Sozora's Labyrinth

[Miracle]

Atlantis is a fantasy land sealed off from the rest of the world. Magical creatures abound, crops grow in abundance and humanity is prospering in the Peaceful Paradise.

But that's when Ghost Mansions, giant man-eating oak trees, transdimensional demons and God knows what else isn't popping out of nowhere.

Jean Sozora, Spell Card user, discovers the Ghost Mansion deep within a dark forest. As she seeks to obtain more knowledge about the Mansion and it's past, she enlists the help of three other girls, all of which have a connection with the mansion in one way or the other.


Jean Sozora is the daughter of the famous philosopher and magician Nessiah Sozora, who mysteriously vanished shortly before Jean was born. He left behind a Golden hairpin in the shape of a moon, which Jean is always seen wearing. The hairpin changes it's form to match the current phase of the moon.


Ulidama Fia Owen is actually from the outer world, that is the world outside of Atlantis. She discovered a portal into Atlantis, albeit unstable, she hurled herself through the portal before it could disappear. However, fortune was not on Ulidama's side, as the portal ended up shutting in on her before she could make it completely through. Her waist down is now hidden by a colorful floating omnidimensional rift.


Mitori Kawashiro was accused of an extremely heinous crime. She was convicted, and as her punishment she was either to be put to death or become an outcast to society as a whole. She chose the latter, and now walks the earth shunned from every being. Her clothing is the symbol of an outcast, warning others not to approach her.


Sasha Sashiromiya is the Princess of the undersea kingdom of Lemuria. She used to wield the heavenly fork Trident, which granted her an immense amount of power. However, one day she dueled a dark stranger who commanded the Trident to backfire on the poor princess, surging a terrible amount of energy through her body. Ever since that day, Sasha has been... different.

FEATURES

• Custom Main Menu
• Custom Message Box (which will probably be overhauled in the near future)
• Eighteen different Spell Cards (Skills) for each heroine, each with their own levels and classes
• Four Over-World Spell Cards, skills which can be used outside of battle to aid you in travel
• Interesting main characters (along with a few NPCs that were kinda cool once)
• Face portraits for every human and enemy in the game
• Mini-Games and puzzles that actually have something to do with the storyline
• Touhou. 'Nuff said.
• Flying Lolis

SPELL CARDS

Jean Sozora obtains the Over-World Spell Card "Dream Clock", an immensely powerful Spell Card which stops the flow of time in the universe. It's useful to interfere with moving objects (such as using it to not get crushed by a falling boulder) or puzzles (moving falling rocks in mid-air to hit switches), even to evade enemies from engaging you in a Spell Duel (can't move if you're frozen, right~?)


Ulidama Fia Owen's Over-World Spell Card is "Sister Stars", a Spell Card which summons one of three UFOs to either burst into flames, freeze the area or send out a shockwave. It can be used to cross still water (Ice can be walked on), burn vines and move large boulders.


Mitori Kawashiro obtains her own Over-World Spell Card "Cutting Edge", a practical Spell Card that fires a razor-sharp disc in front of her. It can be used to slice through vines or ropes, or activate switches from afar. Simple, practical, it's no wonder Mitori wields this one~ Although the activation animation is rather flashy.


Sasha Sashiromiya, the 'Schizophrenic Jellyfish Princess' used to wield a Spell Card involving the use of her Trident. However, since then the Trident has backfired on her, forcing her to use a weaker version of her power, "Ocean Spire". This Spell Card summons a pillar from the earth exactly two spaces in front of you. It can be used as a stepping-stone in gaps, or as a blockade in narrow spaces.

SCREENSHOTS

INCOMPLETE SCRAPS

CREDIT

Graphic Material

• First Seed Material

• CLOSET

• velvetend

• Double Period

• RHETORIC

• Miracle

• GameOverMushroom

Music Material

• TAM Music Factory

• Maoutamsi

• ZUN


Sound Material

• TAM Music Factory

• Neko-San

Program

• Miracle

Other

• MokutonAlchemist

• Tatl0e

Voice Actresses

• S-h-u-d-o-R-a-n-m-a-r-u

• SailorDigiMoon

Publisher

• Travy Web Blog

If you see any of your material in my game that is not credited to you, PM me and I will add you to this list.

Thank you~

--Miracle

[drenrin2120]

Wow, the graphics are beautiful. I'll have to give this is a shot.

EDIT: Have to give it to you, there are some impressive graphics in this demo. Great control of cut-scenes and taste in menu style. One gripe, in the intro, when the character's info pops up, there's a whole paragraph of stuff, but the player gets about a second to read it all.

Other gripes:
1st) While your menus and graphics are really good, the controls are a bit wonky. For example, there should be an auto-scroll function for big lists like that spell card list. There's a ton of tutorials on this and it's rather easy to implement.
2nd) This is more a personal opinion, but the character moves really fast on the map. I didn't feel the need to use the running option. Plus, not holding a key down to run feels a little odd to me, but some people may like it.
3rd) The battle system wasn't explained very well and I still kicked ***.
4th) a bit too many sound affects for my tastes during conversations.

Don't take these sorely, I liked the game. These are just little things that could help improve game play. You've got some cool things going on here. Also, question, did you use pictures in battle for the sprites? 'cuz they look pretty darn good.

[Miracle]

Hey, thanks for trying the demo ^^

Yeah, there are a lotta valid points you made. However, the demo system is old, and a lot of them have been made already (if they've not already been fixed.) ^^

◕ The character bios in the introduction cutscene are just for show. If you could read, like, a sentence of it, it wouldn't make any sense. Like: " A schizophrenic Jellyfish Princess from the undersea that lunacy has ensues and uses Demon Fork Kill ".
I knew players wouldn't have time to read/make sense out of it, so I just threw together the stupidest sentences.

◕ When the demonstration date for this game was released, I was behind schedule. This forced me to make Map-Based CMSs (which                       make everything wonky) so I could release it by the deadline. Also, the Spell Card Menu that you were speaking about was scrapped from production in favor of a new Spell Card System. ^^

◕ Eh? The running speed was too fast? Well, I'll be using a new 2k3 hack soon which will allow more precise walking speeds ^^
Thanks for the tip~

◕ The entire battle system is an error. I was an idiot and didn't test my demo thoroughly, so the battle system option was never disabled. That's why none of the functions were explained ^^ I'm planning on making a CBS for this project ^^

◕ Yeah, I hated that, too. A new 2k3 hack will allow me to scrap those ugly piano noises that play whenever you talk to somebody ^^

◕ I used battle animations for the battle charsets ^^ Unfortunately, they'll be scrapped along with everything else for a CBS ^^

Thank you so much for the feedback I seriously don't mind whatever people say about my game, as long as it's constructive ^^
I view criticism as an opportunity for improvement ^^

Thanks again for playing

[Brieg]

Wow. that demo totally destroyed my computer.

[Miracle]

wat
just delete my game, your computer will be back to whatever state it was in before 00;

[PROGUY]

...Is it me or does this game somehow relate to the Touhou series? Especially Mitori. Gonna try it later.

[Miracle]

◕ PROGUY : Mitori is fanmade. 'eck, all my chars are fanmade. I was gonna make a Touhou RPG, but I kinda wanted to do something original, but influenced by Touhou. So, I took four fanmade Touhou girls and made them into an RPG

This game is pretty much the inversion of 'in name only', as everything about it is somewhat influenced by Touhou, but isn't actually Touhou. I would still consider it a fangame, though ^^

◕ lucas_irineu : Yeah, yeah, facesets are ugly, shading is just gradients and sucks, portraits look flat. I've heard that on every site I've posted my game -_-;; Until I can either find a real, talented artist, or drastically improve my artwork, that's the best I can do. Thanks for the link, though ^^

Thanks for checking out my game guys ^^

[Brieg]

I did delete it. That solves the "My computer is ruined" problem, but not the "i want to play this demo" problem.

[Miracle]

◕ lucas_irineu : Hey, thanks ^^ I'll definately keep those tips in mind ^^

◕ Brieg : Try using a different computer. The download link isn't actually gameplay, so don't download it if you're expecting an actual video game. That'll come later on.

[Miracle]

UPDATE -- ***



Sasha's new sprite.

Now to animate it. I plan on making her spin her arms like a jellyfish xD

[coreystranick]

Just needs shading in the upper chest region, looks very flat there (not saying it needs boobs or anything just a little bit of shading coming up from the arm pits or somthing)

Otherwise great job. Your sprites look a ton better.

[Valiere]

What a refreshing concept....bright colors, a unique interface, great sound effects, and best of all, plenty of custom sprites. The sprites aren't perfect (The battle animations need to move a lot more than they do), but I agree with Lucas...you have enormous potential as a spriter, and you've already managed to improve a lot in a very short time. You're doing the right thing by using other spriters' work as a reference but still keeping everything your own. It will be much more satisfying when you see your characters doing super-cool animations when you know that you made them.

Now for the demo. I ran into some issues. My screen froze twice while trying to use some characters' Shift key abilities. I can get Sozora's dream clock thing and the one with the rock to work fine, but the others are bugged for me. I must say, I really love the rock one though. I can't imagine the amount of programming that went into that.

Keep us updated, I'm very interested in seeing where you go with this.

[Miracle]

◕ coreystranick : Took your advice I was having trouble shading up there, and I gave up but when I shaded from the armpits up the boobs just fell into place xD bahaha thanks alot

◕ Valiere : Ooh, yes, the sprites are very far from perfect. These new ones will have at least 8 different frames of animations, though

Ooh, yeah, I didn't make Mitori's or Ulidama's OW spell cards. There was no coding there, so the game just stopped. I wish I would've playtested more thoroughly, but I ran into the deadline and had to release it. =-=;; I really think I should add a revised demo that'll disable those Spell Duels and Spell Cards.

Sasha Sashiromiya's Ocean Spire? The rock thing? That coding was so simple. Dream Clock was more difficult than that~ xD I just used a fork condition to see which way the player was facing, then I experimented with the XY coordinates to see where I should place the charsets of the rock. After that the coding was all effects. When you use it in a puzzle you can jump on top of it, and when it sinks you sink down too xD

Thank you so much guys for trying out my demo xD Thank you for your feedback, it's all so helpful~

[Miracle]

UPDATE -- ****

While I was re-coding everything, an epiphany dawned upon me.


Dream Clock sucks.



Honestly, that thing is too powerful. Everything stops? No enemies can move and declare a Duel? You can run while using it an blast past frozen monsters?

No way. That's just abuse waiting to happen. I can't change Dream Clock, because it's far too relevant to the story. The solution? Spell Card CoolDown.


Screenshot of the CoolDown system

This baby is an anti-game breaker. Sure, you get Dream Clock later on into the game, but when you do you're immune to enemy attacks. In my opinion, that just isn't fun.

So here's how it works : Whenever you use an OverWorld Spell Card (Sister Stars, Cutting Edge, etc.), the Spell Card will do it's magic, and then the CoolDown menu is displayed. When the CoolDown menu is working, the magical circle will grow larger (for a quick glance to see how far it's gone) and digits will be displayed (for precise knowledge of how far it's gone).

The Spell Cards take 10 seconds to cool down. The first two digits are the seconds, then the last two behind the decimal are milliseconds (the first one is precise, the second one is just a blur xD). This way you'll know exactly how many seconds are left in order to use a Spell Card again.

Since I'm recoding, it'll be a while before the game is actually made. But after all the coding is sorted out there's nothing stopping me from making maps and character events xD

Cheers to balancing ~~~

  --Miracle

[Miracle]

--UPDATE *****

Some of you noticed that whenever you tried to activate Mitori or Ulidama's OW Spell Card, the demo simply froze. That's because there wasn't any coding to execute when SHIFT was pressed.

I've just successfully implemented Mitori Kawashiro's Spell Card, "Cutting Edge", into the game. It's fully functional, and better yet, I only have to code Ulidama's before the entire cast has functional OW Spell Cards


Use Cutting Edge to slice through vines, ropes, and even activate switches from afar

To use Cutting Edge, simply face the direction in which you would like to throw the disc. Then press SHIFT to activate Mitori's Spell Card, and viola~ One razor-sharp disc hurling through the map

When all of the girls' Spell Cards are functional, then I'll have to tackle coding the Main Menu >>;; But when that's finished, a demo should be released that contains actual gameplay~
It probably won't be a lot, as there are still a million other things I have to complete before I can start making battles and Spell Cards, but at least every other aspect of this game will be completed

Ulidama's will be much harder to code, as she can have up to three different outcomes each time she uses her spell card. Plus it's direction-sensitive, too >>
--Miracle