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The annual Crab Festival of Ivy Cove is held every year to celebrate the fall harvest of this cornerstone of the Ivy Islands economy. Nearly all who live in Ivy Cove are tied to the crab fishery in one way or another and the Crab Festival is a time of community-wide celebration for a village perched on the edge of civilization.

But the celebration is short-lived. A report has reached the Kingdom of Laurentide that a terrible illness has spread within this fishing village in the western islands. Illness has been virtually wiped out due to advances in medicine, so the report is met with concern.

A medical team is put together and escorted to the community by the newly formed Shatter Team Alpha of the Laurentide army. However, when they arrive in the community, they find the village abandoned. Mysterious clues point to a wave of suicides, while other clues suggest survivors went to a nearby town for medical attention.

What befell the community if Ivy Cove? Can Shatter Team Alpha track down the survivors and provide assistance? And are forces at play in the Ivy Islands that suggest that this illness is part of a larger, insidious scheme?

At Last Alone: Risen tells an early story of Shatter Team Alpha, the top special forces team in the Laurentide ground forces. Led by newly-appointed captain Calista Strelley, the team includes and her companion direwolf, Georgie, Garrard Dwirisa, Brilavial Rowley, and Jonvrenn Glonn. General Niranda, commander of the Shatter Teams, also joins the mission.

Take command of the Shatter Team and investigate the illness and the missing villagers! But watch out, the island is infested with a range of dangerous creatures who aim to stop you at every turn!

****

This game was made for the 2017 IGMC competition. It is set in the same world as my other game, At Last Alone: Rescue at Moranthia, but takes place about 6 years prior to that adventure. Many of the same characters are present.

The game uses a tactical battle system patterned largely on Final Fantasy Tactics (as opposed to Advance Wars or Fire Emblem) and battles take place on a series of isometric maps. The script is pretty processor intensive and arguably pushes VXAce to its limit. Thus, you may find some performance issues on older machines or if you're playing on a laptop that isn't plugged in and is in battery-saver mode.

The game features an original battle theme and end credits song by O Colosso. Other original music was created by me using ampermusic.com. It also takes place at night, so turn up that brightness and use those headphones for extra eeriness!

Spoiler and warning!
There is no cursing or sex, but there are some maps with blood and pixelated disembowelings. Pg-13, I'd say. No jump scares! But a bunch of zombies show up at the end. So if zombies creep you out, don't play through to the end.


Follow the devblog on instagram @djbeardo206

Latest Blog

400+ Downloads! And a IRL event!

Thanks to everyone who downloaded the game to get it past 400! It's a nice round number to celebrate!

Also, I wanted to let people know that I'll be presenting Risen at Kobe-Kon in Everett, Washington this weekend (July 13-15, 2018) as part of the Seattle Indies arcade room. I was honored to be invited! As my game is a JRPG tactics, and Kobe-Kon is an anime/cosplay convention, the organizers thought it would be a good fit! I look forward to meeting people in real life and saying hi! I'll also have At Last Alone keychains to give out to people who promise they won't throw them immediately in the garbage with the rest of their con swag (conference rules says I can't sell them...).
  • Completed
  • djbeardo
  • RPG Maker VX Ace
  • Tactics RPG
  • 10/31/2017 04:51 AM
  • 09/15/2018 11:39 AM
  • 11/05/2017
  • 53974
  • 15
  • 1074

Posts

Pages: 1
A tactics game using rpg maker. o_o This is a rare breed. I must try it! xD
author=Knightowl
A tactics game using rpg maker. o_o This is a rare breed. I must try it! xD


It is! It was a big challenge finding any that were completed (for examples) or even much support on forums!
Good to see your game is here djbeardo! Definitely gonna try it out. :)
Eh? A prequel to the original At Last Alone game!? When did this happen??? :O

I remember playing and reviewing the original one a few years back - and remember quite enjoying it - so it’s a bit of a nice surprise to see another entry in the series just pop out of the blue like this. Although I’m not the biggest fan in the world when it comes to tactical RPG’s, with really the only ones that I really, really like being the original Sega Genesis Shining Force games, I wouldn’t mind giving this a play and review sometime in the future. So in the meantime I’ll be giving this is a subscribe for now. ^^

BTW, djbeardo – how did you end up doing in the IGMC event, anyway? Did the judges get around to playing your entry as of yet? I haven’t been following much of what’s been going on over there and all, so I’m curious to know.
author=Addit
Eh? A prequel to the original At Last Alone game!? When did this happen??? :O

I remember playing and reviewing the original one a few years back - and remember quite enjoying it - so it’s a bit of a nice surprise to see another entry in the series just pop out of the blue like this. Although I’m not the biggest fan in the world when it comes to tactical RPG’s, with really the only ones that I really, really like being the original Sega Genesis Shining Force games, I wouldn’t mind giving this a play and review sometime in the future. So in the meantime I’ll be giving this is a subscribe for now. ^^

BTW, djbeardo – how did you end up doing in the IGMC event, anyway? Did the judges get around to playing your entry as of yet? I haven’t been following much of what’s been going on over there and all, so I’m curious to know.


Yep, kinda out of the blue! Thanks for your kind words regarding the last game!
I've been working on a true sequel to the game you played, but it's taken forever. I admittedly bit off more than I can reasonably chew regarding the story, maps, characters, etc. Classic RPGMaker rookie move: making the massive epic of my dreams. But I'm about 3/5 of the way done.

But as I was making that, IGMC started up and I had always wanted to do a tactical rpg. They are my absolute favorite genre of game, and when I saw GubiD's script for VXAce, I got really excited. So I figured I'd throw up a quick prequel/gaiden with the same characters (since I had their art, sprites, etc. ready to go).

The IGMC event closed on Nov 5, and I got a message saying they are closing the public vote Dec 18th, with winner announced "before Christmas". I haven't gotten any feedback from the judges yet. I've been watching a few youtubers claw their way through the submissions and there are some really good entries. I'd say about half of the entries either don't work, are all RTP, were thrown together in a day, or are incomprehensible. So that leaves about 125 solid entries! Very stiff competition!

But it was nice to complete something!

I'll probably revisit the tactics system in the future.
a Tactics styled RPG? you had me at Tactics, there is so few times that we see Tactical RPGs in RPG Maker, gotta say there could be tons of games that would be suited to use this system.

sadly i run my RPG Maker games on a potato of a laptop, so i'll have to wait for the distant future to play this, but that wont stop me from downloading it and adding it to my collection.
author=TheGamingPaladin
a Tactics styled RPG? you had me at Tactics, there is so few times that we see Tactical RPGs in RPG Maker, gotta say there could be tons of games that would be suited to use this system.

sadly i run my RPG Maker games on a potato of a laptop, so i'll have to wait for the distant future to play this, but that wont stop me from downloading it and adding it to my collection.


Thanks for the download! I hope you can get it to work on your future laptop! :D
Tactics RPG. I knew this would be alright since I saw lobo play the developer's rescue game. I saw this in the review requests so why not. Battle interface has minor glitches where important information such as skill descriptions and afflicted states can disappear when navigating menus. Maps are 3D which was interesting, but that limits them to simple looking maps. Also the shadow weather effect (or whatever it was) made it really dark and hard to see on some of the maps.

Some spoilers below
Story was interesting but easily predictable. The AI is pretty bad which is something I saw in other tactics RPGMaker games and this game is also aware of. Enemies go passive if you are out of their aggro sight range, letting you take them out 1 by 1. In an attempt to remedy this, the developer starts almost every battle with you being surrounded by enemies while the other 3/4ths of the map is completely barren of enemies. Game is also supremely easy if you know anything about tactic RPG's, since some of the skills are blatantly OP. Overall it was a simple tactics game which you don't see that often in RMN. Pretty good.
author=bicfarmer
Tactics RPG. I knew this would be alright since I saw lobo play the developer's rescue game. I saw this in the review requests so why not. Battle interface has minor glitches where important information such as skill descriptions and afflicted states can disappear when navigating menus. Maps are 3D which was interesting, but that limits them to simple looking maps. Also the shadow weather effect (or whatever it was) made it really dark and hard to see on some of the maps.


Thanks for playing my game! I'm glad you were able to get through it! And thanks for all your suggestions and edits! :D
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