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Sunken Spire is being made for the Indie Game Maker Contest 2014.
It belongs to the Arum universe and shares characters with Dead Moon Night, The Grumpy Knight and In Search of Immortality.
The events of the game happen chronologically after In Search of Immortality.

CONTROL NOTES:
Somethign that slipped past us over the controls:
During Battle, press the L/R buttons (Q and W in keyboard default) to access the Combat Log and Escape respectively.


(This is filler characters so I can pass the machine limit for topic acceptance. To the profile accepters: the text is already in the images and I'd like to remove it).

Latest Blog

Sunken Spire Patch Released


This patch fixes up all of the little bugs (and big bugs) that have been reported to us over the last little while. We also played a bit with rebalancing and encounter rates, based on your feedback!

A huuuuge thank you to all the kind words we've received so far about the game! It's been very encouraging, especially with all the bugs you had to slog through, to see people not only dedicating time to this game, but LOTS of time. <3

Your save files should be transferable between versions of the game, so don't hesitate to redownload and play on the patch version. (if you want to beat the optional bosses, I actually encourage you to redownload)

If you've enjoyed our game, don't forget to drop us a vote!

Thanks again!

Tags

Posts

Notoh
*Deeply Thinking*
1928
Does Alma's really feature her holding a book the entire game? That's super funny!

Looks like this game has a good amount of characterization in it. I'll definitely be giving this a try!
meisam
meisam your not using semicolon properly, and that's a laughing matter.
0
author=Fomar0153
This one?

can you help me on the f13 ice floor there is an item that I can't understand how can I pick it up :S it's in south west of slippery section of floor.
If you mean this one:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/fnxrfry6yw27cub/Screenshot%202015-08-05%2022.41.37.png?dl=0
it's not possible, the map was altered near the end of production and the item wasn't moved, don't worry though it's only Aoife Solution.

Also we got featured?! Cool, thanks everyone.
meisam
meisam your not using semicolon properly, and that's a laughing matter.
0
okay I just finished 3 game of this series It was quite amazing,

not only some of the best battle system I have ever seen in any games but the story and art was enthralling too. quite a talent you guys/gals have here a job well done :).

the things I didn't like in sunken spire was:
almost zero use for money and items I used like 2 or 3 items in the whole game and had like 100k gold with nothing to spend on it. maybe we could buy some development and research subjects?

a big town full of nothing (almost) the talk was good but honestly it did not add much to the whole game, mostly a distraction rather than enjoyment.

almost no challenge whatsoever I died only 3 times all because I was in a place that I was not suppose to be. doing almost zero damage receiving 2k damage per round stats buff and debuff was way too powerful.

edit: I have mix feeling about sunken spire, what I liked about the other 2 games was removal of time wasters like moving a lot and talking a lot the game was to the point no unrelated event, no talking with random people.

sunken spire was improved a lot from the game mechanic perspective although In Search of Immortality there was a lot of potential.

the jokes was appropriate, character were quite understandable and I had quite a lot of fun.

big thanks to all of the team for creating such a great games.
meisam
meisam your not using semicolon properly, and that's a laughing matter.
0
author=Fomar0153
If you mean this one:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/fnxrfry6yw27cub/Screenshot%202015-08-05%2022.41.37.png?dl=0
it's not possible, the map was altered near the end of production and the item wasn't moved, don't worry though it's only Aoife Solution.

Also we got featured?! Cool, thanks everyone.


yes I meant this item :), congrat on become featured a well deserved place for a such a quality game.
Oh cool I take it then you played The Grumpy Knight and In Search of Immortality?

Cool glad you enjoyed them, they were much tighter games also made in shorter deadlines with a smaller team. For Sunken we wanted to try our hand at making a longer RPG. We learned a lot from it's development which will be invaluable in the future.

The town was meant to have some more sidequests, but we ran out of time so it is was it is. Same with Ezekiel's section.

Anyway thanks for the big vote of confidence and really glad you enjoyed the series.
meisam
meisam your not using semicolon properly, and that's a laughing matter.
0
author=Fomar0153
Oh cool I take it then you played The Grumpy Knight and In Search of Immortality?

Cool glad you enjoyed them, they were much tighter games also made in shorter deadlines with a smaller team. For Sunken we wanted to try our hand at making a longer RPG. We learned a lot from it's development which will be invaluable in the future.

The town was meant to have some more sidequests, but we ran out of time so it is was it is. Same with Ezekiel's section.

Anyway thanks for the big vote of confidence and really glad you enjoyed the series.

of course all 3 had some of the best game mechanic I have ever seen specially for a rpg maker game, one thing is for sure the rate this games is improving means that the next games will be much better.

oh I loved the overpowered Ezekiel made him the main damage dealer in search of immortality and used all other as support :). zero defense 1400 power is no kidding :).

Just finished your game.
I think I found and learned anything.
But the balancing of the fire-floors and at L.Lake and the boss on Mt. Helena is not good. The enemies are way to overpowered. Why stop the Level-up at LV. 40? - Then the enemies of L.Lake and Mt. Helena would have more meaning.
I defeated Gabriella with sure luck and sudden death. At the first battle she summoned tree dragons which killed me in one turn.
When learning human/dragon form they were already maxed.
The dispel-charm only heals one stack of downers - not two.

Can't wait for an sequel!
Yeah, unfortunately balancing was the thing that got sacrificed at the end as the deadline zoomed close. There just simply wasn't enough time to balance the entire game. We've toyed with the idea of revisiting this and fixing that element of it, but I think we're all rather firmly in the state of "It's done, move forward instead of dwelling on the past!"

Thanks for completing the game all the way! I'm really glad to hear you enjoyed it, despite its flaws. :)
The ooze's super forms are a combination of two previous forms so it being maxed meant you had already maxed the two forms it combined.

Glad you enjoyed it enough to do the side stuff. Balance is the biggest issue with the game, it was simply an out of time thing. Like Maki said at the moment there are no plans to really address it as we're all busy with other things.

A direct sequel isn't going to happen, Sunken Spire was the latest entry in a series of games with an ensemble cast it was in fact the first time (excluding In Search of Clues which was a short prequel) any characters returned as playable characters.
I saw the game was recently updated for the Bacon Jam2 but I cannot find the change log or an appropriate file to see what was changed. Any info?
News to me, sorry I don't know anything.
Hi, late to the party.

I think I agree with most of the other commentators; the mechanics were fun, but the game was very poorly balanced. The entire spire was incredibly easy; regular encounters were usually over within 2 rounds, and I was often shocked and disappointed by how quickly bosses died. Even with the double-bosses in the ice and magic sections, I was like, "Oh I get it, that was the easy fakeout boss and this will be the real challenge oh I've already won." In particular, Ooze vastly outpaced everyone else once he got his combo forms -- I thought dragon form was overpowered when I was oneshotting every encounter with Dragon Breath, then I switched to mystic plant and woah, five-digit damage! Elsa and Alma couldn't hold a candle to that. I beat the final bosses with two shots of Maelstrom and nothing else. Am I correct in assuming your battle system uses subtractive or asymptotic defense? Small changes in attack and defense stats made worlds of difference, and I think that's probably the reason why Ooze is so powerful, since his combo forms start with very high offensive stats.

Then I had the audacity to venture into the optional dungeons and the enemies wiped the floor with me. Even once I had enough health to avoid being destroyed in the first turn, I was completely dependent on Ooze to kill them, because everyone else was doing about one-fifth the damage. There's just too big of a power gap between the tunnel enemies and the lake enemies, you can't really level up in a nice smooth curve. The superbosses were still pretty easy, though.


And yeeeah, completely changing the gameplay for the final stretch was...awkward. If it was just a simple cinematic race to the finish, that would be one thing, but forcing the player to grind, even for only a little bit, completely kills the pacing. I think it would have been a better idea to remove the random encounters and just start Ezekiel at level 40. It might have actually been best to just cut it entirely, since the player doesn't really have enough context on Ezekiel, the church, and the sword to really understand its significance, especially if they haven't played In Search of Immortality.


A few bugs, also: the tunnel and mountain rest spots don't actually heal you, Ezekiel's defense spell only grants 1 stack of Protect instead of 5, Alma gets inspiration for Ooze's special attacks after the restaurant scene instead of from the tunnel plant, and Ooze's mystic form only gets 3 skills instead of 4 (unless that's intentional?). Typos, too: most of Ooze's equipment gives different stat boosts than what's stated (the mask, in particular, seems to give twice the MAT), and Alma's Metal Plate skills mention the Desert Rose. (And, nitpicky, but "father" is incorrectly capitalized most of the time; when used in place of a name, as in "But Father told me to do X," it's supposed to be capitalized.)

Story-wise I thought this was pretty good. The characters play off each other really well, and I enjoyed their banter plus Ooze's adorable naivete. It seems like a lot of people hated the NPC dialogue, but I didn't; it wasn't anything spectacular, but it did its job, especially in establishing the cultural attitudes of the town. And I actually disagree that the characters are totally static; I felt we got to see their depths and facets through stuff like the inn scenes. I liked Elsa in particular -- I want to play Grumpy Knight to see her origin story now. Preston and Beatrice were pretty meh, though. That's a natural consequence of their short screentime, of course, but I just find it really hard to care about bumbling ineffectual villains in general. If the heroes aren't impressed by them or whatever threat they're theoretically presenting, why should I be? The dramatic ~dark shadowy villainy~ scenes felt like they were building up to something...more, I guess. Is this like an Ezekiel thing where they're featured in another Arum game? Or do you plan to have them show up later?


I'm also a bit baffled that retrieving Gabriella changes the ending but resurrecting Saint Selene doesn't, since that seems way more significant. (Unless that stinger of her opening her eyes behind the sword only happens if you do...?) Is that plotline supposed to be laying the groundwork for some future Arum project?


There was the general sense of being lost and confused that I usually get with Arum games, but greater lore doesn't seem necessary to understand the plot so it was okay. I imagine someone who didn't play In Search of Immortality would be pretty confused, though, especially about Ezekiel.

Oh, and, uh...personally, I cringed at the scene where Elsa said Ooze was male. There's no point to it other than reinforcing the annoying idea that male = default. It's an infantile formless blob monster, how is that more masculine than feminine? If the characters just passively referred to him with male pronouns that would be one thing, but making a point of it is just extremely awkward.
Thank's for the indepth comment.

I can't really comment on too much of these points, as they weren't areas of the game that I handled (aka mostly art), but I will apologize that Beatrice and Preston weren't that interesting of characters. They don't exist in any other Arum games, and I have no idea if they will down the road either. They were mine to handle (within the details that were outlined to me by the boundaries of the game), so yeah, I'm sorry they didn't hold up to the rest of the cast.

Thanks again for the comment. Most of the things you mention were a result of simply running out of time (this game was grossly undertested). None of us have the desire to come poke at this project anymore though, so it is what it is. I'm glad it was enjoyable in some form :)
Oh, you were the artist? You did an excellent job! The portraits were nicely detailed, and I loved just how many expressions there were. Did you do the battlers too? The low-res sprites were a little odd at first when contrasted to the sleek portraits, but they grew on me.
Yup! I was the artist. Thanks!

I didn't do the bulk of the battlers, they were made by a Japanese artist called monta!. I did edit the ones for the main cast though, using a bit of frankenspriting and freehand, to match the other style. Glad they grew on you; it's such a charming style.
Mostly it boils down to time, we had very little testing time and we had a couple of small communication break downs, I misunderstood when the optional areas opened up (hence the huge spike) and I was expecting Ezekiel to have a full sized floor for each of the six sections. Had there been even more time his bit would have been expanded to run parallel with the main party, beat the game unlock Ezekiel's Story. I was planning on have the Ezekiel you control fight the party you used stat, equipment and skills wise. Also there was a brief outline of a plan for a Selene Story which would have expanded on her backstory which would have been unlocked when you completed that side quest. We've all moved on from Sunken Spire at the moment so it's highly unlikely the cut content will be realised.

As for the future of our Arum series, Saint Selene should make an appearance eventually, chronologically Sunken Spire is the last game currently and we have two unfinished games to finish (In Search of Freedom and In Search of Dragons).

Anyway glad you enjoyed the game and thanks for such a detailed report, if you play the grumpy knight then I hope you have fun.
Sorry but I simply have no clue what to do about the saints quest. The last thing I found was the necromancy stuff from her in the tower and now I can't find anything else from her. Is it related to the guardian of the lake? Because I've no clue how to get her too.
Hints on the side quests and Saint Selena's relics. There is a NPC in the eastern part of the town (near the cave) who will give you hints. You will need to backtrack to the south forest and the lab areas and explore the forest and cave systems around the Spire.

To find the missing cat.
Take the south exit out of the town back into the forest. There is a side path to the east that will lead to a clearing.


Selena’s relics for Liam:
1.
I don't remember exactly where the first relic was (A stone tablet). I found it in the Spire, I think I was on level 5.


2.
The second relic (the statue) is hidden somewhere in the town.


3.
I’m not certain where I got the third relic (the Necromancer set), but I think it was in the cave system past the tree house.


4.
The forth (a book) was back at the lab where you started. You need a guide to show you where it is hidden.
Remember that skeleton in the prison who ignored you when you tried to fight it?


5.
The fifth relic (a diary) is hidden in a tree. To get to the tree, leave the town by the west exit. After crossing the bridges, Take the second path leading north and keep going up until you get to the screen just before the Spire. The tree is just below and west of the spire.

I was excited to find the game continues after reaching the top of the spire. But this part of the game is brutal. Really stuck on Esikiel vs Arachne (sp?). Seems buggy. Sometimes I get hit multiple times without gaining any DP points. Damage given is inconsistent even when I don't have any status ailments. And the shielding skill should give you 5 stacks but only gives you one.
Any hints for beating the spider lady (third level)?