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The only thing Laura cares about is her polaroid camera. Whenever she pictures something for eternity she feels like she can conserve emotions.

Her parents, currently separating, send her on vacation to her demented grandpa's house. She pursues her hobby, taking pictures of couples, happier than her parents.
Out of the blue she meets rumspringa Linus who wins over her heart.
This summer's romance won't last long: suddenly all the people of the town, including, Linus, turn to stone.

From a distance a covey of puzzle pieces emerges and abducts Laura to a distant realm. Missions have to be completed in order for Laura to return one day to her loved one.



This game revolves around jigsaw puzzles. Developing your character and acquiring new skills will always be in conjunction of placing puzzle pieces somewhere, leaving each player many different possibilites of completing the game. For instance, every new level Laura acquires a puzzle piece (called Puzmo) which can be placed on her Puzmo Board, increasing different stats, based on the location it will be placed.

The battle system lets Laura and two followers (one of them can be controlled by player 2) face up to 5 enemies and battle them in real time fashion similar to Secret of Mana.

All graphics will be self-made.

Latest Blog

Request - Level/World-Designer (not especially graphics/mapping)

Hey folks!,

yes, I am still working on this game, but to speed up the progress I am looking for someone (ore more people) who are willing to assist me in developing and conceptional design of the worlds. :)

What this does include:
- Concepts of sidequests (describing Quest Givers, Dialogues, etc.)
- Concepts of areas and dungeons (drawing sketches of maps, treasures)
- Concepts for NPCs

What this might include:
- ideas for monsters and bosses
- input for main story progression

What I do not need are graphic artists (this is what I am doing all the time).
Mapping is not necessary as well (because my maps consist of many essential events for the jumping system or battles). But you could create raw sketches of maps within the maker that I just have to fill with the tech-stuff. (those sketches would show the walking paths, positions of monsters and chests -> I do the rest).

Everything mentioned above has to fit within the Lore of my game so we have to discuss what kind of stories and ideas do match my game. I do have some standards regarding quality of the presented work so I might refuse if your work won't match my expectations.

What you get?

- FAME (by assisting in one of the most aspiring Action RPGs released on the RPG-Maker)
- having your ideas being brought to life by my pixel art
- being mentioned on a prominent spot in the game's credits

Contact my by a personal message if you are interested!
  • Production
  • Itaju
  • RPG Tsukuru 2003
  • Action RPG
  • 10/14/2012 06:54 PM
  • 02/25/2016 09:24 PM
  • 03/20/2003
  • 80301
  • 64
  • 573

Posts

Pages: first 12 next last
Decky
I'm a dog pirate
19645
Looks like a promising project!
chana
(Socrates would certainly not contadict me!)
1584
Loved every map, the city ones are amazing, the puzzle bit looks a really interesting idea, subscribing.
Ooh, is this some kind of puzzle game/RPG hybrid? That sounds awesome.
It's a game about puzzles, but not a puzzle game. ;)
This looks like greatness in the process of creation.
Let's subscribe aggressively.

Also, your avatar's gif has green BG on one of the frames.
author=Itaju
It's a game about puzzles, but not a puzzle game. ;)

Still sounds awesome. :D
Ciel
an aristocrat of rpgmaker culture
367
thisssssss looks greattttttt
Hi,

Just dropping by to pass off a few words. This game always sort of popped out to me. Felt like a 2005ish game you'd see in the English, but most likely German / French community. That statement wasn't really a diss haha. It's just that people around that time spent more time going beyond the limits of rm2k3. It's kind of unheard of to see people do that nowadays. But low and beyond, I'm happy it's on the front page as I probably would have missed it

Anyways I wrote a wall of text and for the sake of everyone I'm going to put it in a tag lol.


I was skeptical with the pixel art in general, I mean the concepts were really good just some of the art could look a bit better with some practice. This did not really hurt my image of your game. You were right when you said the game looked better in motion for instance. I don't know, action games are hardly done right and I wanted to see how your game would look in motion.

You don't really have to talk to express your ideas as I understand a lot of the design decisions you've made simply by watching the LP video.

Rm2k3 is a tile-based editor with a lot of limitations (patches + scripting things help I guess). Point is, a tile-based game with no pixel movement will ALWAYS feel clunky.

There are ways to get around that but it's almost always too much effort and not really an effective solution. Still, I really liked how you setup your battles. You had the heroine position herself around the enemy by detecting where the enemy is present. From there the character strafes and it appears you can then even pick the direction the character is faces during the strafing. This is brilliant and a really creative way to get around the tile-based limitation. If you wanted to do a pixel based movement it would obviously be smarter to use a different engine.

Another thing that impressed me was your 2nd and 3rd character's A.I. They are actually MORE intelligent then the Secret Of Mana A.I which is a game some people compared your game to.

The caterpillar system is great, the characters lag behind a bit unless you're walking slow and not running. It really looks like Chrono Trigger caterpillar system which is phenomenal.

I really liked how the fairy keeps her distance and uses projectiles while the brown melee imp is a bit more aggressive which is fine for a melee champ. He essentially acts as a tank as well by doing this. At first I thought there was an aggro system but the enemies seem to lock onto allies within a certain distance. I could be wrong.

I absolutely love how the enemies fall when you hit them, this is a lot like Secret Of Mana.

Still this is some really creative work, keep it up man. The game looks aesthetically pleasing too, the leaves falling was a nice touch. It really looks likes a polished game with some minor flaws. I skimmed over the story, I actually thought the game was more about putting the world back together. I was kind of disappointed it wasn't that lol but yeah, the story still has a lot of room for character development and good scenario writing.

Some of my thoughts for improvements:

- When your cast members die, they should stay dead until all the enemies are cleared. This is needed for attrition, if there are no penalties then there aren't many risks. The game becomes easy mode. It's even more weird that they get up (after that bar fills up) with like 2 hp and die two seconds later.

- It's nice that you're limiting the amount of enemies on the field, the more events the more likely the game will lag. Lag absolutely destroys real-time games...

However, make the battle maps bigger, tight maps aren't good for action-based battle systems. Seiken Densetsu 3 (snes game) did this and it was impossible to avoid hits. The player should be able to avoid hits if they are good enough.

- Battle animations are good, I can at least tell what's going on. Maybe make the spell animations a bit clearer.

- The LPer mentioned the skill system, don't make magic overpowered.

- You could probably even go a step further and make it so your heroine has to position herself on the map to avoid projectiles etc. This could be great for boss battles and their respective patterns, this is often seen in online games but they make it really gimmicky lol.

- I really laughed when you said you could map the controls for the second character. It's a bit clunky in rm2k3 but it's still option haha! It's strange I was actually going to do something similar for my game.



Anyways, that was probably longer then it had to be but I was just tipping my hat and giving you some feedback. Keep it up, this game is on my playlist, I'll play it it sometime when it's out. I'm overdue for some LPs and reviews myself so I won't make anymore promises like that lol.
Looks good, best of luck putting everything together. ABS is a bitch, haha.
Did I miss the release of the beta? or has there not been a public beta release yet? :/
author=Solid89
Did I miss the release of the beta? or has there not been a public beta release yet? :/


There has, but in a German RPG Maker Board. :)

I will set up a public Beta as soon as I have more content.
When I saw this in the "Latest download" section of the front page I was excited for a second... That's kind of a shady trick adding a tune in the downloads section. Music should be added as 'Media' or ideally in a separate tab in the profile. xP

Edit: It's all good, then. ...Still looking forward for that download! =P
author=alterego
When I saw this in the "Latest download" section of the front page I was excited for a second... That's kind of a shady trick adding a tune in the downloads section. Music should be added as 'Media' or ideally in a separate tab in the profile. xP


it's not a trick, it's a mistake, I fix that. :)
Looks neato! It reminds me of secret of Mana. I bet you could make a perfect fangame for the series.
No one leaving some kind of feedback to the Tech-Demo? I'd appreciate. :)
dragonheartman
Developer, Starless Umbra / Heroes of Umbra
2966
I didn't realize you posted a tech demo. I remember seeing screens of this on multimediaxis.de -- it looks great. I'll have to play it.
The intro, and visual effects are pretty good, and I especially like the city. It feels alive, opposed to many cities in rpg maker games. One thing bothered me there, the exploration. It is too restricted (maybe necessary for the story hovewer, so not a big problem)...

So I liked the game. Then I reached the part where I had to fight two imps. The combat was not bad, And I am amazed, that one can actually create something like this, in rpg maker 2003.... But... The lag...
The lag is unbearable. I am sure, that the fps IS below 10, as are MANY, and Long lag spikes. Maybe the engine is not up to this task?
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