Engalia: The Wager

[Sated]

ENGALIA: THE WAGER

RPGMAKER.NET "RM VENTURE" ONE WEEK CONTEST GAME, FEBRUARY 2014!
WON A "BADGE OF BEAUTY" FOR AESTHETICS IN THE CONTEST!
WON A "BADGE OF TALES" FOR STORYTELLING IN THE CONTEST!

...::: What People Are Saying :::...

"The RTP characters never looked so good. This was my most anticipated entry just because of this." - Little Wing Guy

"The fact that character dialogue existed for any combination of characters you chose, in scenes regularly repeated throughout the dungeon experience, created personal moments that were actually quite a nice touch." - CashmereCat

...::: Storyline and Setting :::...

Engalia, a nation steeped in ancient lore that's dotted with uncountable ruins from civilisations passed. Flanked to the north by uninhabitable, snow-covered tundra, and to the south by arid deserts that only disparate, savage tribes call home, Engalia is the largest kindgom of man known in the modern era. Ruled by a fair and courteous Queen, and having been at peace for more than a generation, Engalia's recent prosperity has lead to an influx of skilled sellswords and adventurers willing to plunge into the depths of caves, caverns and ruins that were all but ignored during past times of war.

This story begins in the sourthern town of Neodym, where after a few too many meads a sellsword named Zack is challenged by his good friend Burns to find a historic treasure horde supposedly lost when the "legendary explorers" Alex and Brian entered the nearby Neodymous Cave and never came out. Using any combination of thirteen other adventurers that he sees fit to accompany him, Zack must retrieve the lost treasure without meeting the same dark end as those who have gone seeking it before him. What he doesn't know is that the evil protecting this treasure is far more devious than he and his sellsword friend imagine!

...::: Gameplay, Features and Comments :::...

Engalia: The Wager is a short RPG originally made in only a week as part of the RM Venture event, before being patched up slightly after the contest was over. The total development time was approximately 2-3 weeks. It features a traditional active-time battle system, 14 different heroes to choose from, a handful of (hopefully) intelligent puzzle sequences, and some (what I think are) beautifully designed dungeons... or as many of these things as I could make in such a short time!

...::: Reviews, Images and Downloads :::...

Read Reviews Here: http://rpgmaker.net/games/6014/reviews/
View The Full Image Gallery Here: http://rpgmaker.net/games/6014/images/
Download The Game Here: http://rpgmaker.net/games/6014/downloads/

[Sated]

I released a new version (v1.2) of this game over on RMN. There are three reasons for releasing this new version of the game:

• The first reason is to fix a big that was preventing enemies from using skills that buff their stats. I'd forgotten to set those skills up properly (because of a bug in the RM2K3 engine, they need to be set up a certain way), which made it so that enemies wouldn't ever consider using them over their other skills. This bug should now be fixed, I hope.
• The second reason was to update the mapping so that the caves looked less square and had a little bit more depth. This basically meant adding more "diagonal" sections to the maps. I've also added new tiles to the chipsets that allow the "outside" parts of the caves to appear as if they're fading to black, which adds a little bit more depth and realism to the mapping.
• Finally, and perhaps most importantly, I've extended the size of the caves in order to give the player more exploration to do. This is based on criticism offered in Cashmere's review. Chests will now be something that you need to be more proactive about looking for, and the caves should feel less linear to explore as a result.

Enjoy

[Momeka]

Woah, that's the best use of the RTP graphics I've seen. Good work.

[Sated]

Thanks! I actually need to update the screenshots since I recently made some edits to the chipsets so that the caves have less square edges (basically by editing the diagonal tiles so that they could be used more ubiquitously), but I was pretty happy with the original mapping given the time constraints I had when making this game originally.

[Zoltar]

Wow!  This was so fun and with only RTP elements to do it with too. Firstly your skills being your attack commands was genius then having the defend refresh your MP was double genius.    Makes me want to try it for my game. But my favorite part? You used every RTP character and gave them all unique and cool skills to use as well as the option to use them in any order I wanted. *Huggles all the adorable sprites* I really like this game. Equally challenging and fun. Five... No Ten Stars!
 

[Sated]

Wow, thanks a lot

Trying to make all the characters unique was pretty difficult, but I was adamant that I wanted to use all of them so I just focused on trying to make them all useful. I think there is an element of YMMV and some combinations obviously aren't viable (trying to go with only support characters would be super difficult) but yeah, that was definitely one of the hardest parts about making the game. I'm glad you liked it, and that you liked the skills-only approach because I'm not really a fan of "normal attacks" in the traditional JRPG sense.

EDIT:

If you want to use the FFV-style sprites that I made for the RTP heroes then they're free to use, by the way: http://rpgmaker.net/resources/152/

I would upload them to the resources section here if I knew how The uploader wasn't working for me when I last tried.

[Sated]

A review for this project was just posted over on RMN. I'm a bit underwhelmed with the score because I think some of the problems that the reviewer had were of their own making (they didn't pick a balanced party), and also because the way they've described the game makes it sound as though I've managed to achieve the things that I wanted to achieve with this project, but I suppose a purposefully frustrating and difficult dungeon crawl isn't for everyone In any case, I'm always grateful for reviews, and this is a well-written and honest one.

Here's the review: http://rpgmaker.net/games/6014/reviews/4440/

Because this reviewer managed to take a fairly imbalanced party, I might release a small update to the hero descriptions so they explicitly mention whether a given character is a healer, a support character or a damage dealer. I think that should help people craft better parties in the future!

[Bridgeman]

I read that you made this in two weeks, that's pretty incredible. I don't know how you did it. But I haven't played the game yet so I don't know how long it is.

[Sated]

This video was pointed out to me recently. I'm surprised that the video is only a couple of months old because this isn't exactly a new game. It kinda makes me wonder how this YouTuber managed to stumble across it in the first place. Whatever the case, it's always nice to see people playing the games that we put so much effort into making. They seem to cover a lot of RPGMaker titles on their channel, so maybe some of your favourites are on there?

The video is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAVfvntnQdA

Unfortunately, this particular YouTuber has trouble with the difficulty of the battles in my game and so didn't get to see much of it. It's a shame that they struggled so much, but I don't think it's because the battles are too difficult. I think it's because this game would benefit from some supplementary material explaining how different damage types interact with different enemy types so that players have a better idea of what they're getting themselves into. Damage varies wildly when a player uses the wrong damage types on the wrong enemies, but it's hard to blame the player for making mistakes when the game doesn't really give them any way of knowing different... other than dying over and over and over and over until they figure it out!

Maybe I'll do something about it, but I probably won't. This game is pretty long in the tooth.

[Fisherson]

This made me do a double take of over dramatic proportions XD I knew this couldn't be updated. Pity as it was pretty fun! As for people posting videos you do mostly see stuff from the MV and VX generation with active videos yeah but there are some RPG maker 2003 reviewers out there too. Youtube is a big place after all. I know how you feel though I have that trouble with others playing my chapters in chain games or beta testing things. It's hard to know if you've scaled damage to the right level in 2003. I suppose it's why MV used actual damage formulas in it's DBS and buffed up DBS pluggins.

[Sated]

That you can't edit the damage formulae in RM2K3 does make things difficult, but here is a useful guide for getting the most out of it: https://rpgmaker.net/articles/371

I think I was just surprised that someone would choose to make a video about a game that was created over half a decade ago with less than one month's work. It's a very difficult dungeon crawler that's meant to kill you lots and lots. It's not the kind of thing you normally see in RPGMaker Let's Play videos!