Description

A big component of games is the story, but there are games out there where the draw is not the story, the characters, the setting or the gameplay (well, not as much, anyway). It's the sidequests, and that's why we're here today - to make a game based on quests!


What is a Sidequest?
Sidequests are quests that are, quite often, optional. They tend to add more meat to a game and often require the player to do particular tasks in exchange for treasure. Different kinds of sidequests tend to have particular expectations on how to complete them.

They are as follows:

- Fetch Quests: Find items and bring them back to the quest giver. These can be as simple as buying an item from a shop, or as hard as going through a whole optional dungeon in order to find a lost item. They can be integral to the story, or not at all a part of it, but the main component is "Go here and get this for me".
- Battle/Exploration/Tutorial Quests: Usually revolve around aspects of the battle system, exploration or tutorial, which help your character learn how to use various aspects of the game. Usually these are once-and-done miniquests that aim to teach by example. "Jump over 10 logs/Create 3 potions/Use Combo-attack 5 times against an enemy" are all examples of these kinds of quests.
- Kill Quests: Kill x number of enemies for me! These are the most simple of quests, usually, though they can be annoying if the monster in question is hard to find.
- Chain Quests: A series of quests that connect to each other. "Bring this to my friend > it's the wrong item, go get me the right one > take this back to the original guy > now use this to kill an enemy for me > etc". They usually can contain various different types of quests within them.
- Escort Quests: Protect a character or thing until you reach a specific area. Some of these will require in or out of battle protection.
- Gather Quests: Like the Fetch Quests, this requires that you gather a set amount of items, whether from enemy drops or interaction with the environment. They require finding specific items, collecting an amount and bringing them back to the quest giver.
- Timed Quests: You usually have a set amount of time to do this quest in, and usually it overlaps with other kinds of quests, but the main component is that race against the clock.
- Hybrid Quests: Quests tend to overlap various quest types to create a particular quest. For example, a kill quest that also doubles as an escort mission, where you must help an NPC to kill a set amount of monsters for them to pass a test.
- Story Quests: Not usually considered sidequests, these are quests that move the story forward, but can also be used to delve deeper into the lore or characterisation of the game world or characters. They usually involve any of the above quest types but are centred around the story/lore/characters/etc of the game.

- Miniquests are sidequests in miniature. They tend to require very little of the player beyond what they've already done in the game, and rarely (if ever) ask the player to leave the immediate area/zone in order to complete them. Such quests can include aspects of any of the above, however on a much smaller scale. For example, giving someone a potion, asking you to kill rats in a room, asking you to talk to someone in the house next door.


What are we doing?
In this event the idea is to create a game that focuses on what would usually be an optional aspect of a game. The story of the game can be quite short, in and of itself, as the main aspect will be the quests themselves. In this event you can structure the game to follow only sidequests, or have a short story as an aside to the quests, but the main component of the game, the main focus, must be the quests.

You will be tasked to create a game with at least ten sidequests within it, if not more, and those required ten must make use of ten of the listed quest names below, either as direct reference to the quests themselves, or as inspiration for them.

That is: Make game with 10 or more sidequests, but 10 of them must be directly inspired from the listed quest names below. An actual over-arching story/main quest for your game is completely optional.


Rules
- Start on the 21sth of January. Remember to set your site time zone so that you can check this page for the event start and end times!
- Games must be full games. As the story isn't the main aspect, you can have something very short.
- When you have enough details about your game, CREATE A GAME PAGE, at least a few days before the end of the event (remember, game pages need to be checked over. Give time just in case it gets denied and you have to fix something! Last minute game pages will be met with face-palmage and me crossly flailing my arms around asking "Why?! Why do they do this every goddamn event?!")
- End date is midnight of February 19th. Again, please set your site timezone preferences so that you can tell when that is!
- You may team up, if you so wish.
- You may be part of multiple teams, if you so wish.
- You must include a list of the named quests you used in a Read Me file in the game folder OR someplace on the game page.

- Your game must have at least 10 of the named quests below.
- Your game can have no main quest, or something short. The main component must be the quests, though.

The Quests
Pick at least ten of the below names to base ten of your quests on. You may have more than ten quests total, or exactly ten, but a requirement of the event is to have ten quests within your game based on the quest names/titles below.

+ Blood on the Snow
+ The Ballad of the Grey Man
+ Suzy's Catastrophic Day
+ Oops! Suddenly... Cthulhu!
+ The Good, The Bad, and the Etc.
+ Where-ever I Lay My Head
+ Any Port in a Storm
+ Vape Me!
+ The Wrong Bees
+ The Case of the Empty Coffin
+ Midnight Rendezvous
+ Visions and Voices
+ The Last Dancer
+ Dark Side of the Road
+ Curses and Curls
+ The Shopping List
+ Her Sigh
+ Wendigo Mountain
+ Abigail Road
+ Luxuries of Lamplaw Lookout
+ A Twisted Beauty
+ Oops! Suddenly... Cthulhu! Part II
+ Twin Souls
+ The Mystery of the Missing Misao
+ Flowers at Fanninglow Fen
+ The Terrific Tale of One-Legged Lon
+ A Grave Remembrance
+ The Mistress and Her Cicisbeo
+ The Diamond of Gugglebug Gulch
+ Rune of the Moon
+ Ye Olde Guitar of the Blood God
+ The Toprock Narratives
+ The Downrock Diatribes
+ Power Moves and Freezes
+ Kitten Kabootle
+ Precognitive Dissonance
+ Chaos Emerald Weapon
+ Bone of Contention
+ Lord Jim: A Tale
+ Centaur for Disease Control
+ Fedora the Explorer
+ Temporal Pair of Socks
+ The Dragon, the Witch and the Wardrobe Malfunction
+ A Bridge Over Trolled Waters
+ Good Knight, Sweet Prince
+ The Littlest Megabiologist
+ The Dog Who Cried 'Woof!'
+ There's Snow Stopping Us Now!
+ On the Hills of Hervanen
+ Bandits in Bunkaloo Bush
+ All's Well That Ends Well
+ The Mourning After
+ rand(x) Time's The Charm
+ The Merchant of Riffolk
+ Of Dice and Men
+ Little Buoy, Blue
+ My Name, My Rules
+ "Normal" aka "Your Idea of Normal Hurts Me Deep, Deep Inside"
+ Help Me, Gobi One
+ The Golden Idol
+ A Stitch In Time
+ A Parade of Pandas
+ The Great Goatsby
+ Tex-Mex on the Beach
+ I Know What You Did Last Drummer
+ #blame(insertnameherebutesbyworksbestby)
+ Money Talks
+ Witch Upon a Star
+ Hello, Is It Bee You're Looking For
+ Which Hour?
+ Paint it Black-ish
+ These Ain't The Right Trousers
+ Lit Green with Envy
+ The Miracle on Ice
+ Three Crowns, One Euro
+ Dude, Where's My Griffin?!
+ Blackhawk's Down
+ The Gretzky Escape
+ Not Just Another Sidequest



Submission
To submit your game to the event, follow these directions:
- Sign up for this event.
- Create a Game Page when you have enough information about your game to do so. (Please leave enough time for it to go through the queue and to allow for uploading/fixing/etc.)
- When your Game Page has been accepted to the site, upload your game to the game page.
- When your game has finished uploading, come to this page and hit the "Submit" button in the top-right corner.
- From there pick the download of that game and submit it. It should show up next to your name on the list of entries.
- If you have any questions or issues, about this, please PM Liberty before the end date.
- Make sure to include the Read Me file with the names of the quests you were inspired by in the download (or somewhere on the game page).


FAQs
How obscure can we be?
A little obscure, yeah, but not so obscure that people can't figure out where the idea came from on the list. You can fudge the spelling on some of the words, too, as long as it remains similar to the original. For example "Morning > Mourning".

Details

  • 01/21/2017 12:00 AM
  • 02/20/2017 02:00 AM
  • 10

Achievements

Registration

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Teams Members Entry
Doing nothing or hardly trying
Its cold and there are frostwolves out
Crazuman
This Team has Nothing Whatsoever to do with Dragons
We screwed everything up, but we're trying to fix it now, okay?
Murder She Worf
Team Name
I HOPE THIS TIME I'D HAVE ENOUGH TIME FOR FINISH THIS FREAKIN' GAME
Team Late to the Party
Team Probably Not Making Anything Again
HexComet
We Have Slain the Dragon oh look a little girl lost her cat
Team Deckiller
a series of disappointing events
how the heck am I making a cohesive narrative out of this
Side by Side Warrior
When it's all over, we still have to clear up
Aw Hell,l I might as well join... I got nothing better to do.
Oh but it's Klold out side!
https://pics.onsizzle.com/Facebook-a212ce.png
Maybe I'll find time... mabe not... have some glitter meanwhile...
procedural quest generator
Merk-antile
Emag Retniw Memories
Team Names Suck
Gam Maek
TEAM SLACKER
80 Hours of Optional Content
A CAT AND HIS CHEERLEADER
Team FFX-2 Clone GOGOGOGOG
Team Name Goes Here
I Love Sidequests
Cute Girls do Cute Things
The weather outside is HOT AS HELL, let's make sidequests
The Weather Outside is Gam Mak
Team Not Gonna Submit Anything
Team (oh frick i accidentally lost all my motivation)
Sir Questalot
maybe someday sometime
Side Quest for Glory
Machine Hangar
Out questing, please come back later unless you want to join me
Team Rat Race
Hecka Cool Boys Studio (Punk + Hekset: Buddy Cop Duo)
Team, get it in
Team Name
I mak gams therefore I join
Whoops I just failed
Team-a-ding-ding
Studio SaGa Q
Team Blob of Game
Simple RTP Game
Always late to the party
Can't think of a name
Sidequest Lord
A Mechanical Garden
School, exams, and game making... I am not sure I can finish in time :(

Posts

Punkitt
notorious rpgmaker 2k3 shill
3341
guess who's not dead yet BOYS

pianotm
The TM is for Totally Magical.
32347
'Ere, he says he's not dead yet!
Unless I pull a Seer Dell and pump something out in these last few days I won't make it. BUT I'LL TRY!
author=Archeia_Nessiah
I was gonna work on my entry on the weekends but it turns out that I did so badly at meeting my deadline this week it bleeds in.

how many teams feel like they'll enter in time? :o


Just barely. Working on balancing enemies right now. >.> It definitely won't be as balanced as I'd liked. Made worse by the fact that the extra party members are optional. Poor solo players, haha.
author=Aethers
You're the maker of Altima! I really like that game. Still waitint for the upgraded/updated/plus version to come out lol.

But yeah, Altima2. Looking forward for that too.

author=GreatRedSpirit

Man I started the Altima XTREME three or four times. There was the initial bit, then I moved it to Ace some time after it came out for more XTREME shit to take advantage of Ace's baked in gameplay goodies that VX didn't have, then finally moved it back to normal VX and dropped all the XTREME new content just to make it not suck for the Revive the Dead event (holy shit it's been two years since). I dropped the xtreme rewrite where you explore and fight against the Patrons of Evil and settled for a bit of worldbuilding based on what was already there, added more than one boss for each enemy tier, and try to theme enemies for each dungeon. Y'know, basic things any game that wasn't slapped together should have! Didn't finish in time though, I got mired down in indecision and details. Lots of little details.

Last year I went back and tried to just finish it (spoilers I failed, I am very bad at finishing things). I never got too far with making combat interesting in the last iteration so I just focused on that. I didn't do too well though and combat wasn't that engaging so I dropped it for the last time around halfway through the game and let it rot. Improving Altima has been a curse.

Also I removed the exploit where you could enter a dungeon, run from every encounter, and get the dungeon clear reward over and over again. I'm not sure if that helped or hurt the endproduct because of how cheesy it was.



As for this actual event, I don't really have a gameplan (what a surprise!). I did spend some time writing some ideas down: It was a small realm that's having general health issues and it's up to the protagonist to find out why and to fix it! Side quests would be power ups or directions to solving the game but a sufficiently inquisitive player would find the problem and be able to fix it (with explosives!) without doing any of that.


There's no way I can actually do that because I work slower than smell so I'm split between making some rushed bossgame with ten bosses inspired by the quest names (Suddenly, Cthulu! would be some eldritch abomination, Twin Souls would be a boss that clones itself and the player has to choose between killing the clone to slow the boss' DPS or burn the boss while surviving under full DPS or something) or surprising nobody and just work on my original idea event game and make up for my shitposting with feedback for those who submitted entries.
Cap_H
DIGITAL IDENTITY CRISIS
6625
@Punkitt Can I hang it on my wall, Please? The palette has my fav tones of brick red and surf green. It's just too delightful.
haha GRS, that dog gif is so apt right now.

So, are there any actual rewards for this event? If I submit our game in it's current state and there are 0 quests finished but some dialogue and maps, would that be any different than actually submitting a game with 10 quests?

We're going to finish the game either way in the future, so at least that came out of the event. I'm just curious if we should make 10 of the simplest quests ever just to meet the goal to win a prize. It would save me a lot of stress.

Also, when we submit through this event page, is that instant? So as long as I click that submit button and add my game 5 minutes before the deadline, I'm safe?
Versalia
must be all that rtp in your diet
1405
Sadly I'll have to withdraw from the event, as real life and my new job are kicking my ass. I also realized I designed something that I could make really fun if I stopped worrying about a deadline, so I shall!
- Your game must have at least 10 of the named quests below.
- Your game can have no main quest, or something short. The main component must be the quests, though.
- Games must be full games. As the story isn't the main aspect, you can have something very short.


Quite frankly, I'd love to give everyone an extra week but I'm sure Ziggy would be sending me angry emoticons every day since the McBJ is coming up.
author=Liberty
- Your game must have at least 10 of the named quests below.
- Your game can have no main quest, or something short. The main component must be the quests, though.
- Games must be full games. As the story isn't the main aspect, you can have something very short.
Quite frankly, I'd love to give everyone an extra week but I'm sure Ziggy would be sending me angry emoticons every day since the McBJ is coming up.


We could just put the BaconJam on the back burner...*smoke arises from the burning bacon*

It sounds like a lot of people really enjoyed the game they were working on though. Hopefully they continue on and release something really cool some day.

Future event idea: the whole site gets together and creates a frankensteined game. Each participant makes one map, one character, one quest, etc. The results would be amaze.
We did something like that map-wise with the MaMaMa and FoMaMa games (The Here and Now of Yesterday, and, Where End Times Saddest Songs, respectively).
Trihan
"It's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly...timey wimey...stuff."
3359
Considering how many people have said they'll have to pull out and the fact that I still haven't been able to start my entry yet an extra week sure would be handy.
Cap_H
DIGITAL IDENTITY CRISIS
6625
People may be too exhausted to start working on another game right away.
But i think there is a cool down time planned, everything should be alright, then.
Well, we are running a 'finish your goddamn games people' event later in the year, too.
Technically, for once, I'm on track for finishing. (Although, uh, I did have to scale back a little? XD) I wouldn't mind another week though as it'd allow me a little more sleep with my gam mak. We can upset the ziggy also. >:D Although if we got another week that'd have to be, uh, the last extra week. XD

Ugu I'll have to submit the gamepage really soon though... >.>
unity
You're magical to me.
12540
author=Archeia_Nessiah
I was gonna work on my entry on the weekends but it turns out that I did so badly at meeting my deadline this week it bleeds in.

how many teams feel like they'll enter in time? :o


I didn't scale back enough, so I don't think I'll make the deadline. But I'm going to keep working. I'm pretty sure I can have the game done within a week. ^_^
Seiromem
I would have more makerscore If I did things.
6375
if I cut out half of the content I had planned I might make it
@GRS
That Altima plan sounds pretty good actually. I already enjoyed the original game since it has tons of freedom. I ditched the hero from the get go and control a named guard to save the world. It was pretty glorious adventure (the guard is actually really good with his skillset) and in the end I just grind to solo the final boss. Doable, but takes time and kinda boring at the grind (well, that's solo for you).

Also probably missed a dungeon or two because of the SHIP being buggy with its starting position (not on water. Why). In total, I think I played it twice.

If ALTIMA have skill/job learning system and more chars (with unique passive or something) in addition to your new bosses and quests, it would still be pretty fun. But that is my preferences in game.

author=Delsin7
Aethers, I totally expect you to put out an amazing mech combat game this year. :3

Question tho, is it more Front Mission, Full Metal Panic, Robotech, Gundam, or Xenogears style?


Are we playing hot potato now?



Also probably front mission or xenogears from your choices.
But first, I need to make/write a story that is not stupid. Or at least stupid but still acceptable.

Frogge
I wanna marry ALL the boys!! And Donna is a meanc
18536
author=pianotm
'Ere, he says he's not dead yet!

Yes he is.