TURGLEQUEST REMASTERED - It's Finally Here!

Radio silence these past few months, eh? Except, of course, on the YouTube channel, if you care to check that out. The biggest and grandest game yet has been in the making by yours truly and others at RAV Studio, and it's been a long, hard road. I'm still worried that over the next few days, some big gamebreaking bug I didn't catch the first 500 rounds of playtesting will show up and ruin everyone's experience. But we said we'd release this game by the end of the year and god damn it, even if it is a few hours short of the deadline, it's here! It's finally here!

TURGLEQUEST REMASTERED is a remake of a game RAV made several years ago (2), back before I really wanted to do game design as a full time thing. For those of you that never played it, it was a cringy, glitchy mess, and I hope the original copy never sees the light of day. For those of you that did - if you circulate that copy, I will find you. No one can know. But this is a full remake from the ground up, taking the basic concept and reinventing it. As development went on, it scaled ever upward in complexity, though it does keep the same basic skeleton of a plot. What is the plot? Wouldn't you like to know! You'll have to play to find out. 

It's another RPG Maker VX Ace game, but we've put a lot more bells and whistles in it than Maxxemon. New fonts, custom spritework by RAV and Kaleidocat, new battle mechanics, much better understanding of how to actually use RPG Maker (it's a learning experience). It's a much more streamlined experience. Though, it's not all about combat this time around; your journey takes you through three challenges. Logical, where you'll have to solve puzzles and navigate through a perilous labyrinth; emotional, where you'll get to the heart of your character, and physical, which is a lot about combat actually yeah.

There is a proper credits in the game now, so I won't waste a ton of time talking about it here. A lot of inspiration came from the band Electric Light Orchestra - an eagle eyed fan will notice a ton of references packed into the game. Speaking of easter eggs - make sure to explore. There's some conversations and characters you'll miss out on if you try to take the game too fast. The statistics for battles were designed off of an average playthrough, though, so don't feel you have to grind too hard. You can if you want to, but don't be surprised if you blitz through enemies.

One last thing before I cut myself off - there will be extensive updates coming to Turglequest 2 to make it an actual sequel, and there are plans for more games in the same setting! So if you like what you see here, stay tuned! And if you happen to do art and music composing, give us a call! (For any inquiry at all, you can reach me at frankelandrywork@gmail.com) 

Now without further ado, you can download the game here! As per usual, the zip file contains a .exe. Let Windows trust it. We won't hurt you, or steal your money. And let us know if there are any problems with it!

Happy New Year, folks!

Turglequest Online Prototype - Online Hosted Shooter

Hey all - fun little experiment for today. This project is only a prototype, and was made in less than two days. Still, should be basically functional. Made in Godot, Turglequest Online is a shooter game that you can play with friends. You fight in a colorful landscape of various polygons, armed with a baseball bat and bottomless pistol. You (and friends) have five hits of health, as indicated by the healthbar in your HUD, and when depelted you'll spawn back at the entrance. Nothing too fancy, and I'm sure there are glitches abound. 

CONTROLS: WASD to move, spacebar to jump. You can wall jump off of any surface, and holding the direction of the wall will let you jump up steep surfaces. Holding away from the wall while wall jumping will give you more momentum. Use left click to shoot, right click to swat with your bat. The hitmarker at the center of your screen is designed to show you where your shots will hit if standing on the same level as your opponent; if the elevation is different, than expect the shot to curve. If you are tired of playing, press Esc to quit the game. 

SETUP: Unpack all contents of this .zip folder into a dedicated folder, and click 'TQOnlineProto.console.exe'. Windows may gave you some permission warnings, click accept. Either click 'Host Game' and look for your address on the debug screen, or get a friend's address and paste in the 'Game Address' bar. You'll have to delete the words that say 'Game Address'. Then, click 'Join Game', and you'll be connected. These online features worked in initial testing; I'll patch the game if they are not working. 

CREDITS:

Couldn't have made this experiment without DevLogLogan's tutorial and pistol model, and I got the player model from EmilsVFX and the bat model from FineZeus.

Maxxemon - A Pokemon-inspired RPG

This next game is a smaller project, and was originally made as a birthday gift to send off a close friend of mine to grad school. However, with permission, I'm uploading it here as well. Centered around Maxximus, a biology major at the University of Houston, you traverse the map and collect ANIMALS, in an RPG system similar to the Pokemon series. The game was made without scripts in RPG Maker VX Ace, using the Omega Modern asset pack, and utilizing music from Pokemon Diamond/Pearl/Platinum, Mother 3, and Mother: Cognitive Dissonance. Custom sprite work done by Kaleidocat. 

You'll start the game picking our your starter, and from there, you can select your ANIMALS in battle through the ITEMS menu. They can either use ITEMS, ATTACK, or build up stamina to use SPECIALS. Providing you have BioBalls, you can capture one ANIMAL of each type and use it in future battles (excepting bosses). There is one secret ANIMAL that may require some backtracking, but I hope it'll be worth the effort. This is a more grind-heavy game, so you may have to spend some time levelling up each of your ANIMALS before proceeding to the next area. 

To install, click this link and download the .exe file. Despite Windows' apprehensions, it's not a virus. Run it, and select a folder to install the game files in. Then, go into the folder "Maxxemon" and click the application under the same name. After that, have fun!

Cinevva Engine - Highlight Reel

Been working on a few projects - here's one of them. Through an internship at Cinevva, I've been working on testing and building their online game engine - a lot of the same functionality as something like Unity or Unreal, but run through WebGL and Three.JS. Together with the developers, I've created a level called 'Hide and Seek', where you can traverse around a 3D landscape and ask NPC's for hints on where to go. We've put out three videos, the first a highlight reel of the engine and the level:

Cinevva Engine - Highlight Reel

The second video displays some of the newest features and tools still in development:

Cinevva Engine - Latest Advancements!

And finally, a longer video with a playthrough and commentary of Hide and Seek:

Hide and Seek (Cinevva) - with Commentary

TURGLEQUEST 2 Version 1 - Download Now!

After a week of work, Turglequest 2 is finally finished and ready for download! This is a free 2D platformer game made with Unity, featuring six levels plus a tutorial, and text cutscenes that explain the story. Assets are from Pixel Adventure 1, sound effects are from 8-Bit SFX (both from the Unity Store), and music from various classic (mostly SNES) games. 

You play as a hapless wanderer who is found by a wizard in need of help - a bandit has scattered his precious kiwis to the wind, and you must traverse the mountains in search of them. See if you can collect all of them, but at the very least, 35 kiwis will net you the true ending and a bonus sixth level. 

There's a lot of work to do vis-a-vis polishing up the game and adding features such as more complex menus, level select, etc. that will come in later versions, but for now, this is the complete package. Feel free to provide feedback in the comments or at frankelandrywork@gmail.com, so I can work on improving the game in the future. For now, download Turglequest 2 at this link!

(Download instructions: the link leads to a zip file on Google Drive. Extract the whole folder and then run the .exe file within, which should boot up the game. Play with either keyboard + mouse or controller - I recommend the latter!)