The Hero will be Mine (temp name) - A prototype for the 9/2021 Gain Jam.

Gain Jam Gain Jam 9/2021
1

Hello there everyone! It’s your friendly chair here (formally known as Lurker#2106) and I’ve managed to complete… something for the Gain Jam!

Wanted to work on this a bit more than I did, but I just didn’t have the time. Life as a chair got in the way. Regardless, I’m fairly happy with what I did finish, and it should at least be interesting for everyone, so without further ado, I present to all of you… “The Hero will be Mine.” Or, well, that’s what I’m calling it at the moment.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to put any of the story into this prototype due to time, so I’ll give you all the rundown here. Basically, Silk, the new Demon Lord, is very fond of humanity’s new hero, Liliana. So much so, that she wants to keep her in her castle. However, when the hero can Smite the demon lord instantly no matter how strong they are, getting the hero of humanity to not kill you is a bit difficult. So, Silk comes up with the plan to slowly reduce Liliana’s mobility until she’s nothing but a fatass that can’t even lift a finger against her. That way, Silk can fawn over Liliana without worthy of either murdering each other.

In the game, you play as Silk managing you castle. Each of the castle’s 6 rooms can house a main obstacle for the hero to come up against, and the potential for a reward. These obstacles can be traps such as dangerous fireballs or tempting foods that test her stats, or battles that test her fighting prowess. These obstacles will serve to fatten up the hero and prevent her from wanting to continue through the castle that day. The goal is simple: make Liliana too fat to move without killing her, or getting killed yourself.

Of course, Liliana can make her own decisions as well. If she’s too full, she won’t want to fight anymore, and she’ll also pay attention to her health and leave if she’s too injured. Furthermore, if she has a strong enough will, she will train in-between visiting the castle, in order pass the obstacles you set. Getting her fat enough is about manipulating her behavior to do what you want. You can also upgrade these obstacles to be more effective.

Honestly, it’s a bit hard to explain everything that goes into how Liliana acts, but here’s the basic rundown:

Taking damage, and being full makes her want to leave. Furthermore, falling for traps also makes her less motivated to storm the castle that day. However, if you ever want her to continue, gold can be put in chests for her to pick up, increasing her motivation. However, be careful, she can also use that gold to buy things that make her stronger…

Finally, I wanted to go through the various tools you have at your disposal, just 'cause the prototype doesn’t have any explanations as to what things do.

  • Fireball/Arrow Trap - Does damage to Liliana if she fails a Intelligence check and a agility check. Check is harder and does more damage at higher levels.

  • Large Meal - Liliana will eat this if her willpower is low enough. Makes her fuller. Grants more fullness and harder check at higher levels.

  • Enchanted Cake - Liliana instantly gains weight if she eats this. Will based check. Check is easier at higher levels, but weight gained increases drastically.

  • Skeleton - Basic damaging enemy. More enemies at high levels.

  • Slime - Stuffs Liliana with slime. More enemies at high levels.

  • Imp - Makes Liliana gain weight. More enemies at high levels.

  • Gold - Motivates Liliana and gives her money.

  • Cursed Ring - If she wears it, she’ll get a penalty to her willpower.

And that’s about it. Sorry for the wall of text to explain. It’s becoming a staple of my gain jam entries.

Oh, one final thing. I had almost 0 time to test this for bugs, so SAVE OFTEN. The game is also barely balanced at all. I was, at minimum, able to complete one playthrough before I submitted, so it’s at least possible to beat, and I honestly found it pretty easy. But I’m the dev, so it’s going to be easy for me.

Either way, Hope everyone enjoys!

SS1
SS1816×623 127 KB

SS2
SS2811×621 130 KB

Mediafire Link
Mega link

28 Likes
2

I really like the concept and love the gameplay, but I have 3 major issues:

  • I’m accidentally able to place infinite skeletons for free
  • how do I get more MP
  • why is the tutorial here and not in-game?

edit: fourth issue, lots of bugs and junk, which really hold it back. The hero got stuck on the wall eating cake, turned invisible after beating an imp, and I am basically able to summon skeletons and cake for free at random places, but sometimes those break the game. Also, it deleted my meal, which was upsetting, with no refunded MP.

3

It’s a great idea and has lots of promise.

Though there are quite a few bugs.

  • Some rooms don’t refund mana when changing to nothing
  • Some rooms will have a large meal placed despite choosing nothing
  • Room 2 (Courtyard, the one with the trees) breaks when placing magic cake - that field becomes non-interactable and the hero turns invisible when using it. Her returning works, but her choosing to continue softlocks the game
  • Room 3 (First castle room after courtyard) won’t let you update - nothing happens

There’s also no explanation in-game, or an introduction, or a setting.

Edit:
Also, starting the game produces this thing:
image

3 Likes
4

Heroine-fattening Yuri hi-jinks are good civ. Coupling that with tower-defense?

I’m sold.

Excellent concept, fun to play, and I look forward to seeing more, after you have a well-deserved nap, and get the bug-spray out, of course.

3 Likes
5

It is a darn shame the bugs are so numerous because I really do love the game! I wish I could give it more of a critique but I was having to circumnavigate content to find things that weren’t bugged in order to play. What I did manage to play, I really enjoyed!

Well done on entering, much like you, my own entry has had the misfortune of needing its tutorial in a monolith of text on the page so I know exactly how you feel in that regard! Best of luck to you I hope you will be able to release a bug free version at some point!

2 Likes
6

One again, would like to apologize about the amount of bugs the game has. The days I wanted to use for testing and bug fixing went out the window 'cause of irl stuff, and I ended up needing to rush the final stage of my development. That said, thank you all for the kind words despite this.

@Muffintopmanor1

  • Not a bug I expected, but again, lack of testing does this sometimes. Sorry about the issue.
  • Ah, that’s something I forgot to mention. You passively gain more MP as the hero gains weight. However, there’s some one else you can feed to upgrade your mana capacity…
  • Because of time constraints. I wanted to put in an intro with a full explanation, but I literally finished my only test run of the gameplay about 5 minutes before the deadline, so no time.

@Kitsune
Some of these bugs are certainly interesting 'cause they’re based on common events, which apply to every room. Could be some sort of goblin in the code I didn’t catch.

Not sure why that last bit is happening though. Might be something with RPG maker itself, 'cause I didn’t exactly use anything fancy for this prototype. I also made sure to run the build once and it didn’t give me anything weird.

@Shatteraura
Thanks, wish I had more time to bugtest too.

As for those bugs, while I am planning on continuing development on this game following the Jam (after quite a bit of time away from it), I’m planning on re-building the game from the ground up. The major reason why there are so many bugs is due to how the game was built, which was itself a result of the rapid prototyping I did. To lift the curtain behind the demo a bit, each room is actually 7 different rooms, one for each possible obstacle you can place (including nothing). Each one has it’s own eventing to make everything work, either than a few common events that make up some of the most basic functionality. As a result, the game is a spaghetti nightmare of events and variables, which is what’s causing all the bugs.

That said, I might try to do some bug squashing just to have a more playable version done before I start doing the rework. But we’ll see. Working with this spaghetti nightmare is a pain.

5 Likes
7

Other bugs/extended:

  • Imp in room 1 (entrance) causes the game to softlock as the hero does not appear. Probably spawns in the wrong room. That seems to also be the cause for Room 2 (Courtyard) cake
  • Placeable Items (Gold, Ring) may disappear from the room they were placed in and appear in another depending on the monster/trap chosen (Observed with Room 3 (Entrance) and 6 (Last), with Cake in 3)
  • Right-clicking (choosing nothing) on an event will place the last used event free of charge, but only if you haven’t placed anything there before (Place Cake in Room X, enter any empty room, interact with the monster/trap, right-click)
  • Cake breaks the hero’s movement path, softlocking the game in most rooms

On another note, at the start of the game, placing a single monster in room 1 will make the hero exit in either room 1 or 2 (if 2 has a trap), but only placing a ring in 1 and only traps in all other rooms will make the hero run through the entire dungeon and kill you.
Based on the information that traps reduce motivation, that behaviour should not work. Though it may also occur due to the placement-glitch mentioned above.

8

Yeah, at this point I’m definitely going to focus on just re-building the thing rather than fixing the current implementation. Some of this behavior seems weird; though, it’s possible that what’s happening isn’t what you think. Either way, it’s going to be easier to just remake it all properly instead of dealing with all the nonsense.

Thanks for the feedback regardless. At the very least, it’ll let other people playing it know what they’re getting into.

5 Likes
9

I give up I can’t play the game every so often the heroine collides with the wall of the first room and does not pass the first day, the enemy number 1 of the heroine is the walls
looks very promising but gameplay is nil or I don’t know how to play it

11

Not sure what you mean by that. I tested the first room just now just to be sure, and I didn’t see her get stuck on any walls. The only obstacle that soft-locks is the imp, and she doesn’t even appear at all there.

The game is definitely a buggy mess, and I don’t have the time or energy to fix it atm, but I would like for you to see what does work. If you could describe to me more clearly what you mean, I might be able to help.

1 Like
12

I’m not sure what version of RPG Maker your using, so this advice might not be applicable, but for future reference I recommend using the “Skip if cannot move” checkbox in the “Set Movement Route” event when programming autorun events. That way, even if the character doesn’t move exactly as planned in a cutscene or whatever, the game can at least keep going and not lock up every time something gets stuck or caught on something.

13

I thought about doing it at the start of development, but back then the paths were so brain-dead simple at the time that I didn’t bother. It’s annoying to click that box Every. single. time, so I don’t do it if I don’t feel it’s necessary. It also helps me understand when something goes wrong on a playtest. Nothing like soft-locking the game to tell you that you’re having issues.

By the time I realized that I was having trouble with paths, I had so many that it was pretty much impossible to enable that setting on them all. It would have taken more time then I had.

What I really should have done is cut the pathing entirely in favor of something I knew would work. But in my rush to get done I didn’t even think about that until just now.

1 Like
14

2021-10-04 (1)
2021-10-04 (1)1072×602 79.4 KB

15

I see, just found the conditions that cause that. Don’t use the meal with the chest in that room. When she eats the food with the chest there, the pathing prevents you from continuing.

Should you have to do this? No. As I’ve said, the game’s in a sorry state thanks to some design choices I made, and the game paid for it. However, if you want to see more, change it to a different room set up. Not all of them are broken.

3 Likes
16

Like the game, didn’t have many of the same bugs everyone else seems to but that probably because I figured out how to break the game kinda of early.
Put a cursed ring in the first room(Entrance), Hero always gets it. (Or she did in my play testing.)
Put a skele in the room after that. Then in the third room put a feast and upgrade it to the next level. With the ring on the Hero always failed the will roll and went back to town after.
I eventually put a gold chest in the skele room so the Hero would get enough motivation to get to the feast room.
After that you can sit back and run a few days giving all your mana to the other lady till you get enough to replace the skele with a imp and upgrade it. You almost always win after that.
That said you don’t get to enjoy the slow growth if you do the imp method.

Like I said, love the game but the balance is not really a thing right now.

2 Likes
17

Yeah, ring is pretty much OP atm. It’s what I used for my test-playthrough. Though, I didn’t use the imp at all. Decided to leave it as-is just in case removing it makes the game ball-bustingly hard. Would rather people be able to casually beat the game with an exploit than no one be able to beat it.

Glad you enjoyed it though. Planning on making this my main game project for the next while 'cause I’ve felt like I needed a smaller game thing I could work on. Taking a break this week 'cause I’m burnt out from the jam, but I’ll certainly be starting back on this next week.

3 Likes
18

This project is interesting to me because you could make it tight and focus on the core loop or add in more options and content and I believe that the game would be good if taken in either direction.

It’s a good base idea to work on is what I am getting at.

19

I’m planning on doing a bit of both. Have a bunch of stuff planned, but I want to focus on getting this version down before I go off working on other shit for it.

And yeah, I think it’s a good base as well. I’ve had this idea for months, but didn’t do anything with it 'cause I thought it would be too hard to implement. Then I got the basic room system working and basically went “shit, now I have to do this.” I’m excited about the story aspect as well. It’s a shame I didn’t have time for the story stuff either.

3 Likes
20

Update on more issues/testing:

  • I accidentally spawned infinite cake in the bottom right room, and the hero breaks if she eats it
  • I spawned a fireball trap in the dining hall, and the hero, without me touching the throne, came and fell into the trap infinite times forever
  • I placed 2 imps in a row and the hero instantly became immobile and I won
21

Yeah imps are pretty broken, too op