Celestial Tear: Demon's Revenge live on Steam!

[trexrell]

Boss Enemy Design Contest!

In honor of our upcoming Kickstarter, we are doing a boss enemy design contest in order for someone to win some really cool stuff before the campaign even begins. We want people to get involved with the creation of the game and we figured this is the best way of doing it.

Here is how you enter:

1. Draw a boss by the 28th of August. The boss can be a human, jeht (demonoid being), or a creative mystical beast. Just about anything you can think of.
2. Write a compelling back story describing its powers and abilities.
3. Email your drawings to yin@whiteguardianstudios.com with the subject line: Boss Enemy Design Contest!

Join our facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/DemonsRevenge
We will announce the winner on Facebook, Twitter, and our main website. There, you can comment onyour submission and put more attention towards your creation!

What Do You Win?

The winner gets their boss in the game, a poster of your creation drawn by our artist Ricky Gunawan. The winner will also receive a copy of the game.

Rules or Restrictions:

- By submitting to our design contest, you agree that you will give us your mailing address if chosen as the winner (unless you don't want the physical prize).

- If the design is a human, they normally derive their magical abilities from objects or the type of region where they are from.

- If the design is a jeht, they generally have red, black, white, or dark purple skin. Some are shape shifters and can look like humans with extremely pale skin tones. They usually have abilities derived from their physical physique, which is of immense strength and speed, and have natural abilities that deal with the elements of light, darkness, fire, water, ice, earth, and wind.

- Mystical creature anything goes.

- You agree that you are age of consent in your country, or have permission from an adult to give out your address and receive a prize from us.

- You can submit as many designs as you like

- You do not need to be a great artist as we will be judging the contest based on creativity in the design, story, and powers/abilities.

- If it's anthropomorphic, please don't use nudity. It will not be chosen.

- We reserve the right to change the rules as we see fit if necessary.

- Ask any questions on facebook, twitter, or our website, DemonsRevenge.com.

 

[coyotecraft]

Once your game is complete I'd suggest going for real coverage and not exploit development sites and rpg maker communities.
Rpgamer might cover your game if it's within their guidelines.
They won't hold back though. They score rpg maker games pretty low. But if they covered Victim of Xen, which was an obvious cash grab, I'm sure they'll cover your game.

 

[trexrell]

Once your game is complete I'd suggest going for real coverage and not exploit development sites and rpg maker communities.
Rpgamer might cover your game if it's within their guidelines.
They won't hold back though. They score rpg maker games pretty low. But if they covered Victim of Xen, which was an obvious cash grab, I'm sure they'll cover your game.

Well to be honest I come to development sites to get feedback. Of course I also go on sites like TIGsource, Reddit, Indiedb, Rock Paper Shotgun and others. The whole reason I post on these sites though is to get people involved to see what we can do better. No one understands your engine like the people who use it. I would like to believe that the rpg maker community sees how much work we have put into it and for the most part support it. Not that it has been the case. I have seen people have far simpler time getting someone to play a demo with rtp before they tried what we have. So it has certainly not been the case and getting anyone to post on our project is pretty exciting.

 

[coyotecraft]

I don't know about anyone else but my framerate was hovering around a choppy 8-10fps the entire time. Sometimes it goes up to 30 while walking around but then it drops back down for no apparent reason. Not sure if the leaf particles are on a cycle or what it could be.

It says to use L2 and R2 to scroll through the quest log in the menu which made no sense until I remembered Q&W which are rarely used in RM games. Wouldn't that just be L and R though? Guess it would depend on the game pad, but I've never used a controller for an rm game before.

 

[trexrell]

Older computers/older cpus seem to run the game in a much slower rate. If you are operating in full screen and it is happening it would be best to use f5 or f6 rather than alt+enter which makes it run much smoother. We do need to further optimize the game. We want it to run as smooth as possible on the average pc. We take no excuse in that regard. Aside from having all the graphical effects(lighting, weather, butterflies ect..) it is indeed possible to get it to run on older pcs much smoother.

 

[Ace of Spades]

Alright, I'm back to give some impressions after sinking some time into this game.

Let's start off with some positives:
Your presentation might be the best thing going for this project, so keep up the good work there. The comic book-esque animated intro was awesome, I'd recommend trying to go the same route for any extended or important cutscenes. The voice acting was also a nice touch, and most of the characters were pretty well done. The story seems pretty straight forward, if not a little bit cliche. Guy gets his wife killed by demons, now he wants revenge; so go kill stuff. I'm sure there's room for this to be more in depth, but it all depends on your execution. Your maps and custom graphics is probably what will draw the most people to this game, and rightfully so. It's not often we're treated to projects with full custom character sets and art, so your game stands out like a rose in a field of tulips. Also hats off to whoever is animating these sprites; everything from the hero running, diving into the water, and all the battle animations really look great and help bring the characters alive. The music sound tracks were also well received, the music selection suited the game nicely.

Now some things that could use improvement:
My biggest complaint about this title was the gameplay. As it currently stands, the battle system is just a button masher. I was able to clear every enemy in the woods without healing once, just by spamming attack every time I fought something. I know this is an early section of the game and enemies will tend to be weaker, but I found myself spamming attack on everything that I encountered until my party emerged victorious, merely unscathed. There's no strategy to be found, no need to defend, and no need to strategically use skills of any sort. While the battles looked really nice and well animated, I truthfully found them really boring. There's also lots of potions to be found, which pretty much guarantees your party's survival. The only time a party member died was when he got poisoned, I died from wandering around on the map after the battle, and then found myself unable to revive him. I also found myself unable to go back to heal or save my progress during all of this, which was more than frustrating. After wandering all the maps and killing all the wolves, I tried to go back but was told that I had unfinished business in the woods. There was no clear sense of direction, I found myself wandering to all the sections of the woods, having cleared all enemies, but nothing left to do. I wasn't sure if this is where the demo was supposed to end, but that's where you lost me as a player.

Some other things to consider:
The frame rate for most of the maps was dipping to about 20-24 FPS, in the 30's on less populated maps. You may want to cut out some of the unnecessary events like some of the butterflies to help bring up that performance. I thought this game could really benefit from pixel-based movement. The 8-directional movement was kind of clunky at times, which I know is more of a restriction based on RPG Maker than this game in particular, but it might be worth looking into a pixel-based movement script. Also, try integrating some kind of tutorial in game for the basic actions you introduce the player to. Maybe add a "Press D to Jump" or "Press A to Cut". The effects when walking through tall grass looked pretty strange. If you insist on keeping it, I'd at least tone it down, or have it animated a little better. I also had an issue with some of the sound effects; mostly the splashing noise used for confirming choices in battle, the sound that enemies made when they got hit sounded like a crackling flame, and the hero swimming sounded a little like he was trudging through pudding. In comparison to the voice acting and music which were both amazing, the sound effects could use some work.

Overall Impressions:
This looks like a high quality project that oozes personality and potential. With some much needed adjustments to the battle system, this could become a classic amongst the RPG making community. Based on my personal experience with the demo, I'd give this a 7/10.

 

[Yin]

Hey Ace of Spades :D
Thank you for your review! I'm ok with a 7/10, but I'm pretty sure we can bump that up to a 10/10 :P

The gameplay is definitely not at it's peak yet, especially with the battle system. Balancing is going to be rough. Being that this is a tutorial session, I think maybe you got stuck where many other people got stuck and that is the part by the tree creature. To the left of that, you will see some rocks that you can push/pull. I've recently added a tooltip for that as well, just like the jump/swim stuff. I think people are expecting to see what to do since it is labeled everywhere else.
You can also press H to get help with any controls. We've also stuck a lot of secrets in there too to try an keep people occupied after completing the wolf quest. A lot of the controls are set up for a controller though and I'm trying to figure out a way to implement both while still using little space in the interface. I'm actually planning to write a button binding scene for players who prefer to make their own button scheme. I have come to the conclusion that the controls are poorly explained and I've been trying to rectify that for quite some time.

I will let trexrell explain the battle system that will be compared to the battle system that is now. It is about 50% complete as is. Although yes, the balancing problem is my fault and I will be fixing it as well as the AI. Right now, the wolves kinda just keep doing attack up and then not using that power to attack :| (My fault).

One thing we've learned is that the voice acting is really hit or miss. I'm glad that you enjoyed that aspect :D

On performance, I've since optimized the game a bit, but I don't really have anyone to test performance with.

I actually thought that the grass effects were big for the character. So I will probably change that in the next update.

"the sound that enemies made when they got hit sounded like a crackling flame, and the hero swimming sounded a little like he was trudging through pudding"

I think that you are talking about the worms/mudworms. We tried to make it a slimey sound, but I guess it can kind of sound like fire crackling. Swimming underwater definitely needs a different sound. I think it needs a more deepwater sound. I will relay the sound concerns back to Zach, who is the sound designer. Mind you, there are also sounds from the RTP that will be replaced with original sounds.

As for pixel movement, I'd originally thought about it, but after using it for some time, it seemed to cause a lot of problems with other things that I was using and we ultimately decided against it. It can be a possibility in the future if we can get an experienced coder to handle that stuff, but it is beyond my knowledge right now.

I hope that I have addressed most/all of your concerns. Thanks again for trying the game and actually leaving us your feedback and criticism. We appreciate it and it really helps the overall quality of the game!

coyotecraft - I have been working on optimization as much as I can and I think I've pinpointed a bottleneck that required an overhaul of the tools system that I was using. It works pretty well on my computer, but I have no way of testing on other computers for performance.
As for controls, I wrote in my response to the review that I am aware that they are not explained very well and I am planning a way to make that better. Also, you can press H to get the controls anywhere, anytime. I think I've come up with a way to tell what a player is using for input and I can base the text that displays (the text that shows the button) on that.

"Once your game is complete I'd suggest going for real coverage and not exploit development sites and rpg maker communities.
Rpgamer might cover your game if it's within their guidelines."

Thank you for letting us know about RPG Gamer. I'd personally never heard of it before. Also, I'm not sure what you mean by exploit development sites/RM communities. We've been (or I've been) a member here since way back. The game is indeed in development, so we post it here for feedback.

I hope you enjoyed the game. And if anyone got stuck by the push/pull rocks part, I am hoping to get a new update that labels that they can be interacted with. Unfortunately since it is a pretty big update (removal of a big system) it requires a new game and I apologize for that, but I also hope that the update makes the game run much smoother!

Oh yeah, 1 more thing.
I think the keyboard controls in the help menu (H) are wrong because I thought that if I shipped it out with my control settings (From F1), everyone would have those same controls. That does not seem to be the case as I've gotten complaints of how the controls listed are wrong. I will be fixing that in the next update too.

 

[trexrell]

The Battle System:

As it stands right now it has every bit of the functionality of any other battle system. Our goal for it is to not be a button mashing fest. We personally realize that it is that way but it is indeed far from complete. A lot of the functions are currently in the game but not yet fully implemented.

Environmental Interaction:

This function is currently in this build. With this you can use a special skill to affect the battlefield. If there is an object on the battlefield, your party members would use their abilities to interact with it. These things would incorporate their strength, stealth or whatever that particular character could do. These things would range from hiding behind objects, knocking down or picking up objects or blowing them up. Yin even came up with a cool idea in an area where there would be chemicals or alchemy in which you knock the opponent into it and they could have a chance to transform into a werewolf or something like that.

Positioning:

This is actually something quite new that we noticed about the current system you will be able to have your character move to a particular position on the map to either avoid certain things, or to gather them for buffs or healing. The strategy would lie within who you were facing and what would be the best thing to do. Especially when it came to AOE spells and attacks. This is something quite new and we are still going over the details. It gives more depth to the environmental aspect and makes it a bit more strategic.

Switching Party Members:

There is currently the ability to switch out party members mid battle. When there is a situation where a character is low on health or their abilities are a not too effective in a particular situation you can switch them out.

Combo System

We love turn based combat. We think it is fun and engaging in its own unique way. We are also a big fan of a good challenge combined with plenty of action. So we are working on a way to get timed hits that form into combos similar Legend of Dragoon. Each character will play very differently depending on their speed and type of abilities they may have. We are also talking about taking some cues from Tales of Vesperia in which a magic user can tap a button to cast faster or do a more advanced spell. We want the players to feel engaged with this system and feel like the battles are just as important and fun as the story and adventure.

Cooperative Attacks

Characters that hold a connection to each other will be able to do a unity attack similar to Suikoden 2. They will be unlocked similar to Wild Arms 4 (Through scenes and building connection to other party members).

Summoning(Jehts)

This is an ability that only Jehts/Demons can do, which will function like a limit break (Bar fills up and opens new abilities). It will protect you similar to the GF in Final Fantasy 8, but you will control and summon it.

Rage(Humans)

Rage is an ability like summoning, used like a limit break. It allows the human to do an ultimate attack similar to final Fantasy 7.

 

[Yin]

The Enemy Design Contest's submission end date is approaching fast! Make sure you get yours in by the 28th!

 

[trexrell]

Hey guys! We have lots of news and big things happening for CT:DR that have all come at the right time.

First let me start by saying that your support has really given us the confidence to go on and try our best to complete this game. It is a passion of ours to make this game as well as others and see it to completion.

I will like to show you guys some of the cool contest submissions we have had over the course of the event. There are some pretty creative entries as well as some unique and interesting stories. The contest ends soon so get your submissions in by the 28th.

Contest Submission

Spoiler

We have also had a very good game commentator by the name of Flick do a nice video on our game check it out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=780xXavo1BY

We have also had some rather interesting streams one that I was very excited about.I watch this stream every Sunday when I'm not working and I am a big fan.

We had a really good interview and they played our game on the stream. I was extremely excited to be on their show and the video will be uploaded on their page on Monday.

Epocu

The Epocu campaign is going really well. We only have a few more days left but we only need 10 more supporters. Help us reach that goal guys and we will be more than ready for our next launch. Here is the link here we really need your support.

Epocu

We have been receiving a lot of news coverage these past couple of days. Youtubers and streamers, not to mention the contest. We have decided this is as good of a time as any to do our third and final Kickstarter campaign for CT:DR on September 2nd. Guys we really need your support. I'm working on a new trailer and we are sending out more emails, talking to more lets players, and getting everyone excited for this. We are doing a lot of work but we can not do this without our supporters, our friends, and our fans. For more info check out our blog post.
Demon's Revenge Blog

We really need you guys feedback on our current campaign please review the preview and let us know what you think. The new trailer will be uploaded before we launch.Kickstarter Preview

 

[baghead_jackson]

Firing up the demo with the view of writing a some sort of review/feedback, and had to pause to tell you just how i impressed i am with the game initially.

 

[trexrell]

Firing up the demo with the view of writing a some sort of review/feedback, and had to pause to tell you just how i impressed i am with the game initially.

Thanks a bunch! We still are working on some improvements. Hopefully we get the resources we need to really complete some of the systems sooner than later. Regardless we still are moving forward.

 

[trexrell]

We had yet another great review if you did not get the chance to play it. Here is something for you. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uq2xJ5R79W0

 

[Henrik]

Just got into this.
I have to say thumbs up!


I am so impressed.

What an inspiration!

 

[trexrell]

All entries for the contest are in. We have had some really good participation and it will be a lot of fun seeing these creations in game. I would love to have everyone who participated be a winner but we are going to do it in a community vote on the official website. Look out for the link as we will be posting that soon.

In just 5 days our Kickstarter campaign goes live! We are really getting close and we really are hoping for a huge showing from our community. This not only helps us bring people the game sooner, but provides it with much more quality and scale. It becomes a bridge for future games from us and allows people to be a part of development. If you have not yet subscribed to our newsletter and want to keep informed here is the link just click on the kickstarter banner. http://demonsrevenge.com/

We finally have the interview that we did with Average Giants. I stumbled over my words because I was so excited! I do not think I even gave the reviewers enough time to ask questions.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9hVtXB2no8

 

[baghead_jackson]

Okay so played the Demo. First things first, the amount of variation in exploration was awesome.
When i Jumped into the water i was like 'Holy shit i can swim!' Imagine my surprise when i could then Dive too. The only problem with this was that i went of a Joyride around the forest and got lost.
The battles were very attractive but at that early stage in the game became annoying, because my arsenal was still pretty limited.

I felt that this was more my fault than the games though, as i thought to myself 'Serves me right for wandering around the forest as a newbie Ridder, them motherfudgers did warn me about the Forest.' i think im gonna play again at some point and not be in run around everywhere mode. I got drunk of the JUMPSWIMDIVE coolness!

The Demo allows you to play with all the mechanics and it gave me a great taster of what the games gonna play like, but id perhaps suggest holding the players hand a tiny bit in the start before you let him loose on all of them, it was Kryptonite for me though that's not to say i didn't enjoy it, it just significantly hampered my progress.

The voice Acting is 95% fantastic, but there are little blips a where it sounds off but i suppose that's a hazard and i wouldn't expect you guys to be perfect, it is the best example of voice acting i've seen in a RPGmaker game to date. (Anyone who knows any others please do PM the links ) The conversation between Jagen and the Hippy Ridder who loves Nature was particularly odd to me. The Way Jagen's talking pretty calmly and then flips the script dropping the dead family bombshell. I was a bit like 'well, shit man, cant take this guy nowhere!' and it made me like him less, i mean its understandable if he hasn't got any time for the Hippy givin him grief about doing his job, but he just came across as a dick shouting out of nowhere and it felt too obvious that you were trying to fling that information out there. For something going more the comic book look it came across very anime.

10/10 as far as demo's go, i already want to try some different characters and play it properley. (i hate mud worms already.) i look forward to following the progress and am aware that this is already a pretty hefty block of text so if i've missed anything you want to know about just ask, but this is the stuff that stood out the most.

AHH! Almost forgot the Slowdown. I experienced quite a bit of it. i know nothing of how to reduce lag or if its even possible for you as developers to do anything about it but if you can i would definitely suggest it.

 

[trexrell]

Thanks for the feedback. The battlesystem is in its very basic form. We have some systems that I talked about before that has yet to be implemented.

We have received many concerns about the sense of direction and we plan to add maps to the game in order to help out with where to go.

We were trying to stay away from tutorials but we are going to do one for the beginning and also for some of the more complicated systems in the game.

I am really glad that you liked the demo your grade you gave it is much appreciated. It inspires me to do much more lol.

We are less than 24 hours until our campaign day! We need all the support we can get. Even if all you can give is a dollar anything helps on the 1st day as we need to build popularity. If you guys think our game is cool please join us.

Visit our website for more info. http://demonsrevenge.com/

 

[trexrell]

We just launched! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/wh ... ns-revenge 22 backers!

 

[trexrell]

Ok guys Its been far too long since I made a forum post. Here is a brief summary of all the things we have been going over in updates.

Update #3 I did a V log talking about the campaign.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/wh ... sts/977034
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBAToTcRq10

Update #4 Boss enemy contest winner was announced
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/wh ... sts/977507
Congratulations to Fred Green & his wife who collaborated to create Adelyte.

Update #5 Motion comic cutscene
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/wh ... sts/978579
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gX4LY3iJNg&list=UU5wUNF7GoCXl4KlXxZLgyyw

Update #6 Thanks to our artist
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/wh ... sts/979854

Update #7 Stretch goals
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/wh ... sts/981756

 

[trexrell]

We have a bunch more updates since I was last around.

Update #8 We show some bigger boss enemies among a lot of other things.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/wh ... sts/984271

Update #9 We talk about the tragedy that befalls the main character and her brother.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/wh ... sts/985160

Update #10 We talk more about the character Zone and what his story is.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/wh ... sts/985855

Update #11 We had a streamed interview with Indiegame Magazine
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/wh ... sts/986950

Update #12 Updated demo with community suggestions
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/wh ... sts/987155

Update #13 I thanked all the backers and we had another youtuber play our game.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/wh ... sts/987172
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agnP04w0JIE

Update #14 We get our contest winner image and sprite done.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/wh ... sts/990846
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUsmsO7lfSc