I was in a group of 3 (Alissa, Ein and me) when suddenly I noticed i didn't have the hability to choose my target when healing and using items in combat. There was a pre-selected character (Ein, switched to allisa near the end) and I could only heal them. Outside of combat, I could use items and heal normally. Also no problem with offensive moves. I repeated the mission and this hasn't happened again. This happened during the "Aura Breaks" class, day 14.
Anyway it's still a great game, would love to see a complete version.
Thanks for bringing this up! My guess is that your mouse was probably in the way, so that might be messing with the selected character. You can choose people to target with the mouse button as well and it takes priority over the keyboard selection.
I'm glad you enjoyed it~ Stay tuned for the update in a couple of months!
I talked to the cat in the 2nd day and my game froze ;-; ( the music still is on, forever, but i can't move after he does the water drop emote, and i don't think the girl helps me out )
Ah, thanks for finding this bug! Yes you are right, it's because the girl is blocking you when you are supposed to be pushed backwards. I can fix this in the next update easily. My apologies!
it's great with neat story writing.It feels like i'm back to first time at high school and learn everything about the environtment and people.i look forward for the final release.
Thanks! Honestly, I haven't shown the amount of content I originally wanted to showcase in this version. That's why there will be an update in a few months to showcase more of the game. I hope you try that out too!
By the end of the demo, I was really hoping that I could wreck Sylvia and her goons' day... So overall, pretty good character writing and I can't wait to see more! :D
I'm open to suggestions! There is a feedback channel in Lawmage Academy's Discord so feel free to send it there any time so I can have a look whenever. :D
During the battle against the golem monster, Jin told me to use an aura skill, but I didn't learn it during the battle or after the battle. Is this a glitch? I took the aura skill class after getting Alyssa and Ein to learn their aura skills, so that may have messed things up. On the other hand, considering what happened at the end of the demo, maybe the player character's aura is meant to unlock later, like during a rematch against a certain unbeatable boss.
Again congratulations on your game. As a Filipino myself, you inspire me to improve my game deving even more. You deserve all the success in this field. Looking forward for the final release of Lawmage Academy and to your other future games. 💛
Whenever I start up the game again, it doesn't remember any of the settings I picked before, such as auto-dash.
Edit: Is there a way to disable auto-save? It's bad design to have this feature save over a slot the player can manually save over, since they can lose their manual saves this way. You should instead have auto-save only affect a slot that the player is never allowed to manually save to.
It has been a while since i play tested it, will start again soon. Can already tell it has gotten a lot more prettier and polished though. Looking forward for full release
Thank you for the feedback, the comments, and suggestions that you gave early on! I appreciate the support and I will do my best to make it the best game it can be! :D
Hi HinaAsh! The testing phase for v0.5 demo finished and is no longer available. However, v0.6 is coming soon! I hope you stick around and stay tuned for updates. :D
This is looking really good and fun to play, but I'm going to be that guy and ask: do you plan on updating the battle UI (queue, stat placement/layout, etc) to not be something ripped straight from Octopath Traveler? Is this currently a placeholder while other tasks (arguably more important) are being implemented? Sorry if this sounds brash, but it was the first thing I noticed and now that's the impression I'm left with.
Thanks for asking this! The plugin I'm using for the battle system gives me limited options on how to customize it. I can edit the size of the windows, the colors of the gauges, icons of the shields, and adjust the positions of the characters. With the use of the Luna Engine, I was able to edit the menu of the battle system as well.
For the layout of the hp bars, I intend to keep them at the side to give space for the virtual buttons at the bottom for a future mobile port.
The turn queue at the top though I have very little control on how to edit it due to the nature of the plugin and the parameters it allows me to edit.
Thanks for asking this and I hope I answered your question!
I think the game is really easy now that I have played it so much. I have even beat it in one sitting once. What do you think about speedrunning? I think it may be possible to get a sub 1.5 hour run. I'm not revealing any secrets yet, but the other speedrunner I saw can improve in various locations. I need to test some stuff first though, such as how much I should grind for grades to make future battles easier.
Been eyeing on this game ever since ESGS2019. I couldn't play then because we also had a booth. But now I was finally able to play till the end.
Story: The story was pretty immersive, ever since the beginning of the game, I was drawn in. The writing was pretty decent, and the world building was on point. I could see the potter books we're references, which was great. Although it was off to a slow start, but I became really invested after the first dungeon. I love that they literally teach you the mechanics of the game through lessons in class. It was a good touch. For the world building, everything definitely fits together. I heard that the developer is an actual Lawyer (or studied law, correct me if I'm wrong), but he definitely found a way to mix Law and Fantasy in a very cool way. I won't spoil anything, but I was really frustrated about the outcome of the first trial. But definitely, the story and world building was one of the strong points of the game.
Characters: The characters we're really great and memorable. Each magister have their own personality fit with the classes that they teach. My favorite being Zelka and Uni. There were also those bully brats that I wanted to tear down with my magic. Each of them are really believable and have their own roles to fulfill in the world.
Combat: As an RPG Maker game, most games don't like to change the formula and innovate that much. But this game added a twist to the boring old turned based formula by adding Aura Skills/Counters. I think it added a bit of strategical factor to the battles. The basics - attack, magic, guard, item are still there but I think the battles are well balanced.
Audio: Like in any other game in this genre, I think the audio makes or breaks the game. In this case, the audio for this game was on point. I love the little jingles used for sound effects and most things have some sounds. The music really fit in with the theme of the world, and are used well on proper scenarios. I did they really did a good job on the audio for this game.
Student Life Simulator: One of the main features of the game is to let you live your life as a Lawmage Student. You are free to do things at your own pace at a cost of days. Each action you take takes the whole day to do. I was really amazed how much potential this game has. But I think they could add more things to do, it'll be more fun.
Final Thoughts: Overall, Lawmage Academy has the potential to be something really great. It has the foundations of a great game and a great story. It's something that I want to play till the end and have a great time. I hope the dev team get all the support they need to finish the game because they indeed deserve it. There are still some improvements that can be done here and there but overall I had a really pleasant experience with the game. I recommend it to anyone who likes RPGs/jrpgs. Thank you for making the game.
Been playing for 6 hours this weekend and I love it so far. I'll send some feedback once I finish the content but it is just suggestions, you are doing great! I'd like nothing more to site for hours and know more about this world and the people there, visit more places and learn all the spells there are. Please keep it up!
Thank you so much! It makes me really happy to know that you had a wonderful experience. Any feedback is appreciated so I can improve it even further! 😊
Seems the popularity of this game is dying down a bit. I played through it again recently, but its getting old. I already know how to do everything, and nothing new happens. Maybe add different scenarios that randomize to spruce things up some?
Watched Jaccb_Beck playing this today and decided to purchase it. I'm going to give it a try myself. Plan on streaming it myself on Sunday at 2pm EST. Will let you know what my viewers and I think of it.
Pretty good build so far from what I can see. only weirdness i saw was a piece of grass in the SW corner of the drakewood area that you can't walk on for some reason..
Positives:
So far I've found the music to be quite good, not what I was expecting in a test build at all. The way of showing in combat weaknesses to remember is nice. Aura shield is a very interesting twist I can't remember seeing in a game before. Save points are at good locations to make sure you don't lose much progress and act as good reminders that 'hey, have you saved lately?'
Negatives: Seems like the days are going by too quickly, like we'll run out of days if we only have 100 before we can explore everything. Some of the options seem a little too obvious which you're supposed to pick.
My viewers seemed quite interested in it as well :) Be continuing it again next Sunday to see how far we can go.
Was pointed out to me by one of my discord users who picked up the game:
Potential bug: Completing the v0.5 storyline allows you to continue the game in sandbox mode in order to continue exploring and trying new things. For whatever reason, I've been locked out by the Record Keeper who claims I still need to see my Mentor, which I've already done. Nothing I've been able to do will get the Record Keeper off of that loop.
Potential cause: I had a mission accepted before going to Ridgethorn (sp?) Village that I never started or completed. Hunting Garuda or something of that extent. That's the only thing I had that involves the Mentor-- perhaps it might be the cause.
QoL: When navigating menus, it would be a huge QoL improvement to return to the character listing after backing out of spells/equip/status menus. As of now, it goes all the way back to the menu order, and you have to select spells/equip/status again to return to the character listing.
Nitpicking: Could be my system, windowed mode, or an optimization issue, but my FPS crashes on a large critical strike, sometimes accompanied by a quick, horizontal black line across the screen. Mostly seen in the Arashiya Forest
I'm guessing that person is in Drakewood House? It happened to one of the streamers I know as well and I have fixed that bug in the version I am working on now. Thank you for the QoL suggestion as well! I will make sure to do that. Thank you for letting me know about the FPS crash as well, I will see what I can do. ^-^
I really like how you had that questionaire segment segment in the beginning to determine what house you go to. It was a nice touch of customization. Also picking customizing, I like how you are able pick what skills you learn. However, if you don't pick any offense magics it somewhat hinders exploration when you go out into the field. I have yet to finish it though.
As for reading the books I think having you learn the skill after 3 days seems sufficient. Four just seems a little too long. I like the overall atmosphere of school and the school theme is catchy. Although, you somewhat made it too obvious the LawMages were the true bad guys. The merchant that illegally sells you books and the Julian's slip of the tongue gave it away for me. As for the merchant have the merchant appear later in the game, when the party is starting to question the school. With Julian have Sylvia cut him off when he says the monsters are not the true enemies instead of mentioning the crystal experiments. That way the thought could linger on who the true bad guy is. The battles also seem to drag because of the slower battle animations and barriers. Maybe, you could have 1 to 2 less barriers on bosses because this where that most apparent.
Anyway, I think this a pretty well put together game, I can understand why it won first place. I was wondering if aren't too busy you wouldn't mind trying out my game. I finished the game, I just need it to be playtested some more. https://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/index.php?threads/path-of-the-martyrs.116206/
Thank you so much for the feedback and the suggestions! You raised some really good points and I think this will be helpful as I refine and fine tune the game some more.
I would love to try your game and help you test it! I hope it's available for Mac because I only have a Mac laptop unfortunately.
Okay, another day has come with enough boredom to make me think of this game. Are you planning to leave the amount of time spent at Lawmage Academy at 100 days? If so, I wouldn't be too happy. I think it would just be too short considering what's already there. It would make sense to me if the player were able to play through four years (1460 days) of daily activities, or at least four 100-day terms, Possibly with summer breaks or something. Anyway, just an idea.
Oh, do you have a discord server for this game? That would be nice.
The 100 Days isn't final. It will definitely increase! I am not too sure about 4 years though because that might take too long to make. Still, it will definitely be AT LEAST one year.
To those of you who saw this comment before it was edited to this text, I am sorry. I was careless in my wording, and it sounded like I disliked this game. The video I made was taken down due to way too many editing mistakes and caption-commentary that didn't make sense and even made it seem like the game was horrible.
I have a question. When you create a character and get to the naming stage, the default name that appears is "Syle". In the RPG Maker GOTM Jam, I found many games that offered the same thing. As a person who had only known the name RPG Maker until I found this game, is that just a basic default given by a plugin (engine, add-on, whatever its called)? If so, what do you think it should be befitting Lawmage Academy?
Awhile back I was bored during some free time, so I grabbed a pencil and paper and wrote up a short story in the Lawmage Academy setting and was unsure of one of the character names. It's nothing to be proud of.
I am currently trying to get a small streamer to play this. He's already looked at it, but he said turn based RPGs weren't really his thing, so I'm next going to try to convice him that the turn base is only in battle and combat is only smaller part of this game.
Aww thanks for the support! You are right. Most of the mechanics are outside of battle and combat is only one aspect of the game. Still, I don't want anyone who is not interested in JRPGs to feel compelled to play Lawmage Academy either. My target audience in the end are people who like retro style RPGs. ^-^
Um, I broke the crystal in the fairy forest, and the only thing that happened was a fairy who originally did not want to fight attacked me. What's supposed to happen? It literally traps me there every time I do it, so its the farthest I've been able to progress. I'm going to try the other route now, but why can't I break it and I actually gain the ally, the door opens, something?
I found nothing in the game files hinting of this "powerful ally", so I couldn't tell which file was assigned to her. There is an animation for the gate opening, but I cannot tell how to activate it. I know its not the end because I haven't seen even half of the characters and I'm already four hours in on my save file.
Edit: I took the other route, and it works fine. However, both options should be available, and since one seems broken, I cannot do anything with it.
Oh, one issue. With all the grinding I did to get through Arashia forest easily, Xeoclat Hills and the fairly forest was seriously lacking in difficulty. The boss in Xeoclat Hills was faster to beat. Too bad I couldn't do much grinding.
There was no crystal I could pick up. Was it that sparkling thing next to the broken crystal? I couldn't interact with it. I used a different save file the next time I saved, so I can easily go back therer and see what happens. The only things I could interact with was the door, the fairy, and the entrance to the village, where I was only told to complete my objective. I'll load the save again and check later, but I don't think I can do anything.
Also, I originally wanted to keep this exploit discreet for my own benefit, but with the charms I got in the Xeoclat Hills, I no longer maintain status effects outside of battle. All I have to do is equip them as soon as the battle is over, then unequip and equip on my next party member that has it, and it immediately takes away the effect.
Edit: I loaded the save and it seems to work now, however, I think I'll use the save that I chose to wait for Uni because I like tanking better than a large amount of attack power.
Hey, I played through the v0.5 demo. This is a really great game! Really impressed with what you've managed to do with RPG Maker MV. Loved the loop of going to classes, getting new things to do and then prioritizing how I wanted to do them over the next few days.
I have a few notes that can help improve player experience if you were interested in feedback for the next iteration:
Including more character creation options (not just M/F)
Having just Male and Female may alienate some players. Might be better to have a few body types and then let player determine how gendered or not they want their character to be. To not make this too asset heavy on your side, SumRndDude has a plugin that can use the RPGMV character generator parts to generate sprites and battlers based on player selection.
Also referring to Magister Millenia with gender neutral pronouns might help keep it nice and mysterious.
Hold Z/X to speed through Battle Animations
Some of the spell animations take a while and I think a lot of players might like it if they can speed through some of them to get to their next turn in battle. There are already a lot of time saving measures in this game (such as the Keeper Teleporter) so being time conscious seems to have been an intended part of the design and this speeding animations feature would be in line with that. If you are using Yanfly Battle Engine Core, there is a plugin that adds Battle Animation Speed to your Options menu.
Environmental Spell Effects Issue
I really liked the fact that you could use the same spells as in battle to manipulate the environment (like Golden Sun), however, it seemed inconsistent what spells could be used for what environment interactable. Pictured above is the issue I ran into where I was unable to use Frostbolt spell which I got from a crystal to grow the plant. Do spells from crystals not count towards this effect or is this a bug?
Boss Enemies probably shouldn't be Guarding so much
A few of the Boss enemies would Guard at times effectively skipping their turns making those fights a lot less interesting as a result. Due to the way Order Turn Battle works, singular Bosses should probably be doing a lot of things on their turn (damage, healing, buffing) to be action efficient because the player can manipulate when an enemy's turn gets skipped through a Guard Break. If this is an intentional part of the combat design to give players a breather, please disregard this note entirely.
Hope some of those notes were useful. Thanks for putting together a great demo and looking forward to seeing the full game when it comes out :)
Thank you so much for the detailed feedback! You made a lot of useful points for improvement. I will definitely consider it for the next update. I'm glad you enjoyed Lawmage Academy!
Okay, I know these aren't gender variants, but they would be interesting to see as character choices. Maybe the character editor can choose gender and a list of species such as the ones I listed?
Nice suggestions! Elf and Cat Person are planned. For beast, it can be done and they can have an innate weakness to Water because beast types are weak to that too!
Ok, I have some issues that need to be addressed. It took some time, but I have mastered the early game and found out pretty much everything mechanicswise
First off, there is absolutely no way to know where your secret money stash is. Because I found out about it too late, it ruined all my progress during my retake of Basic Combat I.
Second, the game doesn't tell you anything about how to do things until you do them. This may not be bad in most cases, but it also played a role in ruining my progress. How was I supposed to know that some items you get are for late game, not early and vice versa. I'll explain a bit more later.
Third, it is too easy to grind in Basic Combat I. By learning the enheal spell, you are able to earn more mana potions then you use, and there is an approximately 3:1 ratio involved (with turn limits taken into consideration) with using spells to regain health during battle over using the potions. You can literally find the enemy that poses the greatest challenge, fight it, leave the area, return, and fight him again to level up to level five before it slows to becoming frustratingly slow. During the retake, there is one added monster that beefs up grinding, and with the addition of a friend(s), it is way too easy to grind all over again to level up insanely high.
Fourth, the boss it too unefficient to beat. It is very easy to beat him, but even with my tactics, you use most of your usable items, which could be very useful later. It is possible to grind to regain them, but you might battle inside the school before you return ouside, which made me delete my first save in favor of making my next playthrough more favorable and learn the mechanics more, in which I ended up employing several strategies for beating the boss more efficiently, which I did eventually.
Fifth, whats the point of adding a loading screen that is rarely ever seen, and if it is, its only for a split second?
Now that I have mastered the early game, I am ready to tackle late game. I might to a VLC stream me showcasing my strategy that probably no one will ever see, so I guess I'll record it.
Suggestion: Check out Elchronicle, specifically the mission featureitis a mobile game that I think was also made using RPG Maker, but I think it uses some of the same soundtracks as Lawmage Academy, specifically the one that plays during a mission. Doing so may prevent copyright issues in the future if this game hits mainstream.
Also just found a more serious issue. When creating your name there is a button that says page. Selecting it will take you to a page with various letters scattered across the box. The empty spaces are selectable, and they count as spaces in the creation of a name. I was able to exploit it to add spaces to the end of my name to fill the slots, which ended up adding a suprisingly large amout of space in dialogue boxes whenever my name was mentioned.
It is also possible to get stuck. At the save point in the Soulstace house (only known location), theres that dark haird npc who usually hangs out near the desk. If she moves in the tile touching the corner of the chair tile at the wall or in front of the chair and you talk to her, there is a possibility that she will stop wandering. Because there is a two tile gap between the desk and the wall, and the chair takes up one as well as the npc, you are trapped by the desk.
Also, the latency when using the WASD keyboard configuration is for some reason occasionally higher, much too high for sufficient maneuvering, such as any sudden turn.
Hey don't worry about it I appreciate all the feedback and bug reports! You've been very helpful. I will work on as much bugs as I can to prepare for the next update!
I converted all the assets to ".ogg" and ".png". You can no longer keep secrets to future updates in the game files, even from people without RPG Maker. LOL.
It's fine! Almost all of it are placeholders that RPG Maker MV provides, which I will replace. Plus, you can't legally use the assets without a license from the creator so the copyright is still protected. 😊
But hey if you want to help promote Lawmage Academy by helping distribute the main menu screen to the public, I'd thank you for it!👍
Ok, I guess I might be able to promote it that way. When I told you about this, I was thinking of the possibilities of changing assets to make the game look different, which could be called different things depending on what you want to do with it. For example, skin, texture pack, etc. Oh! I just thought of something. Are you planning to put a character editor in the game? That would be better than having just four basic characters depending on your class.
Changing assets is highly encouraged to set it apart from other RPG Maker games as you pointed it out. As for character editor, it is possible but not yet a priority at this point.
← Return to game
Comments
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
I enjoyed every minute of this game! Keep up the good work!!
Thank you, Mochi!!
This is the first time playing this kind of game and let me tell you-
I loved every minute of it! I just finished the demo. Can't wait for the full version :)
Thank u for your hard work!!
Thank you very much for the kind words. This is really motivating for me. <3
Really enjoying the game. I'm only on day 10 but curious, will you be able to customize your dorm room at all?
At the moment no, but it's something that I can probably implement in the future.
I was in a group of 3 (Alissa, Ein and me) when suddenly I noticed i didn't have the hability to choose my target when healing and using items in combat. There was a pre-selected character (Ein, switched to allisa near the end) and I could only heal them. Outside of combat, I could use items and heal normally. Also no problem with offensive moves. I repeated the mission and this hasn't happened again. This happened during the "Aura Breaks" class, day 14.
Anyway it's still a great game, would love to see a complete version.
Thanks for bringing this up! My guess is that your mouse was probably in the way, so that might be messing with the selected character. You can choose people to target with the mouse button as well and it takes priority over the keyboard selection.
I'm glad you enjoyed it~ Stay tuned for the update in a couple of months!
That makes sense. I checked and that seems to be what happened. Thanks for answering.
Anytime. Thanks!!
I talked to the cat in the 2nd day and my game froze ;-; ( the music still is on, forever, but i can't move after he does the water drop emote, and i don't think the girl helps me out )
maybe it's cuz the cat would push me backwards,but because the girl is there i just keep triggering the event over and over and i can't move
Ah, thanks for finding this bug! Yes you are right, it's because the girl is blocking you when you are supposed to be pushed backwards. I can fix this in the next update easily. My apologies!
Really enjoyed it and can't wait for the full game to be released !!!
Thank you very much~ I'm glad to hear that!
One of my top games on my list, the story is really good and the gameplay too.Hope this game will one day go BOOMING, they really deserve it.:)
Thank you very much! I'm glad you loved it! Stay tuned for an extended demo version early next year. ^-^
it's great with neat story writing.It feels like i'm back to first time at high school and learn everything about the environtment and people.i look forward for the final release.
Thanks! Honestly, I haven't shown the amount of content I originally wanted to showcase in this version. That's why there will be an update in a few months to showcase more of the game. I hope you try that out too!
Kirito is Vissage because he has 2 swords. 1 sword in each hand. = Balance. LOL
By the end of the demo, I was really hoping that I could wreck Sylvia and her goons' day... So overall, pretty good character writing and I can't wait to see more! :D
Hahaha yaaay thanks~ Glad you enjoyed it!
This was an interesting demo. Congratulations and I look forward to your progress and final release.
Thank you very much! I appreciate the well wishes~
Oh, and I forgot to mention, if you would like some suggestions on spells, give me a shout here on Discord if you'd like.
I'm open to suggestions! There is a feedback channel in Lawmage Academy's Discord so feel free to send it there any time so I can have a look whenever. :D
During the battle against the golem monster, Jin told me to use an aura skill, but I didn't learn it during the battle or after the battle. Is this a glitch? I took the aura skill class after getting Alyssa and Ein to learn their aura skills, so that may have messed things up. On the other hand, considering what happened at the end of the demo, maybe the player character's aura is meant to unlock later, like during a rematch against a certain unbeatable boss.
Don't worry it's not a glitch. The player character's Aura skill will be unlocked later. :D
Again congratulations on your game. As a Filipino myself, you inspire me to improve my game deving even more. You deserve all the success in this field. Looking forward for the final release of Lawmage Academy and to your other future games. 💛
I appreciate the kind words, Carl! I'm glad I could inspire you and help motivate you to finish your game. <3
Whenever I start up the game again, it doesn't remember any of the settings I picked before, such as auto-dash.
Edit: Is there a way to disable auto-save? It's bad design to have this feature save over a slot the player can manually save over, since they can lose their manual saves this way. You should instead have auto-save only affect a slot that the player is never allowed to manually save to.
Thanks for the feedback. I'll look for better plugins to to address those issues in the extended demo. ^-^
Amazing start so far! I need more!!!! I will definitely be purchasing the final release.
Wonderful~ I'm glad you enjoyed it!
Thank you for making such a great game.
Awww ; ~ ;
Great demo, looking forward to the final release! :)
I appreciate the kind words, Angel!
When id the . exe file coming?
The public demo will be released on the first week of November. ^ - ^
I cannot wait XD
It has been a while since i play tested it, will start again soon. Can already tell it has gotten a lot more prettier and polished though. Looking forward for full release
The updated demo will come real soon! I'm so excited for you to try it out. :D
Woah, now it's keep improving! Looking forward for the full release~
Thank you for the feedback, the comments, and suggestions that you gave early on! I appreciate the support and I will do my best to make it the best game it can be! :D
Am i just blind or there isn't really a download button?
Hi HinaAsh! The testing phase for v0.5 demo finished and is no longer available. However, v0.6 is coming soon! I hope you stick around and stay tuned for updates. :D
I really am looking forward to this
It has gotten better! Keep it up!
Thank you so much~! <3
Deserve the love it gets ❤️🙏
This is looking really good and fun to play, but I'm going to be that guy and ask: do you plan on updating the battle UI (queue, stat placement/layout, etc) to not be something ripped straight from Octopath Traveler? Is this currently a placeholder while other tasks (arguably more important) are being implemented? Sorry if this sounds brash, but it was the first thing I noticed and now that's the impression I'm left with.
Thanks for asking this! The plugin I'm using for the battle system gives me limited options on how to customize it. I can edit the size of the windows, the colors of the gauges, icons of the shields, and adjust the positions of the characters. With the use of the Luna Engine, I was able to edit the menu of the battle system as well.
For the layout of the hp bars, I intend to keep them at the side to give space for the virtual buttons at the bottom for a future mobile port.
The turn queue at the top though I have very little control on how to edit it due to the nature of the plugin and the parameters it allows me to edit.
Thanks for asking this and I hope I answered your question!
I think the game is really easy now that I have played it so much. I have even beat it in one sitting once. What do you think about speedrunning? I think it may be possible to get a sub 1.5 hour run. I'm not revealing any secrets yet, but the other speedrunner I saw can improve in various locations. I need to test some stuff first though, such as how much I should grind for grades to make future battles easier.
You can definitely do it faster I think. The dev room has enough exploits to ensure that everything goes fast.
Been eyeing on this game ever since ESGS2019. I couldn't play then because we also had a booth. But now I was finally able to play till the end.
Story:
The story was pretty immersive, ever since the beginning of the game, I was drawn in. The writing was pretty decent, and the world building was on point. I could see the potter books we're references, which was great. Although it was off to a slow start, but I became really invested after the first dungeon. I love that they literally teach you the mechanics of the game through lessons in class. It was a good touch. For the world building, everything definitely fits together. I heard that the developer is an actual Lawyer (or studied law, correct me if I'm wrong), but he definitely found a way to mix Law and Fantasy in a very cool way. I won't spoil anything, but I was really frustrated about the outcome of the first trial. But definitely, the story and world building was one of the strong points of the game.
Characters:
The characters we're really great and memorable. Each magister have their own personality fit with the classes that they teach. My favorite being Zelka and Uni. There were also those bully brats that I wanted to tear down with my magic. Each of them are really believable and have their own roles to fulfill in the world.
Combat:
As an RPG Maker game, most games don't like to change the formula and innovate that much. But this game added a twist to the boring old turned based formula by adding Aura Skills/Counters. I think it added a bit of strategical factor to the battles. The basics - attack, magic, guard, item are still there but I think the battles are well balanced.
Audio:
Like in any other game in this genre, I think the audio makes or breaks the game. In this case, the audio for this game was on point. I love the little jingles used for sound effects and most things have some sounds. The music really fit in with the theme of the world, and are used well on proper scenarios. I did they really did a good job on the audio for this game.
Student Life Simulator:
One of the main features of the game is to let you live your life as a Lawmage Student. You are free to do things at your own pace at a cost of days. Each action you take takes the whole day to do. I was really amazed how much potential this game has. But I think they could add more things to do, it'll be more fun.
Final Thoughts:
Overall, Lawmage Academy has the potential to be something really great. It has the foundations of a great game and a great story. It's something that I want to play till the end and have a great time. I hope the dev team get all the support they need to finish the game because they indeed deserve it. There are still some improvements that can be done here and there but overall I had a really pleasant experience with the game. I recommend it to anyone who likes RPGs/jrpgs. Thank you for making the game.
Thank you so much for the detailed review. I appreciate the kind words and the suggestions. I hope to meet you as well in the next ESGS! 😊
I love it! check out my impressions video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSu2uBWKCrs
this games offers so much, i love the combat, beautiful maps and the learning system for spells is unique
Thank you so much! I will check out the video for sure. ☺
Been playing for 6 hours this weekend and I love it so far. I'll send some feedback once I finish the content but it is just suggestions, you are doing great! I'd like nothing more to site for hours and know more about this world and the people there, visit more places and learn all the spells there are. Please keep it up!
Thank you so much! It makes me really happy to know that you had a wonderful experience. Any feedback is appreciated so I can improve it even further! 😊
Seems the popularity of this game is dying down a bit. I played through it again recently, but its getting old. I already know how to do everything, and nothing new happens. Maybe add different scenarios that randomize to spruce things up some?
Yep! Thanks for the suggestion. I will make an update later this year. :D
When you do, I will do a playthrough on YouTube.
Watched Jaccb_Beck playing this today and decided to purchase it. I'm going to give it a try myself. Plan on streaming it myself on Sunday at 2pm EST. Will let you know what my viewers and I think of it.
Oooh awesome! I'll see if I can drop by as well!
Pretty good build so far from what I can see. only weirdness i saw was a piece of grass in the SW corner of the drakewood area that you can't walk on for some reason..
Positives:
So far I've found the music to be quite good, not what I was expecting in a test build at all.
The way of showing in combat weaknesses to remember is nice.
Aura shield is a very interesting twist I can't remember seeing in a game before.
Save points are at good locations to make sure you don't lose much progress and act as good reminders that 'hey, have you saved lately?'
Negatives:
Seems like the days are going by too quickly, like we'll run out of days if we only have 100 before we can explore everything.
Some of the options seem a little too obvious which you're supposed to pick.
My viewers seemed quite interested in it as well :) Be continuing it again next Sunday to see how far we can go.
Thanks for the feedback! I'm glad you enjoyed the game. I'll watch the VOD of your stream so I can catch up. ^-^
Just a clarification, 100 Days is a placeholder and will be extended later on.
Was pointed out to me by one of my discord users who picked up the game:
Potential bug: Completing the v0.5 storyline allows you to continue the game in sandbox mode in order to continue exploring and trying new things. For whatever reason, I've been locked out by the Record Keeper who claims I still need to see my Mentor, which I've already done. Nothing I've been able to do will get the Record Keeper off of that loop.
Potential cause: I had a mission accepted before going to Ridgethorn (sp?) Village that I never started or completed. Hunting Garuda or something of that extent. That's the only thing I had that involves the Mentor-- perhaps it might be the cause.
QoL: When navigating menus, it would be a huge QoL improvement to return to the character listing after backing out of spells/equip/status menus. As of now, it goes all the way back to the menu order, and you have to select spells/equip/status again to return to the character listing.
Nitpicking: Could be my system, windowed mode, or an optimization issue, but my FPS crashes on a large critical strike, sometimes accompanied by a quick, horizontal black line across the screen. Mostly seen in the Arashiya Forest
Thanks for pointing out these things!
I'm guessing that person is in Drakewood House? It happened to one of the streamers I know as well and I have fixed that bug in the version I am working on now. Thank you for the QoL suggestion as well! I will make sure to do that. Thank you for letting me know about the FPS crash as well, I will see what I can do. ^-^
I really like how you had that questionaire segment segment in the beginning to determine what house you go to. It was a nice touch of customization. Also picking customizing, I like how you are able pick what skills you learn. However, if you don't pick any offense magics it somewhat hinders exploration when you go out into the field. I have yet to finish it though.
As for reading the books I think having you learn the skill after 3 days seems sufficient. Four just seems a little too long. I like the overall atmosphere of school and the school theme is catchy. Although, you somewhat made it too obvious the LawMages were the true bad guys. The merchant that illegally sells you books and the Julian's slip of the tongue gave it away for me. As for the merchant have the merchant appear later in the game, when the party is starting to question the school. With Julian have Sylvia cut him off when he says the monsters are not the true enemies instead of mentioning the crystal experiments. That way the thought could linger on who the true bad guy is. The battles also seem to drag because of the slower battle animations and barriers. Maybe, you could have 1 to 2 less barriers on bosses because this where that most apparent.
Anyway, I think this a pretty well put together game, I can understand why it won first place. I was wondering if aren't too busy you wouldn't mind trying out my game. I finished the game, I just need it to be playtested some more. https://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/index.php?threads/path-of-the-martyrs.116206/
Thank you so much for the feedback and the suggestions! You raised some really good points and I think this will be helpful as I refine and fine tune the game some more.
I would love to try your game and help you test it! I hope it's available for Mac because I only have a Mac laptop unfortunately.
Here’s link to the Mac version of the game: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ldtmypz0axknyyv/Path%20of%20the%20Martyrs%201.2%20%28Mac%29.zip?dl=0
Let me know if it works.
hi
Okay, another day has come with enough boredom to make me think of this game. Are you planning to leave the amount of time spent at Lawmage Academy at 100 days? If so, I wouldn't be too happy. I think it would just be too short considering what's already there. It would make sense to me if the player were able to play through four years (1460 days) of daily activities, or at least four 100-day terms, Possibly with summer breaks or something. Anyway, just an idea.
Oh, do you have a discord server for this game? That would be nice.
The 100 Days isn't final. It will definitely increase! I am not too sure about 4 years though because that might take too long to make. Still, it will definitely be AT LEAST one year.
At least one year is fine
Ah also I don't have a Discord server for Lawmage Academy yet. Maybe next year? We'll see. Thanks for your interesr and suggestions!! 😊
To those of you who saw this comment before it was edited to this text, I am sorry. I was careless in my wording, and it sounded like I disliked this game. The video I made was taken down due to way too many editing mistakes and caption-commentary that didn't make sense and even made it seem like the game was horrible.
I haven't watched it yet. I was planning to watch it today but unfortunately you took it down. No worries though!
Very cute character sprites. 🙂
Thank you so much!
I have a question. When you create a character and get to the naming stage, the default name that appears is "Syle". In the RPG Maker GOTM Jam, I found many games that offered the same thing. As a person who had only known the name RPG Maker until I found this game, is that just a basic default given by a plugin (engine, add-on, whatever its called)? If so, what do you think it should be befitting Lawmage Academy?
Some people want a "canon" name for main characters in RPGs so I placed a default name there. Developers can choose not to put a default name though.
Awhile back I was bored during some free time, so I grabbed a pencil and paper and wrote up a short story in the Lawmage Academy setting and was unsure of one of the character names. It's nothing to be proud of.
There's no shame in it either! I am proud of you that you even made a story in the Lawmage Academy setting!
Congrats on your RPG Maker GOTM win!
I am currently trying to get a small streamer to play this. He's already looked at it, but he said turn based RPGs weren't really his thing, so I'm next going to try to convice him that the turn base is only in battle and combat is only smaller part of this game.
Aww thanks for the support! You are right. Most of the mechanics are outside of battle and combat is only one aspect of the game. Still, I don't want anyone who is not interested in JRPGs to feel compelled to play Lawmage Academy either. My target audience in the end are people who like retro style RPGs. ^-^
Um, I broke the crystal in the fairy forest, and the only thing that happened was a fairy who originally did not want to fight attacked me. What's supposed to happen? It literally traps me there every time I do it, so its the farthest I've been able to progress. I'm going to try the other route now, but why can't I break it and I actually gain the ally, the door opens, something?
I found nothing in the game files hinting of this "powerful ally", so I couldn't tell which file was assigned to her. There is an animation for the gate opening, but I cannot tell how to activate it. I know its not the end because I haven't seen even half of the characters and I'm already four hours in on my save file.
Edit: I took the other route, and it works fine. However, both options should be available, and since one seems broken, I cannot do anything with it.
Oh, one issue. With all the grinding I did to get through Arashia forest easily, Xeoclat Hills and the fairly forest was seriously lacking in difficulty. The boss in Xeoclat Hills was faster to beat. Too bad I couldn't do much grinding.
Did you get the Fejora Crystal? After picking up the crystal and beating the fairy, you should be able to go back to the village.
There was no crystal I could pick up. Was it that sparkling thing next to the broken crystal? I couldn't interact with it. I used a different save file the next time I saved, so I can easily go back therer and see what happens. The only things I could interact with was the door, the fairy, and the entrance to the village, where I was only told to complete my objective. I'll load the save again and check later, but I don't think I can do anything.
Also, I originally wanted to keep this exploit discreet for my own benefit, but with the charms I got in the Xeoclat Hills, I no longer maintain status effects outside of battle. All I have to do is equip them as soon as the battle is over, then unequip and equip on my next party member that has it, and it immediately takes away the effect.
Edit: I loaded the save and it seems to work now, however, I think I'll use the save that I chose to wait for Uni because I like tanking better than a large amount of attack power.
Alrighty! The exploit is a nice discovery. I don't mind leaving it there because status effects are really more threatening while in battle.
Hey, I played through the v0.5 demo. This is a really great game! Really impressed with what you've managed to do with RPG Maker MV. Loved the loop of going to classes, getting new things to do and then prioritizing how I wanted to do them over the next few days.
I have a few notes that can help improve player experience if you were interested in feedback for the next iteration:
Having just Male and Female may alienate some players. Might be better to have a few body types and then let player determine how gendered or not they want their character to be. To not make this too asset heavy on your side, SumRndDude has a plugin that can use the RPGMV character generator parts to generate sprites and battlers based on player selection.
Also referring to Magister Millenia with gender neutral pronouns might help keep it nice and mysterious.
Some of the spell animations take a while and I think a lot of players might like it if they can speed through some of them to get to their next turn in battle. There are already a lot of time saving measures in this game (such as the Keeper Teleporter) so being time conscious seems to have been an intended part of the design and this speeding animations feature would be in line with that. If you are using Yanfly Battle Engine Core, there is a plugin that adds Battle Animation Speed to your Options menu.
I really liked the fact that you could use the same spells as in battle to manipulate the environment (like Golden Sun), however, it seemed inconsistent what spells could be used for what environment interactable. Pictured above is the issue I ran into where I was unable to use Frostbolt spell which I got from a crystal to grow the plant. Do spells from crystals not count towards this effect or is this a bug?
A few of the Boss enemies would Guard at times effectively skipping their turns making those fights a lot less interesting as a result. Due to the way Order Turn Battle works, singular Bosses should probably be doing a lot of things on their turn (damage, healing, buffing) to be action efficient because the player can manipulate when an enemy's turn gets skipped through a Guard Break. If this is an intentional part of the combat design to give players a breather, please disregard this note entirely.
Hope some of those notes were useful. Thanks for putting together a great demo and looking forward to seeing the full game when it comes out :)
Thank you so much for the detailed feedback! You made a lot of useful points for improvement. I will definitely consider it for the next update. I'm glad you enjoyed Lawmage Academy!
ooh ooh! I have a great idea for gender variants.
1. Human
2. Beast
3. Cat Person
4. Elf
5. Smerf (Lol)
Okay, I know these aren't gender variants, but they would be interesting to see as character choices. Maybe the character editor can choose gender and a list of species such as the ones I listed?
Nice suggestions! Elf and Cat Person are planned. For beast, it can be done and they can have an innate weakness to Water because beast types are weak to that too!
Interesting, but why haven't I seen any bosses or enemies guarding? Weird.
The frostbolt spell is technically ice, so its probably not considered a water spell for that reason.
Most bosses have a small chance to guard on any turn. In the next update I will focus on reworking and balancing enemies.
For frosbolt, I'll see what I can do instead. Your suggestions are all well noted!
Ok, I have some issues that need to be addressed. It took some time, but I have mastered the early game and found out pretty much everything mechanicswise
First off, there is absolutely no way to know where your secret money stash is. Because I found out about it too late, it ruined all my progress during my retake of Basic Combat I.
Second, the game doesn't tell you anything about how to do things until you do them. This may not be bad in most cases, but it also played a role in ruining my progress. How was I supposed to know that some items you get are for late game, not early and vice versa. I'll explain a bit more later.
Third, it is too easy to grind in Basic Combat I. By learning the enheal spell, you are able to earn more mana potions then you use, and there is an approximately 3:1 ratio involved (with turn limits taken into consideration) with using spells to regain health during battle over using the potions. You can literally find the enemy that poses the greatest challenge, fight it, leave the area, return, and fight him again to level up to level five before it slows to becoming frustratingly slow. During the retake, there is one added monster that beefs up grinding, and with the addition of a friend(s), it is way too easy to grind all over again to level up insanely high.
Fourth, the boss it too unefficient to beat. It is very easy to beat him, but even with my tactics, you use most of your usable items, which could be very useful later. It is possible to grind to regain them, but you might battle inside the school before you return ouside, which made me delete my first save in favor of making my next playthrough more favorable and learn the mechanics more, in which I ended up employing several strategies for beating the boss more efficiently, which I did eventually.
Fifth, whats the point of adding a loading screen that is rarely ever seen, and if it is, its only for a split second?
Now that I have mastered the early game, I am ready to tackle late game. I might to a VLC stream me showcasing my strategy that probably no one will ever see, so I guess I'll record it.
Suggestion: Check out Elchronicle, specifically the mission featureitis a mobile game that I think was also made using RPG Maker, but I think it uses some of the same soundtracks as Lawmage Academy, specifically the one that plays during a mission. Doing so may prevent copyright issues in the future if this game hits mainstream.
Thanks for the suggestions on the balancing issues! You made some nice points here. They are well noted!
Also just found a more serious issue. When creating your name there is a button that says page. Selecting it will take you to a page with various letters scattered across the box. The empty spaces are selectable, and they count as spaces in the creation of a name. I was able to exploit it to add spaces to the end of my name to fill the slots, which ended up adding a suprisingly large amout of space in dialogue boxes whenever my name was mentioned.
It is also possible to get stuck. At the save point in the Soulstace house (only known location), theres that dark haird npc who usually hangs out near the desk. If she moves in the tile touching the corner of the chair tile at the wall or in front of the chair and you talk to her, there is a possibility that she will stop wandering. Because there is a two tile gap between the desk and the wall, and the chair takes up one as well as the npc, you are trapped by the desk.
Also, the latency when using the WASD keyboard configuration is for some reason occasionally higher, much too high for sufficient maneuvering, such as any sudden turn.
Sorry if I'm commenting too much.
Hey don't worry about it I appreciate all the feedback and bug reports! You've been very helpful. I will work on as much bugs as I can to prepare for the next update!
I converted all the assets to ".ogg" and ".png". You can no longer keep secrets to future updates in the game files, even from people without RPG Maker. LOL.
It's fine! Almost all of it are placeholders that RPG Maker MV provides, which I will replace. Plus, you can't legally use the assets without a license from the creator so the copyright is still protected. 😊
But hey if you want to help promote Lawmage Academy by helping distribute the main menu screen to the public, I'd thank you for it!👍
Ok, I guess I might be able to promote it that way. When I told you about this, I was thinking of the possibilities of changing assets to make the game look different, which could be called different things depending on what you want to do with it. For example, skin, texture pack, etc. Oh! I just thought of something. Are you planning to put a character editor in the game? That would be better than having just four basic characters depending on your class.
Changing assets is highly encouraged to set it apart from other RPG Maker games as you pointed it out. As for character editor, it is possible but not yet a priority at this point.
Okay, I like that.
Hey do you mind if i record myself playing it for youtube and twitch?
Not at all! I can even help you promote it in my social media accounts! Send me a message in Twitter @LawmageA and I'll share it with everyone! ☺
Ooooh thank you so much! I'll watch it right away!