Do you think anyone would play this? Here is the plot I came up with:
Plot of quest1: In the land of Samyhr, the ambitious sorceror Avegast, in his quest for knowledge, performed a ritual to call a being from the land of Nestaxas, another dimension. In doing so, he unwittingly tore an opening between Samyhr and Nestaxas. The inhabitants of Nestaxas are now coming through the opening to corrput Samyhr to their own evil ends. Avegast went mad and has not been seen or heard from after the ritual he performed. He left clues on how to call beings from Nestaxas, and it is up to you to find what he left behind to seal the rift between the two worlds. Hero's name: Soraen
I don't even know what to call it so i called it quest1 for now.
Should I just give up or do you think people would play this? It's going to have shitty graphics and I'm using adventure game studio with my own sprites and such with my own original crappy MS paint things and names so I don't run the risk of getting sued for copyright.
Alright, I'll try a beta on it. Should be ready in a week or so.
Asher Diaz
As long as it's entertaining, yes.
Julian Reyes
>Do you think anyone would play this? For free? Sure. Especially with that art style, don't expect to be getting much money out of it.
If you are actually looking at turning it into a functional game, though, you might want to spend a bit more time thinking about what the game offers people to play it. If the story is unusually good, or the game is unusually fun to play, then it might be worth trying out anyways. However, you've picked perhaps the most generic story with the least comprehensive names possible, so you're not doing yourself any favors.
That said, I would still recommend trying to put together the first town or so and making the game playable. You can learn a lot just from doing, even if the concept isn't that great, and can pick up some tricks that will help you in later projects.
Nathaniel Powell
please change all the names
Easton Walker
I used fantasy name generator, got any suggestions? I thought the plot was solid but I was iffy on the names
Elijah Roberts
>you've picked perhaps the most generic story with the least comprehensive names possible yeah i was worried about that
Luke Ortiz
I think the ms paint art style is somewhat charming, at least for the overworld. Starting area looks like shit. If you want it to be a financial success or at least popular you have to memeify it like undertale or baldi's basics.
Oliver Cooper
I'd recommend putting more thought into the names and making them more memorable. A fantasy generator can work when you immediately need a name that doesn't really matter. It's fairly poor when you want a name that the player will remember over the next 8 hours or so of playing.
I'd also recommend removing all the unnecessary y's and extra vowels to make the names more recognizable. Unless you want the name to stand out with a distinctive y, it's more distracting than anything.
First, what is the most distinctive feature of the world worth mentioning? Or, if that's too vague, what is the most distinctive feature of the area or country?
Jace Collins
It's a rough draft really. I am not looking to enterprise this, it's like writing a book for me. I just want it to be entertaining. I was hoping to get tips on names and plot ideas and maybe a good program to make sprites.
Samuel Wilson
Thanks for the advice. I would think the most distinctive area of the game would be the chasm. Like you would have to do something hard to cross it.
Joshua Stewart
the art style is actually charming because it's obviously made using MS paint or some shit, but it still looks well done. it could look cool if you have a lot of graphics whether animated or not, but a point and click usually has you staring at the same unchanging screen for eternity, so i'm not sure it's going to look that great.
Oliver Lee
The chasm looks like it's on the south continent. The most distinctive part of the northern islands seems to be the desert. Is that natural, or caused by all the demons coming out?
Jayden Cox
My first thought was that I needed a desert in there somewhere. It sort of evolved into the swath across the world.
I suppose I need a place where the magician made the rift between the worlds. Like a volcano or something.
Asher Rivera
I thought the rift was at location 17, given that is the ending.
Well, the starting kingdom is the greenland area north of the desert. North Greenlands. Nauthland. Or just Nauth. That sounds like an appropriate fantasy name, and is fairly easy to remember. You could have Eastern Nauth, where the castle is, and Western Nauth, with a lot more wild territory. That sounds like something which should be easy enough for a player to remember, even later into the game, and it would help to keep a distinction in their head between the starting area (Eastern Nauth) and the second area (Western Nauth).
Well, it sounds like it works for my ear.
That's typically what I do with fantasy names. I take something common, I screw around with it a bit, and then I treat it as a fairly normal name. "Nauth" sounds normal enough to be spoken and understandable, but is different enough that players won't think you're automatically saying "western north". You could even throw in a few extra consonants like "Naulth" if you prefer.
Your main castle could be the Nauthland Castle, perhaps with the main character being Norman of Nauth: something that's fairly easy to remember, and helps refer back to the main castle. Especially if it's the only city starting with the letter N.
Kayden Reyes
here is what i was thinking about the hero animation - like the hermit from tarot cards
Either way will work. In most games like this, the main character is a rather ordinary smuck who has to rub the magic orb to solve the problem, although you could go with a magician as the main character instead. The biggest concern is that, as a magician guy, players are going to expect you to be able to do magician things like cast spells. So keep that in mind when designing what they can do, and perhaps the game systems themselves.
Ryan Garcia
Well that's the main idea. I was going to make it so the hero (who is also a magician) can gather the clues that the other magician did to make the ritual that opened the portal so he can fix it.
Like real references from ars goetia and hermetic tradition for the meat of the plot. I just suck at making names and animations and such. My vision is to keep it simple graphically but with a compelling story line.
Kevin Campbell
the hermit tarot card is like an old man helping others as well as himself seek knowledge and enlightenment. i'm not sure what that has to do with your story.
Ryan Peterson
Exactly and he's the guy who's compelled to fix the world and also has the skill to do so.
Jose Martinez
i mean he's more commonly known as a messenger, letting others know the coming of danger. he isn't usually the hero, but you can obviously do a spin on the tarot symbolism. i would just expect more tarot symbolism if you're going to do a spin because otherwise it just seems like an incorrect reference imo.
Gavin Walker
Understood. Do you have any other suggestions for a protagonist in the tarot context? Prince of disks maybe?
Nathaniel Cruz
About the only other advice I can offer at this point is to try to avoid empty rooms, or at least only use them when you have a purpose for doing so. You might have a bunch of empty screens for wandering across the desert, or an empty hallway connecting rooms, but I've seen a lot of games like this which make a "big" castle and then don't bother to fill it with anything, meaning you only visit about two rooms inside. It's far better to have a smaller space with at least one distinctive (and preferably important) thing in each room, than a larger one with a bunch of empty rooms.
Xavier Bailey
thanks user.
I'll make a thread in a week or so with a rough draft of the game and hopefully i'll get some constructive criticism like this
John Parker
uh well i'm no tarot expert but often times The Fool is actually the protagonist. but the reason i offered you to do your own spin is because i considered that your evil sorceror guy could be considered The Magician. The Magician is often interpreted to want to bridge the gap between heaven and the earth, and your sorceror guy seemed to have bridged the gap between some hellish dimension and the one they reside in, which is a similar but opposite concept. i'm just saying if you want to have some tarot symbolism you should double down on it, but you can twist the symbolism however you want as that's what good stories often do.
Carter Price
The sorcerer is not evil, he just unwittingly made a mistake and went mad and got out of dodge. Like Crowley did.
I figured that the Hermit was the humble, wise person who saw the world going to hell and did what he could to close the gate.
Ryder Taylor
an interesting concept perhaps is that you play as the hermit and you know of the danger and go on the journey to fix it, but learn far late into the story that you aren't the one that can actually fix it and the fool however he plays a role is the one that will fix it. that's just an example and puts a lot of emphasis on the tarot symbolism however, and you may want to be more creative and only have loose symbolism. you might want to think about if you want the tarot interpretations to guide your story or the other way around.
