Firefly
Storyline
Tara and her brother Taran arranged to meet at the mage's tower where he is an apprentice to watch the "fireflies" – strange, star-like lights in the night sky. When one falls and lands in the forest, they must hurry to find it and help it to return to the sky before it burns out – or, worse, someone catches it to use its powerful magic…About
A short RPG made in a few days, partly as a break from my ongoing project and partly to spend some time using the actual RPG functionality of RPGMXP. Deliberately stuck to the inbuilt resources (except for a mildly modified title screen) rather than creating any sprites etc. in order to keep time requirements minimal.If you have any feedback or come across any bugs, please drop me a message/leave a comment!
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Team
Details
- Publisher
- Genre
- RPG
- Engine
- RPG Maker XP
Status
100% - Complete
Uncategorized
Downloads
Show & Tell Posts
Credits & Thanks
Kitsuki
Hi, Goonlalagoon! I tried to access the dropbox link, but it doesn't seem to work. 🙂 Try getting the link again, I have the feeling you put the wrong one in because my dropbox account is searching my own folders for it when obviously it doesn't exist there.
Goonlalagoon
Not sure what I did there…have tried again & hopefully will be working now!
Kitsuki
Whoop, sorry I didn't see this until now ;;u;; I downloaded it and started to play but I'm a little confused! I want to ask what to do after I go down to the Lower Forest, looking for the firefly. The cave is frozen, and I don't know how to get in there. I've been looking all over, and I don't know where to go.
For some feedback! I know that you spent a short time on this because of your time requirement as you mentioned in your description… but I think you could do some work on your mapping and the story flow a bit! We didn't have much explanation or characterisation for Taran and his sister (I can't remember her name, since I spent only a few minutes in the game before getting stuck). Even in a short game, it's possible for the characters should be relatable and interesting, with personality. The mapping was too spread out and open, and there should be some more detailing, especially on the mountains. There are also some inconsistencies with the tower–you see them on the roof, but you never see how they get on the roof, and that somewhat threw me off because I'm very map-oriented. 😛
As for the gameplay, I found there to be a lot of random battles. There was very little story before I was thrown in, and while I was wandering around I had to battle a lot. It was tiring, and I didn't enjoy the game as much as I should have. Plus, the shop's items are overpriced–even though I was in 20+ battles, I could only buy one or two items before I ran out of money.
So yeah, I'm very interested to see where else this goes! But as I'm stuck, I'd like to wait for help before I move on uvu I can't really give my overall interpretation of the game. Hope to be able to play more soon!
Marked
I agree with K re the mapping and too many random encounters. The random encounters thing really comes down to user testing, a great way of managing that is to get people to test your game and give you feedback (like we're doing 🙂 ). These are the little things you don't realize as a developer… but you have to look at from the point of view of the player. I've noticed that there's two [b]huge[/b] factors that will force a player to quit your game after a few minutes: 1. The player has to search to find where to go next. Eg someone says go and find Bill, then you gotta search the whole town for Bill. Early game, you should hand-feed the player [b]everything[/b], and keep the frustrating searches to a minimum and only where appropriate. 2. Bad dialogue (not saying I experienced this in your game because I didn't play it, because I can't). Your dialogue needs to be straight to the point, not too long, have the character development but keep it very profressional. Nothing too playful or immature, at least in the beginning.
For mapping I'd recommend you have a look in the resources section at other people's screenies for RMXP mapping inspiration. I'm actually thinking of creating a new forum category called "Learning Centre". It'd have a forum just for mapping, for all engines, where members can come in and ask for help/feedback on their maps. Basically an informal setting where members can get help and the forums aren't engine specific, so just post away. That is. when I get around to doing that 🙂
Goonlalagoon
Thanks for the feedback guys 🙂 I'll try to have a look at the things you highlighted in the next few days.
Once you've met the firefly you should be able to open the cave door by interacting with it. I'll double check that event system and try to make sure it's clear what to do. I'll also adjust the frequency of encounters and price of items to put them in better balance.
I may not have much chance to add to storyline/character development (which I knew I'd rather skimmed over) due to offline work commitments but will try to at some point.
Kitsuki
Ohh, well, I didn't find the firefly yet. I guess that's the problem! I'll go and find it pronto (or, well, at least when I have time to oepn the game up again).
And I know the character development is different for various types of games. Such as The Mirror Lied, where you can barely tell the playable character's personality because she never speaks or gives the player input… for such types of games I don't think a personality would be needed. But since you have dialogue in your game, it's nice to show at least a little personality 😉 As Mark said, the rules for bad dialogue should follow… but your dialogue, as opposed to being too long and overdone, was too brief and to-the-point, without personality, imo. 🙂 Keep in mind that this is so far! I'll keep playing soon and give feedback on the rest.
Thanks for the info, Goonlalagoon! This is really helpful 😀
Goonlalagoon
Sorry it took me so long to get around to looking at the points you raised – uni deadline took over completely!
I've played with the item prices and battle frequency settings, so those should now be less extreme. I also tweaked some of the dialogue etc., hopefully making it clearer where you need to go to in order to progress the story.
Character development is likely to stay roughly where it is, as this is only a very short game made mostly as an exercise/break from other stuff! That said, if you find any other issues, please let me know and I'll try to fix them.