagoniste e Lunk il mentore/figura paterna, tutti i personaggi sono parecchio monodimensionali, e non lasciano molto spazio per chiedersi quali siano le loro motivazioni per ricoprire il ruolo che finiscono per fare (ad esempio, mi ero fatto molte teorie su quali problemi del regno stessero portando il re a fare cose che lo facevano percepire come un tiranno, salvo poi vedere che era letteralmente come veniva descritto da tutti i personaggi che lo disprezzavano)

Ribadisco che gli eventi del gioco avrei avuto molto interesse a vederli sviluppare in modo più graduale e nel giusto contesto, magari con più conflitto di idee o di interessi tra i tre protagonisti. Il gioco fa uno sbalzo enorme quando, in certi punti della storia (faccio meno spoiler possibile), ci sono timeskip di interi giorni seguiti dai personaggi che spiegano cosa è appena successo in una situazione che è cambiata radicalmente: avrei preferito che il gioco si allungasse di altri 10-20 minuti per mostrare una scena o inserire una parte giocabile, anche condensata, di quel timeskip. 

L'ultima parte vede anche molti eventi che si susseguono quasi di fretta, con personaggi che nel giro di pochissimo tempo cementano legami, hanno un accenno di conflitto che però risolvono immediatamente, e arrivano a una conclusione che lascia l'amaro in bocca visto che senza averti dato prima uno sviluppo organico dei protagonisti diventa un semplice susseguirsi di eventi che culmina in un finale che è in gran parte narrato (e considerata la scala dell'evento finale, ci sarebbe stata senz'altro una scena che mostrasse il tutto anche da lontano, invece c'è un altro timeskip che mi fa ancora di più desiderare aver potuto vedere cosa è veramente successo in quel tempo).

Ma tirando le somme, ha buona giocabilità e storia di base, salvo alcuni scivoloni ho apprezzato i concetti dei protagonisti (specialmente Lunk che si contrappone in modo molto naturale a Krystal), sicuramente sarebbe uscito un fior fior di gioco gestendo meglio il pacing della trama e mettendo più carne al fuoco per esplorare meglio i personaggi e i rapporti tra di loro e quindi aggiungere più interesse a quello che succede quando inevitabilmente la posta in gioco per loro diventa più alta. Guarderò con ottimismo a uscite future della serie/saga.

https://zorothegallade.itch.io/pyre

Pyre is a game I made for a forum community contest, the theme being "receiving and overcoming a curse".

It was made in three weeks and includes a deviation from the standard RPG formula: the hero becomes weaker as he beats more and more enemies. Each of them curses the hero with a specific handicap, and you can fight them in any order you like.

The game has multiple endings and only takes about 20-30 minutes to play through. If you have a bit of time to waste you'll hopefully like it.

This comment section sure has several comments from people who registered just to post them.

A game teeming with strategic depth that still manages to make every mechanic in it streamlined and intuitive.
With a minimalist cast, intuitive color palette and an incredibly broad variety of different combos you can try with skills and statuses, you never feel truly stuck thanks to the number of different ways you can approach combat and change your tactics if you ever lose.

Game literally expects you to survive a first battle against 5 strong enemies without having even told you anything of how battles work. Learn how to balance your battles.

Atrocious translation with many untranslated line, horrible mapping, and not even a hint of competent game design (the first enemies you encounter not only take over 5 turns of beating from your party EACH, but heal each other making your progress useless)

Learn before trying again.

Needs a way to skip the intro cutscene...

Turn them into Dispensers and give them health/ammo/HP upgrades.

Dude asked how the game mechanics work...

Arrows (and darts to restock traps) are refilled after every in-game year.And yeah, besides the higher attack ninjas are pretty useless. Also hitting a wall by mistake is frustrating because it will cost you one turn, either from digging it or sneaking inside of it.

This game has the most puzzling balance issues in that it is heaviiy RNG reliant, but what is randomized is mostly actions that in other genres are in your control. Unlocking rooms might place them in a useful space or somewhere out of the way. You might get lucky and have a brickmaker + engineer goblin right off the bat or waste hundreds of turns without either or both. The shop might give you useful items/upgrades or a bunch of minions with no beds. Traps you buy might get placed somewhere useful like in a chokepoint or in a random corner where they will never trigger, and so on and so forth.

That and one of my runs was killed from finding the first 2 orbs right at once, but the third being so out of the way even with prospectors and torches I couldn't get it before getting bored of having to fight yet another 10+ heroes wave.

When you become a world controlling collective consciousness but you're kinda sad because smoking weed doesn't feel as good as it did because you did it a few times 50 years ago and that was enough to build tolerance.