Monster Puzzle RPG - My Game

So I released in the last few days a game called Monster Puzzle RPG. It's my third game in the Android Market. It's not successful so far, though. I made it together with my cousin, he told me about an interesting mechanic he wanted to pursue and, after some convincing, I went along with it.

Download Monster Puzzle RPG on Android Market!

Monster Puzzle RPG on ModDB!

Let's analyze the game(our own game xD), then.

Gameplay
The main mechanic of the game is a grid. A grid of blocks where you have to destroy the blocks and rotate the screen to get an advantage, so you can avoid AND attack the monsters. It's feels quite puzzle-ish, which is why it has the puzzle in it's name. To reinforce the puzzle aspect, I decided to grade the player based on his score and allow the player to retry the stage freely to increase his rank, similar to Angry Birds.

A picture of the puzzle-battle thing

While not inside a puzzle-battle, you proceed through the story in a visual novel manner, similar to games like 999. This way of telling the story was chosen because it's easier and faster to make, since we are indies, but even so it's still an effective way of telling a story, I believe.

We went for an sort of addictive gameplay thing where you kinda wanna make yourself unlock the S rank in every stage. Not sure if it worked, though.

Story
We went with a traditional medieval theme and a story about a treasure hunter that's looking for an specific treasure. I think that it fits well with the puzzle theme and that isn't integrated in to the gameplay yet, I suppose. The story is light-hearted and develops as Soleil, the main character, interacts with his companion, a little girl by the name of Ciel. They are both happy people, so the story stays warm through the demo, but if we continue the game it will go deeper in to darker themes.

Graphics
We went with pastel colors since we find that lighter on the eyes, so light colors are seemed though the entire game. The graphics are mainly vectorized stuff. We're not graphics specialists, but the game still went nicely, we believe.

Sounds
The sound effects are generic stuff, but they fit well. The music was compoused my cousin, who's really amazing and managed to create some cool songs for the game. We went with MID stuff, which kinda limited his potential, but the musics are still great and might justify a download, I hope. He used a program called Fruity Loops Studio

So there you have it! So the game still isn't successful(we hope we can turn that around), but we do not thing the game is faulty, it's just a matter of exposion.

Ludum Dare - Report 3

So the competition itself ended. It was a new experience, it was pretty cool to make a game in a day(I didn't use the 48 hours), I implemented everything I wanted(although not as much as my first ideas).

The game isn't all that pretty, but I guess it fits in to Ludum Dare!

Here is my entry, in case you wanna check it out:

My Ludum Dare entry!

One of the things that made me sad is the lack of music. I can't make it myself and it's against the rules to use other's songs. Oh well.

There's an impressive amount of over 750 games! That's so cool!
Now I'll proceed to rate some games and I'll post about anything that catches my eye!

19/12/2011

Lonely Island: a game heavy on atmosphere, good use of Unity, good, fitting, graphics. Sad story. I like it.
Quiet Player: this game has good graphics and sound, it's also well done, pretty well constructed, with a clear goal, beginning and end.
Lonely Robot: amazing gameplay features for the given time, it feels like a quite complete platforming game, although the camera is bad. Good graphics and sound too! Solid.

I've rated through 8 games, there's much more to come!

 20/12/2011
Alone: witty and creative gameplay. kinda cool. Bad theme fitting, though.
Copy Killer: Best game so far, amazing gameplay, good graphics, interesting puzzles. Lack of sound though, still great! Great take on the theme too! Got the first five stars for theme!
Ending Messages Suck: simple game mechanic but good enough. Charming puzzle-like!

I've gone through around 20, 25 games by now! Tuesday's games wore better than monday's...

Copy Killer is really great! Give it a whirl!

21/12/2011
Abandoned: awesome graphics and concepts, good gameplay, good representation of the theme. One of the best!
Alone in the Mansion: good game, maybe a little bit short, nothing groundbreaking, but it does it's job.
Drink Alone: innovative, interesting take, but not too good on the theme. Everything is good, too.
Dungeons of Solitude: solid Zelda-ish entry. Not innovative, nothing big on the theme, but great game with awesome pixel art graphic!
Final Trip Soccer: innovative, good take on the theme, great graphics, one of the best. The gameplay mechanic is slightly broken, though.