Available NOW!... Simple Man's Quest for the Playground*

[Sejon]

Re: Available NOW!... Simple Man's Quest for the Playground*

I'm playing it tooooooooo.

[Wavelength]

Re: Available NOW!... Simple Man's Quest for the Playground*

I'm gonna start playing it this weekend. Can't wait.

[Pagerron]

Re: Available NOW!... Simple Man's Quest for the Playground*

I've started playing it also. I'm about ten minutes in. Cool! I like it so far. (It's awesome that you can just download it and play it without having to own RPG Maker VX!)

[LunarWingCloud]

Re: Available NOW!... Simple Man's Quest for the Playground*

*downloads* This is gonna be fun.

Ryner, I love you. In a heterosexual way, somehow, of course.

[Wavelength]

Re: Available NOW!... Simple Man's Quest for the Playground*

Just played the whole thing, and it's good enough that I may give it another play through, picking different activities.

I found a few text errors and typos, and one apparent glitch in the battle system, which you might or might not be able to fix.

I've got a lot of good things to say about Simple Man's Quest and I'll say more some other time. But overall it was a blast and you did a great job with it. Take a bow, man.

VX is a pretty cool platform, it seems. How far would you say you pushed its battle system compared to what's possible? How hard was it to work with?

[Pagerron]

Re: Available NOW!... Simple Man's Quest for the Playground*

I'm about 1:45 into my playthrough.

I must say that I love the chance to see which quests are outstanding.

I haven't chosen easy mode for anything yet.

It's a very well-made game Ryner. The battles are very interesting. I also really like the way you can customize your home.

Very cool experience so far.

[Bon]

Re: Available NOW!... Simple Man's Quest for the Playground*

Kudos to the perfect score and quite popular game, Ryner.

[Ryner]

Re: Available NOW!... Simple Man's Quest for the Playground*

I found a few text errors and typos, and one apparent glitch in the battle system, which you might or might not be able to fix.

If you could let me know specifics as soon as you get a chance, I'd appreciate it. I want to catch and fix as many mistakes as I can.

VX is a pretty cool platform, it seems. How far would you say you pushed its battle system compared to what's possible? How hard was it to work with?

I didn't push it far at all. Everything I did in the battles was through the standard controls the game gives you. It was just a matter of finding the best way to implement my ideas with the building blocks I had. VX supports full script editing but I have no knowledge of Ruby or any other programming language. Someone who did could create battles that put mine to shame in a matter of minutes.


Thanks for the responses, everyone!

[Ryner]

Re: Available NOW!... Simple Man's Quest for the Playground*

A private message I received made me think about the challenge of the game. I've been very conscious to the fact that I might use easy modes as a crutch without fully realizing it. By that I mean I might think "I don't have to properly balance this part since the player can just use easy mode if they find it too hard." I don't think I've done this and have tried very hard to balance, but I admit it's a possibility. Obviously I don't want that. Add to the fact that it can be hard to judge the difficulty of a battle since I know the proper strategies from turn 0, and it can be hard to tell where my game stands on the difficulty gauge.

If any players could consider and answer the following questions, I'd appreciate it greatly.

1) What parts, if any, did you use easy mode for? About how many attempts did you make before the switch?
1b) Would you say you found those parts to be frustrating or otherwise a "bad" challenge (meaning TOO hard, overly frustrating, or hard for the wrong reasons)?

2) Were there any parts that you thought made especially "good" challenges? Battles or puzzles that you struggled with but were okay with making multiple attempts on? Where you made noticeably progress on your attempts and felt good after finally beating it?

It's not meant to be easy, of course. I'm perfectly fine with my players having to try a battle several times before figuring out what works, but I'd still like to read some responses to see where it all stands.

Thoughts?

[Pagerron]

Re: Available NOW!... Simple Man's Quest for the Playground*

Well, I've successfully played through every part without having to choose "easy" mode for anything. The battles are what have made me have to have multiple attempts. The battle to capture the monster in the loki ball took me three attempts, but I wouldn't say it was too hard. I liked it.

I like the mini-games. The matching one is very cool. I also like the lever pull (ala Jackpot style). I had no trouble helping Crunk. It was cool looking around the Pavilion to find him multiple times (you'll know what I'm talking about if you've played. If you haven't played yet, you should. very cool game). The last part of the brain puzzle (to get the orb was fun to figure out. Hurray for FROGGER experience.)

Right now I have three members in my parts and am preparing to do a little bit of the battle arena. I have three goblis (or four) I have to check.

I've enjoyed every minute of it so far. I'm at about three hours of gameplay.

Yay Ryner!

[Wavelength]

Re: Available NOW!... Simple Man's Quest for the Playground*

1) What parts, if any, did you use easy mode for? About how many attempts did you make before the switch?

I didn't use Easy Mode at all. There were some battles I had to retry, and a couple of other segments that were tough, but I never felt like I was staring at something impossible or completely crapshoot-based.

2) Were there any parts that you thought made especially "good" challenges? Battles or puzzles that you struggled with but were okay with making multiple attempts on? Where you made noticeably progress on your attempts and felt good after finally beating it?

The mind puzzles, especially the Frogger-like one, was awesome. I wish it would let you try again IMMEDIATELY if you failed, but despite taking about 30 attempts to complete, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I also really liked the story of the "clone" segment and its ensuing battle, there was a lot of strategy in there.

I do feel like the balance is quite good in your game, in general.

[Pagerron]

Re: Available NOW!... Simple Man's Quest for the Playground*

I have beaten the game!!! Woo Hoo!!!

I wanted to post this a few days ago, but with the whole Pav attack thing, I decided to wait until things got more back to normal.

I ended with

-4 party members
-12,699 gold
-21 Days
-7 quests
-22 treasure chests opened
-Times defeated in battle 9 (Yeah, that may seem like a lot, but I really didn't want to use the easy mode) The battles are great in this game, anyway, and are worth repeating in order to figure out how to improve your strategy for upcoming battle restarts.
-Easy modes used 1 (I had not choice because of a little game glitch that Ryner has since fixed)
-2 Daily missions complete (I had my attention on the main quests at hand, honestly. Had I paid more attention to those daily missions, I could have had quite a nice, or nicer than I already had, stash of goodies)
-Gambling Games played 23 (That was a very easy to play and fun mini-game. I even played so much in one day that I was told I had to come back later. I played it ten times in one day. )
-Matching Games won 6
-Fireflies caught 5 (there were hard to catch, I must admit. Sometimes, I would walk right over one, and I wouldn't catch it. I wonder if you have to be coming at them from a certain direction?)

I ended up with 6 Goblis!! (You can never get enough of those.)

Great game Ryner. Lots of fun. Well-made. Worth playing. Very cool battle system. Minigames were great. Puzzles were nicely done.

If you haven't checked it out, you really should!!

I love how it keeps tracks of your little stats for you as you go. Remember to check your quest journal too!

Have fun with it!

[Ryner]

Re: Available NOW!... Simple Man's Quest for the Playground*

I'm glad to hear people are enjoying my game, it means a lot. And all the feedback I get will only help me to make improvements.

-Fireflies caught 5 (there were hard to catch, I must admit. Sometimes, I would walk right over one, and I wouldn't catch it. I wonder if you have to be coming at them from a certain direction?)

I checked out the fireflies right after reading this, and found that one of them was incorrectly set to "Action Button" as its trigger (meaning the player would have to press the space bar to capture it). I changed it to "Player Touch", as it should be. Thanks for the info.

It's a little tough to see the little mistakes like this that the game has. Even through my playtestings there were things I never noticed until someone brought them to my attention, but I'm grateful to the people who spotted mistakes and alerted me to them.

[simple man]

Re: Available NOW!... Simple Man's Quest for the Playground*

I finished it! wooooo!

*** SPOILERS ***
The game was great, i laughed, and i had fun. the game isnt some crappy game thats making fun of my past, its a good short but sweet game and i had fun playing it, sadly the cliffhanger got me, i want to play more! i know you had a deadline but i am stoked to see what the ending is once your ready to make it!
*** END SPOILERS ***


10/10

[Ryner]

Re: Available NOW!... Simple Man's Quest for the Playground*

Once I'm done with finals in Mid-December I'll have a few weeks with lots of free time. I'm planning to put a good amount of work into finishing this bad boy up. I'm considering restarting the blog I did when facing the deadline since I think it helped me focus on the project, but I haven't fully decided yet. What I can say is that there are still a lot of additions to make to the game. Just about everything in the game is going to be improved or expanded: more loot, more abilities, more quests, more random town events, etc. But there are also a few totally new things that will be in the final version, key features that I had always planned on having but had to cut in order to meet the deadline. They are:

A real conclusion: The ending in the contest version was literally thrown together an hour before the deadline. Though the cliffhanger revelation of the villain and his minions is canon, nothing else is (the "To Be Continued in Simple Man's Quest 2 part was a joke). The Forum of Judgment is going to be a much larger end-game dungeon with multiple bosses, events, puzzles, and a true conclusion to the plot.

Challenge bosses: Special, extra-challenging optional boss battles with no risk, no easy mode, a unique reward system and unlimited attempts allowed. Not including this in the contest version was especially frustrating for me, as the bosses were already in the game and only needed to be balanced.

Crafting: It's possible to get ore as loot in treasure chests, and although they're only vendor trash in the contest version, there are plans for an entire crafting system accessible through Vonwert's lab. The house decorating system (something I'm a big fan of) in the contest version is so small because I had planned for the player to craft most of their furniture, but you'll also be able to craft equipment and maybe a few special surprises.