Ad Libelo
A downloadable papiertheater for Windows
Once upon a time, in a kingdom blessed by the faeries, lived two princes.
All his life, Second Prince Snow has been considered inferior to his older brother, the true heir to the throne. That is alright with him; he's never had designs on the crown.
Crown Prince's Valens' coronation is scheduled for tomorrow, and Snow has faith that his brother will find in him the heart to be a good king. He must - for if he does not believe in him, it would be as good as admitting the ugly truth he does not wish to face.
Unveil the curtains and dim the lights. The papiertheater's actors have a script to enact.
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THIS PROJECT IS A MESS! this is all i got after crunching my brain out and you can tell that battles were given little priority compared to maps and eventing and such. i'll clean it up when i'm less burnt out
Please note that this game contains mild blood and the usual casual approach to violence. You know, the usual.
also i tried to upload a web version but i have like 114 files too many. im eepy please let me live
Features:
- Turn based RPG battle system that mostly hinges on balancing cooldowns (needs heavy rebalancing)
- Currently one silly puzzle that my peers have tried to throttle me by the neck for. I thought it was funny so I'm keeping it as is until I get public judgement on it
- Side scroller parallax maps and original visual assets (currently roughs, currently using some RTP placeholders). The intention for the final product is for everything to be 100% original assets drawn by me! (I may or may not rescind this because RTP emote balloons are kinda already peak, but that'd be it).
- The current version is pretty barebones about identifying speakers (it's done via text colour) but I'll do portraits and expressions I swear
- Four (currently two) idiot fairytale expies who get into stupid adventures, play stupid games and win stupid prizes
- Will have alternate endings and ways to skew the story into something else entirely
- At least like. Five obvious Project Moon references. more if you're savvy. spot 'em all
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This game is an entry to the RPG Maker Themed Game Jam #10: Heir to the Throne, but wasn't finished due to time constraints (yes, yes, tale as old as time for me). Again, I am unable to release a full game for the deadline - for now, what is available is a beta that consists of rough assets and the first area. The next update should still use rough assets (hopefully phasing out the RTP), but come with the full story. After that should be the full polished version.
Plugins:
- Caethyril
- DKPlugins
- Fallen Angel Olivia
- Galv
- HimeWorks
- MechPen
- MNKR (ムノクラ)
- Quxios
- ShadowDragon
- Yanfly
- Zalerinian
Sound:
- (C) Bitter Sweet Entertainment
- (C) F.Takumi
- (C) RPG Maker - 2015 KADOKAWA CORPORATION./YOJI OJIMA
- (C) Hiroki Kikuta’s Music Pack: The Calm -2017 Hiroki Kikuta.
- Battle Theme commissioned from COLORGEIST.
Download
Development log
- post-release patch 217 days ago
- post-release patch 120 days ago
Comments
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Played versions 0.1-0.3, really cool seeing the later parts improving and changing!
I spent around an hour and a half in this demo (for one playthrough) and spent most of the first half exploring all the maps, talking to all the characters, and backtracking whenever the story progressed to see if there was more dialogue. Loved the little details in the background like the trains passing by and ducks moving in the pond, really made the world feel alive.
Reallyyyy liked the new battle music that came with v0.3, had it playing in the background for a good bit. Morgan appearing in the forest to restore hp and setting up shop was really helpful, especially if you forgot to buy purification crystals like I did in my first run. Alexander's additional skills made him a lot more fun to use rather than just being a meat shield and wide swinging every few turns.
I can tell that a lot of passion went into this, really excited to see what comes next!
(jumpscared by a certain shopkeep who hasn't gone to school yet)
Again, thank you so much for playing! Doubly so for helping with bug fixes/balancing/etc!
I've always wanted to make game maps that look pretty while serving their purpose... next step for these in particular would be to make characters that just walk by the roads to make them seem populated. One thing at a time and all that
The battle music only recently got delivered so that explains why I didn't have it out for .1, but it was well worth the wait! And yeah, having to consider things like pacing and refreshing the party (as well as realizing that locking the player out of a shop is a bad idea, even if thematically fitting) are stuff I'm slowly learning.
((redacted) jumpscare real. i needed some npcs to use as shopkeepers and he and Morgan got picked on impulse... i'm unfortunately quite fond of him. (redacted)-centric game one distant day, surely
Such an awesome proof of concept! I already love the setting and the character designs, and I can tell this is going to be absolutely gorgeous once it's finished! The puzzle you mentioned was a bit frustrating, but not as bad as I thought it would be, and didn't take too long to fiddle out. The final battle was tough stuff though! It took me 3 tries to get a good run, where Snow didn't get taken out immediately. I think it did a good job of challenging the player to manage their party and not just rely on brute strength though, which is always more fun than just trying to charge your way through battles. I'm really excited to see how this game progresses and where it all goes!
Aaaaah thank you very much! (I got some mixed responses from the puzzle but ultimately everyone seemed to figure it out eventually, so I'm pretty happy with it, haha.)
I appreciate the faith in the aesthetic of the game. Roughs were all I could manage, but I hope at the very least what I have conveys what I want in the final version. And yeah, people did tell me the final battle was a struggle, so it's been adjusted quite a lot since! Balancing combat is hard, I have learnt...
Thank you for the comment and for playing my game! I'll work hard to finish this!
It looks like there's a lot of art assets that'll need to be done, so I completely understand only being able to manage roughs for now- but I think it still does a great job of giving an idea of what everything is going to look like! Battles seem really difficult to balance though, I've been hesitant to dip my toes into it properly because of that, so I don't envy you. But again, I think you've gotten a really good start, in terms of forcing the player to be smart and not just brute force their way through! So I'm sure that you'll be able to figure out balancing with trial and error ^^/
I believe in you!! And I look forward to seeing it progress!