About Dragons

And on the top of the fantasy monster food chain: dragons.


TheDave should've stayed in bed that day. Dragons are powerful, intelligent, terrifying forces. They usually keep to themselves and only attack those who seek to raid its treasure. This is good news for humanity, because if these things wanted to take over the world, they probably would. If you encounter a dragon, the smartest thing to do is GTFO or you will die horribly.

There are seven types of dragons, each representing one of the seven elements of the game. If you haven't figured them out yet, they are: fire, water, air, earth, holy, psionic, dark. Dragons are a fun extra to tackle towards the end of the game when you get high-end gear and you don't think the main plot is challenging you enough.

Dragons can be inflicted with most bad status, but they have the ability to reset their status every few turns, curing them of their ailments. Still though, if you can get one envenomed for two turns, that's 20% of it's health gone right there. Another strategy would be to exploit its magic weakness to death. You could also try to pimp your party out with some blinging gear and march off to your inevitable death. Some awesomely epic dragon-battle-specific music plays when you encounter one. You'll be able to taste the fear!

Demons

One particularly nasty type of foe you'll run in to in the game are demons.


Scary stuff. Demons are embodiments of one of the five nether elements. These are Terror, Hatred, Chaos, Suffering, and Death. Kressalack pioneered controlling these forces to create beings. Things that bring demons in to the world are not truly gates, but are actually spires that gather these elements from the land. Thus, a happy vomit-inducing land of flowers and butterflies couldn't breed demons, but a war-torn land could.

Demons are always one of the five nether elements, since it's their very nature. Demons of terror feed off the fears of other and prefer psychological torture to ending lives; they have a terror ability that causes paralysis. Demons of chaos seek to destroy order, though they are not organized in their goal and attack targets randomly; they use a spell called Chaos Anthem that causes mass confusion. Demons of hatred attack with extreme prejudice and malice; they have an ability to inflict hatred upon others, causing berserk. Demons of suffering sustain themselves through the agony of others; they use slow killing effects like poison and combine it with disabling skills, rendering poisoned targets helpless. Demons of death have a simple objective, destroy all sentient life. Even though their objective may clash with the objective of other demons, they are the strongest type of demon and therefore get precedence. They use instant kill spells often.

Demons are all resistant to dark magic and susceptible to holy. Even though demons are usually major boss-type encounters, they can be afflicted by bad status (at a low chance). Some can even be destroyed by instant death effects. Some demons are immune to certain effects (e.g. you can't destroy demons of death with death effects) and each is weak against a specific element. Silver weapons are also useful against demons. If you encounter one, you'll need a strategy for staying alive.

1-up

Here's a short update on something fun. 1-ups!


When you collect a 1-up, your entire party instantly gets a full recovery (hp/mp/status). There are more of these to be found in extreme mode because there are very few free healing safe spots. 1-ups are usually only in hidden locations, difficult to reach spots (like the screenshot), or only appear under certain conditions. When you collect them, they make that charming sound effect that I never get tired of hearing. Good luck hunting for them.

Warp Circles

Here's a short update on something you'll encounter. Warp circles are simply teleporters that link two fixed locations. Only Baru and TheDave can activate these (either one needs to be in the party).

The destination is unknown, so jumping in one could throw you somewhere you didn't expect. Their main functionality in the game is to allow the party to quickly jump areas without having to do some serious back tracking. There are also quite a few secret warp circles. I'm thinking of making a system for creating these circles via rune chalk or something. I'll throw up an update if I come up with something brilliant.

Prologue

When you start the Awesome Adventure, you jump right in to the game with absolutely no sense of back story or story arc. The plot develops as the game progresses, but you start with little more than a title screen. This allows you to get to the game play faster, but makes for worse story telling. The solution? I added a Prologue entry to the Extras.

When you start a new game, you've got the option to check out the prologue. In the prologue, you play as a different group of characters in the era before the main plot happens (obviously, where else would the prologue be). It's almost like a completely separate game within a game.

If you've ever played the Lufia games for SNES, the prologue is something in the same idea; a group of characters defeat a major villain to save the world in a generation before the main story arc. Obviously something went horrendously wrong and it's up to the characters in the present to set things right. Of course, you could skip the prologue entirely and discover everything for yourself. Either way, it's a good play through to get a sense at what the world is like. Oh, and did I mention that the major villain was Kressalack? More awesome voicing of unmentionable badassitude ensues.

Combat

I've been updating for about a month now and I haven't mentioned the battle system at all. Battles are more or less what you'd expect from a retro rpg: a turn based battle system. Every round of combat, you get three options: Fight, GTFO, or I'm Lazy. Fight lets you give orders to your characters, GTFO gets you the fuck out of a bad situation, and I'm Lazy automatically chooses commands for the characters. If you engage the enemy in battle, you'll get 4 commands: Attack, use special techniques (the name for this command is unique for every character), Defend, and Item. Things are self explanatory.

The four attributes of characters determine how good they are in battle. In case you haven't figured it out yet, the four attributes are Attack, Defense, Agility, and Magic. Attack increases the damage done by your Attack command and gives you better damage with weapon techniques or skills that do more damage with a high attack (like Ether Fist). Defense is damage reduction; the more you have, the less damage you take from physical attacks. Agility improves your initiative in battle (the order in which actions are made), gives you more accuracy, and lets you evade attacks. Magic makes your special attacks more potent and gives you resistance against other magic attacks. Every turn, characters recover 1 hp and 1 mp. This entire paragraph is crap you probably could've guessed.

If your characters encounter an enemy much weaker than your average party level, the enemy is automatically defeated before the battle even begins (like in Earthbound). You just walk up to the weak monster and zap it. You get xp and cash for zapping an enemy, but the enemy won't respawn (though a stronger kind of monster may take it's place later). This makes back tracking less tedious and dampens the effectiveness of level grinding. That, and it makes a snazzy thwack sound.

Dynamic Dialog

Dynamic dialog is the fancy term I coined that basically means that the dialog changes depending on factors. Fancy, huh. It makes playing through the game more than once rewarding, as there are new punchlines and witty banter to be heard.


Most of the dialog doesn't actually effect game play, but it makes the dialog bits more enjoyable. The characters seem more developed. Stuff that effects dialog:

• Element skill
• How long it takes you to complete an area
• If you help someone or ignore them
• If you fail or succeed at certain encounters
• Your character level
• Items held
• If certain people are in your party or not
  

There are probably a couple more I'm forgetting, but these are the major factors. How about some dialog for example? I'll grab a piece of text from the flooded caverns. After some swimming, Baru and Tsujin have a chat.

If both Baru and Tsujin have water skill- B: "Well, that was fun. Yay for water." T:"Isn't it awesome?"
If Baru has water skill but Tsujin doesn't- B: "Well, that was fun. Yay for water." T:"Swimming is for noobs. Like you! Oh burn!" B: "Hey. Don't make me throw water at you."
If Baru has no water skill but Tsujin does- B: "Blah. That was crap. I need to put more points in to water." T: "You noob. I've got some water skill... although I don't swim anyway."
If neither Baru nor Tsujin have water skill- B: "Blah. That was crap. I need to put more points in to water." T:"It's kind of a crappy element. We're better off with what we have."

A lot of the dialog is written like this. I think it makes things more interesting.

Items

If I were to ever print a manual for the game, this would definitely be a section. Why? Because good manuals have random lists. Since this 'blog' is looking more like a manual than a log, I might as well load it with mundane lists like this. So, check out these items:

Green Herb: Heals 40 HP. You can find these all over maps and TheDave sells them. Most towns don't sell these.
Exotic Herb: Heals 150 HP and cures paralyze. You can find these in remote areas, and sometimes TheDave sells them. Towns sure don't.
Forbidden Herb: Heals all HP but 25% chance to set HP to 0 instead. Secret merchants sell these.
Dilute Potion: Cures 25% HP. Junk heal. Useful for healing yourself outside of battle when item usage won't waste a turn.
Potion: Cures 50% HP. Useful throughout the entire game. TheDave doesn't sell them, but every town will.
Full Potion: Cures all HP. Expensive, but useful in dire situations.
Grey Ether: Recover 25 MP. Ethers are expensive, but they fuel your special abilities.
Cyan Ether: Recover 70 MP. The bluer the ether, the better it is.
Blue Ether: Recover 150 HP. See?
Silver Ether: Recover 400 MP. Okay, so maybe silver isn't blue. Shush.
Black Ether: Recover MP, but drains HP. You can get these from monsters called Flying Hellfish. I forget what the exact numbers are. x_X
Prismatic Tonic: Recover all HP/MP. Good luck ever finding them.
Union Plume: Restore near-dead allies to 14 HP. Low-budget restoration item.
Phoenix Down: Restore near-dead allies with 40% HP. Mass produced somehow. Maybe there are Phoenix farms or something.
Phoenix Tear: Restore near-dead allies with all HP and recovers 80 MP. A revive of awesome.
Hero Meal: Full recovery for entire party at save points. Used to be called 'tent', but I figured that was a lame name.
Scroll of _____: Enables one time use of spell. There are dozens of scrolls, several emulating elemental skills, several unique.
_____ Orb: Causes a specific bad status to target when thrown. There's also a super powered version called the Omni Orb that inflicts every bad status.
_____ Tonic: Permanent stat increase. Comes in several different flavors. Always hidden in sneaky areas.
Card: You can look at cards any time (outside of battle). When you activate them, a card album appears and you can browse through the cards you've collected. Monster cards show you their stats, their skills, their resistances/weaknesses, and what items they can drop. The cards themselves are ridiculously hard to find but they can give you some insight. Gotta collect 'em all.

There are also a slew of status recovery items (antivenom, pills, restoration, etc), but this list is good enough as is. All it needs now is some pictures.

Extreme Mode

I like games with a good challenge. Although Awesome Adventure is challenging already, I decided to take things to the next step. You can set the difficulty to EXTREME when you start a new game. Extreme mode absolutely destroys casual gamers and noobs alike. It's also hilarious.

Start the party by going in to the Options menu. XSTREEM!

In extreme mode, all of the dialog has been rewritten. The characters are all very fourth wall breaking ("As long as we survive to make it to the save point.") and are paranoid of a horrible evil ("No, on a day like today, death is around every corner. Death will try to sneak up on you..."). Even the terrain itself is malevolent.

You'll have to master the system and rethink battle strategies in order to get through this vicious difficulty. Extreme mode deviates heavily from the plot. It's pretty nonsensical, but hilarious. There are several aspects of the game that are unique to this difficulty (e.g. Teh Jamesy encounters, Merewen as a playable character, an eviler version of Kyamu, etc). Try playing through the game on normal before attempting this.

Bad Status

Before I go off on tangents about what skills can do, a fundamental understanding of the game would be teh pwn. Here are the bad status effects in the RPG. There are a few other 'status', like grappled and passive for scripted battles. Below are the common ones.

Near Death: Characters who fall to 0 HP are rendered unable to fight. If the entire party is prone, the monsters eat you and you die. GAME OVER, GG. x_X

Poison: Deals 5% Max HP damage per turn, so this skill will kill any target in 20 turns. Unlike most RPGs, many bosses can be poisoned. Persists even after battle.

Venom: Deals 10% Max HP damage per turn, double that of poison. This status only lasts a few turns, but it will ruin your HP by then.

Silence: Disables all magic tech and skills that require voice (like Insult). Lasts 4-10 turns.

Disable: Disables all non-magic tech, such as weapon techniques. Lasts 4-10 turns.

Confuse: Randomly attack allies or self. The effect is cancelled if the subject takes damage or after 3-8 turns. Magic attacks don't break the confusion.

Bezerk: Randomly attack enemies with a 30% miss chance. There is a small chance that damage may cancel the status, otherwise, lasts 3-8 turns.

Stun: Subject losses next action. Stunned targets lose all evasion.

Paralyze: Disables all action. Lasts 3-8 turns.


Sleep: Disables all action. Lasts 4-10 turns or until the sleeper takes damage.

Blind: 70% miss chance with physical attacks. You can still use items, defend, and use magic tech. Lasts 4-10 turns.

Merchants

Most monsters you beat will drop some cash. Some monsters drop items (such as equipment or consumables) while others leave behind poachable items (like scales or pelts). You can also find cash in yellow treasure boxes. Great, riches, but it's no good unless you can actually spend it. So how does the merchant system work?

Most of the game play will take place far from cities. You can usually find TheDave during these random adventures; he sells basic healing items and a few pieces of equipment. From time to time, the party will visit various towns. Most towns have a blacksmith, an alchemist, a magic shop, and a fur trader. The blacksmith sells a huge assortment of equipment, even very expensive late game stuff. Blacksmiths also repair damaged armor, and some can improve regular armor. Most alchemists sell healing and restoration items, while some sell offensive throwable items. Magic shops have expensive magic items and spell scrolls for sale... bet you couldnt've figured that one out. Fur traders exchange monster items for practical items. You can sell scales/pelts/etc to any vendor, but you get a better deal if you wait until you can get them to the trader.

There are also several secret merchants that sell ridiculous items. They are only found in the most clever of awesome secret places. So far, none of the play testers have found such a vendor. Kahahahah...

Damage Types

There are a few set damage types in the game. Pretty much everything will have a specific set of strengths and weaknesses.

Physical damage types:

Slashing: Common damage dealt by blades. More effective against fleshy targets.

Blunt: Unarmed attacks, gloves, maces, and slam attacks. Great against things like skeletons.

Piercing: Teeth (wolf) and some special attacks deal this damage. More effective against large targets.

Ranged: Bows and throwables. Deals extra damage to flying things.

Silver: A special damage type that is particularly effective vs shape shifters and undead.

Magic damage types:

Fire: Deals huge damage. Very effective against snow dwelling creatures or flammable things (like mimics, the evil treasure chests).
Water: Ice blasts deal modest damage at a more affordable mana cost. It kills what fire can't.

Air: Deals more damage against flying enemies and less against burrowing ones.

Earth: Anything not weak against the other three elements is probably weak to this one.

Holy: Great for banishing demons and destroying undead. Not effective against Mystics.

Psionic: Very effective against spirits and magic beings. Not effective against constructs.

Dark: Corrupts and destroys all natural life. Not effective against hell-spawn.

Leader Swapping

Check out the different styles of system menus.


While playing through the Awesome Adventure, your characters change their marching order and different people lead the party. Every time someone takes control of the party, the entire GUI and sound scheme change. Even the music is different for other characters. For example, Tsujin's system is green and pink and has a Zeldaish sound scheme.


Variety ftw.

Gameplay Info

I've thrown a bunch of information on this blog already, but what does it all add up to? What is the gameplay like? Let's see what I can describe in three paragraphs.

Most of the gameplay is from a top downish perspective. You've got an objective (such as walk in that general direction) and you'll encounter bits of inter-party dialog, monsters, treasure boxes, and some other surprises. The frequent dialog bits help move the plot along, but you can always get distracted with exploring an area.

Sometimes, exploring an area can pay off as you might find an arbitrarily positioned treasure box. In hard mode, these boxes can be trapped or mimics (a monster). As for monsters, the game doesn't actually have the common random encounter system that most classic RPGs are blighted with. Instead, you see the enemies running around on the map and you can choose whether to beat them down or go around them, something like Chrono Trigger. Some monsters will wander around with a set route, some will randomly move around, and some will have specific behaviors (e.g. chase you if you steal their treasure).

There are a few other platformer elements to the gameplay that add depth. You can swim (your competence depends on your water level), you can light candles in the dark for some interesting lighting effects (more effective with a high fire level), you can jump across gaps or up and down walls (depending on your air level), and so on. There are a few puzzles along the way and some 'escape before the timer hits 0:00' areas. And, of course, tons of amazing secret areas along the way that you'll miss over and over. Sometimes talking to those random doodads can get you something special. Madness, isn't it? You have no idea.