Learnings: #PJ15

We're live!

Asqueria: Distilled Soul is my submission to Pirate Jam 15.  Taking my learnings from last game jam and concentrating them down into a finished - yes, as in introduction to final boss finished game. It's short! We scoped correctly! .. Almost.

There's a few things that fell thru, I might try to sneak in some in this last day.

Cuts/delays:

The Succedaneum (Mini-Colosseum)- This isn't hard, It's just a time sink. I only set it up to show monsters from map 1, but it "should" show some from each map and let the player "farm resources" between maps, if they're so inclined.

Sprites- MAN. I did a lot of sprite work but it just felt like there was never enough. I may want to work with an artist next time! I still have at least 8 sprites I'd like to do up (simple color shifts from existing ones thankfully) but we'll see.

Balance- Out the window half way thru the game. No idea if the numbers worked out, Playtesters will have to tell me :)

On the other hand there's some stuff I learned that I thought went well.. 

ATB system- Balancing around active battles wasn't as hard as I thought.

Crafting- Nothing super complicated but the game makes you get resources to get items, not just "gold", and I think that turned out decently.

Story scripted events- Went a bit harder on the animations and scripted events. Still feels kinda cheap in some spots but others I'm happy with. For example the animations for portalling in and out of the player base, or some of the map sprite animations.

Class Design/Theme- I really liked this theme - Shadows and Alchemy - And made 4 "alchemist" classes. We have a berserking, gun toting pyromaniac, A weeping, sturdy acids expert, a brooding apothecary and a light/shadow swapping specialist. They're all pretty "Alchemy", I think. I also learned a lot of old timey alchemy words in the making of this game. Calcination. Dulcified. Athanor! Hopefully you learn some words too.

All in all I think I'm happy with this side project - Since it's a "finished story" that just needs QOL and bug fixes, I may end up packaging it up for Steam some day - I bet it's worth a couple bucks. Like, less than 5. We'll see. Playtest while you can :) 

I'm honestly not sure what kind of scoring I'll get from the judges - At the end of the day, some people just don't like RPG Maker-style games, and this definitely is one. But it's also exploring a different flavour than the main Asqueria: Origins game, and I learned a lot doing it! So that's a 10/10 as far as I'm concerned.