Gladiators: Path of the Champion
A downloadable game
Let there be Bloodshed!
OFFICIAL DEMO RELEASED!
What started as a simple Boss Rush game with random bosses, quickly became an effort to capture the old-school feel of games like Dragon Quest or Final Fantasy on the NES, the Persona Series, and other JRPGs I played as a kid with a little bit of flavor to try to make the game stand on it's own. As of right now, the 1st portion of the game is partially available, give or take the Silver Arena not being quite funtional yet (Currently about 50% finished. You can still fight in the Silver Arena though, all fights are available.)
You are the Fog-Walker. An Outsider. Selected by your people to walk the Path of the Champion, secure all Seven titles, and claim your throne as Grand Champion of the Isle. As you travel you will uncover secrets, meet many people, make new friends, and ascend the various ranks of the arena. The Isle of Champions is home to many different folk of many shapes and sizes, from Goblins to Night Elves to even Sasquatch!?
This Build of Gladiators includes:
-Bug Fixes, Icon Changes
-A New Secret Dungeon paying slight Homage to Diablo 3.
-A Revamped Title Screen that doesn't look like it was made by a Child. With a hand made Logo, and more characters one the screen at a time.
-Subclasses for more Character Versatility (Every Class has their own Set of Secondary Classes.)
-A Persona 5 Inspired "Let's Talk" type system that lets you Execute or Spare an enemy. One yields more Gold, while the other yields more EXP. (Try Sparing the First Arena Champion.)
-A World Map. This is initially what started the narrative that I want to drive this story. Currently, the only open areas are the Plains biome of the map, the Bronze Arena, The Forest Grove, and The Junkyard.
-5 Companions (With more on the way!)
-10 Random Encounters (With over 50+ more planned, to make the world feel alive. And also ensuring you never run into the same Encounter twice.)
-3 Secret Bosses. (Check the Forest Grove and the Junkyard.)
-One Full Tier of the Arena, Fleshed out, with Dialogue, and post-fight content. Now, with the Second Tier available (Encounters Not Final.)
-Some Features are subject to change.
Planned Features:
-5 More Arenas, with Unique Looking Bosses, Unique Dialogue.
-2 More Overworld Dungeons loosely tied to the story.
-Consequences for Executing certain Enemies.
-Steam Deck Control Layout. (I prefer to use the Steam Deck to play/test my own games from time to time, so I just upload the configurations.)
-A Small Secret Dungeon that's a Slight Homage to Diablo 1.
(If I can finish this game and deliver my vision for it soon enough, I have a budding idea for 2 more games under the same name. Gladiators: City of Heroes & Gladiators: Age of Magic.)
Note: Thank you for taking the time to play this. If you left feedback, I will be sure to credit you in the games End Credits whenever I get that far. I'm having a lot of fun working on this game, and I want to see it flourish.
CHANGELOGS:\
5/12/2024: Official Demo
-The 2nd and 3rd Arenas are fleshed out. That marks the game as Halfway finished. As such the full demo for the game has been released. I hope you enjoy.
7/27/2023: Build 0.5.5
-The 2nd Arena wasn't exactly accessible, as I hadn't added the area transfer just yet. It is now.
Download
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Development log
- Development has Resumed.Oct 05, 2023
Comments
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Hi, first of all i really like this game! Last update was 93 days ago, but hopefully you will continue to develop it.
Here's some of my thoughts about current build:
1. Font is too blurry, especially when playing full screen. Fortunately it can bee easily fixed by adding these 2 strings in Main script:
Font.default_shadow = false
Font.default_outline = false
2. I only played a knight and a little bit valkyrie, so i could be wrong, but it knight feels overpowered due to his high defense and hp. Pretty much nothing can hit him, even casters. I made knight/sorcerer hybrid and overhead slash still hits harder than battle magic and costs less mp.
3. I don't really get the idea of training grounds. Farming at training grounds feels like waste of time. Random encounters on world map are much more rewarding. For example goblin in training grounds give you only 50G and about 200xp if i remember correctly, and goblin on world map give you 5000G and 1-2levels.
3. Teleporting to training grounds is too slow. Wizard's spell dialogue takes the same amount of time as running to training grouns through the world map. It would be nice to get teleported immediately after choosing a location.
4. I don't think it's a good idead to give a Manaskin to the first Arena boss. Once he cast it he became literally invincible, regaining 350hp every turn, while i was hitting him by 325. I think manaskin should be removed from him, or got reduced to 3-5 turns instead of infinite. My first restart happened here.
5.After fighting first match on silver arena i decided to go to second training grounds. I found a secret passage, and killed the boss. Then returned to second arena and game crasshed with missing BGM error. After reloading i got instant win against second enemy. At first i thought it was a part of Alpha's quest, but apparently it's just a bug. Also later i killed training grounds boss again, and got the same missing BGM crash when tried to leave the dungeon.
6. Guard doesn't provide any information about enemies after match 1.
7.When Second boss is dead, you can still go the arena. It causes a black screen. Self-switch is missing.
8.Aqua spells doesn't have a mana cost.
9.Alpha's ressurrection doens't work on allies, but heals enemies instead.
10.There is a passable cliff corner below the second arena.
11. Stat boosting flowers are nice, but first of all they are too cheap, second of all they are infinite. I think it would be better to delete them from shops and add to training grounds common drop.
Well, i finished the game with knight, Alpha and found a 3d party member. I like how my party is the strongest on this part of the map, and it would be nice to see some challenge on next parts of the world.
I'm curious to know what happens next, personally i think you should to focus on finishing arena part before adding any additional side dungeons/content. Thanks for the game!
Hello! Thank you for your feedback. I've sinced then fixed a lot of the general bugs revolving around the first 3 Arenas. I also playtested using a Knight and noticed I was having a really trivial time too. I will be tweaking the Training Areas, as I do understand that world encounters yield more. That will be fixed. I've also uploaded the demo for the first half of the game, feel free to try it out.
Also thank you so much for the notes on the font, I've also noticed it can be really blurry. I will be fixing that as well. Hopefully here in a few days I have something more in line with your criticisms. I think they're all good, and you ask some great questions. Please, if you can, continue with the feedback. It explains to me exactly what I need to fix.
Yo! I was surprised when i get notification from you. It's been awhile since i left a comment about your game, it's nice to see that you didn't abandon your game!
Well, now about the game. This comment below is loosely structured, and can be approximately split by 3 parts: general expression, notes, suggestions.
I just finished my second playthrough, it took me 2 hours. This time i chose archer as my character. Since she's quite weak at start, after losing my first match i decided to farm some level at training grounds. After getting lightning arrow game becomes too easy since paralyze is almost endless. I would say arena 1 and 2 are mostly finished, but arena 3 is very rough (i really like the concept though).
Last time i suggested to fix upgrade system by addid upgrades to monster drop and removing items from shops. Now i changed my mind a i think getting upgrades in shop is find, and collecting upgrades from monsters may make leveling system too grindy. I think better solution would be adding stock count to upgrades in shop. Basically adding a level cap per arena zone. Or increasing the price of upgrades, In general stat upgrades are usually is better idea for late game rather than early game. And in early games stats could be gained by getting new items. And not gonna like current items are meaningless, it's not worth to buy items, since upgrades are cheaper and add more stats.
Gameplay notes:
1. unreadable main menu, unreadable colored text. (read comment below)
2. save cancel after choosing save. it's possible to skip save by pressing x and lose access to save in item vendor menu, since it limited to 1 per zone.
3. why archer's quiver does reduce armor by 1 ?
4. missing wall in tavern stairs
5. goblin shop chestplate tab also contains helmets.
6. wrong match information on silver arena. i noticed it after killing a cryomancer, but it could appear earlir. it seems like index of messages is -1, i.e instead of showing an info of next match it shows info of previous match
7. rapid fire is the worst skill in game? it seems like it misses with 100% chance.
8. i dont this troll needs bloodshed skills he's already have triple slash and double slash, blodshed is excess
9. arena 2 is still accessible after beta's match, and it breaks the game.
10. goldbolt is op, i think it should spent money on usage.
11. lightning arrow is op. paralysis is almost everlasting.
12. items on arena 3 is just a placeholders?
13. why beta is the last boss of arena 3? also arena 3 is still accessible after win, and it breaks the game.
14. equipment feels meaningless
15. why i can't talk to loot goblins in goblin cave even if i had goblin translator?
Things i like and suggestions:
-npc's in tavern reacting to alpha, instead of talking the same thing. cutscene.
- characters ethnicity remind me about salt and sacrifice. does it give any perks or somehow affects the story?
it could be interesting to make every arena in it's own region. Arena 2 already feels like it belong to Pharum region.
- it would nice to have some explanation dialog about what happened to beta
- it would be nice if tavern folks react to conquering arena 2.
- introducing teams, choose character before fighting on arena. similar to yuyu hakusho, or shaman king.
ok, i feel sleepy now and this comment is already pretty long, hopefully something of these notes will be helpful. Bye.
speaking of readability, you are using pixelated font, but unfortunately vx ace has built-in anti-alising for fonts, so font will be blurry anyway. but i think i found pretty good solution to increase readability in this game:
set default outline to true,
add this string to main script:
Font.default_out_color.set(Color.new(255,255,255, 125))
#values could be ajusted
and decrease tone of your green, yellow, blue etc. in window.png
something about #588a00, #aa7700, #0073b5 respectively.
edit:
well, actually readability could be fixed even without adding outline, just by ajusting tone color of font.
In case you can't see the user ratings, here's mine:
The game is very aesthetically pleasing and definitely has that NES charm to it. However, the random enemy encounters are quite ruthless with their attacks, as most of the time I'm left sitting there waiting for their multiple-hit attack to end after like 8 hits in a row. Otherwise, this game is a bit more laid back compared to some other rpg maker games out there that tend to introduce too many things at once.
Thank you for taking the time to play! I appreciate it heavily. I’ll take a look at the random encounters. I thought I might’ve overdone it a little on the stats. But I’ll definitely apply it to what I have to improve user experience.