I made a Game (Demo): Cave Up North

[A Zarkin' Frood]

Originally Posted by krogothwolf

Is there anyway to see how much equipment modifies a stat before buying it? Just so It's easier to figure out when to spend hard to earn cash on?

Sadly not, at least not without a custom shop system. Maybe I should exchange the pseudo witty descriptions for the actual stats. Like "Def +5" instead of "made of wood lol"
But in general you can say that the price you need to pay for something is strongly related to that item's defense or attack power. And if it's more expensive but has the same or less it means that it improves another stat or has some special effect (It's intentional if those aren't noted in the item's description sometimes. But I don't think any of those are in the demo.)

[krogothwolf]

Ah, well I am notorious for either not spending money on things that give a little stat boost or farming money to afford everything! Which is seriously a bad thing.

But all in all I would love to play the full version of the game when it comes out, it's incredibly fun!

[A Zarkin' Frood]

I guess I'll just let the monsters drop some more money and maybe make the equipment cheaper too after some testing. For now. I'll worry about a way to display the stat boost later or maybe ignore it completely in case I forget. I just checked and the RPG-Maker 2003 doesn't display stat boosts either. MADNESS.
As mentioned in my opening posts criticism regarding gameplay issues or balancing (like this here) is much appreciated. You just helped shaping a game in the making. Isn't that exciting?
Seriously, I encourage everyone who played this to come up with suggestions, as long as it's not about the silly plot or the lame jokes.

[krogothwolf]

I think personally. If it is at all possible. Suzie should when yelling at someone induce a random status effect. With both positive and negative possibilities. So she yells at hero, it could boost a stat or cause poison or something. Same with yelling at enemies. That way she doesn't feel as useless.

The only reason I brought up the money thing is, when I went from Cave 1 to Temple, they hit hard and I could only really afford a couple replacement equipments. Then ran into a couple really tough random encounters that almost killed me so I had to grind more then I thought to survive.

[A Zarkin' Frood]

Originally Posted by krogothwolf

I think personally. If it is at all possible. Suzie should when yelling at someone induce a random status effect. With both positive and negative possibilities. So she yells at hero, it could boost a stat or cause poison or something. Same with yelling at enemies. That way she doesn't feel as useless.

Suzie is supposed to be useless, but...
If you didn't inflict any status effects on enemies you just didn't yell enough. In fact the skill "Yell at Monster" was so horribly overpowered because it had a 100% chance of inflicting its status effect on any monster, including bosses. So I had to make it less effective. Who knows what kind of seemingly useless skills Suzie will learn in the future.
As for the yelling at Hero, he knows Suzie for a long time, so it's only natural he doesn't care about anything she says. (besides I can't design regular skills that inflict negative status effects on fellow party members, because I tried to do that. I might have to switch over to rm2k3 after all. If there just weren't the extra sprites needed for the battle system I'd have switched already. Maybe I'll clumsily try editing the regular sprites into battle sprites)

The only reason I brought up the money thing is, when I went from Cave 1 to Temple, they hit hard and I could only really afford a couple replacement equipments. Then ran into a couple really tough random encounters that almost killed me so I had to grind more then I thought to survive.

This is weird, I went through the game without any grinding with almost no problems. The temple is supposed to be noticeably more difficult than the cave. But it's not supposed to kill you. I was on Level 3 when I entered the temple and gained Levels rather quickly in there. But I DID know about that box... so... yeah. But I do want to eliminate any kind of grinding so early in the game. So I think I'll nerf the temple monsters a bit.

[krogothwolf]

Well I had the box, then then later on had 2 encounters just like the box encounter and those nearly killed me out right since I really couldn't afford equipment.

Oh, I just yelled a couple of times at monsters and nothing happened so I figured it was the same as yelling at the hero. Was just a goofy little skill thing.

I just thought I'd be funny if yelling at the hero randomly did something strange to him.

[A Zarkin' Frood]

Yeah, I thought that too, but the engine didn't let me. Because it's very restrictive. Even the updated version 2003 isn't much better.

Though, getting that box encounter outside of that room with the box should actually be impossible. I'm gonna look into that.

[krogothwolf]

So I beat the demo! Huzzah!

Second boss was strange. It's poison breath attack hit 3 out of 4 characters the first time it was used, then 4 out of 4 characters the second time after I healed them for poison. It became more of a smack him and hope to survive poison damage then anything else. Is that suppose to be that way? Otherwise it wasn't an overly tough fight. The first boss died way to quick when you get booze on your side and the second one was really a swing till you win fight because you cant really keep the poison off you. So it was screw poison curing just use potions.

From a personal experience, I like boss fights to be fairly challenging, and if you have a free heal before a boss fight, it should be more so.

Although the DQ feel to the game is really nice

[A Zarkin' Frood]

First boss is supposed to be like that.
Second one shouldn't use poison breath that often. He as three perfectly fine other options of what to do. During testing (I adjusted him a lot) he didn't use the poison breath on me that much. In fact I don't even remember being poisoned.
Maybe he hates you.
But I'll also look into that, because he really isn't supposed to poison you every chance he gets, maybe I was just lucky during my test fights. Who knows.
He doesn't even use the skill until you reach a certain level, by the way.

[krogothwolf]

Originally Posted by InsaneGenius

First boss is supposed to be like that.
Second one shouldn't use poison breath that often. He as three perfectly fine other options of what to do. During testing (I adjusted him a lot) he didn't use the poison breath on me that much. In fact I don't even remember being poisoned.
Maybe he hates you.
But I'll also look into that, because he really isn't supposed to poison you every chance he gets, maybe I was just lucky during my test fights. Who knows.
He doesn't even use the skill until you reach a certain level, by the way.

Well, maybe that was it. It wasn't that he used it much, it was just the success rate it seemed to have. I swear he must have hated me though! Cause he loved himself the poison breath! I did have to level a ton just to afford all the new equipment So I was like level 8-10 when fighting him. But thats mainly because I knew it would be short being a demo and all so I figured why not deck myself out before it ends.

It was a pretty cool game. I await more from you!