Project: Heart Forth, Alicia
| Project Started: |
28th January, 2011 |
Last Update: |
11th January, 2014 |
| Project Owner: |
 Alonso Martin |
Project Members: |
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| Project Type: |
Platform Adventure |
Project Progress: |
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| More Info: |
http://www.hfalicia.com |
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40 |
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| Project Overview |
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HEART FORTH, ALICIA is a platform adventure with RPG and Metroidvania elements.
STORY
In the sky, above the clouds, there is a small floating island named Auster. Along with its uninhabited twin island Quilth, Auster is the last piece of land that survived the great Catastrophe that destroyed the Old World.
There is a small village in Auster named Brenia, an old settlement dedicated to the magical craft. Alicia and Höstra, the two and only young apprentices in Brenia, live happily with the rest of the grown-ups. They are the only children that haven’t died at birth in decades.
One day, a certain god appears. It kills and devours one of the wizards. The young wizard girl and her best friend flee to the neighbouring village Florenia in hopes to bring help. However, Höstra, apparently under the influence of the god, attacks Alicia and throws her off the Edge of the Island.
Below the Island, under the clouds, there is only the Void—the place into which the Old World fell after it dropped from the skies hundreds of years ago.
Alicia wakes up in the Void. She is alive. She meets a couple of mysterious people who seem to know more than they show. With their help, Alicia sets off into Éliadin in search for a way of returning to Brenia.
TECHNICAL INFORMATION:
The game will feature:
-An involving story
-A carefully designed world that is easy to navigate.
-A map engine to help you navigate said world.
-7 magical offensive powers
-Over 20 special abilities and skills
-A defensive fairy
-Four offensive elemental fairies
-A night and day cycle
-A scheduling system that lets you set appointments and quests.
-An inventory system
-Some NPCs with 24-hour routines
-An in-game cutscene system
-Animated cutscenes (to be determined)
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Oh. My. Goodness.
By: Alonso Martin
On: 27th Sep 11, 02:47:23
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New screenshot & Happy New Year!
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Posted 11th Jan 14, by Alonso Martin
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3 Comments
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I was happy to find out HFA was included in a couple of upcoming games for 2014 articles! Thanks very much to the editors for including the game! It’s awesome for HFA to be listed among some very cool upcoming projects.
Indiestatik — Top 100 Most Anticipated Indie Games Of 2014
http://indiestatik.com/2014/01/01/indie-games-2014/
PC Gamer — The best PC games of 2014
http://www.pcgamer.com/2014/01/04/the-best-pc-games-of-2014/10
Otherwise, I took a few days off just bum around and enjoy myself during the holidays. Wish I could’ve gone to a sunny beach and enjoy piñas coladas, but maybe next year. Hope the holidays were great for you, and happy 2014! Many interesting things will be happening this year!
Uploaded a new gif!
Other than reminding of New Years, the Wind Festival is about to begin in Ivos City. Ivos is an area that was first shown in 2009, if you remember that old gameplay video. Unfortunately I can’t tell you very much about this place’s relevance to the game plot, but here is where everything begins for the main antagonist.
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Testing process & more game dev
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Posted 20th Dec 13, by Alonso Martin
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2 Comments
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It's been a rough few weeks! I had to move to a new apartment in the middle of releasing a build for beta testing, and almost caught a cold. Wasn't very fun, but things are a lot calmer now that I've been back to work on the game full time.
The story/plot was well received, which was something that was bugging me in the back of my head. There's been a lot of feedback form the testers. The main issues revolved around some game-mechanic comprehension and the early game’s difficulty curve. The game is not designed to spell out every aspect of the engine to the player. I’ve always liked games with mechanics that are never explained but seem to be working in the background. Or, for instance, I find it rewarding when I discover a mechanic I could perform right from the beginning of the game. However, essential mechanics should almost always be explained in some way, and I missed doing this with a couple of things.
One of these things was the level-up system: leveling-up increases your magic attack and your defense, but nowhere is this ever mentioned. Originally, you could only level up from level 1 to 10, so any level ups would change your stats right away and you’d definitely notice. However, long ago I went back and made the game support levels 1-99, so the effects of leveling-up weren’t as clear now.
To fix this, I implemented a small stats window in the inventory screen (pictured above) to show the player her/his growth as she/he levels up. DEF and MATK increase automatically at different intervals, and they now clearly tell the player something’s happening. However, now that there are clear stats, it seems a bit counter-intuitive that the player can't interact with stats other than using accessories (all those +0's are accessory/equip modifiers for stats). I think SOTN did this too: let the game handle stat growth, taking the trouble of worrying about this from the player's hands, so perhaps it's a good thing.
Another thing that popped up from a couple of testers was the length of the introduction. Right now, it takes about 30-35 minutes to get down to the actual game world. You do get control of the game from the start, but go through several cutscenes and a small dungeon to get to know the story, characters and game world. I've shaved off several bits of this 'intro segment' over the months, but it seems like it might be a bit too long still. Considering this is a story-driven game of sorts, I'm not sure if I'd be harming the game by cutting out more stuff.
The other option that's come up is to make the intro dungeon longer so that it feels like a full gameplay segment, and then the remaining part of the intro will feel shorter. I'm all for doing this last, except that it would take some dev time to make it. I'll have to design this first and see if it's worth doing.
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New website & screenshot!
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Posted 9th Nov 13, by Alonso Martin
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4 Comments
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It took a good 7 years for the site to get re-designed! Those of you unfamiliar with the older site won't be able to see the difference, but it's a big upgrade from what we used to have! There's a nicer way to display screenshots now, there's a neat background-cycle thing with modified in-game screenshots, and an improved developer's blog.
Check out the site at: http://www.hfalicia.com
I also released a new screenshot (pictured to the left or right)! In it, Alicia idles in the lower parts of the desert, with a shiny leafling that's waiting to be grabbed:
I updated and modified the older sections of the website, revamped the developer's blog, and will hopefully be adding some cool content as time comes.
I'm also contemplating the possibility of doing live-streams of certain parts of my development, but I need to determine how I'd go about not spoiling things. More importantly, a lot depends on the interest that people would have in such a stream. We'll see about that when the time comes.
Any comments and/or suggestions are greatly appreciated!
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Posted 3rd Sep 13, by Alonso Martin
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2 Comments
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The game’s walking as usual: a bit slowly, but steadily. I’ve recently been working on a boss named Näule. Can’t show you pictures of it yet, but I can show you the stairway leading up to its room.
Doing the bosses in this game is interesting because of how the game mechanics work. Though Alicia is a wizard with spells she can use from afar, she can also become pretty powerful in direct combat, so bosses must be designed to account for these two ways of attack.
Super Metroid and Castlevania’s bosses have pre-defined patterns, which is a lot better than a randomly-moving boss, but you can freely attack them at any stage until they die (granted, SMetroid is a bit more sophisticated than that). Doing it this way would make designing bosses easier, since you just design offensive patterns that the player must avoid, but I’ve found this developed design more interesting:
To compare, Zelda OOT basically has two patterns with bosses: 1) The boss is invulnerable: thematised mechanics with x amount of patterns that eventually put the boss in direct reach, after which 2) the boss becomes vulnerable: you can damage it and eventually kill it with your sword. Otherwise, the pattern repeats. I think every other weapon or skill doesn’t damage the bossses—they all work to get the boss close to you and your sword. There’s something satisfying about this kind of patterning. What I like about it is that it gives you just a small window to do any damage instead of being able to do it at any point during the battle. It feels more like a story to defeat bosses that way.
The difference I see with HFA is that you can damage bosses with your whip up close, but, opposite to OOT, you can also attack from a distance with spells of equal or greater power than your whip. I don’t want to exempt bosses from this kind of attack, since it’s very satisfying to submit them to the same abuse as normal enemies. I find it interesting how this forces me to design bosses that are built around that big advantage.
Anyway, on a completely different matter, I went to a gamejam a couple of weeks ago. It turned out to be really tiring, but fun! We had around a day to finish something, which is certainly more restrictive than 48 or 72 hours, so we were lucky to have anything wrapped up in the end. It’ll be fun to try something else in a future gamejam.
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