Small Saga - a rodent-based RPG - and a quick write up of Itch.io challenges

Here's a demo to an RPG that I've been working on for the last year or so:

sketchylogic.itch.io/small-saga

The final game will eventually be a downloadable exe, but I wanted the demo to be playable online to maximise the number of people who would be willing to play it. Here were some unique challenges I had with making an online demo version:

1. Streamed music files wouldn't play consistently, so I had to make all of the game's music pre-loaded sounds. Not ideal, but it worked.

2. Itch.io has a 500 file limit for online games, although apparently this can be increased if you ask nicely. My demo was pushing this limit, which meant I had to get rid of a lot of superfluous assets. Anyone hoping to make an enormous online game for itch.io should be wary of this limit.

3. Some players turn off hardware acceleration in Chrome for screencapturing purposes, but this effectively disables WebGL. So I had to put in an "if effects enabled" check to give those people an error message that instructed them to try another browser, turn on WebGL, or download an exe version.

4. My dialog system works with text files loaded with AJAX, but I switched to just using giant global strings to remove the possibility of the dialog breaking for someone with a bad Internet connection.

its great game. congratulations.

Just WOW. Safe to say this is the best game I'VE seen in construct 2. You should live stream your development it'd be great for publicity for your game. No critque's for me. Have fun developing it.

Awesome! :) you have obviously put a lot of work into that! Very impressive.

Awesome game, I've shared with my colleagues and they love it. We look forward to your kickstarter in June.

Thanks, all.

My only critique would be to add more animation frames for Verm and other characters. Your art is so good, that it was marred by too little # of frames, making the walking animations not smooth and too fast/slow for their movements. (but maybe this was because of the itch.io limitations?)

My other minor critique would be to have the movement obstacles (or walls) more smooth. It didn't feel good moving Verm around corners, sometimes he would get stuck.. it didn't feel like good movement. Getting 'caught' on an edge is what I am talking about. Since it's not a platformer it should be really smooth movement.

Good points. I had to stop polishing the demo (otherwise I would have been working on it forever), but I will go back and improve these things once I've produced some more content.

Also seems like a very ambitious project if you are to end up delivering a full game. The amount you will have to implement seems really intimidating! you probably need to put in up to 8-10 hours of gameplay?? or more?

Actually, 8-10 hours is exactly what I'm aiming for. It is an intimidating amount of work, especially since I've committed to not padding it out with random battles, but I've got a good grasp on my work speed. Another 2 years of development should be about right to see the game through to completion.

yeah about 2 years sounds about right.

as far as the player movement goes, check out this video by one of creators of Dead Cells and how much work went into making the the user experience smooth. youtu.be/LtBNffzWhf4

good luck! announce the kick starter here!

Kickstarter running : kickstarter.com/projects/sketchyjeremy/small-saga

Bumping for visibility because kickstarter funding ends soon and some may want to pledge. It's had a late surge and looks like it will be funded yay!

congrats on being backed! — are you working on this as well?

congrats on being backed! — are you working on this as well?

hehe nooo I have nothing to do with this but I have pledged my support. I like seeing projects like this using Construct! I am currently making a much less impressive game than this! :)

Thanks all! Looks like I'll be developing this for the next couple of years!

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