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Welcome back, child. Are you ready to begin your journey anew?

First, you must determine who you are. Each identity is unique, but is only a starting point. Your choices will determine who you become.

Keep those options in mind, as they will soon become your only allies in this forgotten realm. Of course, they too will be shaped by your actions.

Finally, the world is yours, so to speak. Explore, discover, and learn its secrets. But always remember... Life is a path, and death, a destination.

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Life is a Path is a turn-based RPG inspired by games like Dark Souls and Final Fantasy. You will choose your party out of several character classes that will then evolve as you see fit.

My current plan is to develop content for this game in two branches: combat system and mechanics, and world and story. Each branch feeds into the other in various ways. Public demos will feature a dungeon-crawling experience containing all game mechanics in a simplified, easy to pick up experience. Mix and match classes however you want, equip them with whatever you happen to find, and see how far you can get.

The storyline, open world layout, and other surprises will not be in public demos. They will be tested, of course, but the intent is for players to discover and experience that aspect of the game as a finished product rather than an incomplete mess that grows over time.

I'll be looking to have completely custom maps, art, sound, animation, and some scripting for this game by final release. If you are interested in assisting development of this project, please contact me via PM.

Note: Information regarding exactly how things work is intentionally vague. Keep this in mind if you have questions to ask, as they may or may not be answered. That said, if you think something is broken and needs fixing, please feel free to bring it up.

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  • 07/05/2016 10:02 AM
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You have quite the interesting concept here. Just the flavortexts point to a clever story. But since the demo focused on combat, I'll do the same. Personally, I can't get enough negative feedback, so I'm purposely harsh when critiquing. You've been warned.

Overpowered:
  • Slayer is probably the best class in terms of sheer damage output. Not strictly broken, but felt better than other party members. Limited especially by MP. Not that I specifically want to see Slayer nerfed, just an observation.

  • Lingering Prayer. Cast it basically every battle. Saw little point in not casting it.

  • Slimes. Immunity (near-immunity?) to normal attacks makes them more interesting to fight than the average meatsack, but when only 1 party member can use elemental attacks without having to charge FP, it's incredibly annoying. Especially when attached to an enemy which, according to RPG standards, should be the weakest of all enemies. If they were mixed with other enemies (perhaps enemies immune to elemental damage?), they be more fun to fight.


Underpowered:
  • The Ranger. I could not find a good use for him. His damage output didn't strike me as terrific, and his skills were uninspiring. I'd have liked to have seen fun stuff like poison, multishot, or defense debuffs, but instead he's got two (basically) defensive skills, a heal spell, and...some kind of berserk mode with an unspecified drawback. Plus, clicking through menus for a normal attack got irksome while waiting for the FP to do something more interesting.

  • Monster events. Skipped as many as I could get away with. You can do better by incorporating mapping to force battles. The graveyard in particular has more monsters than necessary; I skipped 90% of them and beat the boss without difficulty.

  • Parry Skill. Actually, this might be the most broken skill in the game, and I would have no idea. In a complete playthrough, I never used it due to its high cost and vague description. Does it need to cost so much if it only lasts 1 turn? Or does it last for more, and if so, shouldn't you tell the player that?


Other Thoughts:
  • You may wish to highlight the story a little more in the demo to garner more interest, even if it's just a single dialogue.

  • I liked having a lot of skills to start, even if it was a little overwhelming. Could you maybe space out the characters with a battle between each? If you fixed the starting character and the order in which you unlock the rest, you could make each fight highlight that party member's abilities.

  • What's the point of the orc shenanigans?

  • The Slayer seemed out of place alongside the other, generic classes since it was so flavorful. I appreciate the Slayer's development, but it left the other classes feeling cheap and flat.


All things considered, though, your demo's better than many completed games on this site. I enjoyed it, and I look forward to a release with storyline included. Good luck!
author=michaelthegm
Awesome feedback


Thank you, Michael! I'm taking all of this into consideration, and I'll talk about a few points here.

I agree that slimes are a little off right now. I do like your idea of balancing the other enemies with it, though.

Ranger's default attack being a skill is a workaround until I learn the scripting myself or take on a dedicated scripter for the project. Bows in general went through a few iterations until I settled on what I have now, which I think is the best option I've tried.

Monster events: Especially in the final game, I plan to have reasons to tangle with optional monsters, to include treasure, unique items, or progression mechanics of some kind.

Parry: If you try it you may find some answers to these questions. It's a little situational and could probably use some adjustments. I'll work with it for the next release.

Story: I agree, as I build both branches there will definitely be some overlap and you will get some more story. A lot of it is going to reside in item descriptions and such, too. If you've ever played Dark Souls, you'll know the kind of presentation I'm going for, and there's definitely room for it to show in the dungeon crawler demos.

Starting skills: Yep, the decision to throw all four party members in so quickly came about a little late. I wanted to start getting testing and feedback going with the full party of four sooner rather than later. Perhaps I will try your idea regarding fixed order of characters. In the long-term, though, the classes are really just meant to be starting points. Something that is largely missing in this first release is a whole lot of permanently learnable skills you can give to anyone.

Slayer's development: I agree with this. There will definitely be more about all the classes. Another thing to note is that the looks of all the characters are almost certainly temporary. At the very least I'd like to use the character generator rather than the default assets used here. From there I'll look at getting unique artwork done.

Oh, I gave myself a panic attack when I accidentally clicked a link after writing this entire post. Thank you, RMN, for auto-saving! At least, I think the site did it. Anyway, back on topic.

Thank you for playing this release, and I hope that the next one is a more fulfilling experience for you!
"I am sure that being dead is a restful, relaxing thing, but... it kinda gets old after a while? This graveyard is a pretty dull place nothing ever happens here.

Now who was I again? Oh, thank you mysterious lady it seems I have lived more then one life. I think I can already ignore the lives that were spent not doing much. The former lives spent as an adventurer, yes! Which identity do I like best, which skillset would be the most useful... a new body, to replace the old decayed one.

I am not used to this new body yet. It is clumsy and I do not quite remember everything it does. So I should take some one with me, not wander off alone. Some one other then those freaks wandering around. They already have eating utensils out! I just got this body a minute ago, I do not wish to be food already! Should they not be resting in their graves right about now? I guess I am supposed to be resting as well... but I am self-aware, they are not.

Should not the grave keeper do his job and force these zombies back in to their graves? oh, he is blocking my path, and he is very impolite about it. Try as I might, I can not quite manage to climb over the wooden fence or cut a hole in it with the ten short swords I found, so I shall have to take a risk and hope the keeper is weaker then me.

With out the keeper I do wonder if all the zombies will now just wander out with no one to stop them, but I guess that is not my problem. Should I find a traveling partner or three? I could go out alone, but oddly enough the most restless of souls were buried at the exit of the grave yard. Perhaps the keeper decided he did not want to try and stop a full party?

I would say that I do not know where I will go next, but I all ready know. Instead I shall enjoy the path and take my sweet time getting to the destination, preferrably with out the journey being ended prematurely by hungry carnivorous monsters..."


------------------------------------------

It's amazing how much plot you can cram into such a small area by simply showing rather then telling :D

This demo will definately keep me busy for a few hours at least.
Suprise, suprise, I found an insect already. On the character stats screen there is a stat called "Toughness". On the level-up screen there is not 'toughness' stat, instead in its place there is something called "endurance" which appears to increase toughness when applied.

As wonderfully vague the stats are, perhaps a description of what a given stat does could be found as a loot drop.
My thoughts after playing it for a while:

One of the first things I did was to try and give the Short Sword to my Priest starting out just as an experiment (didn't work well). I really like how having a different weapon gives me a completely different attack; could you do more with this please?

The constant battles with a full party gets a bit tedious after a while; is there any way to speed them up?

+1 to slime nerf
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