The Cleansing

[Jason]

Warning, this game has cliché written all over it.

Story
The Kingdom of Freyham has been under attack for years, by four elemental mages, who are set on killing the king and taking his place on the throne. The High Priest of the Chantry has had enough and is plotting against the king in an attempt to lure him towards the mages, however, so far it hasn't gone as planned, and he's had no luck. The king knows of this, and instead of negotiating with him, he has turned to a travelling paladin, who claims he can kill and remove these mages, and save Freyham from destruction...

Gameplay
The game is played like most other RPG's, however, it excludes the standard battlesystem for various other approaches towards killing enemies and bosses.
Traditional values such as HP, MP and EXP have been removed in place for a lives system, where the player will be given three lives, if they lose these, then it will result in gameover, there will also be chances ingame to redeem these lives back, or earn additional lives, increasing the maximum amount.

Characters
The game will feature a few characters who will play a key role in the storyline;

The King of Freyham is an old and frail man, he is afraid that the Chantry may over rule him and sacrifice him in order to save the kingdom, he has the same idea to save the kingdom, but doesn't feel the need to hand himself over, and as a desperate plea, he turns to a travelling paladin to rid the land of the elemental mages.

The High Priest of the Chantry is a deceiving man, who plans to surrender the king to the elemental mages to maintain peace in the kingdom, and claim the throne as his own, becoming the new ruler of Freyham. However, what he is oblivious to, is the fact that the king knows about this plot, and is keeping his distance until something can be done about the situation.

The Travelling Paladin is a mysterious person who turns up in the kingdom by utter coincidence, and has struck a deal with the king to seek out the four elemental mages and kill them in order to restore peace, and save the king from being handed over by the chantry. Not much is known about him, as no one knows about his past, however, this may change through the course of the story.

Spoiler: Screenshots: These are the definitive screenshots taken straight from the game itself.

This is a screenshot when the Paladin first enters the Ice Queens cavern, she's one of the four mages as you've guessed.... PS. The wolf says hi!

This is a screenshot inside the Chantry, where one of the nuns is concerned about the High Priests plot.

Having a nice chat with a guard by the kings throne inside the castle. Seems like the guard doesn't like his job.

___
I'll update this thread as more information and media become available.

 

[zchin]

The story seems like it has a lot of potential, I'm assuming it will turn out really nicely. I like how the gameplay makes the lives instead of hp and mp and exp. The story is cliche but then again you can spin a lot of twists in there to make it more original. You should work on the characters section, are there going to be more then one character? Or just one? Well either way I wish you the best of luck with this project.

Thank you and have a nice day!

 

[Jason]

Yeah, I'll be slowly updating this with more stuff as it's created, hopefully I'll have something to show for it too, lol.

But as for the story, I've left quite a bit out, otherwise it'd just serve as a big spoiler y'see, and I don't like spoilers, if they were physical I'd powerbomb them off a cliff... well, not quite, unless I had some sort of paper wings that could fly me back to safety... note to self, make paper wings.

I'll also think about adding a character bio section or something, just giving a brief outline of the "main" characters in the story.

 

[Tuna]

It's good to see that you're not using the standard battle system, something that I despise unless used really well. I'm interested in your alternate combat system and the use of lives. You'll probably want to limit saving if you plan on giving the character X amount of lives in order to cut down on cheating. I really like the art style, but I must say you'll want to keep it consistent which would mean cutting out any and all RTP. It looks really off when you incorporate original art with the old stuff. Also, does the whole game have the letterbox effect shown in the screenshots, or will the maps actually fill up the whole screen?

 

[Jason]

Don't worry, I've already made sure that saving is limited, infact, it's the first thing I did, since I despise in-menu saving, if you can save anywhere, that's just stupid. And yeah, the game has the letterbox effect throughout, that's how big maps will be, since I find it easier to map, and can link maps together to make an area seem bigger, although it's generally gonna' be a small game anyway, the black area around it will have stuff on, like at the top, that space is used for messages etc. whereas the space below will show lives and whatever else I add.

 

[Tuna]

You should consider having a Zelda-esque transition between maps, because that would be boss. Any chance I could take a peek at a demo of how you plan on doing the transitions?

 

[Jason]

I don't have a demo ready yet, and I'm not 100% on how I'd transition the maps, but for now I'll just stick to the good old teleport method, but either way I'll be looking at new ways on how to do this, but I desperately need another scripter to help me with such things, trying to script with VX is so confusing when you're used to XP D:

 

[silver wind]

Looks promising. I like how you made the maps, small yet effective.

 

[darkcieran]

this'll definitely be to play when this comes out. the whole three lives and you OUT twist really gives the player extra incentive to think before doing things.

 

[Luthur]

Great, you finally got past planning games and started making
As I said to you yesterday, I love what you've done with the VX tiles, very original and it suits them brilliantly. I'm looking forward to hearing more about the battle system, you'll have to make sure it doesn't envolve the player moving themselves away from enemies too much, because having limited space per map could make that a chore. But so far, looking good. I'll keep my eye on this.

 

[Emertinel]

I'm really like the story, it's quite unique in my opinion, but somewhat cliched. Then again, you can't really avoid cliches, so it doesn't matter. I found this game quite interesting, and I like how the screenshots look.

 

[Jason]

Well I'll be updating this with some new screenshots sometime today I think, since I've made a little progress since I've put this up, can't say how long it'll be for a demo, although I've got one of the crucial features working, so that makes me happy.

Just remember, those screenshots you see now most likely won't be in the game, although the areas will, but the dialogue is just an example of how the screen looks with things happening... however, these new screenshots I'll be uploading are obviously straight from the game and won't be changing.

 

[bladeking77]

It's nice to see you out of the Rec Room... Now about the game:
I won't comment the clishénes, as you supposedly know about it already. The whole project altogether, seems very good though. Seems like you have some fresh ideas. I was just wondering how exactly are you going to replace the good old HP,MP,EXP system. Except for that, I would suggest you to ease it on the Tint a little. It's sufficient that you've put all the same-colored tiles in one map(It's just my opinion though). Good luck and keep up the good work. :thumb:

 

[Jason]

Hmm, for the tints, the only one that I think I overdid a little is the swamp map (First screenshot), I maybe added a little too much green, but it can be fixed simple, the other two in my opinion look fine.
Anyway, I'll be ready to update the thread with new screenshot in like... 10-20 mins, so get looking for new ones!

 

[Jason]

Update;
Not really a big update, I've removed the older screenshots that weren't part of the game, just a showcase of how the game looks, and added three new screenshots taken directly from the game itself.

 

[Chalupa]

This looks pretty kick ass, Jbrist. I'm eager to see how the gameplay works.

 

[moxie]

I'm getting a Link to the Past dungeon vibe with the maps, which is pretty neat. I would vary the sizes of the areas every once and a while, though. It seems like it could get dull if every map has the exact same dimensions as the last.

I can't really comment on the story - if you're going for the oldschool feeling like the lives system would suggest, then it actually benefits from simplicity.