Hey Newgrounds!, long time without an update, so here's a thing:

Just finished a quick GAME project, a little 'RPG' battle called 'Arcane Cereal Duel'!
Take a look!


 

Now I'll expand a bit about its making:

This one was originally created for 'The Very First Extra Credits Game Design Jam!' I had missed the Ludum Dare jam the previous weekend so this was a good alternative.

The inspirational theme for this game jam was a video where they talked about the concept of "Awesome per second". What's that, you ask?, well it's pretty much a critique on games that could deliver a better overall experience if they were shorter by getting rid of boring/less memorable parts.

After exploring a few ideas I liked this one as a way to make a content-heavy short game where there were a bunch of elements around you and you had to find the best way to use them in your favor, in some way like a Point and Click, but in battle form.

The game was made over a weekend on the 48 hour jam, barely finished a functional version, (the original one is up on itch.io if you're curious ). I liked the results, so I took some time I had through the week to update the graphics and a few details I wanted to improve from the first one, testing, dialogs, and a slightly varied enemy pattern.

I worked once again with Construct (3), which I've found great for the graphic implementation, I wasn't so sure if the battle system could be easily achieved, and after a few tests it became all about using variables properly, using only mouse controls made it a lot simpler too.

If the characters look familiar to some extent, they are the 2 wizards I rescued from a previous short animation from 2017 called 'Ketchup Golem'!, now called Wizlog and Spirk, an RPG battle was a great excuse to revisit them!

A fun fact, this is the first game where I actually make the music!, it took me a bit to tinker around, and I finally used ORGMaker, this one was originally created by Studio Pixel for the music of Cave Story, so I wanted to see what could be done with it. I don't have much of a background on this area. Possibly any oldschool RPG player may be able to tell that the battle theme is created following the same structure of old Final Fantasy Battle music.

It was also fun to toy around with simple dialog 'cutscenes' in the style of old rpgs, I like how a simple change of expression, along with a sound and dialog can do a lot to compensate for its simplicity. 
 

While in the short term I want to focus a bit more on animated content, this game was a pretty fun side project with still a good deal of animation.

What do you think? Is this something you'd like to see more of?