It's most heavily inspired by La Mulana and Dark Souls as far as storytelling goes as information about the setting and the characters is initially sparse with the puzzles and flavor text found through environmental interactions primarily serving to flesh out the world; I still have more outright exposition than I would have liked, but i do not believe it to be an overly excessive amount. The puzzles themselves are also somewhat inspired by these two games as looking for and correctly interpreting clues found in the environment is essential and several of the puzzles are designed to be near-impossible to simply brute force.
 |
| This innocent-looking setup is probably by far the hardest puzzle in the game. |
The part that I'm happiest with is probably the way the puzzles themselves are setup. There are only 3 puzzles absolutely needed to reach the end, but players will need to find additional puzzles to acquire mysterious chants needed to actually finish the game with the paths to these additional puzzles generally being hidden within the 3 main puzzles and sharing a common theme or element. I also am happy with the way the music turned out; I spent a lot of time searching for appropriate music (legally free with the respective artists given credit within the game of course), and I am happy with the end result. I also think the story and the characterization of Gil, the protagonist, turned out better than I was expecting them to.
Now for things I don't like about my game. For a start, it mainly sticks to RTP graphics 9the basic graphics for RPG Maker games); this was a decision I made early on since I wasn't too familiar with map building and worried about not being able to find consistent tilesets within the time constraints, but it still looks bland, generic, and is easily the top priority amongst 'things that I would change' if I ever remade Enrasil's Prison in the future. Secondly, there aren't emotion-based character portraits; Gil only has one portrait used for whenever he talks and, while this is in part due to the limitations of RPG Maker's character generator, it annoys me and is again something I would change in a remake. Third, the game has a boss fight in it (although said fight is itself more of a puzzle than an actual fight) and I am happy with the fight itself, but I had to draw the boss myself and stuck with the default background; my drawing skills are poor to say the least and the background is of course bland because it's default so for a full-fledged remake I'd hire/find a graphic artist since I wouldn't have a three-week time constraint. Fourth, too much empty space; I wanted to give players the impression of being surrounded by a massive dark abyss and to somewhat emulate the style of some dungeons in The 7th Saga, but the screen simply isn't used to its fullest potential in the end and it needs more platforms and rooms closer together, so a complete layout redesign is another thing I would change in a remake. Fifth, this was a 'learn as I go' project, I'm ultimately happy with the end result, but the event handling in the earlier parts could have been done much more efficiently had I been more familiar with the program. Sixth, I do have one very lengthy exposition dump near the end of the game which fills in a lot of the backstory; I probably could have easily spread this information out with better planning and more content (something like the dog fetch quest in Cave Story would have been preferable, a bit tedious and still an exposition dump, but spread out a bit). Finally, seventh, the game gets a bit laggy at some points. The lag is due to roughly 700 events all being crammed into a single map for the sake of the contest, so it's not really something that could be helped without removing several events or shortening the game, but it still annoys me so of course a future remake would spread the content across multiple maps to remove lag.
So those are my thoughts on my own game. I'm not going to cut it slack, it feels like a 'my first RPG' (largely because it is) and there are a lot of things about it that I would like to change. On the other hand, it still turned out better than I was expecting it to and simply finishing it is something I'm happy about. I also think the puzzles and/or plot are things at least some people may legitimately enjoy, so I still would appreciate it if people gave it a shot.
The link to the contest with everyone's entries can be found here: http://rpgmaker.net/games/4347/
The download to my game specifically can be found here: http://www.mediafire.com/?pdj3cj5qaxuqu34
The VX Ace RTP needed to actually play the game is here: http://www.rpgmakerweb.com/download/run-time-package
No comments:
Post a Comment