A Hero's Retirement 1.1: A New Look

Ok, I just started the game, got lost and met the fox. What should I do to make progress?

Hmm where are farmer maggot’s pigs for orphelia? I can’t seem to find them? are they supposed to be in that fence area?

Two are out and about the main hub area.
One is in a building

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The librarian will help you out if you ask them.

Also, speaking of annoying quests, fuck the will-o-wisp hunt in the basement

Echoing the complaints about the map, too much empty space. My other issue is the boulder chase sequence when doing Elaynes 4th quest, theres too much happening at once that it’s near impossible.

Thank you all so much for your feedback so far!

The biggest issue is clearly the town size, with all the empty space making it easy to get lost. I’ll have to think about if I can pare things down somewhat, just not when I’m running on 4 hours of sleep. In the meantime:

I edited the game to include this map next to Aisha in the library, hopefully it should help a little.

Also, I took out some of the magic circles on the boulder chase sequence, since @Skiddash confirmed my worries that it was too difficult. Should be a little less hectic now.

@onipuck , I’d be happy to hear specifics about what you found annoying in the will-o-the-wisp hunt, since there’s so many parts to that particular quest. If enough people share your opinions I can consider making changes.

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I’m on the will-o-the-wisp hunt right now, and…wow. On the one hand I’m impressed, because I’ve never seen a maze anywhere near as large or difficult in any game before. I wandered around down dead end after dead end for 10 minutes before finding my first one. On the other hand, I don’t know how much more time I’m willing to sink into this before I call it quits. It’s a definite difficulty spike compared to the other little minigames so far in the game.

Edit: Got all the will-o-the-wisps; the rest wasn’t as terrible as I thought, given how beating the warp puzzle (while that’s its own special kind of frustration) unlocked quite a few all in a row. The whole thing took me about 30 minutes, while the rest of the game up to that point took about 1 hour in total. Not sure if I’m uniquely bad at mazes, or just got unlucky considering I tried the right side first, which is just a whole lot of dead ends. Or maybe I missed some hints somewhere along the way?

Anyway it does seem like it’s a big step up in difficulty but I’m still genuinely impressed by it. How did you go about designing such a complex maze?

Anyone got a key for the will-o-the wisp puzzle? Just in general the minigames in this game range from pleasant zen to keyboard smashing bad, given this is the OP’s first game i will complement the girls in this and overall story, but GODDAMN do the mingames need a change(or a complete removal).

I did manage to get past the boulder sequence, after the game glitched and a boulder clipped through me somehow, which let me just focus on not getting hit by the lazers.

I like the idea of the game and how each little quest help work with each other and some of the joke are funny like the fox one but the map need to be smaller because there is tons of space and you can got lost easy also some of the puzzle like the basement maze need to be shorter or add a hint or two to it like one of the four Statues can be Different and that show you the right path.

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Wow just finished this game. Loved it. Great characters, great references, great humor and great weight gains. Only took about an hour and a half to beat, but was worth it.

Alright just finished the game. Honestly, Amazing. I hated nearly every quest because it’s like you took the definition of tedious and frustrating with half of them, be it random-feeling gambling and mines, exploring a stupidly huge map to find tiny objects, or navigating time trials and mazes. But in the end, I had more fun than most rpg maker games, even ones with combat, and honestly loved it at the end of the day. The characters were really enjoyable, especially the girls lmao. I like that you had a lot of freedom in what order to do things (until the end I guess), and I’m curious if there’s any reason not to do a certain choice at the end (im not replaying to find out lmao). Genuinely a 10/10 game. Also, gotta love the healthy mix of beer belly, mASSive, and stupidly huge girl. Only complaint is I couldn’t make the other two bigger, and that the Inn is still standing >:(

The specifics for why I hate that basement are the excessive size of the maze, and the warp puzzle.

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I enjoyed it! Good sprite work and music, as well as some moments that made me chuckle.

Echoing the general sentiments on map size, it felt like you had attempted to scale thing based on the character’s sprite size as opposed to keeping things relative to the prop and scenery sizes, which explains all the sprawl (and conversely, it’s kinda weird how we as gamers have gotten used to twee buildings and level spaces, so much so a to-scale building looks freakishly enormous now)

That basement was obnoxious though >_<

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Now that I finished the game I did want to chime in and say there’s a lot to love here! The dialogue is great, I enjoyed the jokes, I didn’t run across any bugs and was never at a loss for where to go for the next quest (didn’t need to use the library, but it was good to know it was there in case the need arose).

It’s a solid game, I’m looking forward to seeing what else you work on in the future!

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Yeah, really shot myself in the foot with map size, huh? I figure, let’s keep the game simple, just one major map! So it’ll need to be a reeeeal big map to fit everything, right?

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I could argue since the town is kinda set in the boonies, it mirrors real-life places I’ve been where you need to drive 30 minutes to find a freaking gas station. But then, who would actually enjoy playing a game like that?

Difficulty was a worry for me. I didn’t want combat grinds in this particular game, so that means the puzzles have to be SOMEWHAT interesting, and you can only push around boxes/boulders/trash piles so many times. So I kinda threw everything at a wall to see what stuck. Honestly expected the most frustrating to be G-Card and the Fool’s Road.

I think the main problem with Isis’ Basement is a lack of distinct landmarks. @Circlesquarer I just auto-generated a maze, made clearings where I wanted will-o-the-wisps and their puzzles to go, and made a path from the entrance to them. Then I took out dead ends and made others shorter so they wouldn’t lead too far away from the goal. You find a wisp if you just keep heading right, left, or up, but I realize it REALLY doesn’t help that the passageways all look so similar. And they could be wider.

Warp puzzle gets easier once you realize you’re really only choosing between blue or green to move forward. Yellow tends to take you back a room, and red warps you out of the maze.

@DolphinsRWeird Thanks, glad someone got some of the references!
And if anyone really wants a really timely reference, you might want to take a look at one of the tombstones…

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You know, it’s funny you mention that!

I toyed around with an idea where Yuu accidentally knocks over a candle or something during the heist, doesn’t care enough to pick it up, and when the heist is over the inn is ablaze and Yuu finds it hilarious.

Left it out because it would take a lot of work, and seemed a little dark and cruel for Yuu’s character. I still think it’s funny, though.

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this looks super interesting and I’m totally gonna check this out sometime, the idea with one major map to fit everything is really interesting and I’m intrigued how it’ll be handled!

Not well, friend. Not well.

Think it’ll be awhile before I’m close to your level of game design.

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Pretty solid on the whole, only real complaints is the map size and the labyrinth being a pain, but those are less flaws and more just kind of annoying. G card was a bit annoying until I realized the tells. I really liked how all the quests were tied together.

Also, Mad Bull 34 is not a reference I expected to see.

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