Castle Paradox

Camdog · Joined: 08 Aug 2003 Posts: 606

My second entry in the gameathon!

All the gooey goodness of a standard rpg, distilled into a most concentrated form. We've all saved the world from the big bad guy many times, but can you do it in just 15 minutes? Lot's of secrets to explore and lots of abilities to find and use.

This is a more traditional fantasy than my other entry, so not as many tiebreaker rules were implemented, but it does include six brand new songs, all composed in 30 minutes or less. Everything about this game is fast!

Get it here:

http://www.castleparadox.com/gamelist-display.php?game=947

Spoon Weaver · Joined: 18 Nov 2008 Posts: 421 Location: @home

I noticed some striking resemblances between the ritual and the wizard's bomb. Namely, ever single one of the graphics. It's not that a timed rpg isn't a good a idea, but that doesn't mean you should time yourself while making it.

Newbie_Power · Joined: 04 Sep 2006 Posts: 1762

Camdog has released two other games (one being an update of the Ritual). I see absolutely no problem re-using graphics from your own game if you want to make a quick and easy game.

Plus, he did this before for his rogue-like as well. Never really hurt the game. I should really help make graphics for that (offered to make some pet graphics but ran into a standstill that I'm horrible at drawing four legged animals.)
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TheGiz> Am I the only one who likes to imagine that Elijah Wood's character in Back to the Future 2, the kid at the Wild Gunman machine in the Cafe 80's, is some future descendant of the AVGN?

Spoon Weaver · Joined: 18 Nov 2008 Posts: 421 Location: @home

no, no, i agree. I guess I did come off as a little too critical.

TMC · Posted: Sun Mar 15, 2009 3:34 am Post subject:

That was fun! The 'gameplay' was figuring out the best route (for one of two objectives) to take through the game, not hack-and-slash.

However since I made probably over 20 attempts (most lasting less than 5 min) I found the beginning way too repetitive. I could find only 2-3 good choices for what to do with the first 2-3 minutes. The possibilities exploded after that.

So I think it would have been better if it was distilled even a little further (several things to do were not worth it in terms of time/experience/items), but it was pretty great as it is.

I've only beaten the game once, with an abysmal 21 seconds to spare at level 11 (I had 2 people in my party), but on my last game I managed to get to level 19 with 7 minutes to spare before dying. Too much potential for scumming you-know-what. (Were there any other high experience enemies in the game? I didn't detect any other 'endgame'. (Oh wait, I never managed to win a battle with the cactuar things... hmm.) I guess finishing as quickly as possible might be a more interesting goal)
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"It is so great it is insanely great."

Camdog · Joined: 08 Aug 2003 Posts: 606

Glad you liked it! Yes, there are other high-exp enemies in the game; the one you mentioned in fact.

As far as the beginning goes, could you elaborate on which choices you consider worthwhile at the beginning? I feel that there's at least one (easy starting gold) that allows you to attempt pretty much any of the quests very quickly.

Also, which items did you find worthless? I tried to correlate the worth of an item with the difficulty of getting it, so an ideal balance would be that you could attempt the final castle with sub-optimal equipment but have more time left on the clock.

TMC · Posted: Wed Mar 18, 2009 3:19 am Post subject:

Here begin the spoilers

Here is my max level strategy, I didn't really try for minimum playthrough time, except to leave as much time as possible for levelbusting at the end:
The obvious strategy is to get the $500 and go to the second town and buy the steel armor, weapon and potions. Now head either to the cave (never tried that), mountain, or complete miniquests. $200 from miniquests could be used to hire a mercenary. You could get the ancient sword, but I didn't think it worth much time. Likewise, I skipped over most other equipment, since I wasn't sure what boosting any of the other stats did for me. What did the cape do again? Dodge?

The cave on second island has really disappointing loot, and come to think of it, I never fully explored the first one.

I didn't use any of the skills buyable at the second town item shop, partially because I never tried using them on the wizard. Other battles are over too quickly for me to see the point of buffing. I did use Flash and Heal quite a bit in my first runs, though Flash didn't appear to do much more damage. Eventually I stopped buying them.

Next I would like to go and grab the amulet. The flower's lightning attack does a lot of damage which is a big one-hit-kill risk at level 1 unless you either hire a helper or kill a couple red slimes first.

Next, grab the ULTIMATE sword. Heck yeah. Then go scumming on bomb thingys for the remaining ~7 minutes. Initially, run away when encountering more than one, massive damage and the amulet ensures you kill them in one hit nearly always. On reattempting this however, I found that levelling rate is massively dependent on luck at running into nubombs in single formation. Hiring party members makes it much safer to take on multiple.
Turns out cactuar things are a waste of time, my hits barely ever connect. But with the right equipment, maybe they are a faster levelling strategy.

However, I never actually beat the game using this strategy. What was your max level?
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"It is so great it is insanely great."

Moogle1 · Posted: Wed Mar 18, 2009 7:51 am Post subject:

TMC, you might be interested in my winning run. I never found the Ultimate Sword, though, and still don't have any clue where it is unless you're referring to the Ancient Sword. On one of the northern islands is my guess.
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Slime Salad :: Independent Game Design

Camdog · Joined: 08 Aug 2003 Posts: 606

I think I maxed out at level 15 maybe? The cac'tuus have their dodge cranked WAY up; magic is the only realistic way of hitting them, but they go down fast to a flash.

Newbie_Power · Joined: 04 Sep 2006 Posts: 1762

My fastest time so far:

I've tried to optimize to get faster, but a lot of luck based elements killed a lot of my runs.
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TheGiz> Am I the only one who likes to imagine that Elijah Wood's character in Back to the Future 2, the kid at the Wild Gunman machine in the Cafe 80's, is some future descendant of the AVGN?

TMC · Posted: Thu Mar 19, 2009 5:51 am Post subject:

I guess I was quite wrong about possible strategies.

I think I'm very close to the time optimal strategy. In just 4:02:

The plan
-Ancient sword
-$500
-Hire 1 mercenary and buy 6 pieces of armour. No steel weapons!
-gain two or three levels (fastest place to do this is probably the cave) and collect at least $200
-buy Flash for both party members (use this solely in the castle)
-kill Evil Wizard

Variants:
-grab the teddy bear for $200 for the flash's. Takes about an extra 5 sec. Then you could use flash while levelling, might save a few seconds.
-Do less or no levelling. I think I managed to kill an apprentice while at level 1 once, but it's not very reproducible. Maybe grab stun ring while gaining one level off slimes.
-skip ancient sword? Save 1 sec!
-buy potions, but I didn't need them
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"It is so great it is insanely great."