What does it mean by RSE? RSE is Release Something Event held in the official RPG Maker forum. Which mean, this demo is to participate in the said event. That said, while I do release a demo, it is more like a "progress report". Keep in mind that before the event was started, I never intend to actually build a playable demo. The reason is, I'm still changing most of the things within the game.

So, what is my intention with this game demo and plan for the future?

• This demo is some kind of "tech demo" or "proof of concept" of most of the system I created.
  
• I do not have a plan to update the demo content. What I'm planning is, I'm going to make it as a full game for the next release (it wont be so soon though). However, my intention aside from participating RSE is I'm allowing you to try my game progress so far.
  
• I will do bugfix if it's a fatal bug. I will note any non-fatal bug and/or any comments regarding my systems.
  
• Everything within the game is still subject to change. Some part of the game is also placeholders. i.e, it may not actually represent the final product.
  
• If you have played "The Astral Plane" demo back when I shared it in 2018, everything has been changed.
  

That said, upon this release, there're some known glitch that I haven't yet managed to fix due to various reasons. However, these are not a major game breaking bug (except maybe the last one):

• Artifact counts not refreshed when crafting a new one in the artifact menu.
  
• Does not display artifact info when selecting one in the equipment window.
  
• Terra's skill menu displays an incorrect skill slot.
  
• Damage counter does not reset when counting damage in a counterattack.
  
• Player sprite displayed under the bride after accessing the menu in a certain map.
  
• Turn count when "surprised" started from 3 instead of 1 (may actually interfere with hard mode mechanic, but I haven't verified it yet).
  

I put the download link in my itch io page as I want it to be centralized. That said, I'm sorry for any inconvenience.

So, I've been silent all these months, but worry not, the progress is still going on. Nowadays, I prefer to go underground because of the uncertain (although you can still actually see my progress through the twitter I embedded it in the sidebar). However, a few weeks ago, there was an announcement of Release Something Event in the official forum and I'm inclined to join. That kinda speeds up the dev of this game. So, what's up?

Revamped Intro Sequence + Tutorial


The dialogue is almost an exact copy from the previous game for nostalgia feeling.

Element Effectiveness Window

I had a discussion in the official forum and someone said they disliked the trial and error to see the element resistance. I had a deep thought about it since this game will have no standardized element affinity, but I also don't like the scan skill or remembering the element resistance through the bestiary menu. So I come up with this design.

Escape Cooldown

For every 2 escapes, you add 1 turns cooldown before you can escape from a battle. If you escaped 4 times, means you have to wait for 2 turns. I might want to change it to 3 escapes though for a more forgiving experience. But since I almost never escape from my own encounter so idk.

Pre-Setting

Because nowadays people are using 1080p, and the native resolution for Ace is too small for them. This pre-setting will appear as soon as you play the game to ensure you have the optimum screen size before going through the game first.

Classic Reaction counterattack

The counterattack or reaction attack to be exact will be executed at the end of the sequence. For some reason, a "combo breaker" counterattack from the previous game just have a lot of balancing issues. So I dropped it and brought back the classic reaction attack. It surprisingly brought me a lot of new ideas.

State Information for an enemy

Because you may want to see what are the states doing in the enemy.

Artifact Collection

Like in previous game, you also collect artifact, but you need to collect the fragments and craft it. The crafting will cost you some shards (read: golds). And I'm not gonna put it in a very cryptic place like what I did in my previous game lol.

Status and Equipment menu mixed together

Frankly speaking, the status menu is useless. So I mix them together with the equipment menu.

Revamped Victory Aftermath

I ditched completely the Yanfly Victory Aftermath because of many reasons. I designed this on my own and I was close to doing a hairpulling.

And for the closure, here's the last month unlisted video of the gameplay footage.


Alright, but where is the demo?
That goes later, I plan to release demo somewhere around the RSE event duration. So stay tune :D

When I said revamp, it sure almost a total revamp. The majority of the skills from the previous demo was rebalanced. Some removed, some newly added. I also reworked the story boarding that the story from previous demo were not used.

There is not much to tell yet, I don't even have a trailer since my vision on the story is still kinda blurry, but here are some stuff I worked in past month for teaser.

First, the skill menu got a major change to be more elegant. Since each skill has unique effect so it's important to get as many as the detail. However, there're some skill description need to proof read.


Second, a stacking echo effect


The internal code got a little revamp that now you basically able to stacking a lot of echo from different source. Echo is an additional damage after your attack. Damage element may be different from your main damage. Most of attack triggers echo, few aren't. In previous demo, you were only allowed to get one echo, which renders some of the skills useless.

Third, it isn't complete without video demonstration.
The first boss teaser, however you could consider it as a spoiler, or not ...

Also, our little girl, the fourth character got a new whole skill set since I find the previous skill set are kinda lacking of something.


However, from now and then I won't be working on this game as intensively as the previous month. Irl hits hard, and I need to think some stuff until I get a clear vision on where I will bring this game.

The demo is mainly for a preview of the game. The main goal is so that the player get the grasp of the concept I'm trying to make. A major change may happens in later development.

Get the demo on the download page!
Note: The demo requires RTP VXAce to run! get the separate RTP files here

What's inside the demo?

• Around an hour of gameplay, including cut scenes, exploration, and battles
• A basic proof of a concept of two rows battle system.
  
• Two boss battles
  
• A first few maps made in haste, it may change later to add more spices and flavors
  
• A basic skill level up system. Some information might be inaccurate. It's hard to keep the track when you still change the skill balancing quite often
  
• An introduction to the fourth character
  
• An introduction to the world concept, The Void Rift (The detailed description will be added later in the new page of this game profile)
  
• There is no much content to explore yet aside from the battle itself. I plan to add more features later.
  
• Some resources are placeholder (such as NPC design and faceset), and will be replaced in later development
  
• The project is unencrypted, and I will keep it like that. It's no shame, people are free to look at how I did the stuff or 'steal' my scripts. But keep it mind, some resources are reserved, especially the custom one

Bonus :
Here is a little dev footage. A little outdated since I already changed some aspect of the balances. But overall look is still the same