Isn't this a remake of an older flash game? I remember a game years ago with the same set-up, story, characters, and gameplay.
It's still a good little game, but it's strangely familiar.
Reviews for "The Awakening RPG"
RockLou responds:
I released a demo of it 4 years ago.
im stuck on th eink quest whats the anserwer to the riddle anyone know
RockLou responds:
It's Light
Well, it ends abruptly, but it's a very fun game. It's always a nice commentary on a game when you're angry it's over, since obviously that means you enjoyed it (and I certainly did).
Well done. I'd hope you could collaborate with other like minded folks so your next effort is more manageable. This is a really fun game and if it were complete would be at least 4.5 stars for me.
RockLou responds:
Thank you! I'm.... glad I made you angry, I guess. :P
Being a one-man team does make the progress slower. Why not recruit help? NG has forums dedicated to precisely that, as well as an alphas section. Finding the right people to work with can help keep the pace and divide up the work (the wrong people can have, frankly, the opposite effect).
I thought that the customization section was nice and varied, and liked the way unlocking features was tied to achievement (instead of promotion, as seems to be the obnoxious norm these days).
The combat surprised me in how it balanced the counter/attack/dodge system and made it interesting with ranged vs. melee strategy. I think it has potential in that respect.
Were you to continue with the game, here are my recommendations and criticisms:
- Your use of gradients leaves much to be desired. They tend to be just a single color and black, and instead of making it look like you have a reflective surface it makes the shape look very distorted. That's my number 1 flash art beef.
- The "references" to other things got a little obnoxious at points. Elder Scrolls, Tolkien, Azeroth, Tokien, Tolkien...some subtlety would greatly improve this.
- Choosing which quests have arrows appear would be nice. There were several times when a quest said "take [thing] back to [person]" and I'm like "Where the hell is [person]? Which one are they?" and the quest thing didn't see fit to give me directions.
- As nice and complex as your appearance could be, you had very little say in your personality and how you interacted with people, which is much more key to immersion.
RockLou responds:
I don't work well in teams.
I thought of being able to disable quest arrows. But I never got around to it, it never seemed necessary enough.
I tried to keep the conversations simple, so people who don't want to read so much could also keep up. And I wanted to keep the conversation options limited to 2 options, so that the Q/E keys were all you needed to use.
The inventory size of the player could be limited due to grinding stuff and some potions should have side effects. Items that players cannot store in inventory (including cash and swords can be stored inside player houses, giving a real reason they should be purchased.
Speaking of the houses I think there should be a tax payed in px for their upkeep. It keeps rising over time and if it gets to 30 px of debt the house is lost. The threshold is determined by played difficulty level and city it is located in. I also believe that there should be a day/night cicle if it has to work. Maybe some shops in the night would be locked.
Players who would like to play the game more morally should be able to report a bag of drugs they found near that "thief tunnel" to guards. A reward for it would be having next 8 quick training sessions with Argas 50% cheaper (80 px in total instead of 160). Reporting it in Savina would result in guards telling you to take it back to Bavelock and report it there.
Hard difficulty level feels too easy for me. I have managed to defeat Golden Demon by avoiding all of his non-scripted attacks. Combat can remain as hard as it is but I believe that enemies should deal more damage to punish inexperienced players more as well as some enemies should be able to counter player's attacks or dodge and than attack the player but the player would have the ability to dodge both enemy counters and other trap moves before attacking. This would be mentioned by Argas during his tutorial training session. Enemies would also try to attack the player while he is casting spells but the player would be able to dodge enemy attacks while casting. Also on all non-cheat difficulty levels both player and the enemy are regenerating stamina slowly making combat look boring to impatient people.
About the tutorial with healing spell I believe the first enemy who shows up after learning it should be normally dodgable and fought as usual if someone wants to beat the game without getting hit. Tutorial about using healing spell should not display itself at all just to avoid bugs in case if it would have to happen at once with other tutorials.
Limit breaks should be balanced between each other. For example I believe that touch of fury should paralyze target, second limit break can remain the same acting as high damage dealer, third one should deal much less damage but will slow enemy down. Omnislash could act as post-order bonus for players who beat story mode of the game and can remain the same.
All spells should have a cooldown to prevent them from being spammed. Caleb's rain of fire could make slight exception here as it would only have activated it's cooldown upon unleashing fire.
I'm Gonna Use Berserker Spell as an Example of a Spell That Deserves a Remake:
* Can't be used for about 20 seconds after it deactivates.
* Activating it consumes no mana.
* Drains player's health by about 0,9 hit point per second. Does not prevent battles from being flawless this way. Also makes protagonist's only dark spell usable during attempts of beating entire game without taking damage from enemies.
* Drains about 2 point of mana per second. Can be manually deactivated. Automatically deactivated by protagonist upon ending the fight.
* Can be removed with anti-negative status effect potion as a side effect.
* Drinking limit break potion while being under berserk effect deals damage to protagonist. This prevents combat from being flawless.
* Stamina regenerates faster.
* The player can learn how exactly this skill works before ever using it but I leave this issue to developer how it should be solved.
This skill cannot be spammed anymore if so but on the other hand lack of 25 mana consumption to start it makes low mana players able to use it normally. Also greater stamina regeneration gives player opportunity to strike enemies more times.
Examples of Developer's Foresight I Want In This Game:
* If you fight a bandit while having a pack of drugs he can steal it from you.
* Non-linear playthrough and better reasons why the protagonist can't do certain things unless the story itself progresses. Tears can be collected in different order.
* The hound of Golden Demon does not have it's health cap at 1 to ensure it's survival and if the player bypasses it's limit break by any means he will be taken by nearby guards to Bavelock and dream sequence would be skipped. Also Golden Demon does not use his scripted 5 HP damage undodgable attack before the player gets a new limit break so it is possible to finish this fight flawlessly.
* Dion will dodge player's limit break during his boss battle so the player won't deplete his health to 0 and question himself "why is this guy still alive". Dion will escape anyway afraid of the player's inner power.
* Phantom stalkers randomly spawn in Blackwhisper Cave after collecting the cave's tear since they got awakened.
* The player would no longer be teleported back in the first screen of Blackwhisper Cave to start of it if Dion wouldn't be defeated yet. Kidnapping quest would be avaliable before fighting Dion at all. As I said before I believe that tears should be collectable in different order if the player can do in this game almost whatever he wants to.
* After completing summoner's challenge in order to get Serpent Blade summoner won't repeat the same dialogue as if it was obtained for the first time.
* The player can use items during summoner's challenge but it will result in Serpent Blade not being avaliable and if the player haven't reached Thanator yet Summoner will stop spawning next enemies. Both Argas and Summoner will feel disappointment but challenge can be repeated.
* Summoning bandits cannot result in spawning a bandit who stole Mithrel's bag.
* Hunting for enemies in overworld and certain locations a lot can result in their population decline and they won't spawn for some time.
I overall believe that this game has potential to become really good only if the developer decided to hire some people to upgrade it.