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It is exciting to announce that the full demo for 'Future Ghost' is now available. Please hit the above "Download Now" button to check it out! (95Mb, Win & HTML5, 20-30m play time)

Set in the recent past and near future, Future Ghost will have the player direct the actions of Weiliang Song, a man whose 40 year-long obsession with immortality is fulfilled, sending him on a collision course with 1500 year-old secrets and a plot that could determine the direction of humanity’s future.

With his kungfu master and father-in-law missing, a "future ghost" haunting him, and the burden of responsibilities beyond mortal understanding on his shoulders, Song must traverse our world in search of resolution.

  • Explore various hand-drawn settings across the globe, over a 90 year timeline, as well as in flashbacks set decades and millenia into the past.
  • Use Song’s mastery of kungfu and upgrade and utilise a range of chi-based moves in story-driven RPG-style battles.
  • Unravel a deep, complex narrative through linear story missions and optional side-quests.
  • Enjoy a blend of old-school adventure game and RPG, all rendered in a comic book-like 2D art style.

Song fights using the "Twenty-Six Star" style of kungfu, loosely based on Bagua Zhang, and features a counter-attack move in his opening repertoire.
Starting Special "Qigong" Moves:
  • Heal:xRecover health by regulating qi
  • Iron Palm:xIncrease Attack for 3 turns
  • Iron Shirt:xIncrease resistance to all types of attack until next hit
  • Cultivate Qi:xRegain qi


Hoping to attract play testers for Future Ghost, once there's enough of it to be worth playing, as it's quite a big endeavour, with its script running to 152 pages' length. Play testers will of course be credited, and will receive a free copy of the finished game. Please get in touch if interested!

Latest Blog

Where Song comes from

This blog entry will not be about Chengdu, in Sichuan Province, China, which is where the protagonist of my game ‘Future Ghost’, Song Weiliang, is from. Instead, I want to write about his origin as a character within the real-world context that shaped him over time.

Song started out as a standard American-style superhero named the Doppelganger. When I was in primary school, I was an avid reader of these black-and-white omnibus reprints of DC comics we used to get in Australia back in the late 70s and early 80s. As a child, I played around with some childish ideas for my own superheroes to begin with, but the Doppelganger was my first “mature” effort. His super power was, as the name suggests, to copy the appearance of any person. He could also shoot energy beams from his hands, which were in some way related to the shapeshifting power.

A friend of mine also came up with his own hero, and we worked on stories for them under the team name of ‘Vendetta’. The Doppelganger, whose civilian name was ‘Alex’, was actually based on that friend of mine in some ways, not least of all his Asian background and appearance; his current incarnation as Song Weiliang even moreso.

That early collaborator is in fact my oldest close friend. We first met when we were 6 years old, and while adult life has seen us drift somewhat, we are still as close as ever whenever we manage to get together. He came with his family to suburban Melbourne, Australia, as a refugee following the Vietnam War, moving into my First Grade class and into a house just down the street from mine. This is the origin of Song’s backstory as a Chinese refugee following the Cultural Revolution, ending him up in the suburbs of Melbourne, just like my friend.

It was in the house of that friend where I was first introduced to Hong Kong’s kungfu cinema. Often, he and his dad would be watching a Jackie Chan movie or something more obscure when I dropped in, generally in the original Cantonese with only Chinese subtitles. It was a new world, one I’d only previously glimpsed in the Japanese TV series ‘Monkey’ with its hilarious English overdubbing and kungfu-style antics.

When we were in high school, the two of us signed up for karate as an after-school sport. It wasn't kungfu of course, but it was as close as we were going to get. My friend kept it up with the same sensei even in his university days, and took up rock climbing, while I worked on a horror-themed web comic and chased girls. He ended up single but strong as an ox, while I stayed skinny but had found the girl I’d end up marrying by the end of my first year out of university.

So that physical strength and dedication to a martial art also appear in Song.

At his wedding a few years back, the best man, a mutual friend to both of us, said in his speech that the groom was “Superman”, the embodiment of our friend’s long-time favourite superhero and the qualities of steadfastness, reliability, loyalty and so on for which he stands. Through the writing and development process for Song Weiliang in his current iteration, I’ve come to realise all over again that I too see my oldest friend that way. As a superhero.

Posts

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Dyluck
For thousands of years, I laid dormant. Who has disturbed my slumber?
5184
Congrats on reaching your kickstarter funding goal!
Dyluck
For thousands of years, I laid dormant. Who has disturbed my slumber?
5184
The broswer method didn't work, but it seemed to have initialized something, because the game.exe suddenly worked afterwards when I tried again. But you definitely need to look into this and find the reason.

I'll send you my play test observations via PM.
Okay. Managed to DL it (both the file linked from here at RMN and the additional link above) and it runs fine, but I currently have no access to a second PC for testing...
I'm at work at the moment, so can't do that right now, but I'm not having any issues at all with the latest package. Maybe it's a Google Drive issue. The new upload may not have propagated properly. I'll check on it.

Thanks.

-------
Hm. Looks alright, but I'm blocked from downloading it to double-check.

Please try this link instead for now (Windows only).
Dyluck
For thousands of years, I laid dormant. Who has disturbed my slumber?
5184
Same problem still. I even tried the browser way, and it says Failed to load data/Actors.json

Have you tried downloading your own game on a separate computer with no previously installed project files or RMMV files?
Dyluck, the new demo is up. I ran the exe, and didn't encounter the problem present in the previous version. I guess RPG Maker just spat out a bad build last time around. Sorry, should have checked the previous exe before uploading.
Hmm. Good to know. I'm doing some tweaks at the moment, so I'll ensure the next build works 100%. Currently unsure of what could be causing it, though...
Dyluck
For thousands of years, I laid dormant. Who has disturbed my slumber?
5184
I tried F5/open/close multiple times, but still the same result.
That's weird. I did get that one time, and I can't figure out why, but restarting fixed it (either hit F5 or close & run again). Hopefully that'll work for you too.

Of course, I'd prefer to find a proper fix for it. Will look into it.

If that "meantime" fix does the trick though, I'd be mighty appreciative for your feedback after a play test!
Dyluck
For thousands of years, I laid dormant. Who has disturbed my slumber?
5184
I was thinking of play testing this for you, but when I open the Game.exe, it just says "Now Loading..." for over a minute and still nothing.
Thanks orochii! I've tried to put some subtle humour into it, to lighten up what's a pretty serious, sometimes heavy, story overall.
This game is funny in an unique way. I don't know why. But I like it.
Thanks, InfectionFiles! Had to resubmit once, as my blurb was too short and my screenshots too few...

Got a "pre-demo" just about ready to go now, though!
InfectionFiles
the world ends in whatever my makerscore currently is
4622
Great to see your game up! :D
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