Neo Jado

Remember two years ago we said remake was incoming? I had everything sorted out like "Man, this is going smoothly for a change." Then Life said "Haha, hold my beer."

Anyway. No more empty promises... HERE IT IS!

More characters!
More story!
More cutscenes!
More CBS!
Less meaningless gameplay elements!

If you've played the original version, everything after the first 5 minutes have been revised. Many characters have been rewritten or redesigned(especially Phenix and Misty), and you'll follow multiple storylines concurrently with Phenix and Sledge. No more default battles, they've all been replaced with CBS.

Episode 1 is complete. Episode 2 is in progress.

As always, let me know of any bugs you encounter. I've played it through multiple times, but never formally had anyone else test it.

Tell me what you think of the new characters, the narrative, flow, etc.

Since everyone agrees that our default battle system is pointless(including us), we're tossing it in favor of a little custom action.

The concept is simple. It's similar to the Cave boss minigame, except streamlined, based on character statistics and allows for use of skills. We'll have those statistics apply to the other minigames. This also makes the minigames a more logical extension of the gameplay. The existing story QTE events will not result in battles when you fail. We're taking a Heavy Rain like interactive cutscene approach to those.

This probably sounds like some kind of outrageous change to make to a game that's several years in the making, likely causing a massive setback in progress... but I'm actually done the programming already. The cbs, skills available in chapter 1, and the custom menu are ready to go. We're on to balancing the enemies.

Here's a quick WIP look at the skill menu Bones put together:


Only thing missing is the individual skill icons we have to draw.

I'm not sure how long it'll take to balance. Hopefully less than a week, since there's only... 5 or 6 types of enemies? Afterwards, we're gonna need testers, I think... anyone interested?

What's up, all? So, there's a couple things I wanted to mention...

A) Yay for over 100 downloads! Over 100 personages are witnesses to the ridiculousness that is Neo Jado. Thanks for all the support!



B) So, there's these Misao Awards thing at the end of the year? Not sure how they work, but it looks like you can nominate a game from their gamepage. Vote for Neo Jado for Best Storytelling, maybe?

By the way, even though we all know Neo Jado has the most badass soundtrack ever compiled, the sound and music award is for original custom works, which we don't do and therefore don't qualify for. So don't vote that. Thanks in advance if you do vote!



C) I'm gonna open up a game design blog about this later, because I want to discuss battles in Neo Jado. Specifically the issue with the party.

Party members will come and go as quickly as it pertains to the story. This really hampers the feel of the party, where in most other RPGs, you gain party members and build them up, and they mostly stay together for the rest of the game.

Conversely, I feel that having all the core protagonists together at all times, through all the dungeons and adversity, really limits what we can do with the story. For example, the story scenes in Borton would not have been possible (plausible), if Sledge had been with Phenix the entire time, despite the fact that they were both in the same city. There's a dozen or so other protagonists that will encounter scenarios where they similarly can't be together.

This weak party element is the reason we were encouraged to up the gameplay with minigames, puzzles, obstacle courses. Now I'm still trying to gather my thoughts about this, but I'd love to hear what you all have to say about it.

Well, it's a little later than expected, but it's finally here.

Instead of calling it a demo, since it's much too long for a demo, we're making it the first installment. At the end of it, you'll get a save prompt, and that file can be used to transfer party data to the next installment.

Let us know on if there's any glitches, bugs, missing files, etc, and we'll make updates accordingly.

Enjoy.

Our first release is nearly upon us. I haven’t really checked on the game page in a while and just realized that most of the videos are pretty outdated.

Here’s a quick peek at the new systems look by Bones and an example of cancelling enemy encounters.






I honestly cannot figure out why the lighting with my recordings are so off. Anyway, dungeons are setup so you have the option/opportunity to skip every encounter.

The narrative is depicted through several concurrent point-of-views. For this first release, we’ll be leaving out quite a few of them. One reason is that our cutoff point for this release has several of those other plotlines incomplete/seemingly irrelevant and somewhat distracting from the main story. None of the other perspectives are irrelevant, but you won’t see the connection by the end of the demo. The other reason is that they’re not as polished or as compelling as the Phenix storyline. You will meet many of them along the way, though.

As for how long it is, I’m not sure. I haven’t attempted a single playthrough of the game. It’s certainly longer than many completed games.

So anyway, stay tuned. Should be ready in the next two weeks, but we do want to get some external testing going the week before release. Post here if you’re interested in doing some beta testing. Nothing fancy. Bugs, grammar, etc.

Also, we're looking to try some new system sounds for cursor commands. Anyone got any suggestions?