Isekai/Online: Beta Test Blues (MFGJ Summer 2020 Edition)
A downloadable game for Windows, macOS, and Linux
Isekai/Online: Beta Test Blues is an introduction to the story of Deedee Yeowoo and her guildmates in Another World Online: Mundane Fantasy Historia, the most popular VR MMO of the Virtual 2040's.
Somehow, without warning, when she and every other member of the North American Chimera server tried out the new DLC, they were instead mysteriously translated to the game world as their characters - at first level, and with only the most basic starter equipment...
And oh, yeah, this is how Deedee found out she was really a girl. It's complicated.
Now she and her friends are five of around 500,000 players dropped into the world of Mundus alongside the people of Viacrux, the starter city with a canonical population of 256,000.
One month in, tension between and within the "AWOl" Adventurers and the native Mundanes is spiking. Debate over whether to escape, to make a new life, or to study Mundus for its own sake is starting to turn ugly, even violent - with Deedee stuck in the middle.
Even worse, the new DLC introduced errors - glitches that have deadly consequences in a game where death is normally a slap on the wrist. Our heroes have to investigate these Glitch Sargassos, and hope if disaster befalls them, there's enough left of them to respawn in town...
She doesn't know if she can prevent a tragedy - but Deedee and her friends have to try, right?
This proof-of-concept demo features:
- A party of queer disasters lead by a freshly-hatched trans girl
- Original concept by Talia Belser with additional scenario and character concepting by FoxHana
- Concept art by Ruka with final production designs by Emma Glaze
- Dialogue trees with choices and consequences
- The beginning of romance paths with each other party member
- Variables tracking the eventual multiple endings, depending on if you favor the "Stay," "Escape," or "Analyze" factions
- Unique pixel art for the main characters generously donated by O5:30
- An original OST by Bibichu with original sound effects by Arin Eakins
- A combat system based on that of Valor: Heroic Roleplaying, and intended to be part of a pitch to the license holders to develop a video game adapting those rules, designed by me and implemented by Ben "Benbjamin123" Brown-McMillen
- The debug room we didn't patch out yet
In future releases, we will be expanding the game out to include more dialog, the first romance scenes, a dungeon with a final boss and an epilogue in the free port city of Viacrux, and - to support development and my devteam - an optional voice acted edition with an artbook that will cost ten dollars ($10.00 USD).
From there, we will backfill content to the intended start of the full game, and then consider porting it to an engine that better reflects the strategy RPG origins of Valor.
Thank you for visiting Mundus! We hope you enjoy your stay. If a problem persists, please contact [̸̤̈Ṉ̷̀U̷̫̾L̴̗̇L̸͎̀ ̸̤͠A̶̞̅D̴͍̉D̵̜̈R̵͙̒E̶̙̒Ş̷͌S̴͔͗ ̶̟̽P̷̻̚Ǒ̴̭Ḯ̷̲N̸̹̊T̶̪͑Ẽ̸̲Ṟ̵̽]̸̢͐ with your bug report.
Download
Install instructions
Download the file and unzip it. This shouldn't require the MV runtime program files, but here is a link just in case.
Development log
- I/Oquest and the future of I/OAug 06, 2021
- v1.3.0 "Eranda's Love" releaseMay 05, 2021
- I Didn't Have Time To Write A Short Postmortem, So I'm Writing A Long One, Pt...Jul 31, 2020
- Version 1.2.0 "The Glory of Scherzo"Jul 27, 2020
- Game breaking bug found, patching nowJul 27, 2020
- Version 1.1.1Jul 26, 2020
Comments
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The writing was very good, but i really disliked how it was so much. Don't get me wrong, I love me a good lengthy story, but it seemed to drag on way too much, even at the very start of the game. Being stationary all the time just reading instead of exploring or fighting was boring to me personally, and I would love for the same writing to be used more scarcely or being able to talk unprompted and a bit more optional.
Having some experience with RPG maker as well (I loved using it to make short games for myself), the background is very confusing in my opinion. Misplaced cracks that should only be in walls ( I found cracks on poison water, a lake and on trees).
The combat is interesting, but the tutorial being exclusively text and throwing you straight into battle was boring. Experimenting with this battle system is fun, but without a good first experience with it , i couldn't really pay much attention to what everything did.
It is a very solid prototype, and i would love to see it becoming a full fledged RPG! Congrats on your game, and i hope you will keep updating it!
Edit : On the beginning scene, I would advise to make a blank map an insert the trigger for the scrolling text there instead of using a premade map. That way there won't be any weird transition.
Thank you for your candor!
It is pretty overwritten right now; this is something we want to address going forward. Right now it's almost all exposition that we can cut down on once the events the characters are alluding to actually happen on screen. I have an idea of how to make it more naturalistic that I'll use for the eventual 2.0 release, which will also help tie it into the hidden variable tracking I implemented but didn't have time to use for path and romance routing; specifically, I was thinking that Deedee should add Ace to her party and go to the individual other party members around camp to address their questions.
All of the bizarre visual stuff is absolutely intentional and I will not be changing it, except possibly to add more animated strangeness. Recall that the entire reason they were going to the temple of Io was because it was glitching out. Having more areas to explore will make that clearer, since only the Temple of Io and some places that are the same level of bitrotted will have the same deliberately misplaced effects.
The tutorial could definitely be more natural and this is another thing to address and rewrite for the 2.0 release.
Presently we are using a more-or-less blank debugging and initialization room for the scrolling text; having it scroll on a parallax background was my intent but it didn't work in this version.
Thank you again!
As someone who didn't read the description beforehand, starting the game really startled me, then gradually understanding the stuff made me laugh (the writing was that good!)
And the fighting is very thought out too, you can make so many combinations with them. Although I understood the battle mechanics after a few turn, still just a little tutorial of what certain options do would be nice (Since this game has some potential, I think you would add them in the future?)
Btw, I lack intellect, so didn't understand what the meme sound at the end was all about!? Was that the end? Or did I mess up?
The most interesting thing was the plot, I would certainly love some more of it!
The game we have is mostly exposition; the fact that the writing carried it anyway is one of our proudest accomplishments, and I'll pass that praise to Hannah.
A better tutorial for the combat system is on the short list of changes on the Road To Being Able To Charge For This. As mentioned, this was an attempt to adapt the tabletop RPG Valor: Heroic Roleplaying to RPGMaker as part of a pitch to license it for I/O, with mixed success (and I'll address that in the postmortem; this is going to have serious post-game changes). If you enjoyed the combat in this, please consider taking a look at the vastly superior source material!
I don't know what you mean by "the meme sound at the end." Could you get me video of what you're talking about? It's possible you encountered a bug, particularly if you weren't on Windows.
Oh, we absolutely plan to expand the plot - first to the actual end of the quest with an epilogue in town, and then backwards to the planned start of the full game.
I would definitely love to see the game in full version!
And yes, I meant the comedy theme you mention earlier, meatball parade. I thought that was kind of taken from certain failed songs and stuff. My bad.
Including Meatball Parade specifically was definitely me meming - specifically, a lot of the MMO specific comedy was inspired by the misadventures of Drakanous, GoldenTot, and their free company NEST in FF14 (links frequently NSFW). I thought you meant a sound effect.
Fun fact: I actually wanted to ask Drak to voice Hikaru, before I realized that I should probably offer Hikaru's voice to someone else for reasons that aren't in the game yet.
Ah, you encountered a softlock! I've since patched that out, here: https://taliaellib.itch.io/isekaionline-beta-test-blues-mfgj-summer-2020-edition/devlog/165360/version-120-the-glory-of-scherzo
One new bug: My Patron name is NekoIncardine, not NekoIncarNAdine. You got the word it's based off of right, actually, but my name's a bit shorter because I screwed it up when I was 12 and rolled with it forever :V
Overall, a very flavorful prototype that gets a fair bit communicated fast. I hope that mouse controls persist into future versions, as that is one of the stronger points of newer versions of RPGMaker!
Mouse controls are an important accessibility feature that I'll remember to retain even after this stops being an RPGMaker game.
I apologize for getting your name correct incorrectly! I'll fix it in the upload tonight.
New thoughts, from the POV of someone who knows Valor well:
1) Later versions *absolutely* need a more detailed tutorial or set of them.
2) While the two make absolute sense IC'ly and is called out, I feel like two of the party having the Compulsion flaw feels off gameplay-wise - it breaks the combat flow significantly. A clear marker that they need to act or lose Valor would also be desirable.
3) Deedee best girl for sure!
1: Agreed. This suffers from being a proof of concept and I intended to have a tutorial later in this, but we ran out of time.
2: I'll see about replacing it on Hikaru. We tried to implement glowing/pulsing menu items but couldn't make it work yet; but we will add this going forward.
3: She's doing her best.
A new version that fixes a softlock, and introduces a tutorial, is up! I also took your advice and removed Ace's Compulsion, replacing it with Uncoordinated (for those who don't speak valor, she has an Evasion debuff). https://taliaellib.itch.io/isekaionline-beta-test-blues-mfgj-summer-2020-edition/devlog/165360/version-120-the-glory-of-scherzo
Initial thoughts: combat flows interestingly as a Valor player. Turning this into an RPG using Valor techs, without it actually being tactical/grid based is a challenge, and it makes sense. Throwing combat in without tutorial tips might be harder to understand for players who don't already innately know the system it's based on.
Bug report: Alesha's Cover skill shows up in the Support menu, and has no tooltip text.
Feature request: Explain Compulsion beforehand, and have the Support tab glow/be highlighted somehow when it's necessary to be used.
Overall, a good first showing. Excited to see where the project goes.
All good points that I'll try to address going forward. I'll see about adding some event dialogue to that fight to tutorialize Compulsions, and about making stuff that wants to be used glow or catch the eye.
One of the reasons I'm considering moving away from RPGMaker for the commercial game is to make tactical movement a thing. There ARE plugins for it and I wanted to make it tactical, but the plugins are either incompatible with Yanfly Engine or have incredibly bad documentation, so we ditched that idea as unfeasable in the scope of a 14 day game jam.
Thanks for the bug report, will try to address those before the jam ends and put up a 1.1.1 version.
Added version 1.2.0, which fixes a softlock and adds a tutorial! https://taliaellib.itch.io/isekaionline-beta-test-blues-mfgj-summer-2020-edition/devlog/165360/version-120-the-glory-of-scherzo