Ascension Adventure 2
You were a great adventurer, and now you stand an anachronism. The world has changed around you more rapidly than you could have ever imagined. Still, there are parts of the world unexplored. Off the Phalaen coast, on a mysterious island, lies the enigmatic Forge. It promises riches and danger to those who cannot resist its allure. You grab your cloak and trusty stick. One last adventure. One last score.
I've been working on this on and off for the past year or so, and I'm finally at the state where I feel there's enough to show. Hopefully once I have this posted I'll be more motivated to get on it and finish this.
I'm still using the Heroine Dusk codebase, with significant modifications this time. There are some new features, some implemented and some in progress, and a bit of behind the scenes revamping. Of course, the art is largely from this site. Some is reworked from Heroine Dusk or other sources and some is original (which will be posted here when the game is done).
Eventually it will be published to web, Android (WebView or maybe Cordova this time) and desktop (nw.js). For now, if you're brave enough to try it you can clone the repo on github.
Exploring the world. None of the brand new tiles are visible here, unfortunately, but this map was built with my extremely crude map editor. I'm hoping to implement four-direction "skyboxes" but I haven't done that yet. As you can see, I'm still not really an artist.
The new info page, showing off some of the visual style, the multicoloured minimap, and the equipment display. Filtering is enabled in this screenshot but can be turned on and off from the main menu.
And now we're fighting a monster. The combat system is probably the most dramatic change from Ascension: Adventure/Heroine Dusk. You can block, melee attack, ranged attack, run, or use an ability. Unlike Heroine Dusk, you can have as many abilities as you want but can only have two active at a time. Right now I have only Heal. On a side note, these buttons are mapped to the WASD cluster on PC. Also, yes, I know his face looks a little off.
I've been more motivated to work on this lately and I've made pretty good progress on a few features.
I now have "skyboxes". I've actually extended the graphics instead of adding more files, and the game draws the portion corresponding to the cardinal direction. Only one sky background is like this right now and it might stay that way as most of the game will be set underground.
A shop/message. This system is largely unchanged from Heroine Dusk. As you can see, it's looking kind of bland. I wanted to put an image in the middle, and in fact I've actually written the code to do it, but I need to draw up some images first.
Finally, the elevator! This is a big part of Ascension Adventure 2 and a big change from Heroine Dusk gameplay-wise. The game is divided into mostly discrete levels, each one different and more difficult from the last. At the end of each will be a mini-boss of sorts. Defeating them clears the way to the next level and grants you a key for the elevator, allowing you to return to that level at any time or return to the village at the surface. I want to put an image in this screen, too, though I haven't written the code yet.
If the images are blurry, it might be because of postimage or opengameart. I've adjusted my process a bit and it should be better this time.
Ascension Adventure 2 is out! Check out the itch.io page, grab it on Google Play, or dig through the source code on GitHub.
To be honest, I might move it to a page on my own site. I thought embedding it into itch would be cool, but the game doesn't really work properly in the iframe. I recommend you download the desktop or mobile version instead. I've only built a desktop version for Windows, but I'll provide versions for Linux and macOS if there's demand. Otherwise, it's just nw.js, so you can download the Windows version and provide your own binaries.
Fun!
several questions:
--Medicine Storm1. Not in the game itself. You can look at info.js if you're curious. I figured this would be fine, because Heroine Dusk didn't do it either- but Heroine Dusk also avoided random drops and only used the first few tiers in-game.
2. Ranged is slightly more powerful and slightly less accurate than melee. Some enemies are weak to one but not the other, or particularly resistant to one but not the other.
3. To be honest, block isn't terribly useful at this point. It reduces the damage you take, but doesn't deal any damage itself. I'm looking into changes that would make it more useful for the next update.
--Medicine StormThis is sick dude! I really like the open world type gameplay and RPG mechanics. Keep it up! Are you publishing it anywhere? You should add npc dialouge too. Is it a rougelike? (sorry for so many questions)
I'm probably going to add attack patterns to some enemies. Right now it's random, inherited from Heroine Dusk, but it should be fairly trivial to add. There won't be prompts- you'll have to figure out how an enemy attacks on your own and anticipate its actions.
It's available for Android on the Play Store, and you can play it online at the itch.io link (though it doesn't work quite right on all browsers). I'd classify it as a rogue-lite; it doesn't have procedural generation and isn't as punishing as a roguelike.
I'm hoping to get Version 1.1 with some improvements out next month, as well as some of the art packaged up and released here.
I've released an art pack containing (almost) all the art from this game. Most of it is derived from other art from this site, with some new things added in. I may release a separate CC-BY or CC0 pack with some of my original art.
I haven't had time to work on Version 1.1, but I'm hoping that I will at some point and am planning to release it before the end of the summer.