According to Shih Tzu (indie gaming’s ambassador to the East), Pixel has mentioned on his BBS that he’s interested in making an RPG. More than that—he’s already begun preliminary work on it!
“I’d always steered away from working on an RPG, but now that I think I’ve finally got the requisite know-how, I’ve decided to give it a shot,” the famously modest developer says. “But already it’s more of a challenge than anything I’ve done before...”
There aren’t any details on the game itself yet, except that Pixel “would like to avoid anything too large-scale, yet still make it fun to play… somehow.” He goes on to apologize in advance if he never finishes it. (Aw, we’d still love you, Pixel!)
Posted by Lorne Whiting
Fri, 20 Jul 2007 02:32:00 GMT
After several months of spending time on lame stuff like school and non-pretty game stuff, David of Wolfire Software decided to update the company blog.
Posted by Albert Lai
Tue, 03 Jul 2007 11:39:00 GMT
The first thing that comes to my mind when I open up Wilfred, the Hero is a mental image of Wilfred, clutching his head and screaming "Get out of my head Charles! Get out of my heaaaad!"
References to popular culture aside, Wilfred, the Hero attains the coveted status of a RPG Maker game which doesn’t look as if it was made with RPG Maker, an accomplishment which is always an accomplishment to be proud of. They haven’t handed out awards for that category as of this article, but I have it on the best drinking buddies that it may appear as a category in the next IGF.
Aside from the gameplay, the semi-surreal enemy designs remind me of Rice Boy, and the music could function equally nicely as a stand-alone soundtrack, lending a great ambiance to the entire game.
The gameplay of Wilfred, the Hero consists of four parts RPG, two parts cinematic, and one part music-oriented puzzles. Playing the game itself is pretty self-explanatory, but for the sake of those who love to get a dotted list with the pros and cons, some highlights include that characters gain ‘skill points’ from chests rather than from leveling up, battles take place using a Action Time Bar (FF6 is the closest analogy I can draw) and, instead of dying, each character simply loses a life and gains a significant time penalty. Losing all lives, or, alternatively, if both characters are in the process of reviving at once, causes a game over. The cut-scenes are all fairly lengthy (and the dialogue is occasionally hyperbolic) so saving often is recommended.
The current version only covers the first third of the game (with a maximum level of 9), and development is paused currently. Even so, playing through the first bit is a fairly nice experience, and for those RPG-starved out there it’s a very polished experience.
EDIT: Gameplay video in the extended (Thanks, Tim!).
Been sitting on this one for a while! Last Scenario is a game made with RPG Maker. It is more or less a prototypical SNES-era RPG, albeit a well made one. The story begins as a true cliche: orphaned boy with the blood of a hero, an evil empire, etc. The plot does get more interesting as you continue, however.
The combat system is fun, with each character being able to equip spellcards that each have a regular spell and a “Crisis” spell which can only be cast when a bar is full. There’s also a nifty collectible card game that you can play with townsfolk called “Hex.” It feels good to sap an 8-year old villager of all his good cards and then sell them to a merchant for weapons. Just like in real life.
The game apparently uses a lot of default RPG Maker tiles (everything but the characters, enemies, and portraits), but for someone like me who hasn’t played many RPG Maker games, it makes no difference – they fit well with the game.
“Play it before you live it” is the mantra behind World Without Oil, an ARG (Alternate Reality Game) that simulates a world oil crisis. Users submit stories via text, audio, or video describing events unfolding during the pretend crisis, and the game’s admins rank users based on how well their content fits with the reality of the game.
An interesting idea that I’m sure is worth trying! It sounds like a lot of fun… crowd-sourcing a real-world problem through role-playing and creative writing.
Arrow keys move left and right. Walk into things to attack them, but time it right or you’ll lose health. Don’t get attacked from behind and attack others from behind when you can. The inn costs 50 gold to rest (restore your health), but rises by 50 gold per player level until it maxes out at 500. Up cursor will go up and down stairs and pick up items. Down cursor will drop bombs (after you get them).
You start with a shield and a dagger, although it’s hard to see it. When you rest at the inn, the game is saved, but only the statistics for the character are saved – if you die, and continue, any progress in the game will be reset, any items you have will be returned to the game and you will have to get them again. In addition, after a certain point you will not be allowed back into the shop area to save or shop, meaning you will more or less have to complete the game without saving. I recommend saving with at least enough gold left over to buy the sword and potion.
To win the first room, fetch the sword from the chest in the top left and exit the room through the bottom right entrance. To win the second room… beat the dragon. :)
The first room contains a fairly scary double-ended penisworm, and is worth playing just to see that, I think.
There are also a bunch of smaller games on the nekogames site. Requires Shockwave 8 or later.
“OOO is a tiny, very light-weight top-down action rpg. The game was designed and created over a period of one week, and is all about shooting zombies. And, while the graphics are very minimalistic, there are some neat sound effects and lots of little gameplay features.”
I like it – a minimalistic zombie survival game. Unfortunately, the game gets repetitive fairly fast. Fortunately, it appears as though the developer is working on adding more interesting elements, like night/day and survivor camps.
I’m impressed by the amount of atmosphere packed into the game, but a lot more could probably be done to push it. A few more details in the graphics (cars, various debris, etc.) and some lighting effects would go a long way. And maybe some sweet text descriptions for the buildings…
Damn, now I want to make my own zombie survival game.
Do you remember playing MUDs on your 14.4 dial-up? Do you remember when computer games featured no animation of any kind? No? Well, I don’t either. But had I been old enough to form long-term memories in the early 80’s I imagine that Kingdom of Loathing by Asymmetric Publications would remind me of the simple days when playing an RPG meant admiring ASCII art and lots of reading.
KoL is a free* web-based multi-player RPG though more than anything it’s a parody of those genres and more. Yes, it has Wizard and Barbarian classes, but here they’re called “Pastamancers” and “Seal Clubers”. Fortunately the writing is actually funny – as opposed to punny – drawing on popular references obscure and common. If you pick this up look forward to an entire quest devoted to parodying “Harold and Kumar go to White Castle” and a familiar called “Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot”.
The graphics are minimal. I mean, really minimal. Like stick figures. Basically the game looks like it was drawn by the xkcd guy. It’s occasionally endearing but usually it’s just functional.
Because this game only allows a certain number of “adventures” per day it might serve as a methadone treatment for players coming off life-consuming games like WoW. Otherwise it’ll serve as an enjoyable 30-60 diversion a day.
Secret of Ultimate Legendary Fantasy Unleashed, or “Soulfu,” is a dungeon exploring game by the guy who made Egoboo, and like Egoboo it’s got a great graphical style but lacks any kind of purposeful gameplay. The idea, I think, is to grab a bunch of friends with USB gamepads and romp through some randomized dungeons, but without a story or any sense of meaning to drive you forward, what’s the point?
The developer’s website tells you everything you need to know about the depth of Soulfu’s gameplay.
EDIT: You know what, this game is really geared toward multiplayer, so it’s kinda unfair for me to review it based on a singleplayer experience. It also probably gets better as you get further in. But damn, playing it on my own, I really didn’t want to keep going. It’s solid, it just… it’s missing something. I had the same feeling when I played Egoboo. I dunno, maybe I’ll talk about it more in the comments.
