Rive the Heartstone (my RPG Maker game)
 

I mentioned this in my quest thread a while back and I got a surprising amount of interest from people, so, by request, I'm putting it up for download here.

For those not in the know, I made this on a program called RPG Maker VX, which is an engine from Enterbrain for designing oldschool RPGs.

The game is nowhere near finished, this is only a beta of the first four chapters, but it's as far as I've gotten in several years of working on it. I've tried to polish up what's there as much as I can, but I'm only one person and there are bound to be things I missed.

And I'll note here that the game is primarily story-driven. There's nothing in the mechanics you haven't seen a hundred times before, though I've done my best to add what creative touches I can. Bottom line, though, expect to read a lot, it's as much a visual novel as it is a game, and I've put the most work by far into the writing.

To start off, some screenshots:



So, with all that said, here are the download links below. Make sure to read my instructions afterward, since it's a tad tricky to install.



Now, installation instructions:



Now that that's out of the way, I suppose I should lay out the controls.



And here is a list of documents that go with the game that I've uploaded to my Skydrive:



And... I think that's about it. I had the game running on my father's computer so hopefully it'll work on everyone else's. It took me about an hour to download all the files on there, for reference.

And, of course, the whole purpose of this isn't for showing off but for feedback. If something doesn't work right, let me know. I've tried to catch all the writing mistakes, but those are bound to crop up here and there. I'm interested in comments on pretty much anything, especially the game balance, the story/characters, my pathetic mapping skills, or the music.

Oh, and credits/legal stuff:

Wheee downloading now :p

I just really hope it works. I've worked so hard trying to get it ready, but... I don't see any reason why it shouldn't as long as you follow the directions (assuming I covered everything).

Uhh, wow I have to wait 100 minutes between downloads >>

What? Seriously? I only had to wait 1,000 seconds.

It's making me wait 3600 seconds :x Maybe because I'm not a member?

Neither am I, though. Weird. Maybe it's just arbitrary and vindictive. :p

Oh, I should probably mention one thing about the game. My towns are seriously betas at this point. I hate towns. I hate townspeople. The big city in chapter 4 isn't even detailed yet, you can't go into any of the houses. Likewise, the first town is just bare bones to tell the story. The second town is fleshed out a bit, but really, only Avalusia Castle is finished (and damn it, if I'm not proud of that place.)

Getting there. It didn't want to accept the font directly from the Win-Rar window so I dragged the TFF to my desktop and then from there to the folder.


It insists you wait to you get bored and spend money on the upgrade.

Well I was unlikely to get to it tonight anyways ^^; I'm trying to at least stay up to start the other download but I'll admit I'm fading kind of quickly here >>

Yeah, I'm right there with you on that. Not gonna be able to stay up to see if it works for anyone (hopefully everyone). I'll be around tomorrow, though.

Suzerain, maybe I shouldn't mention where my mind went with that last comment ^^;

*looks around for a minute, confused*

Oh. That was poorly worded. I blame my poor, over-worked brain.

Haha, it's not that I didn't know what you meant, I just have a dirty mind :p

Alright, round 2 since I botched the first one. It made me wait 740 seconds in between the two attemps. I have patience you money grubbers! Take that!

Still way less than the 3600 seconds I had to wait D: At least I finally finished the download, but I'll have to wait until tomorrow to try this >>

I'm going to try a theory about the site when I download the sound file. See if it helps anything.

Why does the site hate me D: Everyone else got such a short wait >>

And Cupcake, I have a very pervy mind xD

I tried to see if clearning the browser cache made a differnce but not much. It still wants me to wait 700 seconds between downloads, although it's down from the 800 it asked me before.

Yick. Snag for me too, my screen saver turned on and conked my download. Finishing it tomorrow. Not more stuff tonight.

Wow, I didn't realize downloading would be that big of a problem. I'm sorry, everyone. Honestly, I was given misinformation, as I looked up what people use to upload these games and someone recommended FileFactory because it had no wait times. Um....

@Quiet, I think there is a way to reset it's knowledge of when you last downloaded, but it involves changing your IP address or using a proxy server, from what I remember, and honestly, by the time you go through all that, you'd be better off waiting.

You could use a VPN also, and considering the fairly slow download times that wouldn't impact this site that much. I think MegaUpload doesn't have wait times but I can't be quite sure on that since I do have a free account there.

What's a VPN?

And I'm pretty sure Megaupload has the wait for unregistered users.

Oh, Virtual Private Network, it changes your IP because basically you're connected to someone else's network. And when I had to download a bunch of stuff from MegaUpload, that's probably why I signed up for the free account.

Anyways, on to my initial reactions to the game. There are a few formatting issues with the text, or rather, a few spots where punctuation or extra spaces were present, though I'm sure those will be taken care of in time. I think I noticed one spelling error too right before the first boss fight.
Second, that first town? It's TOO BIG. I personally think it should be scaled down slightly, if only for gameplay purposes, I couldn't initially find where I needed to go only because I kept missing it by being too far away.
Third, balance...I know you talked about this, that stuff would be hard but there's a few things. In the first battle Orec died in two hits (no criticals) while the other guy...uhh.. can't remember his name for whatever reason, lasted against 4 hits without dying. And then the Fiends in the next scene, while it seems they do not use it often, their drain ability is quite powerful and if they continually use it, the battle takes too long for the resources spent. I'd recommend either lowering it's power or limiting the enemy's SP to only be used once. And as for the boss...I also remember you talking about specific strategies and the like but apparently he got a free turn that paralyzed all but my slowest member, and it also did a critical that downed a character from full HP. And yes I had killed all the fiends in town that I could find (another problem with the big town I might add). You may want to either tone them down slightly or at least have a method of finding out what works best against them. Or having saves right before the bosses so you can use the knowledge gained from the first fight to beat them the second. This being the first boss I would suggest going a bit easier on the player, especially since I could not find a spot to save after killing the fiends.

Aside from these though I am enjoying it. It's a standard battle style with some nice touches added by you. I'll play more later and get some revenge on that boss...

Oh, you got it working? Awesome!

Yeah, I catch more text errors every time I play through. It's tough to get them in the editor since it lacks spellcheck and the font is pretty small. Another thing is that the text in the editor is a different size from the text I use in the game (the game text is smaller) meaning that it's hard to judge where it hits the end of the text-box. I know there are probably a few hanging letters that I missed, since for some reason when I go to shift words a line down, it likes to set the cursor after the first letter of a word. I caught a lot of mistakes like that, but there are bound to be more.

And yes, I totally agree on the town. That was actually the first map I made for the game and I had no idea what I was doing. Scaling down is exactly what it needs.

On the point about the fiends, yeah, they are kind of tough from what I remember. (I've never actually fought all of them, kind of shocked you did. :p) I remember the drain attack being an issue I meant to fix. I must have forgotten about it.

The boss, Liukaeryos, can be tough because he's a bit erratic. If you get lucky, he won't use his worst attacks and he's a bit of a pushover; if not, he can wreck you, especially the paralysis spell he has.

The thing about adding saves before boss fights is that, for whatever reason, it screws up the event after you load it back up... like, any events that have moved reset back to where they were. I could probably put one right at the start of his event, and his is pretty short. Later bosses have big scenes before the battle ensures, which might not help that much, then.

Out of curiosity... did you die against his first form, or his second? :p

Oh, and I'm not sure what the trouble was with the trial fight against Elder Horyuu. I just tested it, he did ~190ish to both of them, and Orec has nearly 200 hp more than Tristan. Maybe he used Thunder Slash twice in a row? That hits a fair bit harder than his normal attack. You don't actually have to win that fight, though, the story continues either way.

I really appreciate you playing, by the way. :)

Oh, and if you let me know which form of Liukaeryos is giving you trouble, I can give you some tips, lay out his pattern if I have to. The tough thing about him is that you have no options at this point for equipment and he's strong vs. slashing weapons. He's weak to fire, if you get Tristan high enough to use his fire spell, though... without a magic-boosting weapon, Wildfire isn't that spectacular either. Amilia joins for the second fight, which at least gives you a dedicated healer. You might be better off in the first one having Tristan just heal every turn with Hearten and let Orec and Horyuu whittle away at his health. Good luck, though.

Edit: Okay... just tried fighting him myself. That's uh... a problem. I can't beat him. I think what happened was that I added the Freeze quality to his ice breath after fighting him in my last playtest, and that just destroys any attempt to survive his attacks. Would you happen to know what level your characters were after fighting all the fiends? I tested him with the party at level 6, but if there's enough XP to be had to get to level 7 it might make it a bit easier. I'm not sure there is though.

I kind of feel like a moron, now.

Edit 2: Well, I managed to just barely scrape out a victory at level 7, but he only used his freezing breath once. This is really bad. I'm going to have to fix this and upload the game again. *punches self in the face*

Okay, I fixed the problems and re-uploaded to Megaupload (I'll edit this into the first post).

You'll have to do the same thing with the BGM, and just move the save file from the old folder to this one, and delete the old folder when you're done.

I'm really sorry about this. It... shouldn't become a problem. The other bosses you can grind to get past, if you absolutely have to.

Here's the link: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=RMWN0Y36

It only took me a couple minutes to download it, so at least it's faster.

Truly sorry, everyone.

Edit: oh, and if it says that file is unavailable, wait a few minutes and try again. It seems to be a problem with their servers.

Edit 2: Oh, I should probably mention what I did.

Yeah, I'm wondering if I should put the BGM file up on Megaupload as well, seeing as it seems so much quicker. Then you'd run into the wait time between downloads again, though.

And hopefully I didn't make the boss too easy with those changes. Oh, well, if so, better than too hard, that early on in the game.

Oh, I didn't even think of that. I don't know, I'll give it a try and see if I can do it. That would be really good.

Edit: And, I do believe it worked. Dolly, that was brilliant. Thank you. I'll leave the other links up as alternatives, but I'll make this the main one.

Alright I'm downloading again and going to try it again. As for the first battle maybe he did use thunder slash and I didn't notice, Oric was taking 500+ damage after all. The extra 200 exp for winning is nice though.

I'll give it a try again later tonight with the new modifications.

I gave it another test after the fixes and I beat him pretty easily. Just make sure to use the few buffs you have at that point, and if it gets tough you can always have Tristan switch to dedicated healing since he's quicker than Amilia (and should be faster than the boss if he's at least level 6.)

Oh, and I don't know if you like poking around, but there's a Piety Scripture in Orec's house that can boost Tristan's magic damage for using Wildfire against Liukaeryos. Actually, it's a good idea to check pretty much everything wherever you can, as I have stuff hidden all over.

I did find the Piety scripture, I know you talked about your proud collection of bookcases so I was checking them. Does this mean I should be checking pots and vases too? :p

Um... yes, on principle. There are a few pots and such that have items in them scattered throughout the game. Usually bookshelves and cabinets, though.

Alright, tried again. The fiends were much better this time around, in fact none of them even used the drain ability on me so I wasn't able to find out how much less damage they did. Fought the boss again, easily clearing the first part...however the second part again almost wiped me out on account of an instant death ability I guess he didn't have a chance to use last time. Also he killed Amilia in one non-critical hit even with the defense buff active. I'm going to reload and try again and see if I was just supremely unlucky.

That sounds unlucky. And, Amilia is only level 4. She should probably be higher, but then, the fight would be almost too easy since she gets Godspeed soon, which hastes the entire party.

You do have healing items, by the way, though I'm sure you figured that out. It can be tough to use them in battle, though, especially given how many multi-person attacks he has.

And, I didn't decrease the value of the Blood Banquet attack, I just lowered their % chance to use it and lowered their max HP so it wouldn't benefit them as much.

Alright, I managed to beat him this time with only one dead, Amilia fell to his insta-kill attack and Tristram/Horyuu were paralyzed but Orec does the most damage anyways so I squeaked through. Since the save is right before the fight now I think it's fine as it is, especially if it's a barometer of upcoming difficulties :p

Yay! Awesome! You'll probably need to grind Amilia up a bit so she's not totally useless, but the thing about her is that she doesn't learn offensive spells innately, but as part of story events, so she won't be anything but a healer until a little ways into the game, except for the Exorcism spell she learns, but that only works on demons and undead (which, admittedly, are a huge portion of the game's enemies.)

And the next fight... probably won't be as bad. Maybe. It can be strategized for, at least.

Oh, and you're onto the epically long flashback sequence now. You can blame Quiet for that idea. :p

Haha, well I can live with long flashbacks. It's usually how some games go, you know, a little bit of action before the big meaty story part so you feel like you've invested enough time to actually listen to the story xD