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Going inside Laine's head

So it all came to me in one glorious flash of inspiration. I've finally nailed down an idea for my IGMC entry, and because it is tied to Enelysion's game world, I might as well post it here. ^^

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What if you could literally go into the head of your heroine and take an internal journey to make her grow from the inside out? Determine how to grow her strengths and battle abilities by fighting off her common foes: Rage, Melancholia and Avarice and follow Laine as she struggles to overcome her loss, faces her darker side, and ultimately, become a better person as a result.

Yes, this is based partially off the movie Inside Out, because I just found the premise so promising for a game centered around growth.

Plot:

Laine Fisher has had a bad day. She failed to take down the notorious gang that has been plaguing Landen for the better part of two weeks, swore at Patrick and got involved in a dispute over money with her employer, Krei. After threatening to fire her for her unacceptable behaviour, Laine has a pint or two too many to drink, and has a very strange dream after passing out in the Dirty Dog.

She wakes up in a strange dream world and has to find her bearings on her own. During her journey through this place ( which looks a lot like the Sidhe in the original game ), Laine has to confront the negative facets of her personality, do battle with physical manifestations of Anger, Greed and Melancholia and eventually, her dark side. At the end, she faces Rikard’s spirit, who tells her that there is no shame in what she is feeling, and after this exchange, she wakes up in her own bed at home, with Pat at her side.

Timeline:

A month before the events of the actual game, and a few days after Rikard’s death.

Gameplay:

The Sidhe/Dream world


Foes are only encountered once, then disappear. A boss representing the emotion of each level needs to be defeated for Laine to overcome this trait. An emotion bar is represented on screen, showing how close Laine is to ‘defeating’ her negative trait.

Divided into three distinct levels:

The Wrath area is populated with fiery creatures and treacherous rivers of lava. Laine will gain stats in ATK and HP for this stage. There is no currency. Rather, the foes drop a currency that enables Laine to purchase skills ( JP-system ), which are all locked at the beginning of the game.

During these stages, Laine’s ATK power skyrockets, but leaves her vulnerable to attacks. She can also become Berserked at times.

The Melancholia area is a sombre blue, glowing cave filled with spectral creatures which drain Laine’s HP and try to inflict status effects on her like Depression and Weak.

Laine is more resistant to magic, but her attacks are weaker.

The Avarice area is a temple-like structure full of treasure. However, Laine will be penalised stat-wise if she tries to open any of the chests containing valuable loot. Laine can use her ‘avarice’ based skills ( which require koruna to cast ) on foes here.

After she clears all three areas and the bosses, Laine faces off against her dark side. After she defeats her doppleganger, Rikard will appear, Laine will wake up, and the game will end.

Gameplay progress:

Laine’s stats are fixed. She can either can stats through defeating her foes, getting small stat-ups, or she can equip certain ‘personality traits’ that double as skill enhancements that can combat certain types of foes: Eg; the Calm trait working well against Aggressive foes.

After clearing each level, she will get a large stat-up and a 'trait' to help combat her foes.

Because of her recent loss and certain traits, Laine will be weak against certain ‘elements’. Because she is in mourning, the Depression state affects her worse and because she is hot-headed, the Aggression-based fire foes tend to do more damage to her as well.

I'm also linking certain skills to certain traits ( which is probably borne from my love of the Sims3 ).
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There's probably a lot more to the gameplay, but I'm just trying to hammer the core aspects of the game for now. But expect a game page within the next few days or so. ^^

So, thoughts on the idea? Opinions?

Posts

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I did get lucky with this game, Addit. Very lucky. Explains why some people think the 'hype' around the game is undeserved.
Maybe it wasn’t such a serious issue back then when you were originally asking for feedback for it or maybe it was something that just wasn’t that much of a major focus point while playing it? I’m guessing that either might have been the case… Or maybe people were just too lazy to even play it or comment on it in the first place; it could have been a lot of things…

And yeah, unfortunately, it pays to be popular when it comes to more exposure for anything that you do on these types of sites. That’s not to say that on RMN we haven’t had some developers that don’t really post a lot on here and just mainly focus on their games and commenting and updating on their own game pages and nothing really else besides that, but those people are usually more of a dime and a dozen around here. Unfortunately, if you want to get noticed, you got to put in the extra effort for other people beside yourself and do more than just post your games up and think that it’s immediately going to be an overnight success story. I dunno, sometimes I also think that luck and certain timing plays a significant big part in whether a game is a success or not. You just never know sometimes…

Either way, Enelysion is an awesome game and you shouldn’t let anybody else tell you otherwise. Does it have flaws? Sure it does. Is it perfect? Absolutely not. But you did the best job that you possibly could do at time and at least you completed it and made a lot of people, including myself, very happy, so I say mission accomplished. Besides, it’s always kind of amusing that most of the people who complain about this sort of stuff are mostly the type of people who don’t have anything of their own work to show for themselves and they're just looking to vent out at someone to make themselves look and feel more important than they actually are.
Something real old, but--

http://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/index.php?/topic/37175-enelysion-review/

If they really had a problem with the game's pacing/characterisation, why didn't they mention it when I was asking for feedback/criticism? Why didn't they point it out? Seriously... But no, like with virtually every other game on that site that is not made by a 'cool cat'/popular member, it gets ignored. No wonder some devs come here for feedback. I saw an amazing commercial game called the 'Amber Throne' ( which I was following while still a member there back in mid-2012 and it was still non-commercial ) that received a shockingly low number of replies/views, yet another comm-game made by a well-known member of staff got plenty.

Oh well, hopefully the IGMC entry will fix up all those glaring issues. But I am worried about its reception, since GameDev Fort seemed to be populated with RMWebers, who already hold a poor opinion on Enelysion ( at least, the 'cool' kids do ).

Bit ranty, but I needed to get it off my chest.

IGMC entry will just be titled 'Self'.
You could always just go for something like “Untitled Game” or “Enelysion ~ Side Story ~” for now until you can manage to think of a proper title for it. No need to hold off uploading a game page for it if you’re pretty much ready to submit one.

Besides, I’m sure you’ll think up a clever title for it. :)
I would put up an IGMC page for the prequel, but I still need a title for the game. >< Something that... catches the essence of what's happening. I have all my resources/music/scripts sorted out with about 15 mins of gameplay down so far.

Game aesthetic will be the same as this game. =)
Just kidding, man. I won't use the title because it will remind me of that awful Fire Emblem game. XD

And no Siggy does make Lainey a very sad, mad girl.
author=Luchino
I should steal that title from you though. >:D

Go for it. I was originally thinking of Link’s Awakening when I came up with that.

author=Luchino
She's... pretty nasty in this little game, lol.

No wonder. She hasn’t met Siglud yet.


I'll tone down the difficulty for this or maybe implement a full heal after every battle. And of course I'll let the foes drop items/stat boosters in rare instances to help you guys along. ^^

Atm, Pat isn't being implemented in the gameplay yet, since its supposed to be a solo effort for Laine, not only for personal growth, but to let her handle the consequences of her actions on her own. She's... pretty nasty in this little game, lol.

I should steal that title from you though. >:D
(You should totally call this “Laine’s Awakening,” lol.)

I think this is a pretty neat and clever idea for a side game. It’s really interesting. I’m just wondering that since there’s no currency to purchase any items and you’re learning most of your skills and abilities by defeating enemies if the difficulty for this game is going to be pretty brutal compared to Enelysion. You are going have to items scattered around the dream world and have item drops to collect to make things a bit easier on us, right? Also, does Patrick travel along in the dream world to help Laine out too? Maybe not necessarily for the final battle against Rikard, but maybe for the rest of the way through to provide a human meatsheild some backup support to make things a bit more easier, especially if there’s no full heal / lack of items / no item drops.
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