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[Stricle]

PRIVATE PARTY

Story

Private Party is an RPG about a young boy and his weird adventures searching for his missing parents. Dive into this world and discover more than you can expect.

-Get lost in huge mansions;
-Visit the suspicious Happy-Sad Village;
-(Don't) reach the bird city;
-Enter places you clearly are not supposed to;
-Meet your heroes;
-Get disappointed by your heroes;
-Scam the stock market;

Features

- A regular RPG battle system;
- Up to three members in your party;
- Lots of characters that take months to be designed;
- Challenging bosses;
- No random encounters, just the bosses;
- Items, that are actually useful;
- Some Lots of english misspells;
- Multiple endings;
- Secret areas;
 

About the devlog

This devlog is less about my technical challenges and more about showing what I've done and looking for feedback.
Since game developing isn't my official thing, I don't have much time to spend on it, so this page may look dead from time to time.
I thought this would take me 2 years to make, but I think it will take me one (more) year to make the DEMO.

Inspirations

Private party isn't just inspired by other games, it's also deeply influenced by cartoons and childhood experiences.

Feedback is always welcome!

[Stricle]

Everybody loves GIFs right ?
Now that I learned how to make them, I try to post them instead of images.



The first room.

[vitorlanna]

Looks interesting! If it's only boss battles there's no grinding, so is there a level up system?

[AnaGuillenFdez]

It seems you have a good project there, keep the hard work!

This made me curious, it would be rather interesting if you made this possible. I think it would give a different perspective to RPGs, because in these games the only thing you have to worry about dying is to have enough "Phoenix Feathers".

[Stricle]

That's right. I am planning on make things a little bit different than usual.

What I have in mind is:

You don't level up. However you still get stronger through the game. But how?

By learning new skills;
By getting more people into your party;

And... the most important: You will know who your next boss is, so you will have the opportunity to choose the items and equipments that are most effective. (I still need to think about how I will balance the items to make all of them useful in some way)


Of course everything I said may change, because I'm still early in the development.


By the way, thanks for replying! Feel free to ask, suggest anything you want.

-------EDIT-------
Wow ! Another reply !

AnaGuillenFdez, yeah, I really want to make this work. I won't get into much detail here yet because I still haven't worked on it yet. But, it's supposed to be one of the differentials of the game.

At first I was thinking about make a different ending to every "kind" of death the player has. However this would get boring very quickly. So now I will focus on your friends death. (You'll see what I mean)

[cynicalsandel]

writing your own engine, using rpg maker, or another engine?

[Stricle]

I'm using Game Maker.

[Stricle]

Hello people !

I'm currently working on the battle system. I think it's like 90% done (well, I've been saying this to my self for 2 months, but now I think it's really 90%.)

Here is something to you:



Once again I forgot to take away the damn poiter.

[alvarop]

lol this looks pretty cool! Really like the art style. Tracking 

[DragonDePlatino]

Very interesting concept. I always love a good Earthbound-inspired game and this looks like it could grow into something awesome.

The absence of random encounters reminds me of LISA. Did you happen to be inspired by that game as well? :D

[Stricle]

lol this looks pretty cool! Really like the art style. Tracking 

Thank you very much. Doing the art is one of the most fun parts of game developing

Very interesting concept. I always love a good Earthbound-inspired game and this looks like it could grow into something awesome.

The absence of random encounters reminds me of LISA. Did you happen to be inspired by that game as well? :D

LISA ? No, actually I have never played it. But I'll check it out.

[Stricle]

Hey, it's being a busy week on college, so I haven't made much progress.

However...

I've "improved" some graphics, here is what it looks like now:



I would like to hear your opinion. So, what do you think ? Does the walls look better, or at least less confusing ?
And what about the lighting ?

[alvarop]

It is true that there is a weird perspective issue, specially in the first image of this thread.  I think it's because the horizon line doesn't match the space you're trying to represent? Not sure, I'm not an artistttts

[Stricle]

First, thanks for the feedback.

Second, I'm confused.
What do you mean the horizon line doesn't match the space ?
Is it the bottom walls ?

[alvarop]

I meant in this image
 .

I'm not sure what is going on perspective-wise. It doesn't look like the floor is flat, it looks like it's going up. I think that is caused by the horizon line that is wayyyy too low.
The thing is, that those tiles going up makes it look like a hill. I did a mockup just to show you the difference :

. Sorry for destroying your art.

Now, this might not be the solution to it, but maybe checking other examples of how similar games deal with perspective (Undertale?) could inform you on how to fix this issue.


How come it works on Undertale

Might be that you used the tiles in a way that made it look too much like a hill, so our eyes have trouble figuring out what we're looking at?

[DragonDePlatino]

Another good example would be Link to the Past. Have a top-down view of trees instead of showing them from the side:

[SolS]

I think what you've already got going for the cliff works but you could always try more so what they did in Earthbound to help the perspective a bit?

Here's a rough example of what you could try



But adding the angles like the Undertale reference alvarop posted might be a simpler solution

[Pixel Noise]

Hey this is cute! I like the art and the MC. What you're describing about the combat and progression seems interesting - if the focus isn't on combat, then I assume it's on the story, the character interactions, etc?

Nice work so far - following 

[Stricle]

Man, I wasn't expecting people here being so kind and helpful.

Now I get it. It really looks weird now, I think I've spent too much time looking at my tiles.

Looks like tile-ing is not as simple as I thought. I think I'm going to take the simple (Undertale) approach, because I don't know if I can make it like the Earthbound style, it may take a lot more time and require art skills, I don't have.

Again, thanks for the feedback.

(By the way, I'm impressed with how well made are the images you guys made just to show me your examples, I'm actually considering the earthbound approach...)

Hey this is cute! I like the art and the MC. What you're describing about the combat and progression seems interesting - if the focus isn't on combat, then I assume it's on the story, the character interactions, etc?

Nice work so far - following 

Thanks, about the game: yes I'll focus on the characters and story... but the combat will have its hole in the game as well (unless I can't make it fun). The thing is: there will be less battles, but they will be more important.

[Stricle]

So, following your advice, I made this quick change. Does it look better ?




* Back to adapting the game to 60 fps