New demo, and the winner of the title screen vote!

The winner!

Congratulations to Alice for winning the title screen contest! In second place was Alice, and finding last place in the votes was Alice. (Yes, she made all three.) The final tally across all sites polled including the blog was:

Sword: 16
Mimic: 31
Dragon/Knight: 52
Total Votes: 99

Almost 100 votes! But almost only counts in OVERUSED ANALOGIES.

So, along with the closing of the poll is the arrival of the new demo and a list of thanks:

Alice Kada - Various graphics, the title screen, testing, moral support.
Alex Dickerson - card graphics, testing.
Yanfly - Various scripts.
Aindra - A few graphics (faceset and dice, most notably).

Also, I would like to thank the folks at the rpgmakervx.net forums for their input and scripting help whenever I'm stuck with a particular bit of code.

There are a few graphics used from different resource compilations posted on sites and forums all over the place. If I forgot to mention you, let me know.

So what are you waiting for? Get over to the download page and give it a run! For those of you playing with a keyboard, use the main download. For those using a gamepad, the "gamepad" download has optimized controls with those in mind.

If you found the game to bring even the slightest smile, or add a small glimmer to a dull day, show some love by clicking an ad! It'll only take a moment, I promise, and it will help generate the small amount of revenue needed to convince beta testers to do their thing, bringing about a higher quality game!

New title screen, new minigame, new demo.

Working midnights sucks. I'm sure midnight shifts were invented by terrorists to make those of us who work them easier to explode. That, and the shift is a pretty effective life killer. However, I've still found time to work on the game some, so let's get to that!

First off, you will notice on the side bar there is a poll option. I'm going to be taking a poll on what the new title screen of the game should be. There are three options, and the first will be the main title screen while the second will be used in some other fashion. The title screens are as follows:

In the poll they will be listed in the order you see here, but just to avoid any confusion, the top one will be called Sword, the middle Mimic (which is that treasure chest monster you see in the middle, for those who may be unaware of what a mimic is), and Dragon/Knight. I will be running this poll here, in addition to a few forums and I'll take the total votes from each and tally them together to determine the winner. The poll will close on the 21st.

Onto the next subject - minigames!

I just can't seem to resist the temptation of making small minigames. While they are a lot of work, I think the life they add to games increases the overall value, setting some games apart from others. With that said, what's the new minigame?

Dice!

It's just a simple little minigame you can play against this shady character to earn that small amount of extra gold you may need for that one great weapon. The basic way it works is if your roll is higher than the man's, you can either take your 2 to 1 winnings, or use the value of that roll to play higher or lower. As it sounds, you guess whether or not the next roll will be higher or lower relative to your previous score. You win, you win big. You lose, you lose your previous winnings that round in addition to the gambling fee. A simple game, but fun enough. Even more so when you win and can afford that shiny new weapon!

Onto the final topic, a new demo.

Yes, that's right, a new demo. As much as I wish it were a full game release, there's still a long way to go for that. However, due to the amount of feedback I've gotten from the previous demo, in addition to the balancing issues, I feel that the game really could use a new demo to showcase the progress made, in addition to show what to expect from the final product in terms of balance, character personalities (quite often depending on who you're using in your party and when, they'll have 2 cents to add... sometimes 3), and the new soundtrack.

Your old saves will unfortunately be incompatible with the new demo, so you will have to start over. This is for the better, however, as there are new things to explore, updates to old content, and the game is just more fun now. The new demo will be out after the winner of the title screen battle is chosen, so look forward to more after the 21st! ... of April.