Finding Eden

[Sailerius]

Made in less than a month for RPG Revolution's apocalypse-themed game-making competition, Finding Eden is an action/adventure game set after the end of the world.

Being the two of the last survivors of the collapse of society, you and your friend must struggle to make ends meet while your remaining lifespan ticks away - and the only way to recover it is to scavenge life-giving mana from pockets of vitality that haven't already been picked clean.

• Action-Based Battle System: Switch between two characters on the fly with the AI controlling your partner.
• Open World: Explore the crumbling remains of a once-thriving world
• Unique Powers: Each character has a unique power which they can use to turn the tide of battle.
• Titles System: There are a total of 7 titles to be found, awarded at the end of the game based on your performance.

Spoiler: Click to View

• Original Concept : Sailerius and Hirei
• Mapping and Writing : Sailerius
• Character Art and Design : Hirei
• Programming : Sailerius
• Scripts By : Sailerius, Blizzard, ccoa, and winkio
• Music : Yusaku Kishigami
• Event CG and Sprites : Hirei
• GFX and UI Design : Hirei
• Miscellaneous Art Assets : Lucas Kich, Erk, NeoRTP, Etolier

• http://www.megaupload.com/?d=6SCCT8BA
• http://flameupload.com/files/A3QBA4RC/Finding Eden.rar
• http://www.mediafire.com/?hzhseuc79f7se17
• http://www.4shared.com/file/f70LCCK6/Finding_Eden.html

FAQ:
Q: How long is the game?
A: One of the requirements of the contest was that the game had to be beatable in under a half hour.

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Spoiler: Click to View

 

[regi]

Very cool. The atmosphere and color scheme looks fantastic; I like how the characters are the only bright colors in the screens. Mapping looks decent, although the 3rd has ugly clumps of water and super linear roads you may want to fix. Could you elaborate on how the ABS works? I'd love to see a video of the battle system in progress.

 

[Sailerius]

Sure thing. Aside from your melee attack, each character has a special. The protagonist's is a slow projectile which deals enormous damage and her friend's is a fast-moving projectile which is a guaranteed and long-lasted stun which is good for crowd control. The specials consume mana to use, which is a very limited resource. The AI controls whoever you're not and will refrain from using up mana.

 

[Juan J. Sánchez]

Wow, this looks great. I'll definitely try it out.

 

[deividdo]

This game was very beautiful. The artwork, writing, music and general theme were all enchanting.

Spoiler

I did experience some very bad lag during the battle against the violet-haired girl. I thought I would be dead when it unfroze, but it was fine.

I only received the traveler medal. I'm not sure what that meant though. The game took me about 45 minutes or so to complete. I definitely preferred Red's ability, as it was much easier to use.

I do have one question.

Spoiler

When Red and Blue come up to what appears to be a church in the verdant section to the south west, it states "I feel as though our presence is unwanted". Is there some way to enter that building, or is that intentionally sealed off? I was wondering, seeing as the building appeared to be a church, if it might have been an oblique statement about the nature of the girls' relationship. I am rather curious about what was meant by this, but if it's left intentionally vague and left to the player's interpretation I'll understand.

 

[Hirei]

Hi, this is Hirei speaking.

@deividdo: Traveler medal means that you went to every single map in the game! Grats! In regards to the lag, yeah during testing we had problems with that too, but actually in the first release it was a lot laggier...

 

[Sailerius]

Thanks for playing! I'm glad you enjoyed it.

With regard to the first spoiler:

Spoiler

Yeah, I'm well aware. Believe it or not, the lag has been severely diminished in that fight since the original version. I spent more time trying to crush the lag than on anything else in the polishing period. Unfortunately, BlizzABS has horrendous performance and there's not much else I can do to speed it up shy of completely redoing the battle system. Since the game was short and kind of an experiment, I don't think it's really worth the effort. Sorry about that!

The Traveler title means that you visited every map in the game. You're also the first person I've talked to who prefers the red-haired girl's ability. I personally preferred it since it's easier to aim but the other testers universally preferred the main character's.

And to the second spoiler:

Spoiler

It's intentionally left vague.

 

[mouse_std]

great atmosphere of the game, i like the hud of player hp & mp.
was kindda confused when i atk , dunno if its really atking or not + kindda lag sometimes.
well this is prob one of 3 of the best rpg gamemaker ive played so far although i didnt really get the story....its all seemed rushed.
i got title but i forgot what it is, its not traveler though.

 

[gRaViJa]

Nice game, but in all honesty i was really disappointed by the mapping. Some of the outer mapping (like the forest, cave an graveyard) was really sub-par while all other graphical elements were really good.

The story felt a bit rushed, but that's mostly because of the competition's rules, i'm sure?

All in all an interesting game!

 

[Sailerius]

great atmosphere of the game, i like the hud of player hp & mp.
was kindda confused when i atk , dunno if its really atking or not + kindda lag sometimes.
well this is prob one of 3 of the best rpg gamemaker ive played so far although i didnt really get the story....its all seemed rushed.
i got title but i forgot what it is, its not traveler though.

Thanks for playing! I'm glad you enjoyed it. The story was a little rushed, largely since there was so little time to make the game (I was fixing critical, game-breaking bugs up until 10 minutes before the submission deadline) and because the game had to be beatable in under a half hour.

Nice game, but in all honesty i was really disappointed by the mapping. Some of the outer mapping (like the forest, cave an graveyard) was really sub-par while all other graphical elements were really good.

Mapping is one of my worst RM skills, so that doesn't really surprise me to hear.

 

[Juan J. Sánchez]

Downloading...
I will edit this post after playing and carefully analyzing your game.

Edit: As a whole, I found the game enjoyable. It didn't really have anything new to other RPG Maker games, and seemed a bit rushed. I was very impressed by the artwork and music. The story was intriguing, although at times I just wished the characters would cut to the chase. You could have probably done a better job both at mapping and with the battle system. Maps were uninteresting. Battle were pretty boring. The ambiance was really good, though. Specially how everything was black and white, except things that were important.

 

[Hirei]

Well made within one month, you pretty much need to expect that everything is pretty much rushed as a whole :p

 

[Sailerius]

A couple of the download links were broken, but I've fixed them. Sorry for the inconvenience.

 

[glorious caesar]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jX9JE76TUY

ok i played it. and i died ten minuted in and decided not to keep going.

the atmosphere and stuff is all passable, but in a game that brags about an action battle system i didn't pay much attention to that stuff.

major problems:
the battle system is horrible. it's ridiculously clunky, notably that i can't tell when i'm attacking or when the enemies are attacking. everybody uses the same animation and sound effect and it's impossible to tell who is hitting who. there's no way to tell when i take damage unless i keep an eye on the HUD—there needs to be a sound or something to let me know that i'm getting hit (something beyond the "bite" sound effect because only now when i watch the video do i see that). the characters all just stand around while battle animations fly around without signifying who is doing what. really you need to completely rebuild this part of the battle system. i didn't even get far enough to play with your promised skills because this was such a mess. i died and i had no desire to keep playing.

also apparently i needed to collect a certain amount of mana to open a door and continue, but there's no way for me to see how much mana i have or know how much i need. it makes me feel very lost and not in a good way. when i died this was probably the biggest reason for not coming back because i didn't feel like wandering around smashing the space bar near bad guys and checking that crystal over and over until it finally worked.

overall this is a cute game and i get what you're doing with the atmosphere but the gameplay flaws in the beginning are too big to be ignored. you can do a lot better than this man.

edit:

so the guys in irc tell me that aparently i had to go fight some bosses before openingt he door and now i;m just even more confused: the door says give me mana and i'll open which tells me that i should be fighting bad guys (for the "mana get"s) and harvesting mana from the bushes. this is really bad design.

i think that you like the word mana way too much because you're using it for EVERYTHING in ways that are really confusing to the player. if i need to go fight bosses before the door opens don't tell me that i need to collect mana to open the door.

 

[Sailerius]

Oh, sorry! I somehow missed your post, but I think we discussed it in IRC a while ago.

overall this is a cute game and i get what you're doing with the atmosphere but the gameplay flaws in the beginning are too big to be ignored. you can do a lot better than this man.

Yeah, I definitely agree. I did a pretty poor job of budgeting my time on the game, and it's fairly obvious where the focus went. Well, it was an experimental game and I don't have any particular drive to continue updating it, so I'll chalk it up to experience and know better next time.

That said, I don't know how I missed this, but Finding Eden was featured on Gamasutra back in October! From their Best Of Indie Games column: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/3761 ... _Place.php

 

[Allen2014]

Oh, this is really a great game but the download address have failure...... Hello I am from China Independent Games author, I can be like you for some help? The thing is this: my game is 430MB so much, I want to share it with my friends, I would like to ask what web site can let I uploaded, you can download?
Sorry my English is not very fluent