I did Ludum Dare again! Ludum Dare 56 to be exact. The Big Battle for Tiny Mouse City was my entry, and I got it “finished” about an hour before the cutoff time.
It’s a short little RPG that takes less then 30 minutes to complete. You run around gathering party members, and grabbing weapons to fight the final boss. If I’m being honest, there’s not much here that hasn’t been done in a RPG before, and I’m sure another game has done the “Party of a dozen characters” gimmick before as well.
This writeup covers my thoughts on the experience, where things went well, where they didn’t, and what I’d do differently if I could.
If you want more context, I suggest you play The Big Battle For Tiny Mouse City first.
The Design
This was my first time doing a game jam solo. As a result, I decided to use RPG Maker MV. The RPG Maker “engine” is a weird one. It’s been used to develop some cult classics, including To The Moon, and Fear & Hunger. It’s also mostly javascript, the editor crashes more than anyone could want, and I have a hard time trying to get it to do anything complex.
For a game jam, though, it offered huge advantages. It comes with a complete structure for making a classic RPG, has placeholder art and assets, and there are a large number of community-developed plugins. It also made it very easy to create a web-hostable build.
So with engine decided, and the theme of “Tiny Creatures,” I decided I wanted to do a classic RPG. The twist was that instead of leveling up, you just get a massive party of characters. In my mind, this was gonna be like 20 characters in a party. After a reality check on the level of effort per party member, I cut it down to 12.
My loop was going to be simple: run around and talk to people to add them to your party, find weapons and equip them, and then fight through a few enemies on a quest to get to the final boss.
So around 12:00 on Saturday, this was my design document.
The Implementation
And here’s the finished product. As you can see, it’s actually pretty similar. My initial idea was that the game would have two “halves”, separated by a mid-boss, and then a final boss at the end. In between, the player would recruit new members into their party, pick up weapons, and fight a few trash mobs.
That said, quite a few things changed between the initial idea, my incredible design document, and the final game.
The first big thing was the starting room, or Tutorial Room.
After I continually failed to equip weapons when playtesting, I realized that players would also mess it up. This is important, because it is impossible for any character to deal damage without a weapon equipped. So I made a room that forces the player to find a sword and equip the sword to leave it. This opening has the subtlety and grace of truck nuts, but from the comments I’ve seen on the game, I think it worked.
It also has a little bit of info about where the player can find a special party member. It’s a small clue, but hopefully it helped someone.
Once the player exits the room, they’re immediately greeted with a path that leads to an enemy encounter. After the enemy encounter, they reach a NPC that joins their party. Again, mallet over the head. But given the short length of the game, I wanted players to immediately understand the recruitment mechanic, since all but one of the mouse characters on the map will join the player once talked to.
Side Note: Initially the friendly mouse next to the fight was actually off to the side, but a friend of mine walked by them in play-testing, so I decided to force the player to interact with them.
One of the big things I really want to talk about is the tan path.
I added the path in passing, but it ended up being perfect. The path leads to 3 things: two special mice, the Healer and Alchemist, and the game’s mid and final bosses. The path grounded the game, which otherwise was just a bunch of square green rooms. If the player follows it down a route they haven’t gone, they will find something new.
That said, I wanted the player to explore a bit, so there’s a bunch of weapon chests and recruitable NPC’s just off the path. There are also a few very direct instructions to look for things off the path, and places where the player can see something off the path from further away. The most obvious was the sign above.
Still, it does bring me to my biggest failure in the game: the mid boss.
Conceptually, I wanted to have a big mean rat that gives a speech in the middle of the town, with their acolytes flocking around. I wanted a whole little cutscene, and build up, to keep the player interested.
But I didn’t get the time. Even his battle and world sprite are pretty last minute.
This is a problem. From a player retention standpoint, the mid boss is the first “big” exciting thing the player sees after the start the game. It should be a moment that encourages them to keep playing. But as it stands, it’s pretty dull. There aren’t really any “Big” moments after him, just a few more fights, and some treasure.
So what should have been a “Oh, I can’t wait to see what happens next” moment, turned into a “I’ve seen enough, time to rate the game” moment.
That said, I’m much more pleased with the final boss.
Catmagedon has their own theme music. They have their own big scary overworld sprite. They have a little tiny cutscene before the fight, and I pumped their damage high enough that they actually feel scary to fight.
They’re probably the high point of the game, and even with the wonky menu, and weird interactions, I think they probably felt fun.
Lessons Learned
One thing I learned from this experience is why RPG’s don’t usually have a party over 4: it makes the game quite a slog. I actually cut all enemy HP by about 20% late on Sunday because fights were taking too long. I didn’t want people to quit out of boredom. It’s a fun gimmick, but I don’t think it’s a good way to model a mob of characters.
The second thing was that I am always biting off more than I can chew. I thought I could do a single map RPG with no leveling up in 3 days. I still had to cut a player character, custom tile maps, face plates for dialogue, most of the mid boss, and 2 enemy types to finish on time.
It was also a good reminder that players don’t know anything you don’t tell them. I occasionally grouse about over tutorialization, but it’s necessary.
It’s also an interesting opportunity to look back at my previous entry and ask if I’ve used any of those lessons learned. I think the answer is yes. I was much more consistent about tutorials, and beating the player over the head with mechanics.
What would I do differently?
I should have forced the player to save before the final boss, in case they died. I also wish I’d “smoothed” the map design a bit more. Specifically, I wish I had pulled parts of the map in closer together. Here’s an example.
I’ve already talked about the mid boss at length, but I think I know how I’d fix him now. While I’m happy with most of the art, I wish I’d done a second pass on the player sprite to fix its left/right direction, and its ears.
Conclusion
For someone who spends so much time on unfinished projects that never see the light of day, it’s nice to actually complete something for once, even in an imperfect form. I hope people have some fun with it.
I’m not sure that I’ll return to the game in any large scale, but I may make a “directors cut” version with some fixes and quality of life changes after voting finishes for games.
That said, we’ve had 3 weeks of “not game reviews” on the blog. After this last post, it’s time to return to your regularly scheduled blog posts: those of games and game reviews.
Thanks for reading and thanks to anyone who played my little game.