So I made a computer game.

[Amaril]

This is my first (though hopefully not last) foray into game development, and now I'm putting it up here. Made in the RPG Maker VX Ace engine, This Long Night is a short and very simple game about relationships and survival. Check it out, or don't--whatever floats your boat.

Dropbox download link. (https://www.dropbox.com/s/kmev75oumt6vme5/This%20Long%20Night.exe?dl=0)

After downloading the file, click on it, extract to wherever you want, open the folder it creates, and then click on the .exe with the fancy orange icon.

Any and all commentary is welcome and appreciated.

[Grinner]

Very well done. You made good use of the (standard?) assets, the game had a nice, tight focus, and you avoided the problem of too much exposition. And it was pretty darn fun too.

That said, there's a tree in the southeastern-ish corner which is missing its top half. Additionally, it would be nice if there were some way of telling the time. I'm not sure how that would fit into your overall goal, but the idea is to get to the end of winter, right? I got five or six trips outside before kicking the bucket, and I wasn't sure how to ration food pickups.

Speaking of kicking the bucket, a death animation (maybe just changing the PC's sprite to that of that NPC?) would help drive home the severity of failure.

The only other thing I'd point out is that 190 MB is a downright wasteful size for what assets you're making use of. Surely there's a way to downsize the game? Maybe drop the assets you're using into the DLC folder, reimport them, and don't package the RTP with the game. You may get more downloads without that barrier. At least, I know I was on the fence about downloading this. (Just tried trimming down some of the assets, and the game worked fine without the assets I deleted.)

Also, may I ask how you made the menu? The Luna Engine?

[Amaril]

Very well done. You made good use of the (standard?) assets, the game had a nice, tight focus, and you avoided the problem of too much exposition. And it was pretty darn fun too.

That said, there's a tree in the southeastern-ish corner which is missing its top half. Additionally, it would be nice if there were some way of telling the time. I'm not sure how that would fit into your overall goal, but the idea is to get to the end of winter, right? I got five or six trips outside before kicking the bucket, and I wasn't sure how to ration food pickups.

Speaking of kicking the bucket, a death animation (maybe just changing the PC's sprite to that of that NPC?) would help drive home the severity of failure.

The only other thing I'd point out is that 190 MB is a downright wasteful size for what assets you're making use of. Surely there's a way to downsize the game? Maybe drop the assets you're using into the DLC folder, reimport them, and don't package the RTP with the game. You may get more downloads without that barrier. At least, I know I was on the fence about downloading this. (Just tried trimming down some of the assets, and the game worked fine without the assets I deleted.)

Also, may I ask how you made the menu? The Luna Engine?

Thanks much :smallsmile: Yeah, all the assets are standard, aside from the title screen art and game over screen, which were done by a friend of mine. The menus were, indeed, made with the Luna Engine.

My bad on the tree, I'll fix it and re-upload the file. I'll look into adding a death animation, too--I made this for a class project, and didn't have enough time left before the due date to figure out how to make one. I did come across something online about cutting down the file size by manually importing assets rather than using the automatic function to import the whole RTP, so I can also investigate that.

On the subject of the time and the game's goal...well, you've hit upon something central to the point of the game. I don't want to just say it, because figuring this out for yourself as the player is kind of the whole idea, but I will give you this advice: pay attention to the fact that you don't get to choose how the food you bring back is divided up, and the fact that your partner almost always takes more than half of it.

[Grinner]

I'll look into adding a death animation, too--I made this for a class project, and didn't have enough time left before the due date to figure out how to make one.

You don't need anything too fancy. Wherever you do the game over processing (a common event?), I think you just need to change the player character's spriteset to a custom one in which each slot is the NPC's sprite.


On the subject of the time and the game's goal...well, you've hit upon something central to the point of the game. I don't want to just say it, because figuring this out for yourself as the player is kind of the whole idea, but I will give you this advice: pay attention to the fact that you don't get to choose how the food you bring back is divided up, and the fact that your partner almost always takes more than half of it.

Half...? I must have been playing it wrong...I think I systematically cleaned out the entire forest over the course of 3 or 4 trips, and the NPC never took more than a fourth of what I brought back. Before my last trip, I noticed he had upped his portion to seven. Then I just wandered around till I died.

[Amaril]

Oh, uh...that's actually because of a massive design oversight on my part that I only just thought of. I know how to fix it, though! Back to the editor!

Edit: Okay, that problem should be fixed.

[Madcrafter]

A bug: I came back from my penultimate trip with only two food, but when I went to share it, it said that my partner had taken three (and left the rest with me).

[Amaril]

A bug: I came back from my penultimate trip with only two food, but when I went to share it, it said that my partner had taken three (and left the rest with me).

Noted. I'll look into it. Thanks!

Edit: This bug has been fixed. Also added a death animation.

[Morph Bark]

Noted. I'll look into it. Thanks!

Edit: This bug has been fixed. Also added a death animation.

As someone studying at a game design university: this is good. Teachers always be asking about death animations.

[Amaril]

As someone studying at a game design university: this is good. Teachers always be asking about death animations.

Oh, hey, cool! I'm not at a game design university, per se, but it's what I'm doing my degree in.

Did you happen to have any other commentary on the rest of the game?

[Eru_07]

Looking forward to trying this, has it been submitted anywhere else?

[Amaril]

No, unless you count submitting it for the class project I originally made it for and then sharing it on my Facebook page. Given that it uses generic RPG Maker assets, I assume it'd be dismissed out of hand in any serious arena.

[Grinner]

No, unless you count submitting it for the class project I originally made it for and then sharing it on my Facebook page. Given that it uses generic RPG Maker assets, I assume it'd be dismissed out of hand in any serious arena.

Normally, yes. But your case is somewhat special. You used only a very limited subset of the RPG Maker RTP, and you did so quite tastefully. I still think you should look into cutting down the size of the game by excluding all the assets (particularly sounds) that you're not using, but you might be able to get away with it otherwise.

[Amaril]

Normally, yes. But your case is somewhat special. You used only a very limited subset of the RPG Maker RTP, and you did so quite tastefully. I still think you should look into cutting down the size of the game by excluding all the assets (particularly sounds) that you're not using, but you might be able to get away with it otherwise.

You know, that's actually really encouraging, and I think I might go for it. I didn't get around to cutting down the file size because I was distracted by other things, but if you actually think it has that potential, I'll definitely give it a shot.

[BLoody D]

I worked on a few rpgs back in the day with my buddy, I did map development.. Was Soo awesome!

[infinitum3d]

Kinda fun. Keep it up!

[Eru_07]

I'm interested to know, what grade did you receive on the class project.

[Amaril]

I'm interested to know, what grade did you receive on the class project.

96 percent, but I wouldn't take that as a good metric. It wasn't a game design course, but a general media arts production course mostly focused on film--I think my prof gave me a big grade boost just for being the only person to make a game instead of a film, which made my project stand out.