*DOWNLOAD DEMO HERE*

This is a story I have finally completed, and is loosely based on the fictional placed described in the novel Lost Horizon by James Hilton. Most notably and more suitably based on the manga/anime series Saiyuki. For those who are unfamiliar with the anime, Shangri La is considered to be an Earthly utopia where humans, demons, magic and science all co-exist and this area is isolated from the outside world. In my story everything is similar except for the utopia part but mostly this is just my spin on Saiyuki.

Character Story

In this game you will be the eyes of three half breed demonic brothers known throughout the lands as the Raum Brothers. Consisting of Renove, Rubues, and Relick they are triplets born from a human mother who died while giving birth to them. Their father, once the First General in the army of Abaddon (King of Demons), also died, but in the line of duty. The brothers where cursed at birth with forbidden magic by a sorceress who was attempting to kill the brothers but was stopped by their father. The curse being, that they have a limit set on their demonic powers and they can only use those limited powers when together. If separated they would loose all demonic powers and revert into their human forms.

Story Background

A few small incidents had occurred and the humans decided that it was impossible for them to co-exist with demons knowing their potential to kill, mainly in fear of a future catastrophic incident. This would lead to a war that would last for almost 400 years. Eventually the humans would gain the advantage in the war forcing the demons to a secluded area in the west. To avoid another war the Abaddon (Demon King) agrees to these arrangements and it has been this way for about 20 years.

Presently, there has been a new Abaddon (King of Demons) appointed after the death of the last and the new King of Demons does not agree with the arrangements and has plans to kill all humans and take control of Shangri La. However, the humans have created Demon seeking androids called Omnibots to keep things in order. While also being no push overs themselves with the invention of Chi Emitters.

As for the brothers, even though the sorceress was stopped by their father she still managed to escape unharmed and due to the complexity of this forbidden magic only she can remove the curse. The brothers, who now serve in the demonic army of their guardian the new Abaddon, who was also their fathers best friend, wish to seek out the sorceress to lift the curse. Their search is not with out peril, as they defend themselves against demon hunters, Omnibots, and those demons jealous of their power.






Credits
Scripts - Hermes CMS, Atoa's CBS, Paradog
Faces - Moromaga, Gozaru
Character Sets - Gozaru, Sithjester, Char Generator
Tiles - Sakura Phoenix, Sithjester
Battlers - Dollmage, Green Raven, Crimson Penguin, Skie Fortress, Dark Paladin
Audio - Donny/Spooky?

Special Thanks:
HBgames
RMVXP
RRR
Creation Asylum

If I forgot anyone on discredited anyone let me know.


If anyone would like to assist me with this project feel free to pm or post here letting me know.


All comments and criticism are not only welcome but requested. Thank You.

UPDATE 8/20/2012: Updated Demo Completely

In case you don't know, read this topic
http://www.hbgames.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=53649
Read the "Things to know" part.
What is basically means that you can't recruit in this forum.

Ok now for critics:
It is a little confusing... It takes a while to get what your saying.
I still don't get the goal of the Raum brothers...

Leora looks pretty... typical, flesh her up abit.

Your story just seems... confusing, I can't really help you much there. But I would suggest you reread it yourself. You might find out the mistake.

Also, the grammar needs some correction. ( Buts its not THAT bad)

OK i finally have a title and i rewrote everything so hopefully it sounds less confusing and more intresting.

Added a video of the battle system, still working, slowly but surely.

*Screen shots added*
requesting this thread to be moved to project discussion.

Moved it for you; but next time, report the topic so the mods know you want it moved.

Looking at the graphics alone I can tell you that Xaphan sticks out like a sore thumb. You might want to try to find a sprite for him that looks more consistent with the others.

Agares' faceset really needs some reworking. The way you have his eyes blacked out makes him look like a raccoon, or that he got punched in the face. ;) Looking at the sprite, the faceset might look better if you just make the pupils white and the rest of the eye white, instead of the entire part of his face around his eyes being black.

I'm seeing a couple of spelling/grammar errors in one sentence alone, so be wary of that. Try to run your dialogue through a spellchecker before you put it in the game.

Just some random nitpicks, hope they help.

It seems that everybody hates Agares' faceset. I thought it was different if nothing else maybe a little tacky but if you look at the battler it has similar features. He's the "bad guy" so it shouldn't be a big deal if he's a little ugly right? I tried the all white look before but it seemed too inconsistent with the look of the battler.

As for Xaphan's battler I agree It does look a little off and I have been looking for a replacement sprite for a while now.

Thanks for the feedback, I appreciate it.

*DEMO UPLOADED*

*Bump* Really hoping for some feedback on this one.

I'm kind of busy with finals right now but I plan to download and give my feedback within the next day or two.

Hey, No ID. Last time I just nagged about a bunch of graphical nitpicks, so I'll try to look through a get a little more in-depth. :)

One thing I really like is that the journey is more of a personal nature - the brothers aren't out to save the world, they just want to get rid of their curse. I'm not familiar with the manga/anime you mentioned, so you might put more on the setting itself in the post. How advanced is the technology, how does the technology and magic interact, etc.

A few questions:

Why did the brothers kill Leora's family? Are they heroes of the... morally questionable type, killing in the line of duty, or is there some kind of other justification?

Why is Agares, the son of the almighty, emperor-figure of the world so jealous of a couple of cursed half-demon guys? How does he even know of them, considering he's basically royalty and they're just some nobodies in the army... or are the brothers fairly high-ranking? If this is the case, keep in mind you might wanna make them a bit older, as 22 seems rather young to be in a noteworthy position in the military.

You just reminded me on how left out a key portion of the back story.

Xaphan used to be best friends with the father of the brothers, and since both of their parents are dead he took over as their guardian, this is why Agares doesn't like them. He thinks they are taking attention away from him, and he has this paranoid idea that the brothers are there to take his place as heir to the crown. Not willing to understand the fact that the only reason his father sends the brothers out all the time is because he doesn't want his only son getting hurt.

As for Leora, the brothers killed her family but they don't know it. Her family was just victims of circumstance, humans who were living in a village the brothers were ordered to attack. (This you find out during their first official meeting in the game). The brothers are neither good nor evil, they only care about and fight for themselves. But as the story progresses things will change, for better or worse.

Once again, thanks for the feedback and interest in the story.

Just got done playing the demo. It wasn't bad at all.

I ended up having to close it after the scene where they attacked the staff in the underground place and put on their clothes. For some reason, it wouldn't let me move when the cutscene ended. I could call the menu, but no other controls were responsive and I was stuck.

Some thoughts that occurred to me while playing:
* The face graphics are really mismatched. I thought the brothers were girls from their face images, and they really clash with the RTP-style faces you see for characters like the soldier in the fort. Also, the villain you were fighting in the beginning, his face looked downright awful.

* The battle system is nice and fairly well-balanced.

* However, one aspect of the battle system really annoyed me: the order in which the brothers are listed at the bottom is not the order in which they're standing on the screen, leading me to commonly confuse who needed healing.

* Mapping is acceptable and the music is fine.

* The writing is pretty bad, though. You'll want to find a spelling and grammar checker, for one. Aside from that, the dialog is really awkward and forced, especially between the brothers. They keep shooting off one-liners that are supposed to sound cool but end up coming across as really cheesey and cringe-worthy. I can't really comment on the plot having not gotten far enough to have really seen anything of it.

Thank you, I'm glad you liked what you played so far, and I'll have to look into that error.



Yea, I definitely have been getting a lot of complaints about the faces. I was going to draw them myself, but it would have taken even more time and it took so long for me to get this far that I just wanted to put something out there.



You were the first person to point out this obvious problem. There was a silly reason why I did this at first, but I have to admit, that even I have had times where I didn't know who was who. Thanks for pointing that out.



I suck at mapping.



But once again, I have to admit that your right. I was trying a little too hard to make the characters stand out early, since the demo is short. But you're right, so thanks for your honesty, and I'll fix this as well.

Thank you for the honest feedback. Much needed. And I hope that after I make a few revisions that you will take the time to play it again (all the way through, if error free).

No problem. And it's probably a good idea to use placeholder graphics (like faces) in a demo rather than devote a bunch of time to something that might get changed in the final version. I usually still have placeholders up until the beta version of games when I'm working on them.

New version of the Demo Uploaded.

Whats fixed
*Faster levels*
*Agares = Original Sprite Choice*
*More Balanced/Less Difficult Battles*
*Extended Story*

Story
In order to critique the story, I did not read the story background in this thread. A game should be able to tell a complete story without one needing to read the project thread for storyline details and additions. If I was to refer this game to someone else to play, chances are, they would not be in the rm community, and as such, would not be able to read this thread to fill in the holes.

Following that note, I had no clue what the storyline was supposed to be about. The player is just thrown into the game with no overview whatsoever. There are some games that do this, but fill the player in through the first few minutes/hours of gameplay. There was no such thing in this game. All I gathered was that the demons are being hunted by demon hunters and the demons have been ordered to do something. What that 'something' is, I have no idea. I stopped playing at the laboratory part, after the head scientist speaks about the latest model omnibot, because I had no idea what to do next.

I also thought that the world was set in medievel-ish times. How in the world do supercomputers and robots and things of that sort exist in this world? Remember that I have not read the storyline details in this thread. All of these things should be explained in the game.

Dialogue
Sailerius put it best: The dialogue is awkward and forced. Even very random at times. I can see people rolling their eyes at a lot of the one-liners in the game. There are also a lot of spelling and grammatical errors. It would help to ask someone to spell-check your writing for you.

Gameplay
The battle system is decent, and the difficulty isn't too bad. The real problem is actually when not in a battle. There are a lot of spots in the game where an event that is supposed to have been completed restarts again. For example, after defeating the soldiers in the fort and finding the secret stairs, if you go back up the stairs after the cutscene, the two demon brothers are back in the room (not in scientist attire anymore), once again searching for the secret staircase which has already been found. And when you go back downstairs, the one brother and the scientists are gone and nowhere to be found. Also, if you go outside of the fort, the door/entrance will be missing. You should see if you can get an eventer to help you out with those issues.

Music
As far as I remember, there is no music in this game. With no music to complement the gameplay/story, it makes the experience very bland and uninteresting.

Characters
Because of the dialogue and lack of real storyline motivation, none of the demon brothers stood out to me. To me, they were just random sprites with special abilities in battle. The player is not given a reason to care for or to feel the main characters' cause, whatever it may be. All of them are one-dimensional. Maybe I didn't play long enough to see more, but this is what I got from the first few hour or so of play.

Well thanks a lot for playing and taking the time to give me feedback. As far as the story goes, what the game is about should have been made clear in the cave after the opening scene. However I do need to explain in the story how they have supercomputers, and magic powers.

Its to bad that you didn't get to finish the whole thing but if you walk to the other side of the lab and enter the holding cells the story will continue.

I also understand the problem with the dialog but after listening to what Sailerius said I thought edited out all of the jokes. Maybe you played the older version I don't know but I'll double check. Also the eventing problem I knew I had and I'm sorry about that, was to lazy to fix.

I did have music in the game but it wasn't anything extravagant because I planned on doing it myself and those were placeholders.

But nevertheless, thanks a lot for the constructive criticism.

Hi, are the battle sprites original? If so, good work!
Don't get frustrated by the critism people give in this forums.

Dollmage and and Crimson Penguin are who I got the battlers from.

Looks good, nice graphics and story.
Some ways to improve it:

- on the third screenshot, the mapping is far from bad. However, making the "wall" of stone behind the people less linear will make it look better.
- in the first screenshot in spoiler 2. The patients are nice, but the rmxp template afro hair looks a bit funny.
try frankensteining some other hair onto them.
- You are using medieval guards in a modern lab. You should find something more modern

that's all

My first thought was I want to see more videos! :D
And that is because some of us (paranoid conspiracy theorists) don't like executing .exe files right away.
So it'd be lovely with lots of videos (of cutscenes, battles, bosses, everything worthwhile) and with a high framerate :D

Also I can't see your images, i think something is wrong with the formating.

Also also I saw the terms "Life Energy", "Chi", "Spirit Energy" and "souls". These are seperate entities or different words with the same meaning?
If indeed they are different things, I think you should explain it better. If they are not, maybe you should pick a term and use that particular one exclusively.

game demo completely updated with all new material, and battle system. (don't forget to fight the not so secret secret boss )

all of my screenies broke. ill make new ones tmr.

OK I've added my screenshots as well has dropped the size of the file to 78MB instead of 126MB.
Would love to hear thoughts on the game play since it was difficult trying to balance out the battle system since SP is not used.

1st, thanks for playing it coyotecraft i'm sure it was tough to get through over a hour of text but you did. lol thank.

and now to respond to your notes...



I didn't see anything in your notes about the battles. I just wanted to know if you had any trouble with it, since a lot of people felt it was too hard the first time I posted a demo.

also did you make it to the end? or did the multitude of bugs prevent you from finishing?

again thanks bro.

I made it to the end of the demo.

It took a while to get the hang of at first. The beginning is a lot more difficult then the end. You can walk to the first omnibot fight or that booby trap and only fight 1 or 2 battles. Without healing items and little chance to experiment those battles are pretty hard. Those were the only times I got gameovers. I'm not sure if it's possible to win at level 1. If it is, you really have to know what you are doing and be fast. The way the forest is designed, I basically walked straight to those areas.
The battles got repetitive fast once you figure them out, just bum-rush attack if your near a save point since you can heal easily. The battles are fast enough I didn't worry if a spirit attack was more effective during random encounters. The battles lack variety. The enemies varied, but attacking, spirit element, and shield was all the playable characters could do. Nothing changed from the beginning to end. No stats, skills, or equipment to manage. They could level up but that was it.

I didn't like the boost system. The SP for Physical boost that only lasts 2 turns didn't seem cost effective. There is a limited number of recovery items in the game. The first time playing I didn't know when I'll get to recover at a save point, so I just hoard items. The other boost skill is kinda lame; it's just your regular element X2.

You've given me much to think about sir. Thanks for your help!