Road To Paradise - The Dragon

Hey guys, this game really needs a review.



Even if it's not a good review, I feel like even an average review would help dredge this up from obscurity. We've got the review bounty thing going on (and I'd be reviewing games myself if I could find the time, I really would), but if a bounty isn't posted for this by the Review Pirates, I can offer my own bounty. I can't award maker score, but I might have even better things to offer as incentive.

So, how bout 'it, anyone want to hook a crow up?

I am grateful to have 18 subscribers and would love to have even more. That being said, this is only half of Road To Paradise. The first episode of the other half, The Staircase is nearing completion. By my math there are 12 of you that I appreciate subscribing to this game page that might want to subscribe to that one as well.

Anyway, of course our heroes from the first episode of The Dragon appear in the first episode of The Staircase. This time, though, they're a boss fight!


"The Horror, The Chibi Horror!" I only drew attention to the differing sprite styles of the RTP "aliens" and UPRC "earthlings" for a cheap laugh and to point out that yes, I know these are two different styles, and they clash, but it's very much on purpose. kumada pointed out to me though that actually seeing someone with Chibi proportions would be terrifying to a real human being.


So...not the diplomatic option then? (The game lets you choose whether to attempt cross-world diplomacy, and also handles victory, defeat, and escape as three different outcomes to the battle, all with slightly different consequences.)


Well of course he does. It's turn one. Of the Milano Cat battlers for the main party of The Dragon, the only one I'm really unhappy with is Kara, but I couldn't find a battler in that style that seemed to match a sword princess, in spite of the incredible wealth of humanoids available in that style. I did a fair amount of editing and recoloring on Lydia's battle sprite.


Lydia really doesn't like it when her death magic doesn't work.


I dunno, guys, maybe she's got the right idea...

Follow/Subscribe To the other half of the story here. A release is nigh.

EPISODE I v0.8 (Public Beta) CHANGELOG
* Description of available bow weapons clarified.
* Description of Izuno's transformation abilities clarified.
* In game warning from Teos added about how Dragonform removes your human form's clothing and equipment.
* Added "Point Of No Return" warning to Voidsreach Tower entrance.
* Added confirmation message for returning to Veridian City from Worldmap.
* Changed World Map icon for the point of return to Veridian City to indicate it requires a button press and will not trigger on touch like all other locations on the World Map.
* Added a description of each Dragon Breed during Dragon Selection at game start. (Thanks to kumada for this suggestion it was a really good one!)
* On-Map Encounters in Voidsreach Tower should no longer be able to air-walk over open pits...this improvement brought to you once again by the magic that is Yanfly! They can't fall down them, sadly, but they will sensibly avoid them.
* Used proper Shift-Tiling so that Timekeep looks like it's sitting directly on/above the water (which it is) rather than an island on the water (which it is not).
* Flying away from Timekeep is now much more logical, substantially faster, and slightly more attractive.
* Added this tiny line:
to the scriptlet by Marrend that stopped dead PCs from endlessly marching in death so it ALSO enables them to START moving again if and when they are revived from the dead (i.e. with an Angelus). Wunderbar!
* Tweaked the random encounter rate on Worldmap (Veridian for now) so it's 20 + 1d20 + 1 steps instead of 2d20 + 1 so there should be no chance of triggering a random by walking less than twenty steps.

KNOWN BUGS (If you know of a fix, please tell me!)
* Enemy sprites remain on the battlefield after they are killed if they are killed by end-of-turn damage, i.e. Poison, On Fire!!, Entropy, Acid Arrow, etc.

I plan to try and get Road to Paradise - The Staircase Episode I ready for a release next.

As usual, let me know if fixing this stuff broke anything else, and enjoy!

I hope you got that the title of this blog was a joke, not a lie.

I think the ideal indie dev probably perfectly balances their time between actual game dev, testing, marketing (there should be a better word for 'marketing' something free), and the kind of social networking that maximizes the efficiency of marketing. I am not that ideal person. I like to keep my nose buried in the editor. I can't stand marketing or trying to draw attention to my games because:

1) I am bad at it. There is a line between reasonable self-promotion and being an annoying overhyper/attention hog. I have trouble perceiving that line. After a period where I erred on the side of hype, I now err on the side of hiding.
2) I'm a shy person in general. I don't like putting myself out there. Especially not to promote my work. I know I post a LOT on the forums, but that is just because I have heaps of free time and poor discipline; I am still shy. (And honestly the forums here are rather quiet right now, so even a few posts per day and I see my username all over the place like I CAN'T STOP POSTIN' or something.)
3) Perhaps most importantly, getting people to play/read/watch your game/book/movie takes away time and energy from actually creating that thing.

I think part of my obscurity results from the fact that I'm not a visual artist or a pixel artist. When I make progress on one of my games, it's usually not something you can see in a screenshot, like custom graphics or beautiful maps. It's usually something you'd have to play the game to really appreciate.

So anyway, no one is anticipating the release of Episode I of RTP: The Dragon, which will probably happen later today or tomorrow. At least I assume no one is, because it only has three subscribers and as far as I know they could be my mom, my dad, and my best friend lol.

Nonetheless, I will "stealth" release it (not really that, of course, just not having the time/energy/inclination to make a lot of noise about it before release) and hopefully it will get a little attention. My Theme Roulette game, Chapelwaite, got a lot more attention than I expected. I think it demonstrated the range of graphics, styles, systems, and themes that I'm capable of working with, especially when compared with RTP: The Dragon.

This game puts off some "this is my very first RM game" vibes (as well it might; it was the first RM project I had touched in fully five years), but don't let them fool you, it's anything but. I already considered myself a veteran of this scene when certain people joined as total newbs who have gone fully commercial/semi-pro by now. I might be at that point myself (not that I personally would ever NOT make free games, don't get me wrong) had I not taken a five year hiatus from game dev, but I did. And that's fine. Hopefully, I'll get there eventually. Heck, I had been at this for a decade when pianotm first joined RMN and that guy's got 80 billion MakerScore now.

Anyway, in the case of this project, an effort was made to strip-down, aim for a degree of minimalism, and avoid any feature creep, also--to a point--to be faithful to the RTP aesthetic, or at least an RTP aesthetic. The plain vanilla default CSS of this gamepage is meant to be consistent with the same aesthetic. Kentona made a game called Generica. The aesthetic I'm playing with might well be called "Defaultia".

The first episode of RTP: The Dragon is coming out later today, or possibly tomorrow, depending on your time-zone and my work speed. I will be calling it version 0.5 and considering it to be an open beta. I do hope you will check it out.

Testing, testing. Microphone checka-one-two.

So this is the "serious" project I've been working on for a few months, before I got distracted by the Theme Roulette and making Chapelwaite (a game which couldn't be more different than this one). I've had this page extant but private for a while now. I am hoping for Road To Paradise to reach a level of quality where I feel comfortable charging money for it, but I know I'm not there yet. As you can see, I'm being a bit playful with/getting philosophical about the RTP here. This is definitely not a comedy or parody game, but I like to think it has a sense of humor.

The first Episode is about 80% done. This isn't a promise as such, but I'd really like to get that other 20% done and release the first episode some time in the month of August. So that's the plan.

In the meanwhile, pretty please Subscribe, check out the descriptions of the characters and the world I've put up, and in general enjoy. A download should be coming soon.