• Add Review
  • Subscribe
  • Nominate
  • Submit Media
  • RSS
TRAILER


SYNOPSIS
After the rise of a secret organization named Providence, Jun, a mercenary, finds himself caught in the middle of a coup d'etat. To restore order, he and his best friend Ne'l must journey across the entire continent of Iris, helping citizens in need while liberating the Empire from a dark legacy.

FEATURES
  • Over 30 quests to experience.

  • Around 15 hours of gameplay.

  • 40 Achievements to earn.

  • Interconnected/open world.

  • Resource management-based combat system.

  • Grinding not required.

  • An all original soundtrack.


GAMEPLAY
This game has an interconnected world. Each village on the continent has characters seeking help, and their requests might send you on adventures all around the continent!

BATTLE SYSTEM
  • Enemies roam the world and will chase you when they see you. By walking, it is possible to sneak past them.

  • Combat in this game focuses on skills and the resource known as Anima.

  • All skills use Anima and have a cooldown.

  • Players can choose and equip skills. Develop your own strategy and moveset, from locking down enemies with status effects, to using skills that target enemies' Anima to prevent them from attacking!


BACKSTORY
On Iris, the term mercenary has changed to mean something different. With the start of peacetime in the Fourth Age, the Mercenaries' Guild found its new purpose by serving the government. The Guild became the acting police force, at the same time providing help to people who request it. Through the "Mercenary Request" system, people can request help from a mercenary to carry out tasks or odd jobs for a reward.

CONTROLS
Arrow Keys - Movement / Navigation
Z Key / Enter / Space - Interact / Select
X Key - Menu / Cancel
Shift Key - Dash (Hold)



ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS
If you get an error about xinput1_3, please install DirectX.

If you get an error about F1AltEnterF12.dll, please install the Visual C++ Redistributable Packages.

KNOWN ISSUES
This is the list of already known issues - don't report these!
=Rare=
These are rare bugs, and may be very hard to reproduce. These bugs may only show up once or not at all in an entire playthrough. (If you can consistently replicate these, let me know right away!)
  • Random invisible walls can appear. Fixable by reloading the game. (4 Reports)

  • The game may randomly crash when enemy touches you. (1 Report)

  • An objective in the Quest Log will not be marked as complete even if it is actually complete. This is cosmetic and does not affect quest progress. (1 Report)

  • Enemies may block passage after being defeated. (1 Report)

=Common=
These are easily reproducible bugs. A fix for them may come in the future but it will likely cause save-file incompatibility.
  • Knight’s Will - Passive enemies still chase you if aggression level is set on the same map as the chaser.

  • Clicking out of the game will cause music to continue to run. (Inherent to RPG Maker games)



NEED HELP?
If you are stuck with a puzzle or something else, I might have a guide on it on my website. If not, you can ask here.

Latest Blog

The Gate Closes: A Postmortem on Gate of Providence

Initially posted on my website.

I have placed the postmortem in the spoiler tags so that it doesn't make the page super long. View it here:

It's been eight months after the release of Gate of Providence. During this time, the game has received over 12000 views and 680 downloads. As usual for a postmortem, I'll be writing about what went right and wrong during the development of Gate of Providence, as well as some other thoughts.

What Went Wrong
Combat Balancing and Difficulty Levels
Balancing an RPG is always tricky. Players tend to find a combination of skills they like and stick with them. The problem with this is that players that chose only to use attacking skills would find themselves having trouble near the end of the game, when the level cap is reached, where status effects and debuffs have a bigger impact. On higher difficulties, defensive skills and items become important and in some cases, required. On the other hand, some players would find a really good combo and use only that combo for the entire game, making combat unengaging. Players would either breeze through or get completely obliterated. It becomes hard to tell if a player just has a bad strategy or if the enemies have too high stats.

After some feedback, adjustments to difficulty were made, resulting in the game becoming easier overall. In the end, I feel that this is the better approach for Gate of Providence. I'd rather not have a player take over twenty minutes in a single battle (it has happened) because of a poor moveset and difficulty level.

Difficulties with Art and Artstyle
There are notable inconsistencies with the art, with face portraits in particular. This is because the main characters (Jun, Ne'l, Theresa, etc.) were drawn by an actual artist, my friend David, while the villagers and side characters were drawn by me. Art is something I definitely need to improve on. In addition, the battler art was done by two people, with Providence members having one artist and everything else by another.

Another issue is with the RTP-styled sprites and tiles. While I make no attempt to hide the fact that Gate of Providence is a RPG Maker game, the reputation of the RTP makes the game look bad. Even though the game does contain a lot of custom tiles (by the community) and sprites (by me), to the eyes of someone not in the RPG Maker community, it looks the same as the garbage low-effort games you'd see on Steam. It's a shame because I actually like the RTP style, since it reminds me of the GBA-era Pokemon games.

Online Presence and Target Audience
Gate of Providence had essentially no marketing or online presence. People would only see the occasional screenshot in the weekly screenshot thread on r/rpgmaker. The trailer was made after the game was already completed, resulting in little to no hype. The website, twitter account, and devblog did not exist either. This was mostly because all my time was devoted towards developing the game itself. I still need to work on this, as evident by my very infrequent devblog posts.

The game was also exclusively marketed towards the RPG Maker community, mainly because of the RTP sentiment. For the most part, I feel the game has done okay with views/downloads, but the amount of feedback I got was disappointing. The forum thread I posted on rpgmakerweb has been viewed 1200+ times, but it does not have a single reply. Analytics from itch.io show that the game is being downloaded via rpgmakerweb referral, but I don't know how far people are getting into the game. The entry on rpgmaker.net was much better, though many comments were about not being able to run the game due to missing DirectX or some other dependency, which honestly was quite a shock. Even my grandpa's computer has those required files already installed!


What Went Right
Completion
The completion of Gate of Providence marks an important milestone for me personally. It is my first large/epic project that has attained completion. Dreamshot Dissonance was my actual first complete game, but that was required for a class. Gate of Providence was created on my own volition, with no pressure like grades or monetary gain driving me to finish the game.

Creating the game took three years. In those years, I was able to practice game design, level design and mapping, balancing, programming, art (digital and pixel), writing, and worldbuilding.

Worldbuilding
Many players enjoyed the worldbuilding and lore. This game was my first attempt at creating a world and I feel I did a decent job. It was fun writing lore books, even though not many people actually read them. They made the world feel bigger as they lay out the history of the world and other topics that non-player characters would not normally talk about in daily conversations. (When was the last time YOU casually talked about a historical event outside of an academic setting?) Players liked the down-to-earth feeling of the world as well, with much of the game being low-stakes.

Combat / Anima System
The combat system has also received some praise from players. For those who have not played the game yet, combat in Gate of Providence focuses on using skills that spend a resource called Anima. Every skill has a period of turns that the skill cannot be used again after being used, called Cooldown. Players can pick and choose skills they want to bring into battle. This lets players come up with their own strategies to suit their preferences. This diverges from the standard JRPG-style combat, where players focus on the "Attack" command and use skills only when needed (pretty much against bosses) to conserve MP. Since Anima resets every battle, there is no point in conserving for the long-term, so players can go all out with skills.

What I should have done was remove the "Attack" command completely. It was included to ease players coming from a JRPG background into the Anima combat system, but it led to some players using "Attack" continuously without realizing that it was not meant to be used frequently. For the sequel, I will follow through with removing the basic attack.


Other Thoughts
Experimental Development, Large Projects, and Scope
Gate of Providence was originally made as a test game when I learning how to use RPG Maker VX Ace. After making a minimum viable product (MVP), I expanded the game to include more features, such as puzzles and a deeper combat system. You can see this by the various amount of puzzles that exist in the game, such as crumbling floors, logic gates, Simon, tile flipping, stealth, etc. This was also how the "Mercenary Request" system came to be, where the majority of the gameplay comes from quests from villagers.

After finishing an aspect of the game, the scope of the game was expanded to fit more content. The scope of the game kept on growing, and I kept on adding quests and puzzles. The game ended up being super long, even without combat padding game time. Many parts of the game were done, scrapped, and redone. Eria and the main quest, in particular, was made three times. All building interiors were redone as well, to incorporate a new tileset.

Game Length
I feel a lot of people are put off by the length of the game. Nowadays not many people are willing to spend tens of hours into an one-off game, let alone an indie game no one knows about. I will not be making long games again, mainly for this reason, but also because it takes a long time to develop. My target length would be around 4-5 hours maximum, which is about 2-3 movies worth of time.

This game took too long to make. Time spent on making a game does not equal quality, and also making shorter games also means I could make more games. Of course, there's "quality over quantity" but it's not like you can't try for both.

Unfinished Stories and Cryptic Content
One aspect of the game players disliked was Theresa and her quests. Players felt that she was only there to be cute and her quests didn't have any importance. This is not the intention - Theresa and her story was just poorly implemented. Her story ended up being WAY too cryptic. It was meant to be foreshadowing something big in games to come, but it didn't work out. I hope to retify this with a sequel, which will focus more on Theresa and her importance to the overall storyline.

Save Points
Players could only save at designated save points (save statues) that also acted as fast travel beacons. They were good for making the player explore the world, but it also meant that players would have to redo some progress if they got a game over. They also prevented the player from softlocking themselves if they couldn't figure out a puzzle or beat an enemy. However, the enemies and puzzles ended up not being hard enough to warrant having save points. This is a feature I will most likely not include in future games.

Grinding and Crafting Systems
Balancing a grindy aspect of the game is difficult, because everyone has different patience levels. Making an activity grindy but rewarding could mean more people will do it, but those with a lot of patience will be rewarded greatly. A Let's Player demonstrated this when he discovered the ore rocks in Elysian Forest, the very first area of the game. Before even starting the quest to liberate the Residential District (which essentially opens up the rest of the game), he grinded for around 40 minutes, acquiring over 80 copper and 80 tin (materials for bronze bars, which needs to mined individually), 50 wolf pelts, and gems worth 790K gold (1M is the max gold cap)! Later in the game, he discovered the games room and proceeded to play until he bought 99 (max stack) of EVERYTHING in the rewards shop. The result was that he had no troubles with gold for the rest of the game, and he was able to afford any item he wanted. My expectation was that people would only gather materials when they needed some, and fight enemies only because they were caught. The rewards were balanced for this situation and as a result people who actually grinded made everything too easy. A possible solution would be some sort of anti-grind mechanic, but I felt it wouldn't be fair to punish people for just playing my game for extended periods of time.

Crafting systems allow for an optional grind. Players could gather materials and make equipment and items, saving themselves gold or even making gold if they decide to sell the crafted goods. However, I feel crafting systems have been overdone, especially in RPG Maker games which add them just to have them. It works okay for Gate of Providence because it is sort of an open world game, but for most games I don't think they have a place. I think crafting in Gate of Providence could be improved further if I incorporated monster loot into crafting recipes, and revamped methods of gathering raw materials.

Sequel Talk
I talked about a potential sequel multiple times in this postmortem. While not totally confirmed, it is something I'm highly considering. A rough story concept has been drafted. It'll probably be made after I release 3-4 other games. Gameplay-wise, it will focus more on battles and a main story, and less on puzzles and sidequests. It will also not be as open world as Gate of Providence was, and will likely not have any sort of crafting. More importance will be placed on Gold and shops.


Conclusion
The development of Gate of Providence has truly been a journey. This massive undertaking has provided everyone involved with lots of experience, and I hope that our future games will be as good, if not better than Gate of Providence. Stay tuned and thanks for reading!
  • Completed
  • Xehryn
  • RPG Maker VX Ace
  • Adventure RPG
  • 03/19/2018 01:13 AM
  • 08/07/2023 02:14 PM
  • 11/30/2017
  • 60319
  • 11
  • 1164

Posts

Pages: first prev 123 next last
HI Xehryn
I am totally stuck in Nexus research B5F the last puzzle no way I can not get the right to enter where the group of soldier are, I am trying since yesterday can you believe? tried different ways and I always finish at the entrance, please helpppppppppppp Thanks in advance :-)
author=canim
HI Xehryn
I am totally stuck in Nexus research B5F the last puzzle no way I can not get the right to enter where the group of soldier are, I am trying since yesterday can you believe? tried different ways and I always finish at the entrance, please helpppppppppppp Thanks in advance :-)


I've made a short guide for this section since you're stuck.

Solution:


Follow the colors in order: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue. Get ready for a couple of fights!

I hope you enjoying the game so far!

Help how do i solve the puzle in iris peak. I spent 2 hours trying without success
author=fifacv
Help how do i solve the puzle in iris peak. I spent 2 hours trying without success

You have to activate a switch on two sides to make a bridge appear. Are you just having trouble with the ice?
There's a let's player on youtube who runs through that dungeon.
Is it possible to enable "Space" as an action key?

On the German keyboard the "Z" is where your own "Y" key is.
Now it is a bit too complicated to play when you are using the arrow keys with your right hand and all others with the left.
Especially when you are handycapped.
author=Firefly84
Is it possible to enable "Space" as an action key?

On the German keyboard the "Z" is where your own "Y" key is.
Now it is a bit too complicated to play when you are using the arrow keys with your right hand and all others with the left.
Especially when you are handycapped.

Sure, I'll upload a new version soon which adds Space as the action key.
Thanks for bringing it to my attention.

Edit: A new version of the game has been released with Enter / Space working as the action key.
author=Xehryn
author=Firefly84
Is it possible to enable "Space" as an action key?

On the German keyboard the "Z" is where your own "Y" key is.
Now it is a bit too complicated to play when you are using the arrow keys with your right hand and all others with the left.
Especially when you are handycapped.
Sure, I'll upload a new version soon which adds Space as the action key.
Thanks for bringing it to my attention.

Edit: A new version of the game has been released with Enter / Space working as the action key.

Thanks. Enter has worked before but was useless for the left hand when using the arrow keys.
Just noticed that you can upgrade your Reinforced Pickaxe to Guild Pickaxe once you have Iron and Steel. You don't need the last material.

Is it possible the increase the mining results with a better pickaxe? It is boring to have the best pickaxe but only get 1-2 ores.

You have forgotten the crafting with Mythril (weapons, helmet, armor)
author=Firefly84
Just noticed that you can upgrade your Reinforced Pickaxe to Guild Pickaxe once you have Iron and Steel. You don't need the last material.

Is it possible the increase the mining results with a better pickaxe? It is boring to have the best pickaxe but only get 1-2 ores.

You have forgotten the crafting with Mythril (weapons, helmet, armor)


Thanks for catching the pickaxe bug with the Refining Powder. You can keep the Powder as a souvenir for having broken a part of the game lol. I'll release a fix for v1.0.4 (in case any new bugs are discovered).

With the best pickaxe (Illustrious) you get more gems, which are much better than ores. At that stage of the game, I expect players to stop mining for ores and instead hunt for gems, if they are still mining at all.

I didn't forget to add mythril to armors, it was intentionally left out. It was meant to be a parallel to adamantite as a weapon upgrading material. In-universe mythril is considered to be not suitable for armors.
I noticed about the meaning of Mythril when reading the book in the mining guild.
For now I am doing sidequests in chapter 3 (well I haven't even started that main quest yet). I have the 2nd best melee-weapons and adamatine armor/helmet.
I was really surprised as I upgraded the pickaxe.

And thanks a lot for the "space" key. It makes playing much more enjoyable.
author=Firefly84
I noticed about the meaning of Mythril when reading the book in the mining guild.
For now I am doing sidequests in chapter 3 (well I haven't even started that main quest yet). I have the 2nd best melee-weapons and adamatine armor/helmet.
I was really surprised as I upgraded the pickaxe.

And thanks a lot for the "space" key. It makes playing much more enjoyable.


Yeah that pickaxe was supposed be obtained after Chapter 3 from a mercenary request, so players can't make adamantite gear so quickly.

Hope you are enjoying the game so far!
Don't know why but I can't reach the gambling table in Perennia after I won the Blue Dice in Solem... In Eria, too but one path is working.
All paths are blocked by an invisible wall.

A similar wall is in the restaurant of Eria - can't talk to the upper right NPC.

And the Canowi Forest Statue achivement doesn't unlock even when going the correct path.

When meeting Lucifer in the Volcano, the backgroundmusic don't stop and you can't listen clearly to his music.

Note: All invisible walls vanished after finishing all other quest of chapter IV (or was it the restart of the game?).

When you think the Brute is the Providence agent, you are blocked by that invisible wall... (gamebreaker)

I can't enter the hot springs after repairing them due an invisible wall.
author=Firefly84
Don't know why but I can't reach the gambling table in Perennia after I won the Blue Dice in Solem... In Eria, too but one path is working.
All paths are blocked by an invisible wall.

A similar wall is in the restaurant of Eria - can't talk to the upper right NPC.

And the Canowi Forest Statue achivement doesn't unlock even when going the correct path.

When meeting Lucifer in the Volcano, the backgroundmusic don't stop and you can't listen clearly to his music.

Note: All invisible walls vanished after finishing all other quest of chapter IV (or was it the restart of the game?).

When you think the Brute is the Providence agent, you are blocked by that invisible wall... (gamebreaker)

I can't enter the hot springs after repairing them due an invisible wall.

I've gotten reports of an invisible wall that shows up about once a playthrough... but I've never managed to replicate it, even after four full playthroughs (and not in debug mode either). They go away if you reload the game, but I'm surprised that you managed to run into so many of them. Did you find them all in one session? Like you found one then left to do something else?

For the Canowi Statue achievement - Can you confirm if you did one of these paths: OR . These two are the correct paths for the achievement. Try going back and doing one of these paths and tell me if the achievement unlocks or not.

As for the musician, it doesn't happen when I checked, and another player who recorded his entire playthrough didn't have that problem. Maybe you mistook part of the song to be background music? Does this happen to the other characters who play music? You can check by going behind the Remnants HQ - the musicians appear there after you meet them.

Sorry about all these bugs that showed up. That invisible wall bug is my nemesis. If you find out how to make it appear 100% of the time (or at least more consistently), please let me know!
How do I get to the chest in BF6 (Providence Nexus) with Victor's party?
I was able to cross that and get all chests from the BF7 riddle, but each time I step on the 2nd last platform all path get violet and I got warped to the beginning.

Edit: Nevermind, I have to step one up and then down again...
I noticed that Ne'l looses some HP when using Potions on Jun in the menu.

What do I need to confront the Lunarian? I have 3 of 4 Rings forming a star (Narrufo's Ring, Valdivia's Ring, Hong's Ring), 100% Story...

Edit: When winning 2 of 3 rounds in Exuron, it's like loosing the whole game. (Host: Looks like luck wasn't with you this time.)
In Perennia (win 5/6): You barely made it out alive.
That explains why I can't win the high stake game - it is nearly impossible to win all 10 games. When you win the 4th ring there, you are crazy and unfair!

I won the high stakes but not with 10 wins - and I won more than 5 rounds earlier, too.

Those achiements are missing: Layer Eight Error (and I warped many times), Clandestiny (like I mentioned, I am not ready for the Lunarian)
author=Firefly84
I noticed that Ne'l looses some HP when using Potions on Jun in the menu.

What do I need to confront the Lunarian? I have 3 of 4 Rings forming a star (Narrufo's Ring, Valdivia's Ring, Hong's Ring), 100% Story...

Edit: When winning 2 of 3 rounds in Exuron, it's like loosing the whole game. (Host: Looks like luck wasn't with you this time.)
In Perennia (win 5/6): You barely made it out alive.
That explains why I can't win the high stake game - it is nearly impossible to win all 10 games. When you win the 4th ring there, you are crazy and unfair!

I won the high stakes but not with 10 wins - and I won more than 5 rounds earlier, too.

Those achiements are missing: Layer Eight Error (and I warped many times), Clandestiny (like I mentioned, I am not ready for the Lunarian)


Potions: Can you tell me which potion you used? Or if you have anything equipped?

Clandestiny guide found on my website. Those rings have nothing to do with it, but are very useful. You can find the final ring in the Providence Nexus.

The dice game "Chinchirorin" isn't required for anything and does not give you a ring. It's only for an achievement. You only need to leave with more Gold than you started with to win.

For Layer Eight Error, read the description more carefully. Just warp to wherever you already are.
I noticed that with the health potions. No problem during fights.
He has the best weapons, Radiant Crown, Dragon Armor, Second Ring of Eria, Forest Ring.

I must look if similar happens vice versa.

Thanks for the Ring of Pan.
I'm happy that many people are enjoying the game and even going for 100% completion!

I'm here to announce that I am considering a remaster/remake in the future! If anyone has feedback or criticism to share, please let me know! Stuff you enjoyed or hated, etc, is very valuable to me and will help in making the remaster even better.

Thank you all!
A new version is up, v1.0.4. Minor bug fixes and content changes.
Still looking for feedback! Thank you all.
Pages: first prev 123 next last