|
THERE IS NO NIGHTMARE IN DAYBREAK. THE CITY IS ABSOLUTELY FINE. PLEASE FORGET THAT IT EVER EXISTED. Released October 19, 2020, Weird and Unfortunate Things are Happening is a horror RPG; take some Earthbound, add a dash of eldritch horror, and one woman's desperate search for her niece, and you've got one of the very best RPG Maker games ever made. Hell, it's one of the best games I've played in the last year, being very well written, with great characters, fantastic music, and an atmosphere that is just plain fuckin' spooky. Made by Unity (who also created Luxaren Allure, Date Knights, and a few other RPG Maker titles), this game was introduced to me by a friend who thought it would be right up my alley. As for what it's about, lemme quote the description from the same place you can download the game. "Alicia’s a bit strange. She still likes to wear her old baseball jersey, even though her team disbanded over a year ago. She can see otherworldly creatures that no one else seems to notice. She also has weird powers that she keeps hidden from the rest of the world. But when she receives a call for help from her niece in Daybreak, she’ll do anything to save her. Caught up in the struggle along with Alicia are Miriam, a secretary and gun aficionado who only wants to escape the city, Lamar, an overworked middle school English teacher, and Dottie, Alicia’s niece, who has been captured for some nefarious purpose. Explore what’s left of the ravaged city and find your way through surreal otherworldly areas that connect the broken urban shell. Encounter any other citizens who have survived and make contact with the strange entities that now inhabit this realm. Survive. Or be swallowed up by the city and forgotten forever." With all of that said, let's go over a few things before we get into the meat of it all. Update Schedule Probably only on weekends. Not only do I work full-time, but my kid is four and a half. I usually get home in time to get her a snack and off to bed, so weekends are probably when I'll have the most time to work on these updates. I'll also announce when I update on Twitter, if you want to check that. Spoiler Policy? Don't spoil anything if you know what's coming. Speculation is perfectly fine, but don't do that poo poo where you're posting spoilers as speculation and think you're being cute. This game has a good story, and I think it's best to let yourself get immersed into it. I don't know how many of you here will have played this game or seen streams of it (like thevoiceofdog's), but don't spoil it for those who are blind. With that said, let's get crackin'. Chapters Chapter One: Welcome To Daybreak Chapter Two: Unfriendly Welcome Chapter Three: Welcome Passenger Chapter Four: Mean Streets Of Daybreak Chapter Five: Beginning Explorations Chapter Six: Sacrifices For Power Chapter Seven: doctor doctor give me the news, I gotta bad case of Cthulhu Leave fucked around with this message at 03:58 on Jun 2, 2021 |
# ? Apr 16, 2021 07:26 |
|
|
# ? Mar 28, 2024 22:31 |
|
Chapter One: Welcome To Daybreak Nothing fancy to start us off with, just a title screen where we’re going to start a new game. We start off by the camera panning up on this house. The lady on the left is our main character, Alicia. The little girl on the right is her eleven year old niece, Dottie. Dottie has a crazy hairstyle, and I cannot imagine how long it takes to get pigtails formed into drills, as well as the kind of dress that seems way too elaborate to actually wear. Alicia, on the other hand, is much more plain, but yeah, that is a baseball jersey. Don't worry, Dottie. I'm sure it probably is nothing. Alicia, back me up. Or not. Stalker? Dottie is eleven! Who the gently caress is stalking her, and why haven't they been What in the wide wide world of sports is that thing!? Oh, no, I'm sure it's fine. It's probably like a raccoon and just wants to dig through the trash. It looks gooey. That goo can't be healthy. Thankfully, Alicia has...Experience with this kind of thing. And she's more than willing to help. Alicia is, much like chickens, decent people. I loving love this face. Just look at that, it's so earnest and happy! Dottie takes a step back. Alicia pulls out a shotgun and suddenly, this becomes a RPG Maker version of Doom and-- Alright, fine, Alicia just has a bit of psychic power. Which is enough to make the spooky little thing run off screaming back into wherever it came from. Aunt Alicia is pretty badass, eh? Dottie, goddammit But it's cool stuff. One thing I like about this game, is that this is just about all the explanation we get for Alicia's abilities. They just popped up one day. Frankly, I don't need any more than that. Lookit that, Dottie, you can be cool like Well, I guess you almost look the part right now. Just need a wand, some doofus in a tuxedo, and some friends who you can't beat the villain without. I think? I don't know much about magical girls. Now, were it martial arts that let you shoot lasers, I'm a little more well versed. As for where the conversation goes from there, we don't know. We're scooting right along. One year; the screen just said that. Okay, okay, I'm sorry, I won't get sassy. Occasionally, there are these little emotion bubbles. I'm probably going to cut most of them out. We suddenly cut to this room, where, uh, something isn't quite right. Oh, boy, there's a lot not right. Let's see, chalices full of blood, rogue Unown, weird symbol, and robed and hooded folks. And a guy they're calling Grandmaster? I could have our men there in a matter of minutes to complete the task regardless of her wishes, however. Said Grandmaster is completely encased in shadow, too. This is Bad poo poo Central. But never mind that, we're back in school. In English class, no less. Truly, the horror begins here. Or else it begins here, where we learn Dottie hasn't changed her clothes in a year. Jesus Christ, kid, that's a quick conclusion to jump to. Trust your teacher. He's probably right and it's nothing to worry about. I'm sure it's all fine. After all, nothing scary ever happens in a school. Yeah, yeah, say your spooky words and I, uh, I don't even know. Um, it's probably not good and sounds like a lawnmower throwing up. Suddenly, the school begins to shake violently. Dottie, get back to the classroom! Or anywhere else! Get anywhere else! She takes off the other way. Only to discover three more of the eldritch eyes impeding her escape. Everything goes black... But Dottie reaches out to the one person who can help her now. Leave fucked around with this message at 04:16 on Apr 17, 2021 |
# ? Apr 16, 2021 07:26 |
|
Dottie is precious and must be protected from the unspeakable, Lovecraftian horrors at all costs.
|
# ? Apr 16, 2021 07:32 |
|
YO! Welcome back, Leave! How's life been for you in the last.... oh wow its really been somewhere around 4 years?
|
# ? Apr 16, 2021 07:42 |
|
Well this looks dope.
|
# ? Apr 16, 2021 07:45 |
|
I hate the art style of this so much? The characters are absolutely hideous to look at
|
# ? Apr 16, 2021 07:59 |
|
some plague rats posted:I hate the art style of this so much? The characters are absolutely hideous to look at The art style does seem like a strange choice, but Unity (the developer and artist) has done mostly lighthearted, yuri romance RPGs, and it's more of a style of theirs. The expressions of the characters makes them much more enjoyable than you would first think, and there's a lot of great music to be enjoyed too. If it's not your thing, I understand, but it's an RPGMaker game so I'm not really bothered by the artwork. Story and gameplay is what makes me think of this game as a great free RPG that anyone can enjoy. That being said, something about the resolution seems off. I've played this before, and don't remember things looking blurry. Not a dealbreaker, I still love this game and the characters throughout it, but maybe there's something with your capture methods. I can't really offer any advice for it either except maybe swap to the .png file type?
|
# ? Apr 16, 2021 08:19 |
|
I'm gonna say that the character portraits have charm and a surprising sense of depth to them. They also remind me of some cartoon I can't quite pin down. (Dottie clearly got her auntie's eyebrows.) Certainly an intriguing start so far, plot-wise.
|
# ? Apr 16, 2021 08:20 |
|
Is it just me, or do the screenshots seem squashed?
|
# ? Apr 16, 2021 08:31 |
|
oh,. sweet, an SSLP of my favourite game in recent history. good stuff so far sorry about the 1-point ranking, I misclicked when trying to bookmark the thread on mobile. is there some way I can reverse or mitigate that?
|
# ? Apr 16, 2021 18:36 |
|
Heeeey it's Leave! Man I hadn't seen you for a while! Mind you I haven't really been reading much in the LP subfoeum since mid 2019, i was living somewhere with really bad internet so loading all the screenshots was impossible.
|
# ? Apr 16, 2021 19:38 |
|
fluffyDeathbringer posted:oh,. sweet, an SSLP of my favourite game in recent history. good stuff so far I'm pretty sure if you click on the 5-point afterwards or whatever it'll override your old vote but the details of the thread ranking system are a deep mystery only known to the lords of the forums underworld.
|
# ? Apr 16, 2021 19:44 |
|
Oh hey, one of my favorite new RPGMaker games! The screenshots are definitely stretched in a weird way, it should look like this: instead of this:
|
# ? Apr 16, 2021 21:26 |
|
Hmm. Looks like I made a mistake somewhere along the line of resizing my shots and the resolution I'm recording in. I think I know how to fix it up, though. Edit: Maybe I don't. Here's where I'm at so far. Which, hell, might not be am improvement. Original: New: Leave fucked around with this message at 22:04 on Apr 16, 2021 |
# ? Apr 16, 2021 21:42 |
|
I'm no troubleshooter, but what I will say is that this game already looks pretty interesting! Haven't heard of it before today or seen anything about it, so I look forward to following the ride.
|
# ? Apr 16, 2021 22:10 |
|
Okay, folks, I figured out the screenshot issues, I think, and DoubleNegative bullied me into rewriting the first update. It should look better now.
|
# ? Apr 16, 2021 23:52 |
|
Leave posted:Okay, folks, I figured out the screenshot issues, I think, and DoubleNegative bullied me into rewriting the first update. It should look better now. Excellent work, thank you for the extra effort.
|
# ? Apr 17, 2021 07:29 |
|
I read the first post and promptly downloaded it and am now shotgunning this game . But like, because it's good! Will you be uhhhh (mild spoilers) (for like a post or three later, it's not a huge deal) translating the other fonts? If I knew that it'd come up so often I would have cheated in the translation myself! It's also extremely hard to look up anything for this game because of the title.
|
# ? Apr 17, 2021 08:39 |
|
Karma Guard posted:I read the first post and promptly downloaded it and am now shotgunning this game . I haven't figured the cypher out myself, but if you want, I do know the code to unlock the translations from the beginning. PM me for deets on that one.
|
# ? Apr 17, 2021 09:13 |
|
Eyyyy, nice to see you back in the saddle again! This game does indeed look very Earthbound-ish in the environments and character sprites. I'll be following with interest!
|
# ? Apr 17, 2021 16:36 |
|
Leave posted:I haven't figured the cypher out myself, but if you want, I do know the code to unlock the translations from the beginning. PM me for deets on that one. The problem is I am now edit: aha! I just need the code. Karma Guard fucked around with this message at 21:46 on Apr 17, 2021 |
# ? Apr 17, 2021 17:54 |
|
Holy poo poo we made the big time Hi I'm Sooz I wrote most of the dialog in this thing and contributed graphics for one area. I always get a kick out of seeing creator input in LPs so I figured I'd pop in and offer my dumb thoughts if anyone wants them. I can also relay unity's dumb thoughts.
|
# ? Apr 18, 2021 17:29 |
|
Karma Guard posted:The problem is I am now The game does give you the code after you beat it, if you don't want to wait, hit me up on Discord, as it looks like you don't have PMs. I'm Leave#1764. itsasooz posted:Holy poo poo we made the big time Oh, hello, holy poo poo! Welcome aboard, hope you like what you've seen so far, and I cannot wait to get some insider opinions on this game! Can I add you on Discord? I'm so nervous! It's like meeting a celebrity!
|
# ? Apr 18, 2021 18:24 |
|
Leave posted:Oh, hello, holy poo poo! Welcome aboard, hope you like what you've seen so far, and I cannot wait to get some insider opinions on this game! Can I add you on Discord? I find your commentary charming and of course I'm always a fan of people saying nice things about stuff I've made! I guess I should turn PMs on so I can send my name thingy. I am old I am not good with computers.
|
# ? Apr 18, 2021 18:38 |
|
itsasooz posted:Holy poo poo we made the big time Sooz! I just beat the game and it's really good! The only problem with it I had was the HP on enemies (a smidge too high imo) but it was really a good job. Leave posted:The game does give you the code after you beat it, if you don't want to wait, hit me up on Discord, as it looks like you don't have PMs. Done. Karma Guard fucked around with this message at 23:25 on Apr 18, 2021 |
# ? Apr 18, 2021 19:30 |
|
I figured out the translation for myself when I was playing -- it's a substitution cypher so you can just use Al-Kindi's methodon the sigils to crack it, which is fun and has the added bonus that you get a sheet of what look like crazy cultist notes as a souvenir from playing the game: E: spoilers deleted Whybird fucked around with this message at 09:17 on Apr 19, 2021 |
# ? Apr 18, 2021 20:04 |
|
Good work and that's pretty neat! However, since we've seen two entire sentences of cipher dialog, maybe we can hold off on posting a translation?
|
# ? Apr 18, 2021 22:25 |
|
A weird RPGMaker game with a dev in the thread? I'm in.
|
# ? Apr 18, 2021 23:10 |
|
I didn't figure any of the stuff I posted spoiled any plot reveals, but I can totally delete it if you think it'd be more fun for the thread to figure out the cipher on their own.
|
# ? Apr 19, 2021 01:15 |
|
Please do.
|
# ? Apr 19, 2021 01:22 |
|
Chapter Two: Unfriendly Welcome Welcome back, folks, to Weird and Unfortunate Things are Happening! Last time, we were introduced to our protagonist, her niece, and then poo poo went south; Dottie threw out a cry for help, and today, we're going to answer that cry. Let's get crackin'. Get your motor runnin' Head out on the highway For how you talked up your car last update, Alicia, why are you getting a ride? Yeah, huh? : Oh, sweetie, I've been taking this road since it was built, and I've never seen that name on a single sign. Are you sure you're on the right route? I picked you up not too far from a junction... Eventually, I'll get around to making portraits for the main cast. It's a pain in the rear end, so I'm putting it off for as long as i can. : The crash must have confused you, dear. The stress, you know. There's never been anything but trees and that rest stop here. Crash? Oh, poo poo, Alicia, you're going into Silent Hill! Think about it; she's going to be looking for a little girl, with black hair. Sure, Dottie isn't seven, but it's all coming together. : Are you sure, sweetie? Alicia is a very passionate person. This makes me wonder when this game is set; I can't imagine it's the modern day, since I"m pretty sure that Alicia would have a cell phone of some sort. No real reason for this shot, other than the little patch of graves we pass by. : Don't you worry about it, dear. Would you like me to stay and make sure you- And just like that, we've gotten control and it's go time. Yeah, that sign says Itoi Storage. It's a reference to Shigesato Itoi, the director, writer (among other things) for Mother and Earthbound, as well as the story and scenario behind Mother 3. Those sparkles on the ground are usually items we can pick up. In this case, it throws out some flavor text, as a way of teaching us that sparkles are good. Let's not say anything too rash, Alicia. Maybe they're just changing the message on it? Daybreak got a new town slogan or something, as they're building a mini-taco factory and it's going to revitalize the town! Or maybe not. As I'm pretty sure an impassable wall would really mess up the town's economy and infrastructure. Then again, I don't know, I'm not a city designer. Oh, yeah, sure, psychic the rock wall, that's going to do a whole lot. Alicia, what did you do Hey, maybe we should go call somebody. Someone who has a lot of guns? No? Maybe we could take a second and think about-- Okay, we've entered a section of Hell. Fantastic. I'm glad you can be so nonchalant about entering a place where the first thing you see is a loving tree covered in eyes. May as well walk into the horrible mouth door, it's not going to make it any worse. Oh, hey, I see a face. And a couple of floating creepy tentacled things. Alicia! What in the hell is wrong with you? "Dave, is she serious?" "Maybe we could just give her directions to the town?" "Goddammit, Jared, we talked about this. We're not friendly!" I applaud your commitment to not pooping yourself here. But it's combat time! Look at this sweet-rear end combat transition! Alicia, did you seriously try to talk to these things!? You deserve to be hit by a lamp! How did either of those things look friendly to you!? However, Alicia came prepared. She's got a bat, some psychic powers, and is ready to stomp rear end. Combat is pretty Earthbound-esque, but unfortunately, there's no rolling HP meter. Alicia starts with a couple of psychic powers; this one is offensive, but has a two-turn cooldown, so we can't just spam it every round. The icons and such there will be explained in a bit. While this slaps a status effect on a single foe; panic makes an enemy waste a turn. And we're fighting some kind of...Parasite infested rat and a ghost possessing a lamp. The rat can bite, since it's a rat. It's not like it's going to do kung-fu on you. Let's check out Psi Pulse, shall we? When hitting an enemy, you'll see if it hit a weakness or resistance, any status effects applied (Fallen means that the enemy has been killed), and how much damage dealt. The red bar is a representation of how much health they have and how much is remaining. And while that cools down, we're going to hit a rat with a bat. While wearing a hat, looking for a cat, and hoping we find ourselves a gat. You might recall that the rat held that same green symbol and that Alicia's basic attack is great versus it. Which means that Alicia's basic bat bash is always going to hit a weakness against enemies with that symbol. We trade a couple of more hits and win the battle. We get 14 exp and 3, uh, things. That's right! If you can't run with the big dogs, you best stay on the porch! Things are off to a good start; we encountered some monsters and beat them up. Let's keep this upward momentum. And we got some coinage! Everything's comin' up Milhouse! Over on the right is a note we can pick up. Yeah, there's a lot of different enemy types. As you saw in the shots above, Alicia's various attacks were listed as "Great" against certain types and "Poor" against others. Great hits a weakness, while the Poor is a resistance, and if it doesn't mention either of those, then it's neutral. And the bitch of it all about Unknown monsters is that you've gotta remember what is and isn't effective; the game won't keep track of it for you. There are different "elements" as well, but we'll get into that later. For now, we'll go into another mouth. Here's my question; are these Health Drinks supposed to be a reference to Silent Hill? I just get that vibe. So, there's two notes here, and the floating coins are of the same type that we get from battle. Yeah, this makes no difference to you, the reader, so I don't even know why I'm showing this. We'll find these floating around all over the place, in various amounts. And I'll be making frequent saves. And in different slots, because I know how this LP poo poo can turn out. Alright, let's deal with this guy. See, that's the difference between me and you, Alicia; I would have started with the bashing, then gone to the questioning. Shockingly, the monster doesn't move. Well, it is significantly better armed than the last couple of things we fought. This guy's type is an Oddity. And fuckin' A, our Psi Blast is super effective against it. Since it's slashing us with a knife, it can inflict bleeding. It deals damage each turn, like a poison effect. It's a bit tougher than the last two enemies, so this fight lasts longer. It can also slap the poo poo out of us, which is better than the knife slash. As you can see, I almost got killed in the second fight of the game. But it's enough to make it run off. Since we've nearly gotten Alicia killed before entering the town, let's check out our healing items. She came into town with two Health Drinks and a Med-Kit. And we can check the notes we pick up at any time. While this doesn't keep them relevant throughout the entire game, at least restoring 15% and 30 more health is pretty good right now. And that 15% health for Alicia right now is about 11, so a health drink currently restores 41 health. While we're here, let's check out Alicia's skills, equipment, and stats. We've seen her basic and psychic skills, but her passive skill restores a single point of PSI after each of her turns. As for equipment, all we've got is Alicia's old bat. And a quick rundown of what the stats actually mean, taken directly from the help file included with the game when you download it. Also, don't ask me about the description there; I've got an idea of who is supposed to be describing her, but I honestly don't have a fuckin' clue. help file posted:ATK: Attack, or your physical power. Determines the damage of your Basic abilities. Hell, another note? Those would cover things that raise stats and the like. As the name indicates, they're beneficial. Think of the colors as levels of severity; Yellow is fairly low, red is bad, and purple is definitely bad. But, thankfully, no matter how many of these you have slapped on you during a battle, if you make it out alive, you're cured of all effects. Oh, God, Alicia's touching the uvula! ...This is worse than before! Much worse! Let's see, Alicia got a distress call from her niece, then crashed her car, discovered an entire town is just fuckin' gone, we've entered some sort of hell dimension, encountered monsters, and now we're in a black void being talked to by someone we can't see and who might be also wanting to kick our rear end. If nothing else, at least whoever this is is a little more polite than the others. In that they're actually speaking with us. Or in the direction of anything, really. I'd be happy to stumble across an Arby's right now. This isn't entirely out of left field; remember the driver who brought us to the rest stop had never heard of the town. Alicia, however, doesn't have time to think about that poo poo. Say what you will about Alicia, but she seems like she'd be incredibly pleasant to hang out with. May as well head toward the voice. Considering what else we've seen today, how bad could it ...Alright, yeah, let's take a break and pick up again once I've changed my shorts.
|
# ? Apr 20, 2021 06:24 |
|
Haafathaffhwgfdadgafda that's terrifying
|
# ? Apr 20, 2021 06:38 |
|
Junpei posted:Haafathaffhwgfdadgafda that's terrifying
|
# ? Apr 20, 2021 07:28 |
|
I hope you guys like references because unity and I have no sense of proportion or decency when it comes to them. And yeah, this is a big ol' love letter to Earthbound and Silent Hill, so if you think something's referencing them, it probably is. Unity looked into the rolling HP bar thing, but it's really hard to adapt things like that into RPG Maker (it probably also didn't get along with other parts of the code) so she ultimately decided, "Nah, not worth the headache, this isn't a clone of the game." New guy here was one of my favorite characters to write. Most of the time I'm working in word balloons or dialog boxes, and rarely do I get to bust out a really wordy character. Unity was kind enough to tolerate having to figure out line breaks for the logorrhea. Unity wants me to point out that the character description in the Status menu is a unique font that we'll only see at one other point in the game.
|
# ? Apr 20, 2021 16:10 |
|
Right, RPG maker does not play nice with auto line breaks. That's painful.
|
# ? Apr 20, 2021 16:46 |
|
There's kind of an astonishing array of things RPG Maker doesn't play nice with.
|
# ? Apr 20, 2021 17:03 |
|
another cool thing about the game is that, iirc, most of the battle themes and some of the boss themes are original compositions by the devs for the game (one of them was even made by the guy who made Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass, I think normal battles cycle between themes randomly so I don't know if we've come across that one yet)
|
# ? Apr 20, 2021 17:39 |
|
fluffyDeathbringer posted:another cool thing about the game is that, iirc, most of the battle themes and some of the boss themes are original compositions by the devs for the game (one of them was even made by the guy who made Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass, I think normal battles cycle between themes randomly so I don't know if we've come across that one yet) Not quite- unity spent a lot of time searching various free music sites for themes, so the lion's share of the music is from cool people who put out resources for free. The Kasey Ozymy one was contributed as part of a secret santa exchange, and it's super great. EDIT: unity told me there are a few more tracks she commissioned- a battle track, the most common boss battle track, and the scenes in Dottie's house. They were all done by Geoff Moore. itsasooz fucked around with this message at 20:10 on Apr 20, 2021 |
# ? Apr 20, 2021 18:02 |
|
quote:oh hi quote:hi final boss background from FFVI! (on the left) Seraphic Neoman fucked around with this message at 20:11 on Apr 20, 2021 |
# ? Apr 20, 2021 20:06 |
|
|
# ? Mar 28, 2024 22:31 |
|
Oh nice, a Weird and Unfortunate LP! I got introduced to the game from thevoiceofdog doing a stream over on Twitch late last year and loved it; I hope this introduces even more people to what I'd argue is the one of the best RPGs I've ever played. I enjoyed the heck out of your contributions to the game, Sooz, and I'm looking forward to whatever unity creates next
|
# ? Apr 20, 2021 21:00 |