Exilian

Game Design and Project Resources: The Workshops Quarter => Computer Game Development - The Indie Alley => Topic started by: yobob on October 04, 2019, 10:45:17 PM

Title: The Chains That Bound Me, Alpha Demo Available!
Post by: yobob on October 04, 2019, 10:45:17 PM

(https://i.imgur.com/YuF4DC3.png)

Download and Support!

Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/yobob/the-chains-that-bound-me

Download: https://yobob.itch.io/a-lovers-rpg-demo

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Yol3ob

Discord: https://discord.gg/BFJGHd8

Walkthrough: https://yobob.itch.io/a-lovers-rpg-demo/devlog/103439/walk-through

Story

The Chains That Bound Me is a story rich game that has the elements of an rpg genre. You'll explore the city of Florie in the lower district, a place where the guards oppresses the working people. Death is common and starving people will ask you for food. You will play as Arridaios, one of the leading members of the rebellion. People look up to you and hope that their revolt will succeed. But Arridaios is reluctant in helping the people. He wants to live in what little peace he has. Things don't go the way as planned. Arridaios discovers that his friend went missing. And along the way in finding him, he sees something he dreads. Something he never wants to see again. Far worse than the oppression of King Leuric.

(https://i.imgur.com/tyHoCo1.png)

Developer Blog

This game is low funding meaning I've been doing all the programming, art, music, story, marketing,  you name it. Besides the exception of the character portraits which is done by Sphenops. Lots of thanks to her. The game logo is designed by Leonardohendo.

I've published an alpha demo because I needed some exposure to see if this game would do great or not, and if I should continue or not. This game is so big in story that I'm regretting even designing this big feat of a game! I can't tell you how many hours this completed game will have or if it'll even be completed, but I can tell you that this alpha demo has about 2-4hours of game play. Which is big, yeah I know. You can imagine how many more hours there will be if this game does finish.

There are a lot of twists in this game. You'll be surprised at every corner. And as you play on, there will be a lot of questions that will leave you like, "what?! I can't believe - what happens next?"

I've had a few people play and tested my game and they enjoyed the story. And some of them gave me great feedback. There were only minors problems this game faced like exploration felt like a must, there's no point in leveling, and sometimes I felt lost on where to go next.

This was done on purpose because of the lack of time I had in polishing this demo. That's why I call it the alpha demo. I had to publish this game mostly because I'm applying to a game competition called game development world competition.  And the date of the last submission is the end of September.

So I made the mode easy for this game. Just because I wanted you to enjoy the story and not be too nit picky on the little flaws the game has.

I've published another game long ago called the beast named eliza which did very good. I always love to see the lets play. It's probably why I develop video games hahaha...

I'm hoping I do get to see some lets play for this alpha demo. Maybe I'll hear some nice inputs on how to improve the game. I always like to hear those. After all, as a game developer, this game is somewhat my baby lol...

Anyways, this is my temporary good bye because I'm so burnt out, I need a month off from this game. I think my vision has gone worse since I spent like 8 months glued to my PC. I LOVE GAME DEV!!!

Title: Re: The Chains That Bound Me, Alpha Demo Available!
Post by: Tusky on October 05, 2019, 04:08:05 PM

Just checked out the trailer. Looks cool - I love the atmospheric feel to it.

Will have to give the demo a go.

Good luck with the ks - Backed!

Title: Re: The Chains That Bound Me, Alpha Demo Available!
Post by: yobob on October 06, 2019, 08:44:34 PM

Thank you so much @Tusky! I appreciate your support! We just made a discord too you can follow us here!
https://discord.gg/BFJGHd8

Title: Re: The Chains That Bound Me, Alpha Demo Available!
Post by: Jubal on October 06, 2019, 09:17:19 PM

Ooh, I'll try to have a go at the demo and get some posts out about the kickstarter for you tomorrow :)

EDIT: Stuck on the mining area. I got my iron quota, but all three manned booths at the payment station have people in front of them who won't leave :/ And I can't even find a save point to ensure I can keep my progress...

Title: Re: The Chains That Bound Me, Alpha Demo Available!
Post by: yobob on October 07, 2019, 09:52:13 PM

Ok. So this is a bug of the game. When you enter the mines, and after talking to Valentina, trying to exit the cave says you completed the iron collection, that dialogue isn't supposed to say that. In order to get away from this bug, you need to steal from the miners. The located miners are Here.

(https://i.imgur.com/04Xd9de.png)

(https://i.imgur.com/XlJljfw.png)

(https://i.imgur.com/BRqpH1f.png)

(https://i.imgur.com/3LIHYXE.png)

Title: Re: The Chains That Bound Me, Alpha Demo Available!
Post by: Jubal on October 08, 2019, 10:08:57 AM

Oh OK. I actually did have the five iron quota without stealing, which is what really confused me...

I've been making some notes on a bunch of other stuff too and will have some detailed feedback to give :)

Title: Re: The Chains That Bound Me, Alpha Demo Available!
Post by: yobob on October 09, 2019, 08:19:13 AM

Oh wow! thank you so much! Yeah, it's an alpha demo. I had to release it early because of GDWC

Your Iron quota is supposed to be 10. It's marked as so.

Also, I had to upload another build because of a game crashing bug. Should download the new build.

Title: Re: The Chains That Bound Me, Alpha Demo Available!
Post by: Jubal on October 19, 2019, 11:35:03 PM

Sorry for taking so long on this!

Here's all the specific feedback from a full run, I can give more general thoughts tomorrow when I've slept on it.

• Submit, Obey, Tax doesn't make sense because "to tax" means "to extract tax from someone", not "to pay tax". Maybe tweak this motto?
• Day 1, it seems odd having two houses both of which have "lost husband" backstories? From a story perspective I think you could change one of them a bit. It also feels weird that Arridaios doesn't react to the fact that these two people, both of whom live in the same block as him, also both mistake him for their husbands? Dunno, that just felt off a bit. I don't see why Mark's wife needs to mistake Arriados for Mark for that bit of plot to work
• Are we supposed to assume that the Emilia Anthony is writing to is the same as the one the woman in the next house is ranting about? They seem to be different characters but it's a little confusing that you get introduced to them both.
• You really need some sort of tutorial for the steal/advantage mechanic before asking the player to use it for real.
• On day 2, you can loot one of the dead miners infinite times for red potions.
• Not sure why the fate thing only appears on day 2? It feels weird that we're getting tutorial-like stuff after quite a long while of gameplay rather than on the first day.
• I had a bug in the first fight where you get the bonus powers (vs Richard) where it kept showing different key sequences even after I burned him and I couldn't get an option to leave. Was fine the second time.
• The arrow-code on the last fight seemed way too fast, to the point where I often wasn't getting through half the code in time - I think it'd be better if you got a half second of looking at them before the timer starts? It's very reaction time driven at the moment which seems odd given the rest of the RPG is pretty slow paced so there's not much adrenaline in the player's system to help with that. Maybe some better marking would be a different way of helping (more colour/difference between the key markers). The current system needs to be done heavily on muscle memory, but also you don't get much practice with the longer sequences until you need to use them in a proper battle.
• The light by which you leave A. in the last scene of the Alpha doesn't really feel like it's on properly, it would be better if it actually glowed yellow or something to show when you fixed the generator.
• At one point I tried to reload my last save before the lurker, and got a failed to load : img/parallaxes/shadow60_4.png error. This was after I'd just completed the fight and was trying to have another go. Quitting the game and reloading solved the problem.

And then there's spelling and grammar. Some of these errors are made more times than I noted down, but hopefully there's a find/replace system you can use?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Homes/first area:

• Pickaxe, not PickAxe, for the item
• Surely the watch is passed down father to son, not father to father as the description reads now?
• Newspaper: "nonexistent" not nonexistant, and "safety" not saftey
• Jace says "Did he went on ahead" - should be "Did he go on ahead"
• Anny says "We could've given him little by little" - should be "We could've given it to him little by little."
• The handler talks about "a bread"/"a goddamn bread" several times. This should be "some bread" - using bread as a singular discrete thing e.g. "a bread" is never done in standard English for some reason.
• After you've been to Jace's "Let's hope Jace is right." needs an apostrophe.

Outside the mines:

• Arri to Sam: "Whatever she's doing, I'm not apart of it" should be "a part of it".

In the mines:

• "Eric hasn't showed up last night" -> "Eric didn't show up last night", and "I heard gun shot" to "I heard gun shots" or "I heard a gun shot".
• There's a miner who says "I've always look at you from far away". Should be "I've always looked at you from far away"
• General: "must've been a lot of work for them" and "Especially". I think "make him a spectacle as an example to the public" would be the right way of phrasing that bit.
• The two miners - "I found copper" not "a copper". Also, "pickaxe" missing a k there.
• Valentina also says "apart" when she should say "a part". Also goodluck should be "good luck" as two words.

Outside the mines, evening:

• Listening at the house: "I'm going to scavange, mom." -> "I'm going to scavenge, mom."

Miners' houses, evening:

• Top left door: "Door is creaked opened" should be "The door is open a crack.." or "The door's ajar..."
• At Anthony's: "font's faded", not fadded.
• At Valentina's: "Everyone thinks this is" not "Everyone's thinks this is". Also "you should give up on searching for him", and "forsake" not "foresake"
• At Sara's, Rachiel: "every time" not "everytime"

Day session:

• Merchant: "My routinely customers aren't routinely" should be "My routine customers aren't routine"
• "guy name Richard" rather than "named" from one of the starving residents.
• I appriciate it -> I appreciate it
• Val in the mine mentions "gaurds", and Leuric's name is misspelled as Leuirc (which, in this setting, is probably grounds for execution in itself ;) )
• Val mentions appartment 138 (should just have one p, and the guards after that refer to themselves as gaurds.

Title: Re: The Chains That Bound Me, Alpha Demo Available!
Post by: yobob on October 20, 2019, 10:19:19 PM

Hey Jubal, thanks for the feedback

The motto I wanted was, "You submit, you obey, you pay your tax" I shortened it to Submit, Obey, Tax. I think I'll leave the motto as is since most people understood the intent.

The other wife is blind. I just didn't have the portrait to display her being blind. I hope you knew that she was blind. Spoiler alert, Mark is the red coat guy. That's a hidden thing I didn't want to reveal. Mark left her b/c she was blind XD The game itself doesn't say that but it does reveal who her husband was but not strongly. The connection will become stronger in the future

Emilia and the wife next door are different people. Wife is just a generic name. It just means, she's not important towards the story and Arr doesn't know her that well. But Emilia, Arr knows her. There're a lot of characters in the world. I think it's hinted that she's from the inner city.

A tutorial for steal/advantage mechanic? Like stealing from the miners? Hmm, that seems intuitive to steal and to press the arrow keys. There isn't much to say besides pressing the keys. And stealing is just stealing.

Really? I need to fix that!

The game I plan to have is about 10+ hours (I think) Every time a new concept arises, I need to have a tutorial for it. But it's good that you mentioned that the tutorial is a bit off on day two. I should move the explanation of the tutorial of knocking and stuff to day one when they first interact with the door. That would be a lot better.

Ah, I know that bug. I've been trying to figure out how to fix that. It happens only when you fail and succeed at the same time.

The timing I will leave it as it. Because the game is slow paced, having that intense key timing creates this contrast of exciting and slow. Have too much exciting will numb the players and eventually it becomes boring. Having different contrast to the keys will make it that the keys won't fit in the world. It'll be difficult to think of a new key idea. I could animate the keys but given that this is a one man project, I have to not do that and keep the game to what I can do. As for the practice bit, I'm reserving long keys for bosses. That way there's a challenge to them instead of it being too easy.

I have to look into that. I think an image failed or something. It should've turned on with the light being yellow

That's a bug I knew. I left it in there because it'll take me maybe two weeks to fix that. I had to release the game b/c I wanted people to try out the demo for the kickstarter I put up.

Plz send me any of the spelling and grammar issues you saw. It's really hard for me to look at them because I'm literally staring thousands of words and they all look the same to me. It's very natural for me to lover look them. (I need to hire an editor x.x) I will make the corrections. Screen shots would help a lot!!

I'm very happy that you gave me these feedback. It gauges me on what to adjust and improve on. I really do want to hear your general thoughts too!

Title: Re: The Chains That Bound Me, Alpha Demo Available!
Post by: Jubal on October 20, 2019, 11:12:55 PM

I figured that Mark was the guy in the red coat... it wasn't clear to me that his wife was blind. You could definitely do some more things to flag that up with her surroundings, like how her house would be different considering her blindness (having a braille book on the table would be a more obvious but not too obvious tell, or something like that).

The key pressing is intuitive, but I guess I feel I'm lacking ways to practice it in the game? I feel like it'd be good if there was a place where you could get key sequences to press for practice/training where there wasn't a failure penalty, so you have some way to get better at it as a player... it's maybe not so much a tutorial I feel I need as a practice location, because I'd rather (as a player) train myself to play and then use those skills in the boss fights, than end up training by rerunning boss fights repeatedly, with all the dialogue etc repeating every time, which is what I ended up doing.

Basically all the spelling/grammar stuff is in the spoiler tag I found is in my above post (click the word "spoiler" to show it, if you didn't already), but I'll let you know if I find any more.

I'll try and write some general thoughts soon, just off to bed now :)

Title: Re: The Chains That Bound Me, Alpha Demo Available!
Post by: yobob on October 21, 2019, 02:12:18 AM

Ohh I didn't see the spoiler tag. Omg This helps so much! I'll make the corrections!

Title: Re: The Chains That Bound Me, Alpha Demo Available!
Post by: Jubal on October 23, 2019, 10:54:12 PM

Glad it's useful! :) I don't know if I caught everything, but it should be a fairly sizeable percentage of the issues.