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Valera is a game set in Arum, the RM Universe. It will be approximately 2-3 hours long and will attempt to flesh out many of the "Unnamed Kingdoms" of Arum's eastern continent.

The current demo is 2.1 and covers about 45 minutes of gameplay.






In the economically powerful land of Valera, a group of mercenaries suffer a swift and focused attack, leaving three dead and one seriously injured. The mercenaries deem the culprit the "Butcher of Valera." This attack sends one of the most seasoned of the mercenaries—our protagonist, Julian—onto a path of revenge. Circumstances lead Julian to the doorstep of an old enemy: Kaufman, leader of one of the most powerful merchant syndicates in all of Arum.

In a blink of an eye, what starts as a simple revenge quest will turn into something far more personal than Julian could have ever imagined. For during all of this, he is occasionally jarred by lucid dreams, in which he is approached by a mysterious spirit. These dreams—and the subtle message they bring—will be the catalyst that changes everything for Julian.





Julian
Second-in-command of the Bergeron Force, a group of mercenaries, Julian has been suffering greatly due to a series of tragic events. His ability to compartmentalize his darker emotions has prevented him from growing unstable. Although he is able to remain sharp and positive most of the time, he is prone to bouts of anger—much like his comrade, Sarah. He is 37 years old.

Sarah
A close ally of Julian and one of the few who can "bust his balls", Sarah is occasionally brash but still has a good head on her shoulders. She might not possesses the same degree of calmness of Julian, but she is just as prone to anger. Her skills as a martial artist make her stereotypical in many ways; however, all is not what it seems with her. She is 28 years old.

Trey
One of the few foreigners in Bergeron Force, Trey hails from the land of Dermod, more than 1000 miles to the west of Valera. He is collected, curious, and analytical, and is never afraid to speak his mind. He has developed proficiency in elemental abilities. He is 25 years old.

Justine
Justine is a supportive, yet misunderstood woman. She is worried about what others think of her, to the point where she is often treated with indifference. There is a degree of jealousy among all of the members of Bergeron Force, for many believe she gets special treatment as Bergeron's sister. She is often marginalized when her brother is not around, even though her skills as an archer and healer make her one of the most valuable members of the force. She has been thinking about leaving the mercs for quite some time. She is 23 years old.

Bergeron
The founder of his band of mercenaries, Bergeron is a natural leader who is somewhat arrogant and instinctive. He counts on Julian and Trey as the voices of logic and reason—especially Trey. Despite his arrogance and boldness, he is prone to lapses of self confidence, which has placed a strain on his subordinates. Little does everyone know that his personal struggles will soon come to a head. He is 29 years old.

Jaal
One of the victims of the "Butcher of Valera", Jaal becomes comatose after suffering a serious stab wound. He is a friend of Julian's, though they have grown somewhat distant since the incident at one of Kaufman's secret vaults. He is 30 years old.

Kaufman
One of the main antagonists of Valera, Kaufman is a greedy and corrupt businessman, merchant, and manipulator. Hated by Julian due to the vault incident. He is 51 years old.

Aderna
Kaufman's second-in-command, Aderna is a hyper ambitious and sharp-minded woman from Thranik who is not afraid to speak her mind to her boss. She is 27 years old.




Valera is a turn-based RPG that uses elements of Yanfly's Gameplay Engine Ace. Regular battles are slightly more challenging and strategic than a typical RPG, and many bosses feature twists that require careful use of skills, elements, and status effects. The game emphasizes items: selling loot is the primary way of obtaining money, and the typical 'attack' command has been replaced with 'mug' to facilitate and encourage item acquisition. Most enemies have three items to steal; some of these items, such as the Gift Box and Money Bag, contain random rewards.

Each character features two skill subsets, as well as the 'Mug', 'Guard', and 'Use Item' options:

Julian: 'Cunning' (status-inflicting sword moves) and 'Impedimenta' (status/debuff magic)
Sarah: 'Martial Arts' (TP-based physical attacks) and 'Augmenta' (tanking/buff magic)
Trey: 'Swordplay' (various) and 'Elementa' (elemental magic).
Justine: 'Archery' (TBD) and 'Reficia' (healing magic).

There are three main dungeons in Valera: a mountain pass, an underground passage, and a watery tomb. In an attempt to streamline the game, most town interaction will occur on the world map. Field maps are completely explorable and feature a variety of puzzles, treasure chests, enemies, and NPCs. Completing an area in the final version will yield a special 'Care Package' based on a simple metric. Every treasure chest and monster party will yield a point; defeating the boss encounter under a certain turn number will also yield points. The more points collected, the better the care package.




Scripts by Yanfly - http://yanflychannel...ress.com/rmvxa/
"Impending Impact" and "Sentience" BGMs by Vengeance from the Sky: http://vengeancefrom...y.bandcamp.com/
Special thanks to Liberty and Namagomi for direct gameplay ideas.
Logo guidance from #pp...I'm a graphics noob

Latest Blog

Valera featured in RM VX Ace trailer

The official trailer of RPG Maker VX Ace has been released, and Valera is one of several lucky games that made it to the final revision of the trailer!



Big shoes to fill! Hopefully I can deliver.

Games:
Homework Salesman by StarCardets
A Tale of Valera by Deckiller
Porcupine Princess
Princess Princess: Another Story
Infinity by Ronove

Also, later this week be on the lookout for a certain thingie related to RPG Maker VX Ace Lite from yours truly. :D It will explain why I haven't touched this game in the last couple months.

A preview:



  • Production
  • Deckiller
  • YF
    Archeia_Nessiah
  • RPG Maker VX Ace
  • RPG
  • 12/06/2011 04:55 AM
  • 04/29/2013 09:24 PM
  • 01/28/2012
  • 41326
  • 32
  • 717

Posts

Pages: first 12 next last
It really reeled me in :p
author=Deckiller
Thanks for the comments! The key is to use the shadow tool :D


/facepalm

Thanks!
Deckiller
Mad bank for RMN server bills yo
12185
Thanks for the comments! The key is to use the shadow tool :D
Figured part of it out... Hold SHIFT when placing field tiles.

Now only thing I have not figured out is the fading on the bottom of the wall tiles in the middle of the bottomless pit. :)
I am very impressed by your demo here. Can I bother you with a few questions?

I have been doing my best to reproduce the effect you managed to make for the pits in the Kaufman Maps, and I am stumped. A few things in particular are throwing me for a loop.

First: The way you seem to place wall tiles, on top of floor tiles without disturbing the floor tiles? In particular, where the bottomless pit meets with stone walls. Normally the floor reshapes no matter what I do. Is there some technique I am missing?

Second: The way you get the bottoms of the wall tiles to vanish into the bottomless pit, as though the darkness consumed them. I am left wondering whaHow?!?!

Third: The way you covered up the loose ends of the bottomless pit in the walls had me trying to place door tiles over, but that often left artifacts behind. Yours are smooth black.

Please share with me your magic! I beg you.
It's great that this game is in production again. It shows a lot of promise.
Deckiller
Mad bank for RMN server bills yo
12185
author=Crystalgate
I'm very impressed with the demo.

Julian and Sarah are very well written. Julian balances humor and seriousness so far flawlessly and seem rather intelligent (he's a genius by RPG protagonist standard). Sarah manages to be brash without coming of as dumb, pretty much as you described her. They have great interaction. Trey isn't so impressive, but so far it seems to be due to lack of spotlight.

The story jumped a bit and got confusing, so I have a hard time telling if it was any good. I can say though that the story intrigued me in many ways.

Battles are great. I can't remember any other JRPG where there was so much thought put into cannon fodder enemies. The characters also have well though trough skill sets.

I do however spot one danger to the balance, namely economy. As a rule, when the characters due to levels have doubled their HP and MP, their income has more than doubled. What this means is that healing items will become cheaper and cheaper. The easier it is to heal, the less valuable defensive skills, such as Julian's Impediments and Sarah's tanking moves, will be. You get into the problem present in over 90% of JRPGs where the best strategy is to just spam offensive moves and heal up afterwards. Also, if it becomes easier to replenish MP, the balance between MP and TP can fall apart. For example, Julian has both MP and TP based physical moves. If MP items becomes to cheap, he can just spam the MP based moves with impunity. Sarah on the other hand, relies on TP to deal good damage. She can easily fall behind.

Thanks a lot for the feedback! Yeah, economy is critical, and unless I do something it'll be a problem when the game is stretched out over a full 2-3 hours - usually I keep a static number of MP, and I might do that again for this game. Keeping MP static would also help keep TP/MP balanced, since they'd both have set numbers. I might have some accessories that either increase starting TP or total MP.
I'm very impressed with the demo.

Julian and Sarah are very well written. Julian balances humor and seriousness so far flawlessly and seem rather intelligent (he's a genius by RPG protagonist standard). Sarah manages to be brash without coming of as dumb, pretty much as you described her. They have great interaction. Trey isn't so impressive, but so far it seems to be due to lack of spotlight.

The story jumped a bit and got confusing, so I have a hard time telling if it was any good. I can say though that the story intrigued me in many ways.

Battles are great. I can't remember any other JRPG where there was so much thought put into cannon fodder enemies. The characters also have well though trough skill sets.

I do however spot one danger to the balance, namely economy. As a rule, when the characters due to levels have doubled their HP and MP, their income has more than doubled. What this means is that healing items will become cheaper and cheaper. The easier it is to heal, the less valuable defensive skills, such as Julian's Impediments and Sarah's tanking moves, will be. You get into the problem present in over 90% of JRPGs where the best strategy is to just spam offensive moves and heal up afterwards. Also, if it becomes easier to replenish MP, the balance between MP and TP can fall apart. For example, Julian has both MP and TP based physical moves. If MP items becomes to cheap, he can just spam the MP based moves with impunity. Sarah on the other hand, relies on TP to deal good damage. She can easily fall behind.
Played through 2.1.
I...
Hated it............NO, I loved it. There are a few errors here and there, but it's mostly pretty nice. I'll upload those videos when I get the time :)
Deckiller
Mad bank for RMN server bills yo
12185
author=bigtime
True, true, well i like the elementalist the best so far. Seems to dominate all. Cant wait to try new demo.


I'll have something posted in less than 24 hours!
True, true, well i like the elementalist the best so far. Seems to dominate all. Cant wait to try new demo.
Deckiller
Mad bank for RMN server bills yo
12185
author=bigtime
This looks cool and im downloading. As for the archer I dont know if you ever decided yet but good options for blue mages are always stealing items, getting skills used against character, or your silver arrow idea of sort of stealing the ability. Good luck and I look forward to playing this.


I might implement this idea in the full version, but for tomorrow's demo release I might not even be implementing the archer.
This looks cool and im downloading. As for the archer I dont know if you ever decided yet but good options for blue mages are always stealing items, getting skills used against character, or your silver arrow idea of sort of stealing the ability. Good luck and I look forward to playing this.
Deckiller
Mad bank for RMN server bills yo
12185
I might opt to post a demo or two before the game's final release at the end of April.
Yeah, I also look forward to see what else happens to this game. I´m pretty sure whatever comes next will be done with more time and less gimmes. Regarding the items to steal, I guess I got an idea of the variety of items the monster will have from Snatch (just previewed, never bothered with it though ...). And I´m with Liberty regarding the boring, repetitive melee attacks in fights.
Liberty
~RTP Princess~
9501
This is looking really nice so far, decky. After playing the demo, I gotta say I'm liking the characters and the general setup of the game so far. The battles are challenging without being too hard and I liked having a group of thieves as characters, instead of just attacking all the time!
Deckiller
Mad bank for RMN server bills yo
12185
author=Renasci
I am amazed at the speed of development of this game.
Good work~ I'd love to play this with my friend some time. :)


Thanks for stopping in for those kind words! Long time no see!
I am amazed at the speed of development of this game.
Good work~ I'd love to play this with my friend some time. :)
Deckiller
Mad bank for RMN server bills yo
12185
author=edchuy
So here's my feedback:

First of all, while I found that 65k treasure chest, it was nothing compared to the one that had gazillion (not quite as much!). Basically, that made money a non-issue. The healing stores are a first time for me as well. For the store, perhaps you should consider allowing the players to buy weapons and armor and adjust the enemies levels accordingly.

I found the combat options to be refreshing, since you can't just spam the normal attack with the weaker foes and because each character has their own options you have to make more thoughtful choices in the fights, especially since the attacks might have some useful debuffs. Regarding Steal, I think this is the first time I have seen it has a 100% success rate at least with non-bosses, always yielding the same loot and I believe should be for only 1 character in the party, at most.

As mentioned elsewhere, your mapping is very good. There were a couple of passability issues, though. When I exited the cave and walked the road heading toward the bridge that leads to the cave with the final boss, I accidentally found I was able to walk up and down the ledge. Also, in the room before the final boss, you must have forgotten to put a jumping spot to get to the chest there.

I found out you can skip the final boss if you don't walk straight to it, which is probably true (didn't try it!) of the earlier one. As mentioned elsewhere, the fight is tough because it takes a little bit of trial and earlier to figure out how to land a hit on it.

Overall, not bad at all for a rushed game!


Ah, thanks for the feedback.

I literally put random stuff in the chests for "teh lulz", hehe. Such as the 5938934289 dollar chests.

Yeah, I sort of just plopped that boss sprite at the end around 5 minutes before the upload deadline. Passability issues will be easy to resolve, as I was using a terrain flag script. Eventually, each monster will have an array of 3-5 items, making multiple steal options a good thing.
So here's my feedback:

First of all, while I found that 65k treasure chest, it was nothing compared to the one that had gazillion (not quite as much!). Basically, that made money a non-issue. The healing stores are a first time for me as well. For the store, perhaps you should consider allowing the players to buy weapons and armor and adjust the enemies levels accordingly.

I found the combat options to be refreshing, since you can't just spam the normal attack with the weaker foes and because each character has their own options you have to make more thoughtful choices in the fights, especially since the attacks might have some useful debuffs. Regarding Steal, I think this is the first time I have seen it has a 100% success rate at least with non-bosses, always yielding the same loot and I believe should be for only 1 character in the party, at most.

As mentioned elsewhere, your mapping is very good. There were a couple of passability issues, though. When I exited the cave and walked the road heading toward the bridge that leads to the cave with the final boss, I accidentally found I was able to walk up and down the ledge. Also, in the room before the final boss, you must have forgotten to put a jumping spot to get to the chest there.

I found out you can skip the final boss if you don't walk straight to it, which is probably true (didn't try it!) of the earlier one. As mentioned elsewhere, the fight is tough because it takes a little bit of trial and earlier to figure out how to land a hit on it.

Overall, not bad at all for a rushed game!
Pages: first 12 next last