Full Games List
Featured Games
New Games
Reviews
Media
Images
Blogs
Game Updates
Images Feedback Summary
Game Design Highlights
Tutorials
Articles
Scripts
Utilities / Plugins
Resources
Engines
Engine Bulletins
What is Makerscore?
Past Events
Achievements
Misaos
Forums
Post History
Chat
New to RMN?
Full Store List
RMN Music Pack (free)
Profile
Locker
Play ListsSTRAK'S PROFILE
Strak
1560
Close
Just an indie game developer out of Alberta, Canada, building games for fun, never for profit, and always giving full effort to every project.
Search
Filter
All
Game Pages
User Statuses
The Amber Throne
Thrall
Looks like the download link wasn't functional for some reason. I've had to host the demo off site due to the file size, and it's causing some trouble. It's fixed for now, hopefully problems don't persist. Thanks for your patience.
EDIT: Link is apparently still broken. Working on a fix.
EDIT EDIT: Link is working again. Hopefully it stays that way this time.
EDIT: Link is apparently still broken. Working on a fix.
EDIT EDIT: Link is working again. Hopefully it stays that way this time.
POC: Random Loot System
Thanks, I appreciate the praise! This was the origin of my latest project, Thrall. I've since expanded on this concept and am implementing it into an actual game. The system is far more fleshed out and streamlined in the new project. I'll probably take this page down at some point, but it for some reason got a mention as a notable game for Misao nominations, so I'll at least wait until after those to avoid any confusion.
EDIT: Wow, that's elaborate. Nice SPAM, bot.
EDIT: Wow, that's elaborate. Nice SPAM, bot.
Thrall
The demo for Thrall has been updated!
What's new in v0.5?
- Button configuration recognition and accurate on-screen button prompts
- Added a new weapon accessory, "MULTI"
- Added option to sort loot based on either rarity or type
- Added Elite enemies with unique affixes
- Added a Blackjack minigame
- Added character specific unique Overdrive skills
- Updated major cutscene during prologue
- Altered "reset" functionality on floor change. Now only Overkill and Fury will reset
- Reinstated "unequip" functionality
- Turn counters added for skills on cooldown
- Adjusted how enemy weaknesses and resistances are determined
- Overhauled skill trees
- New skill tree layouts and names
- Overhauled loot table and inventory screen layout
- Added healing items to starting inventory
- Changed status healing item functionality
- Added Gold drops to loot pools
- Adjusted formula for hit ratio (less likely to miss)
- New unique and Legendary weapons (Gravity, Gold, Chastiefol, Conductor)
- Variable drop rate and EXP gain based on Difficulty settings
- Changed EXP formula based on overleveled allies
- More streamlined and consistent code for enemy management
And a ton of other minor quality of life improvements! No additional gameplay has been added to the demo, it still only extends to the end of the first dungeon, but I have done lots of work on developing later dungeons and story points. I simply don't want them in the demo. I'd rather the demo stay the same length, but have functionality and mechanics that accurately reflect what the full release will look like. Regardless, have fun with the demo!
If you encounter any bugs or situations that seem out of the ordinary, please let me know and I'll do my best to resolve them as quickly as possible. Happy playing!
What's new in v0.5?
- Button configuration recognition and accurate on-screen button prompts
- Added a new weapon accessory, "MULTI"
- Added option to sort loot based on either rarity or type
- Added Elite enemies with unique affixes
- Added a Blackjack minigame
- Added character specific unique Overdrive skills
- Updated major cutscene during prologue
- Altered "reset" functionality on floor change. Now only Overkill and Fury will reset
- Reinstated "unequip" functionality
- Turn counters added for skills on cooldown
- Adjusted how enemy weaknesses and resistances are determined
- Overhauled skill trees
- New skill tree layouts and names
- Overhauled loot table and inventory screen layout
- Added healing items to starting inventory
- Changed status healing item functionality
- Added Gold drops to loot pools
- Adjusted formula for hit ratio (less likely to miss)
- New unique and Legendary weapons (Gravity, Gold, Chastiefol, Conductor)
- Variable drop rate and EXP gain based on Difficulty settings
- Changed EXP formula based on overleveled allies
- More streamlined and consistent code for enemy management
And a ton of other minor quality of life improvements! No additional gameplay has been added to the demo, it still only extends to the end of the first dungeon, but I have done lots of work on developing later dungeons and story points. I simply don't want them in the demo. I'd rather the demo stay the same length, but have functionality and mechanics that accurately reflect what the full release will look like. Regardless, have fun with the demo!
If you encounter any bugs or situations that seem out of the ordinary, please let me know and I'll do my best to resolve them as quickly as possible. Happy playing!
Thrall
author=AnneLaurant
Woah, is this new? I'll have to allot a schedule for this!
It's new to this year! I started work on the project back in February, I believe. Hoping to have it done by the end of 2025, but that may be a bit unrealistic for the scope of this project.
Arcanium:Magia
Hoping this is still underway! Haven't seen you around much. Hope life is well and game dev is still something you're wanting to work on.
Thrall
There will be no blog post tomorrow unfortunately, despite the release schedule I had. Please see user statuses for more information.
Thrall
Demo Version 0.4 is now available! I made a ton of changes with this release, so check out the blog post for more information! And if you've tried this game before and found it too frustrating, maybe give it another shake. A lot of the mechanics that frustrated most players have been significantly adjusted to make for a much smoother gameplay experience.
Trust me, a lot of those changes were NOT easy to figure out. There were a lot of times in the last month where I was sitting at my computer thinking "How the hell am I going to do that?" But, well, see for yourself! The updated demo is available now.
Please let me know if you encounter any game-breaking bugs, and I'll make an effort to patch them as soon as possible. Thanks for playing! Happy looting!
Trust me, a lot of those changes were NOT easy to figure out. There were a lot of times in the last month where I was sitting at my computer thinking "How the hell am I going to do that?" But, well, see for yourself! The updated demo is available now.
Please let me know if you encounter any game-breaking bugs, and I'll make an effort to patch them as soon as possible. Thanks for playing! Happy looting!
Thrall
Great questions, let me see if I can answer them for you.
Not necessarily. Have you ever played the "Borderlands" games? This loot system is very similar to the system seen in those games. Level requirements and all. One thing that I noticed in your stream of the game is that I don't think you quite experienced the full potential of the loot system in your particular run, most likely just due to bad RNG, honestly. I didn't see any gold chests in the dungeons that you went through, and I think the highest rarity item you found was blue. So basically, there are three more rarity tiers above what you found that are much harder to find, and are much higher quality. Purple rarity is even better than blue, and orange rarity is better still. Even better, orange rarity items have special effects that are unique to them, that don't generate on any other piece of equipment.
An example is the orange sword you found in the first chest in the Keep, the "Aremen." While it's listed as having 0 DMG, it has a unique effect that actually sets its DMG stat based on the level of the player equipping it, so it grows with you. There are dozens of other Legendary weapons and armors that can randomly generate as well, and so being able to transfer those between save files is a good way to re-use items that you've found on other saves, but are no longer useful.
In addition, the stats scale pretty dramatically as you get to higher levels. Some of the highest damaging weapons will literally break the engines pre-set stat caps with over 1000 DMG and around 300 DEX. Needless to say, equipping that to a level 1 character would pretty much break the game.
Now, you can still abuse the locker by transferring over high selling items, so that you have an abundance of gold and can afford whatever you want, but it still encourages you to play each playthrough using what you find, unless you happen to have something EXTRA useful on another file at your current level.
Kind of addressed this in the first answer, but I'll also say that a big part of subsequent playthroughs is (hopefully) not just for story purposes, but also to try out new character builds, and see how the character you left behind works in unison with the others and their skill trees.
Actually, yeah this is accommodated. The HP bar doesn't change, but the cursors change. For your action skills, the cursor changes shape when the action skill is ready to use. As for boss HP bars, the cursor will change when targeting an enemy with an icon denoting their weakness. Fireball when weak to fire, lightning bolt when weak to lightning, and so on. In addition, if you enable colorblind mode before the tutorials, the tutorials will also change to reflect this.
I did have an oversight in that mode though, which is in regards to comparing stat increases or decreases. I've already fixed this for the full release, but basically now when a stat is increased, it will display with an "O" next to it, and for decreases it will display a "X". That isn't available in the demo, unfortunately, but I appreciate you mentioning it in your stream. Problem with testing a colorblind mode when you yourself are not colorblind: You can test to see if a script does what you want, but not to see whether or not it's effective.
Fair, although I personally think a playthrough with no kill skills is going to be fairly unlikely, especially given how powerful a lot of them can be. As a matter of fact, Lionel has a specific kill called "Mercy" that's designed to set others up to trigger their skills. I did remove the slimes from the Spider boss, since it's not really necessary that early in the game, but I personally think those kill skills would be almost useless unless SOME of the bosses in the game have minions, and there are a lot of really ridiculous builds that can be done when those skills synergize. I'll work on finding a happy medium.
That's a darn good solution, right there.
And so is this. That's actually a great idea, just gotta rebalance the skill trees to make sure the skill point allocations are still appropriate. The way it's set up right now, unlocking every single skill is possible at exactly level 99. Kind of want to keep it that way if I can.
author=Red_Nova
1) If there is a level requirement for equipment, then isn't the idea of transferring equipment between save files already negated since anything I put in that chest will have to wait until my next party is already leveled up enough to use it? By the time I level up enough to use that gear, I likely would have found something just as good (or even better) for my party in my next playthrough since I can get lucky and get a high rarity item early on.
Not necessarily. Have you ever played the "Borderlands" games? This loot system is very similar to the system seen in those games. Level requirements and all. One thing that I noticed in your stream of the game is that I don't think you quite experienced the full potential of the loot system in your particular run, most likely just due to bad RNG, honestly. I didn't see any gold chests in the dungeons that you went through, and I think the highest rarity item you found was blue. So basically, there are three more rarity tiers above what you found that are much harder to find, and are much higher quality. Purple rarity is even better than blue, and orange rarity is better still. Even better, orange rarity items have special effects that are unique to them, that don't generate on any other piece of equipment.
An example is the orange sword you found in the first chest in the Keep, the "Aremen." While it's listed as having 0 DMG, it has a unique effect that actually sets its DMG stat based on the level of the player equipping it, so it grows with you. There are dozens of other Legendary weapons and armors that can randomly generate as well, and so being able to transfer those between save files is a good way to re-use items that you've found on other saves, but are no longer useful.
In addition, the stats scale pretty dramatically as you get to higher levels. Some of the highest damaging weapons will literally break the engines pre-set stat caps with over 1000 DMG and around 300 DEX. Needless to say, equipping that to a level 1 character would pretty much break the game.
Now, you can still abuse the locker by transferring over high selling items, so that you have an abundance of gold and can afford whatever you want, but it still encourages you to play each playthrough using what you find, unless you happen to have something EXTRA useful on another file at your current level.
2) What exactly is the harm in letting players transfer high level gear in a subsequent playthrough? The chest can only store ONE piece of gear, after all, so it's not like you can completely deck out your party in OP gear in your second playthrough. Even if you could, I feel like anyone who would make use of this mechanic is to see the routes that that didn't take the first playthrough, and letting them use high level gear just makes it easier for them. If they wanted a subsequent playthrough to be fair and challenging, they would not make use of this item transfer mechanic at all.
Kind of addressed this in the first answer, but I'll also say that a big part of subsequent playthroughs is (hopefully) not just for story purposes, but also to try out new character builds, and see how the character you left behind works in unison with the others and their skill trees.
I feel like the underlined statement goes against your stated intention of accommodating colorblindness. I haven't checked, but what changes about the HP bar if you enable colorblind mode?
Actually, yeah this is accommodated. The HP bar doesn't change, but the cursors change. For your action skills, the cursor changes shape when the action skill is ready to use. As for boss HP bars, the cursor will change when targeting an enemy with an icon denoting their weakness. Fireball when weak to fire, lightning bolt when weak to lightning, and so on. In addition, if you enable colorblind mode before the tutorials, the tutorials will also change to reflect this.
I did have an oversight in that mode though, which is in regards to comparing stat increases or decreases. I've already fixed this for the full release, but basically now when a stat is increased, it will display with an "O" next to it, and for decreases it will display a "X". That isn't available in the demo, unfortunately, but I appreciate you mentioning it in your stream. Problem with testing a colorblind mode when you yourself are not colorblind: You can test to see if a script does what you want, but not to see whether or not it's effective.
That's a dangerous reason considering each character has 3 different skill trees and so the possibility of a party with no kill skills is fairly high.
Fair, although I personally think a playthrough with no kill skills is going to be fairly unlikely, especially given how powerful a lot of them can be. As a matter of fact, Lionel has a specific kill called "Mercy" that's designed to set others up to trigger their skills. I did remove the slimes from the Spider boss, since it's not really necessary that early in the game, but I personally think those kill skills would be almost useless unless SOME of the bosses in the game have minions, and there are a lot of really ridiculous builds that can be done when those skills synergize. I'll work on finding a happy medium.
1) Punch up the dialogue that is already there.
That's a darn good solution, right there.
2) Give the characters their Action Skill right away.
And so is this. That's actually a great idea, just gotta rebalance the skill trees to make sure the skill point allocations are still appropriate. The way it's set up right now, unlocking every single skill is possible at exactly level 99. Kind of want to keep it that way if I can.
Thrall
Thank you so much for doing a stream! It really is true that you can learn more about your game from watching others play it than you can from the verbal feedback they provide. That said, your verbal feedback was also excellent, and I took a ton of notes. Couple takeaways:
Difficulty: I should probably tone it down quite a bit, considering the number of deaths in the first dungeon. It's the first dungeon. It's not meant to be quite that difficult. Granted, dying isn't TERRIBLY costly, and it does encourage optimizing your equipment, but still. I'll be doing a LOT more balancing before the full release.
Level Requirements: So, there was a reason that equipping weapons was locked behind a level requirement. It has to do with the locker in the Keep. The one that allows you to move items between save files and playthroughs. Essentially, with that locker, you could put a level 99 weapon onto a level 1 character without the requirement. That said, I will admit it can be very frustrating to find an obviously better weapon only to find you can't use it yet.
On the one hand, I wanted the player to have equipment that they can use as soon as they level up, rather than leveling up and basically needing to wait before getting better stuff. On the other hand, then you've got an inventory full of stuff you can't use. I'll definitely do some modifications, maybe adjust the drop rates to set the equipment to your level, and only RARELY provide equipment above your level, but I'll have to think it through.
Oh, and as a side note, DEX determines how fast your ATB gauge fills. The idea being that if you use an underleveled weapon just for its special effect, eventually you'll be too slow to really make good use of it. Really should have described that better in game. My bad.
Consistent Visual Language: This is a two parter. One, the tutorials. Yep, that's bad consistency. I'll fix that. I wanted to give the characters some dialogue to represent their personality a bit more, but that... doesn't really come through in a tutorial about mechanics. Also, yes, I will add tutorials for each of the stats and what they actually do in one of those tutorials. Maybe the one where it describes item comparisons?
Second, I noticed that you immediately went for the red item bags in the dungeon, but occasionally missed a chest or two. Granted, the only chests you missed were tier 1 chests that typically don't contain great loot, but frankly it should be obvious what can be interacted with and what can't. I'll work on that.
Boss Fight: Ironically, I was trying to add additional gimmicks that fix the "damage sponge" boss that most RPG's seem to fall in to. Changing elements was the gimmick I went for with this boss. The HP bar changes color based on the bosses elemental weakness. Unfortunately, the only way to do that was to essentially spawn in a new enemy, which heals it. I can work on an alternative solution that maybe spawns it in at the HP of the enemy that was despawned. Shouldn't be too tough to figure out.
As for the slimes, those were included because of one specific feature: Kill skills. Certain characters (Damien especially, but everyone has them) have skills in their skill trees that proc extra abilities when they kill an enemy. It could be additional HP regen, stacking Overkill damage, damage resistance, etc. Adding minions to boss fights essentially means you can proc those abilities during longer encounters. That's great later on, but I guess it's not really necessary if you literally don't have any of those skills available to you yet. Maybe a later boss fight would have them make more sense, but not the first boss.
Narrative: I agree that you don't really get to spend enough time with any of the characters to develop any sort of emotional attachment to them, but I'm not entirely sure how to fix that, to be honest. Something tells me that making the prologue an hour long isn't the solution. I'm open to feedback, and I'll do some thinking about that myself, but I don't exactly have a solution right away.
As for the differences between playthroughs, yes, you will see cutscenes play out quite differently depending on who you leave behind. The actual progression of the storyline and which dungeons and enemies you face will actually change as well, but this isn't reflected terribly well in the demo. The first five dungeons roughly will be basically the same in each playthrough, albeit with different dialogue and interactions, but after that point there will be a split in the story path based on who you leave behind, which will branch out even further on each path. There will be a converging of those paths closer to the end of the story, but still with some VERY distinct differences based on your initial decision.
Game Page Presentation: Honestly, didn't even really think about this, but I'm glad you brought it up. Yes, I will spend some time clarifying the trigger warning. It's mostly due to the language present in the game, and some of the animated violence in cutscenes. I think the worst of it in the demo is the first boss getting decapitated, but I mean... it's a pixelated sprite. There's going to be a fair bit more gory cutscenes later on, but nothing much worse than what was seen here. There will also be scenes including depictions of torture. I will clarify all of that so that it's not just a generic content warning. I will also spend some time modifying the tagline and synopsis to be more words better. To make better word mouth. To... uh... make sense? Yeah, let's go with that.
Anyway, thank you again, this was incredibly helpful. I intend to make a lot of adjustments in the final release, and absolutely am open to feedback, so this was great. That said, I want to avoid falling into the trap of constantly updating a demo, so what you see here is what you get for now.
Difficulty: I should probably tone it down quite a bit, considering the number of deaths in the first dungeon. It's the first dungeon. It's not meant to be quite that difficult. Granted, dying isn't TERRIBLY costly, and it does encourage optimizing your equipment, but still. I'll be doing a LOT more balancing before the full release.
Level Requirements: So, there was a reason that equipping weapons was locked behind a level requirement. It has to do with the locker in the Keep. The one that allows you to move items between save files and playthroughs. Essentially, with that locker, you could put a level 99 weapon onto a level 1 character without the requirement. That said, I will admit it can be very frustrating to find an obviously better weapon only to find you can't use it yet.
On the one hand, I wanted the player to have equipment that they can use as soon as they level up, rather than leveling up and basically needing to wait before getting better stuff. On the other hand, then you've got an inventory full of stuff you can't use. I'll definitely do some modifications, maybe adjust the drop rates to set the equipment to your level, and only RARELY provide equipment above your level, but I'll have to think it through.
Oh, and as a side note, DEX determines how fast your ATB gauge fills. The idea being that if you use an underleveled weapon just for its special effect, eventually you'll be too slow to really make good use of it. Really should have described that better in game. My bad.
Consistent Visual Language: This is a two parter. One, the tutorials. Yep, that's bad consistency. I'll fix that. I wanted to give the characters some dialogue to represent their personality a bit more, but that... doesn't really come through in a tutorial about mechanics. Also, yes, I will add tutorials for each of the stats and what they actually do in one of those tutorials. Maybe the one where it describes item comparisons?
Second, I noticed that you immediately went for the red item bags in the dungeon, but occasionally missed a chest or two. Granted, the only chests you missed were tier 1 chests that typically don't contain great loot, but frankly it should be obvious what can be interacted with and what can't. I'll work on that.
Boss Fight: Ironically, I was trying to add additional gimmicks that fix the "damage sponge" boss that most RPG's seem to fall in to. Changing elements was the gimmick I went for with this boss. The HP bar changes color based on the bosses elemental weakness. Unfortunately, the only way to do that was to essentially spawn in a new enemy, which heals it. I can work on an alternative solution that maybe spawns it in at the HP of the enemy that was despawned. Shouldn't be too tough to figure out.
As for the slimes, those were included because of one specific feature: Kill skills. Certain characters (Damien especially, but everyone has them) have skills in their skill trees that proc extra abilities when they kill an enemy. It could be additional HP regen, stacking Overkill damage, damage resistance, etc. Adding minions to boss fights essentially means you can proc those abilities during longer encounters. That's great later on, but I guess it's not really necessary if you literally don't have any of those skills available to you yet. Maybe a later boss fight would have them make more sense, but not the first boss.
Narrative: I agree that you don't really get to spend enough time with any of the characters to develop any sort of emotional attachment to them, but I'm not entirely sure how to fix that, to be honest. Something tells me that making the prologue an hour long isn't the solution. I'm open to feedback, and I'll do some thinking about that myself, but I don't exactly have a solution right away.
As for the differences between playthroughs, yes, you will see cutscenes play out quite differently depending on who you leave behind. The actual progression of the storyline and which dungeons and enemies you face will actually change as well, but this isn't reflected terribly well in the demo. The first five dungeons roughly will be basically the same in each playthrough, albeit with different dialogue and interactions, but after that point there will be a split in the story path based on who you leave behind, which will branch out even further on each path. There will be a converging of those paths closer to the end of the story, but still with some VERY distinct differences based on your initial decision.
Game Page Presentation: Honestly, didn't even really think about this, but I'm glad you brought it up. Yes, I will spend some time clarifying the trigger warning. It's mostly due to the language present in the game, and some of the animated violence in cutscenes. I think the worst of it in the demo is the first boss getting decapitated, but I mean... it's a pixelated sprite. There's going to be a fair bit more gory cutscenes later on, but nothing much worse than what was seen here. There will also be scenes including depictions of torture. I will clarify all of that so that it's not just a generic content warning. I will also spend some time modifying the tagline and synopsis to be more words better. To make better word mouth. To... uh... make sense? Yeah, let's go with that.
Anyway, thank you again, this was incredibly helpful. I intend to make a lot of adjustments in the final release, and absolutely am open to feedback, so this was great. That said, I want to avoid falling into the trap of constantly updating a demo, so what you see here is what you get for now.
Games - Tester
Games - Other
