Chronicles of Afar: Tale of Three Witches

[Ellie]

Introduction

Follow Sara and Katelyn in their adventures through the world of Afar, a world of knights, magic and demons. On the face of it, Chronicles of Afar is your typical fantasy game: an evil sorceress is taking over the world, and it's up to three young witches to save the day. All is not as it seems, however, and with more twists than a well performed ballet, ToTW aims to be a show of light and animation, observation and wit, and testing analogy to the issues of life in the lowest parts of the Real World.

Animation

I've always been disappointed by RPG Maker games, in their lack of just using the basic things that the RTP provides them with: there is an amazing array of animation and movement built into the graphics supplied that people just don't put to use. I am combining this with REFMAP graphics and much of my own work to create a world that flows, that is interesting even when you're standing still, and that you'd want to visit over again.

Every scene in the game is carefully thought through, from a busy port scene to a random forest map half way between two cities. Trees move in the wind, NPCs come and go with real lives to be getting on with, ports are working environments with boats arriving and going, and forests are full of interesting creatures.

Battles

There are no random battles in the game, every battle is planned out carefully. The battle system being used is one made for the game and which is pretty special: it's a conversation based system. You choose to cast fireball, and you see a scene played out within the battle window. Things happen, events play out, and every action has a consequence later on - magic in this game is itself an analogy for other things so being too reliant on it will change your game later on. Becoming a powerful witch might not be as great as it first seems.

State of the Game

The game is currently about 30 to 45 minutes in length, after cumulatively 4 weeks of work. I'd hope that shows the amount of work I'm planning to put into this and what it'll look like at the end of it.

Storyline

The story is all planned out in my head, but it's so full of twists that I can't really reveal it here. In short though, to begin with at least the player's main concern is the evil sorceress who is planning on taking over the world. It's cliched, but that's largely the point, and will all make sense by the end of it, although I can't promise the game will as a whole.

Characters

Sara and Katelyn have followed me from previous projects, mainly Vengeance. They are witches who have known each other for as far as they can remember, having met at a magic school. They are joined by a third witch whose name is never revealed. It's difficult to describe these characters because of the plot, which will be hard to work around, however they are all witches with an affinity for magic.

Sara is strong with a sword and quick on her feet. She's an explorer and adventurer.

Katelyn is submissive and anxious, but also harnesses much more powerful magic, having been put through a lot during her time at the magic school, becoming something of a chalice for the dark arts being tested by a powerful wizard.

Our third witch is revealed to us as a bartender, captured by the sorceress's Inquisition to be killed by gallows for being a witch. The sorceress is intent on ridding the world of magic such that only she has access and control over the demon realm.

Credits

Other than myself;

Art: REFMAP, Enterbrain, Kisekae temporarily as placeholders

Spoilers

As this is a development community, I might just go ahead and type up the storyline and plot to the game, although it would be horribly revealing and would ruin all of the twists. And you like it with a twist.

 

[Nathaniel3W]

It's beautiful. I like how lively everything is. The colors in the first scene kind of detract from all of the motion though. It's all kind of a grayish blue. Can you add more shadows and highlights? Increase saturation on anything? Or maybe add some yellow or orange to offset the blue? Just some thoughts.

Who did the character illustrations? They look good. Are they modular?

I'm looking forward to seeing more.

 

[Ellie]

The characters are from an adult game called Kisekae that turns out to be quite good at making prototype characters for games. I'm using them as placeholders until I pay someone to make them properly.

Here's a link, NSFW: http://pochi.x.fc2.com/k_kisekae2.html

 

[Perihelion]

Looks nice, Amy! I like the effort you're putting into the animations. I have couple of suggestions, though.

- Give your unnamed witch a name, even if it's just an alias she decides on when she joins the party or something. It's disorienting to the player to not a name to refer to a character by.

- You should come up with a better hook for the game. "It sounds cliche but has interesting twists, I promise" isn't likely to entice the player; you need to have a compelling and interesting pitch, or people aren't going to play your game. I know it's really hard--I have the same problem since the most interesting part of my story is a huge spoiler--but if your beginning isn't interesting enough on its own, you need to come up with something that is and figure out how to make it work.

 

[fucbillgates]

Are you still messing with making this?

 

[Ellie]

To be honest I'm all over the place at the moment, but the plan is to incorporate this game's story and concepts into the mmo version of afar.