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The rope winds from the clouds like the long-dried trail of a giant's tear. It whips in the arid wind, down the birdless sky, and into the open mouth of the ravine that splits the dead land. Down and down it goes, the sky darkening to a pinpoint of light above it. This is the sky that Ivy knows.

Ivy and her sister, Mint, peer further into the ravine. It has been one day since their father stopped moving. A dandelion sprouts from the parched earth like hands clasped together in prayer. It is the only living thing they've seen in this dead world. A growl echoes off the cliff walls. Maybe not the only thing.

Sometimes Ivy dreams of a sky that covers everything. When she awakes, she hates herself for still having the dreams of a child. She's fourteen, now, her sister twelve. The rope stretches up above them, up, up, up, further than young eyes can see.

Features:
-Character-centric storyline
-50+ hours of gameplay
-Challenging boss battles
-Original music
-Different equipment sets that modify the ways characters play
-A crafting system featuring over 100 pieces of unique equipment
-LOTS of side quests
-Puzzles that spice up dungeon design
-Recruit an odd assortment of townspeople and pass legislation to develop your own village
-Raise a pig to compete in the Pig Arena and win prizes
-New game+ feature that includes multiple bonus endings--a mechanic I blatantly stole from Chrono Trigger

Latest Blog

Major Update

I've been hinting here and there about wanting to update A Very Long Rope, and I finally got off my ass and did it. I made quite a few changes, and I'll list them below, but I want to talk about the most major one in depth. When I made A Very Long Rope, my goal was to make a game with a strong story, and a lot of the other aspects got brushed aside. This was going to be my way to segue into the community and hopefully find some other people interested in working together. Since then, I've shifted my perspective and focused more on things like design and aesthetics, which this game doesn't really care much about, unfortunately.

So, the update. The chief annoyance I've been hearing about A Very Long Rope is the dungeon design--mainly, levels are way too big, and the random encounters serve to make things worse. So, this update adds an item to your inventory that toggles enemy encounters. This item was available in the game before, but the only way to get it was to beat the game (players who have done this know I'm talking about the saecelium shield). Now, this item is given to the player at the very beginning, meaning you don't have to fight a single random encounter anymore.

Of course, since bosses exist, you'll still need to gain experience. In order to incentivize getting a good amount of experience before each boss, I've made several treasure chests need a currency called "victory points" in order to open them. Basically, you get a single victory point for every enemy you defeat in a battle (other than bosses). Victory points are dependent based on the dungeon, so the ones you earn in the first dungeon will only work in that dungeon. The cost of opening chests is higher depending on what's inside the chest, so you might need to spend between 2-6 points in order to open each of these special chests.

I've also doubled the experience, gold, and item drops from monsters. The net effect here is that if you open every single locked chest, you'll end up fighting about half of the encounters that you would have if you just left random encounters on. I did a full playthrough and felt that these locked chests provided short-term goals that kept me more interested while exploring; I hope they do that for you, too!

Here's the full list of changes:

-Reduced crit damage from triple to double
-Stat cap increased to 9999 (will mainly affect buff stacking)
-Berserk no longer sucks
-One-touch Sprint
-First agricultural upgrade requires three people instead of five.
-Escape rate now a flat 60%
-Added a way to get out of the Goddess Tower if you don't have a portable transceiver
-Fixed a few typos/graphical glitches/small things I don't remember
-Rare drop rates have been increased significantly
-Gold/XP/Drop Rates doubled
-Findable equipment that could be used in recipes is now sold as recipes in your town along with the regular recipes.
-Saecelium Shield now added at the beginning of the game. Players can use their old data and find a Saeclium Shield in a number of places within a blue chest (such as the entrance to your town, on the world map, or next to the save point in Old Town); the blue chests will disappear upon opening one.
-Most chests are now "locked." Gain Victory Points from defeating random mobs in a dungeon to open locked chests. Victory Points are specific to each dungeon.
-Locked chests are weighted based on how good the item is. 2 VP is a potion, 3 VP is gold, a good potion, or monster mats, 4 VP are great potions and large sums of gold, 5 VP are stat-boosting items or rare monster mats, 6 VP are equipment.
-Chests that aren't near easy grinding spots (e.g. chests in certain puzzles, chests in towns) will never be locked. Several other random chests in dungeons will also not be locked.
-Arena fights now give experience
-Can now use saecelium shield during soul tear scenes
-Only need to find the wolf four times instead of nine (what was I thinking?!) in Marina's soul tear scene.


That's it! Oh, and make sure to subscribe to my new project: Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass.
  • Completed
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  • 11/26/2013 04:56 PM
  • 05/29/2023 03:05 PM
  • 12/01/2013
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with only the one save/heal point near the beginning and a maze with oh so many buttons etc...it got too much of a bother to keep guessing which was what and where. Drops didnt give as much as needed to keep from trying to run from many battles just to try and guess if one of the next pushed buttons might somehow, in some other area open up and have another save/heal point. I am level 6 so at least the battles werent that bad, but getting poisoned over and over with MP for FIRST AID dwindling way too fast and at the same time getting lost in the forest of buttons made me just stop.
Mint should be able to recover mp with prayer at level 3. You should be able to trail the pipes from the buttons to the doors, so the buttons aren't really a maze, unless you're talking about the last puzzle in the first dungeon with the eight buttons in a row. The signs by the buttons give you hints for which button opens which door, and the signs by the doors give hints as to which door leads to the next room. I'd love for you to keep playing, but if the puzzles are giving you too much of a hard time, then maybe this isn't the game for you.
So I continued to play and finally get out and the story progresses. Now what the hell do I do with those falling boulders? I cant dodge fast enough so am thinking there is something needed to do first....but no one I talk to has any info or any advice as what to do next.
Make sure that you're running by holding shift. The boulders also hit that break in the stairs and "hop" over you, so you can walk up to that point safely.
I am already using shift in order to dodge them. They come down too quickly to be able to run up and move from side to side. Really I am attempting to continue playing and I enjoy a challenge but unless the next few tries dont get me anywhere, I am afraid its more annoying than fun. It has a lot going for it though.

Thanks
unity
You're magical to me.
12540
Given the amount of creativity I found in The God of Crawling Eyes I just have to give this a look! Downloaded, and will play soon :D
unity
You're magical to me.
12540
After a little over an hour of playing the game, I thought I'd give my first impression:

Pros:

*The setting is very interesting, especially since the player knows about as much of the world as the girls do at the start.

*Both of the girls are great characters and play off each other's personalities well.

*Dungeons are spiced up with neat ideas like the buttons that open different doors in the first dungeon and the falling boulders (and having to track down a couple of characters) in the second.

*Character interaction is done fantastically, as is the resolution to the scene after the second dungeon.

*The overall feel of the game has quite a bit of charm to it. The event after the first dungeon provided a genuinely tense feeling, where you really wonder what's going to happen.

And the cons:

*The buttons, to me, went a little overboard in the last case on the first dungeon. The doors were labeled with a puzzle to which one needed to be opened, which was cool, but on top of that the buttons to open the doors also had a puzzle so you had to figure out which button you were pressing opened which door. Each puzzle is fine on it's own but combined it took me a little bit to find the answer. On the other hand, I'm not the best with puzzles and I still enjoyed the mechanic overall.

*Areas tend to be very square-shaped and sometimes lack details, which make some spots seem rather bland.

*Save spots were distributed about as often as you'd expect for a commercial RPG. I personally prefer being able to save a little more often in case I can't play for a long stretch of time, so a few more would have been nice, but it still functions fine as-is.

None of those complaints are anywhere close to deal-breakers for me, so I'll continue with the rest of the 49+ hours and see how it goes :D
I agree with pretty much all of the pros and cons unity just listed (though I actually like the save distribution). I do, however, also feel like boss fights have just been damage rushes so far with nearly every ability being an attack of one element or another. That being said, I've also just recently finished up the second area so I'm still quite early in the game and I'm overall enjoying it quite a bit from what I've played of it.
Cool, good to hear some feedback! I kept early bosses pretty simple, but they should have more depth as the game progresses. Map design is probably a weak point for me, but I think maybe I'm in the passable category, haha. I'm glad The God of Crawling Eyes pulled in some people--that's really what I wanted from it. Hope you guys continue to enjoy it!
unity
You're magical to me.
12540
I've gotten stuck in the holy ruins where the lights turn on and off. I got past the first area with the lights just fine. Then there's the next area, that adds pits, and spikes on the lower floor. I spent 2 and a half hours trying to navigate the area. I even went so far as writing down step by painful step what directions I need to take when the lights go off. But even then I couldn't find an exit.

I had to cross spikes so many times that Mint ran out of MP for healing, and I ran out of restorative items. A random encounter was able to easily finish me off and I'm too frustrated to continue for today.

I've really loved the dungeon mechanics in the game so far, but the lights off part is really frustrating to me. First off, and it may just be me, but I get a headache when the lights have to keep being switched off an on. Also, having to navigate in near-complete darkness without even a circle of light around your sprite is very frustrating. You have to completely memorize your surroundings when the lights are on and the holes in the ground mean you must be exactly precise. You also have to be staring at the screen in darkness to tell when you hit a wall and your sprite hasn't moved. The way you're supposed to go isn't made clear, and the green pillars that block your path when the lights are on prevent you from getting a good grasp of the direction you should be traveling.

Am I missing something? Is there some trick to get by this part?
Dang. This was a puzzle I was a little afraid of. You do have to memorize, but I think of it as, like, "move straight up" when there's no pits and a wall in that direction, then like "two left" if there is a pit. Writing this down will work, too, which I guess you did.

However, the real exit is in the basement with the spikes. You don't even have to do the lights out puzzle. The sign before that room says "The path to God is covered in thorns." So, this puzzle is completely optional.
unity
You're magical to me.
12540
Oh, okay. I didn't think hard enough on the clue. I'll give it another try, thanks :D
This game has won my heart. I'm absolutely invested in the characters and story. Which is why I'm so upset at the prospect of not being able to get past the boulders. I've read the previous comments, but it seems like if I as much as touch the boulder that's stuck at the bottom of the steps, I get knocked off the map and I'm forced to restart from the last save. Considering this save was before the first boss, it would save me a whole lot of frustration if there was any further advice you could give. c:
Ah! Do you have an old version (like several months old)? The boulders shouldn't be able to knock you off the map, and if you update the game and move your save file over, the puzzle is a lot easier. If that's not the case, here's my advice for that boulder part (and I need to figure out how that glitch is still happening):

-First off, you can save on the world map; you're the second person who hasn't realized this, so I should throw some dialogue in about it the next time I update it. I was just using old school rules thinking everyone would be hip to them.
-You can get to right before the first gap in the steps and the boulders will hop over you.
-I'm not sure exactly why people have trouble with this part, but it might be because they're panicking. Don't be afraid to take things slow (though you should hold shift to run). What I mean by this: every step up is progress. I ran through it again and paid attention to my behavior. I tend to run into the gaps between boulders and then while the boulders to my left or right are moving down, I plan out my next route. You still have to think fast, but there are little pauses as you run up the mountain. I don't know if that'll help or not, but I hope it does! Let me know how it goes.

Edit: also, if you do see that boulder at the bottom of the step, just walk one screen to the left and go back; the puzzle will reset.
unity
You're magical to me.
12540
I got through the dungeon with no problems now and moved forward! There was a really touching part and also we met Yvette, who is awesome and hilarious. (Her courtroom scene is too funny!)
Yvette says:
It's no big surprise I'm a breakout star. If it were up to me, this game would be called "Yvette's Magical Unicorn Adventure." They had to can the idea in pre-production because we spent all our money buying a real, live unicorn. It was really sad to have to let all the cast and crew go. That unicorn was delicious, though.
unity
You're magical to me.
12540
Hehe. I highly doubt Mint took part of the unicorn feast. Or was she going to be in your Unicorn Adventure at all? :D
Thanks so much for the help! I worked past my frustration and ended up playing for four hours straight. xD It's nice to have such an enjoyable game to play while I'm too uncomfortably sick to fall asleep. Also, thanks for the pointer about the world map. I'm an idiot, I know
Hey, I'm glad you're enjoying it! Don't feel bad about not knowing you can save on the world map; I grew up playing RPGs where this was the standard, and it's easy to forget that everyone might not have the same frame of reference as me.