Wanderer [RMVX]

Wanderer
a game by max mcgee

Wanderer resembles a traditional RPG in terms of its mechanical gameplay (although its systems are heavily customized from the default RMVX systems) but its setting is everything but traditional. It is almost impossible to reveal any info about Wanderer's story without risking the possibility of spoilers. Wanderer is an atmospheric and introspective fantasy adventure and character study, looking at the effects of a reality storm- an idea pilched from Neil Gaiman- on a very old and very powerful being known as a Wanderer, and exploring the effects of that Wanderer's proximity on more finite beings (your party members).

Previous projects I have made have focused on challenging and unique gameplay, complex mechanical systems, and dense story telling. Wanderer focuses almost exclusively on graphical presentation and accessibility to players who have not been able to get into my previous games. For this reason and to increase the chance of completion, it is also one of my least ambitious projects.

As I mentioned in the capsule description, Wanderer takes a traditional fantasy setting and throws it in a blender. The game's scope does not involve the sound and fury of the blenderizing itself: instead, we are looking at the quiet aftermath of a reality quake on an entire multiverse. The fantastic world of Wanderer has become populated by lost souls from other realities, adding elements of historical fiction, science fiction and modern horror into the game. Wanderer is not a sequel or prequel to any of my games, and no knowledge of any of my previous projects is required to enjoy it. The connections are tenuous at best, but if you do happen to have played my other games enough to remember certain obscure characters and side plots, or dangling loose ends, that will eventually inform your experience with Wanderer and should enhance your enjoyment. The game is meant to work on two levels, so that a simple character introduction for new players could be an "oh shit" moment for fans.

Wanderer began development in mid-June of 2009, and was meant to be completed in one month. This did not happen, and its new release date is: when it is done. Like all of my projects, there are only two things that can sway its development rate: my whims, and your level of interest. The latter is more important than the former.

Inspirations for Wanderer were primarily Neil Gaiman's The Sandman and Stephen King's Dark Tower series. On a level of aesthetics and atmosphere, Visions and Voices was also somewhat of an influence on this project.

As always, feedback is actively solicited. I am all but begging.

Screenshotimagepictures

Known issues (This Demo)
*I am having some problems with the music. Namely, a small number of high quality mp3 tracks (from Lost Odyssey) that were working fine on my old Vista laptop seemed to fail compatibility with RMVX on my Windows 7 laptop. The only workaround I was able to well, work, was converting them to wavs which fixed the problem but slightly increased the size and, because I used a shitty free-conversion program, cut off the last 33% of the tracks. All this results in is that some of the "loop" transitions on some of the BGMs are less smooth than I would have liked. This will be addressed in future versions; for now it should really be a minor thing.

*Especially in the early game, battle difficulty seems somewhat more effected by random chance than in most RPG Maker games I have played. I have got my butt kicked from attrition in the first five fights (not to the point of game over) or breezed through them barely taking a hit on different playthrough. If the beginning of the game seems tough to you, before you go "LOL Legion Can't Balance Battles" you should consider the genuine possibility that you may just have terrible luck. I don't think this problem will happen to you though. Wanderer is one of the easiest games I have ever made.

*Any other bugs or issues or quirks are news to me.

This Demo

This demo contains the first 15-30 minutes of the game; the introduction, the introductions of the first couple party members, several maps worth of exploration and battles, and a cutscene/cliffhanger. Since the basics of the Gnosis system are all present, it is possible to amuse yourself much longer, depending on the equipment you find, fighting enemies to draw out the innate skills of your weapons and improve your characters' powers. It all depends on how much you enjoy the battles; right now there is not much mechanical depth (the beginning of the game is meant to be EASY AND SIMPLE) but it will develop later on.

The demo is somewhat large for its length, largely due to some issues I had with MP3/RMVX compatibility when switching operating systems. The good news is the filesize should not increase much from this point as the game grows (though I have included absolutely no unused music to be respectful of people's connections and hard drives) and additionally 50 MB shouldn't be overly much in this era of cable connections and 100+ GB hard drives.

Credits:
*KGC in a big way for scriptage.
*Probably Craze for some advice given at some point or another.
*Especially aprilschild for the awesome title screen. It would probably be even better if I hadn't demanded she do it no more than five minutes, a ridiculous demand she was a good sport about.

This demo requires the RMVX RTP.

This demo requires the Cambria font to display text correctly but to my knowledge Cambria should be included on most computers by default.

Readme

Wanderer is many things but it is not prototypical. It has plenty of gameplay features not native to VX. While none of these are super exotic-- they're all things you've seen in an RPG Before--you will probably want to read about their functionality here.

-Quickness and Evasion-

Your Evasion rate is a direct mathematical function of your Quickness (Agility) score. Heavier armor reduces Quickness as it increases Toughness (Defense), hence possibly reducing Evasion, a tradeoff of damage reduction for evasion rate. Similarly, heavier helmets increase Toughness at a slight cost to Wisdom (Spirit).

-Equipment Skills and Powers-
In Wanderer, only rarely will equipment have no effect beyond modifying your stats/abilities. Most equipment allows your character to learn a temporary skill while it is equipped, and magical equipment additionally grants fantastic powers, such as regeneration. As in most RPGs, only certain characters can equip each class of equipment. For instance, as a soldier Jack can equip many classes of weapons that the main protagonist cannot.

-GNOSIS-
Like FF7's Materia System or the skill learning system in FF9, many skills are tied to equipment (although each character has a handful of innate skills with them for the entire game). In addition to EXP, characters earn Gnosis from battles which let them learn some equipment-tied skills permanently, keeping them even when they change equipment. Unlike in other games, Gnosis can also be earned by interacting with objects in the environment to learn more about the game's setting and story. Not every object has a description, but this is a way of rewarding compulsive examiners. : )

-Aura Bursts-
Limit Breaks by any other name. One of each character's powerful, innate skills is locked until their "Aura Bar" is full, then they can unleash it in an Aura Burst, a very powerful ability. Of course Aura Bursts aren't just straight clones of Limit Breaks; they occur somewhat more often, their effects are not quite as battle-swayingly dramatic, and there are other ways to fill them besides taking damage.

-Differing Character Types: Immortals, Mortals, and Ferals-
The main character is strikingly more powerful and higher in level than the other PCs that join the party- this is intentional, and while the main character has up to 300% the EXP and Level of other PCs, various tricks (such as Racial Traits that act as Passive Skills) are used to equalize them on other planes. Mortals are less powerful than Immortals but may have unique abilities or capabilities that make them invaluable. Ferals cannot be controlled directly in battle or equip any items but are very powerful for Mortals. Although it does not come up in the demo, the maximum party size in Wanderer is eight characters.

Wes Edit: Read all that? Good. Click here for the GL link, or here for the RMN link, which seems to want to name the file with an extension of .download instead of .rar. You'll have to fix that yourself until they fix it on their end.