FableQuest: Origin of the Phoenix Knight is one of my most developed projects. It's an action/adventure RPG that combines the exploration elements of many Legend of Zelda games with a real-time RPG system. If you're a veteran DC member, you could think of it as Lost Valley, but with a bigger focus on storytelling.
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THE PLOT
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The game takes place in Megatia, an obscure continent far from the shores of mainland society. It is inhabited by a large variety anthropomorphic citizens - everything from kitsunes to talking birds - who have built several distinct settlements in order to harvest the riches of the earth. At first glance, Megatia seems like a typical fantasy world with friendly characters, but your journies will reveal a darker side of this land that could threaten its very existence. Every city is held together by the military and political grasp of the Imperium, a seemingly evil force that is necessary in order to keep the peace and prevent civil war among citizens of different races.
The story focuses on Ikkin, a kitsune woman with a strong heart and a relentless desire to help those who are in need. Much to her surprise, and to the surprise of others, she quickly learns how to fight effectively with swords and use other fantastic abilities. It will be up to the player to help Ikkin discover who she really is and what her role will be in the things to come.
Except for the main character (who was created by one of my good friends) and some of the sound effects and monsters, the content in this game has been created by myself. The graphics have a simplistic level of shading to keep with the old-school feel and to pull off an interesting art style in general. The music is being composed with high-quality soundfonts and will be in OGG format when the game is released.
With a variety of items and skills, tons of monsters to fight, secrets to explore, and bosses to defeat, it is my hope that FableQuest will be an RPG adventure to remember!
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PLANNED FEATURES
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A vast overworld map with over 256 areas to unlock and explore, including hundreds of underground rooms, indoor areas, and secret passages
A variety of useful skills to learn in four different categories: Passive, Sword, Magic, and Summon
Over 80 different types of items, each with its own effect or purpose
Three distinct towns with a variety of services, including shops, inns, training areas, libraries, item mixing, and spellcasting
Hundreds of enemies to fight, from simple insects and forest creatures to surreal and completely bizarre monstrosities, and even powerful and intelligent soldiers
Dozens of unique dungeons put your mind and sword to the test, each one longer and more challenging than the last
Colorful, cutout-style graphics and expressive animations
A high-quality soundtrack with over 65 minutes of beautiful music
A compelling story that embraces many classic RPG conventions, while deconstructing others in a unique way
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SCREENSHOTS
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First of all, thank you to everyone who gave me advice in my last devlog. I've decided that I'm not going to sell the game when it's finished. The most I will do is request donations on the website where I host the game.
That being said, I've been picking away at various parts of the game:
- Added a couple new minibosses in underground areas, since they were fairly boring in the past
- Modified the mastery version of Demolitions so that the player can throw bombs as projectiles in addition to laying them on the ground.
- Divided the overworld map into two separate frames to save on loading times. The eastern half contains all of the new regions after the Solar Temple plotline.
- Implemented the Dive skill. Basically, it allows the player to enter underwater areas by pressing Enter over certain bodies of water. From here, the game transitions to a side-scrolling perspective where the player can swim around freely. Kinda reminds me of Ecco The Dolphin.
Aside from that, I'm taking a short break from the project while I prepare for language schooling in real life. I shall return to work on it at the end of the month, though.
So I had a talk with some of my play testers a while back, and a lot of them are starting to agree that the game is good enough to sell. I have thought about this sort of thing in the past, and I'm cautious about selling FableQuest as a commercial title for several reasons:
- Lack of original sound effects and heavy use of royalty-free, "use this as long as it's not for profit" sounds. It would take too long for me to go through the game and replace the copyrighted sounds with completely original ones, and they won't sound nearly as good.
- The in-game music uses soundfonts/instruments with copyright/credit terms. (Though I could probably avoid this one by distributing the soundtrack outside the game for free.)
- References to other games and franchises, including Doom, Mega Man, and Neopets, among other things.
- Use of characters that were not of my own creation (i.e. personas and the like). While I'm sure everyone I borrowed characters from would be perfectly okay with it, it'd still feel weird making money off other peoples' creations.
- If the game is sold, it will no longer be classified as freeware, so instead of being a fairly big fish in a small pond, it'll be a big fish swimming with even bigger sharks.
However, I have realized lately that my wife and I are likely to have some financial difficulties, so the thought of selling my games has been a lot heavier on my mind. I might be able to strike a compromise between what my heart wants and what my family needs by requesting donations rather than flat-out selling it for a set price. At least that way, players who really feel that I deserve a reward can provide it at their own discretion. (To avoid any legal problems with this system, I would mask the donation process as being for my website to keep it up and running, not necessarily for the game itself).
What are your thoughts on it? If I request donations, how can I go about informing players of this while avoiding legal reprecussions?
After the Solar Temple plotline (which is the 33% mark of the game), I'll be introducing another feature to keep things interesting: Allies.
At certain points, the player will have a second character accompany them that helps them fight monsters. The ally's behavior is really tight with the player's, in such a way that they're really more of an extension of the player rather than an independent fighter (kinda like the Ice Climbers from Super Smash Bros, if you've ever played that). If the player doesn't attack monsters and decides to flee from them instead, their ally would do the same, and when the player attacks, they'd attack similarly - with different attacks of course depending on who the ally is.
If possible, I want to try and find some sort of pathfinding tutorial for MMF2 so that I can figure out how to make allies weave around obstacles with the player, rather than constantly moving in a straight path to each destination. I haven't had much luck so far, but fortunately it's not absolutely necessary to continue.
I've got all of basic AI coded. Also, at the moment, allies can take damage, but they have infinite health, and the only downside to them getting attacked is that they're knocked back for a split second. I'm not sure if I should stick with this, though, so what I could probably do is add Kingdom Hearts-styled health bars to allies. Fallen comrades wouldn't die, but would be incapacitated for a minute or so before getting back up to fight.
So somebody on the TDC Community Project thread linked to some really neat articles recently on Gamasutra. The articles explain some neat tips and tricks for action adventure game building:
Basically, it talks about some things you can do to align your player's motivation with the main character's so that the player actively wants the protagonist to finish their quest. It also goes on to describe how to brainstorm and analyze the flow of your game through different kinds of charts and diagrams.
I took their advice and tried my hand at developing a table of FableQuest's gameplay flow. It's in the attached screenshot.
Basically, this table is a chronological timeline that analyzes every piece of the game where the main quest is updated. It goes from the start of the game to the point where Ikkin first reaches the White Weewoo, the main base of operations for the pirate NPCs.
Of particular interest to me is the New Features category. My aim is to provide a constant stream of new skills, abilities, and gameplay mechanics to keep players involved and interested in what will happen next. If all goes well, there should never be too wide of a gap between new features, and if there is, I should balance it out through other means. (Oh, and the white boxes in that row indicate optional new features, while the green ones are mandatory for the player to continue.)
Another side note: The "Tone" of the game is not how I expect the player to feel, but how seriously the game takes itself during a certain point. I'm inclined to believe that the story has taken itself pretty seriously so far, which is all the more reason to go for a more lighthearted tone between the introduction of the Pirates and the fourth dungeon. After the terrifying experience of the Solar Temple, I think that it would be a nice gesture to provide the player with a bit of comic relief before their next dramatic dungeon crawl.
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Strife 
A vast overworld map with over 256 areas to unlock and explore, including hundreds of underground rooms, indoor areas, and secret passages
I've decided that I'm not going to sell the game when it's finished. The most I will do is request donations on the website where I host the game.
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