Ishara: Bane of the Seas [Adventure][GxB][NaNoRenO2015]

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Aleema
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Ishara: Bane of the Seas [Adventure][GxB][NaNoRenO2015]

#1 Post by Aleema »

Happy Backwards presents ...
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The story is about a woman who took a few wrong turns in her life, leading to her exile from her own family. They promised her a ship, but instead gifted it to her twin sister, Cendre. Ishara vows to get her ship back at all costs.
Her attempts to steal the ship are thwarted by another bandit gang who wished to take it for their own. She's thrown on an adventure to get the ship back with someone she does not want to be adventuring with!

She becomes stuck with either her twin sister Cendre, whom she hates, or Félix, her sister's fiancé ... that has something he is hiding.
Game Features:
Battle Mini-game
Two Major Branches
Four Endings
Voice Acting for Battles
36k Words, ~2 Hours Playtime
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Ishara
Ishara named herself after a fabled sea witch to instill fear in all she encountered,
which is the path of a woman looking to turn to piracy. She needs one thing first, and that's a ship.
If only she didn't need her family to get to it.

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Cendre
Ishara's twin sister.
She was raised to be a proper noble lady and to follow all the rules.
She despises her sister for ruining their family's name.

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Félix
Cendre's love and fiancé.
He is a perfect gentleman of modest wealth ... Or so she thinks.
He's used to certain luxuries, you see. He'll do anything to keep his lifestyle.

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Talon
Ishara's first mate. They became good friends while they were captives in the southern desert.
Talon, or Tal for short, loves a good fight and has no qualms breaking the law.
Laws have never done her any good.

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Louis
The poor fisherman who happens to meet Talon - and promptly becomes her prisoner.
He doesn't seem to mind the company, as a man can get lonely out on a fishing boat by himself.

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Download Here
113mb, .ZIP, WIN/MAC/LINUX
Mirror (itch.io)
~
Sorry the game is out a little late! We bit off more than we could chew, but hey? It's only a little late. :mrgreen: I wasn't even planning on doing half of this, but this is definitely the game we wanted to make. There may still be bugs and balance issues with the gameplay. We're going to release now and patch later, so please let us know if you catch anything - including typos. :oops:

We're really proud of this game, so we really do hope you enjoy it.
Last edited by Aleema on Fri Apr 03, 2015 7:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Maegalkarven
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Re: Ishara: Bane of the Seas [Adventure][GxB][NaNoRenO2015]

#2 Post by Maegalkarven »

Congratulations on beating NaNoRenO~
I just played the game and i love it! Story, characters and art - everything is just amasing! I personaly like Ishara, she is such wonderful woman!
I had ending with Felix (the one, there captain Wray stabs Ishara and then Felix saves her) and absolutely loved it.

Though there are some questions left unanswered for me, like:
What happend with Cendre and Grandmom after main story, how did they react to Felix desicion to stay with Ishara?
How did captain Wray know Ishara birth name? Was he the captain who sold her to slavery?
Why Felix can breathe under the water, that kind of merman he is? :D Seriously though, maybe he has mermaid/merman ancestor?
I think, some of this questions can be solved by playing throught another path, to another ending, but i like my ending way too much! :oops:
But honestly, you made a great game, i have so much fun playing it!
And an epilogue could be welcome, actually, it could conclude adventure and tell player, what happend with whom.
Oh, and about bugs:
in the last fight ( with captain Wray) after move or two game suddenly kicked me out, just closed itself. It continued to happen, so i should make every move carefully and save game after every step. It was some kind of lottery: will it kick me out on the next step or not. It was the only bug i have met

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Re: Ishara: Bane of the Seas [Adventure][GxB][NaNoRenO2015]

#3 Post by Aleema »

An epilogue is a good idea! The endings were going to be different (a.k.a. longer), but I ran out of time.

One of your questions is explained in another path. The Felix thing, though, I wanted to incorporate more but I didn't write it well enough so it just comes out of the blue. I realize this sucks. But more or less, you are correct. As for the rest of the family's reactions, I'd have to write an epilogue for that. :)

That's an odd bug. Did it happen because of a specific ability, or was it truly random? Did the game give you an error report that I could read?

So glad you liked it! The time between releasing a game and getting the first review is always tortuous, so thanks for relieving me. xD

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Re: Ishara: Bane of the Seas [Adventure][GxB][NaNoRenO2015]

#4 Post by Starling »

Thank you so much for playing! Out of curiosity, how hard did you find the battles? Also that's such a weird bug, I wish we had had time to test more, as that had never come up.

Also, is the Happy Backward's splash showing up? I just realized that it wasn't for me XD We got kind of overly excited when we finished so.. XD
Completed:
Rapunzel -- Fairy Tale Kinetic Novel
(NaNoRenO '11 )
the empty orchestra
(NaNoRenO '14)
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Re: Ishara: Bane of the Seas [Adventure][GxB][NaNoRenO2015]

#5 Post by Aleema »

Forgot to tell you that the splash screen only happens once by design. :p

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Re: Ishara: Bane of the Seas [Adventure][GxB][NaNoRenO2015]

#6 Post by Maegalkarven »

I'd like to play Ishara again with an epilogue and longer endings in it :) Maybe there will be CGs? They are always appreciated.

Strangely, there was no error report, game just ended itself without any warning.
There may be a system in this all kicking thing. I realise, at the beginning of fight game kicked me out then i tried to attack one foe by Ishara or heal her, so i tried to avoid it, and after several steps(5-7 probably) it's settled. Mass attacks suprisingly don't kick me out. I can't say for sure that there is no random in it though.

Well, battles were hard enough to be interesting, but not enough to be bothersome. I had to pay close attention on how to react in every step, or i would have Ishara and company killed (that would i do without Felix and his "dress wound"skill? :lol: He was real lifesaver in almost every battle). So i died just once because of my own idioticy :lol:

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Re: Ishara: Bane of the Seas [Adventure][GxB][NaNoRenO2015]

#7 Post by Starling »

CGs were originally in my plan (as the artist) but between changing jobs and many of the ALTs who came over with me (to Japan) leaving (so I had to go to goodbye get-togethers or meet up with people) I ran out of time. Also probably because I drew two sprites for each of the main characters. Our first NaNo (Rapunzel) also suffers from lack of CGs. Luckily Aleema is great at making the sprites feel like you're seeing CGs (or it being animated) sometimes.

I'm glad that's the level it is. Possibly could have made it harder, but my goal is exactly what you described. I wanted it to be hard enough that if you weren't paying attention you could die, but wasn't hard enough that it became frustrating. Luckily, due to how Ren'py works, Auto-saves mean that you will never truly die or have to start over.

--

Also, I wanted to give us a little bit more of an intro than what we had up there (When Aleema asked me last night I was too tired to think of anything good haha).

Ishara: Bane of the Seas is Happy Backwards' (happyB) 3rd NaNoRenO project. Although we're made up of more just me (Starling) and Aleema, for the most part the NaNos have been us only. Our first two NaNos (Rapunzel in 2011 and the empty orchestra in 2014) were both headed/"directed" by me. This one, however, is Aleema's brainchild, though I like to think I did a good chunk of the plot/character development as well. The game is a part of a series, though I won't mention too much about it, since Aleema hasn't. The game started off as a Kinetic Novel experience that, as we developed the plot and due to me suggesting feature creep, ended up where it has. At about 35K words it is more than twice what "the empty orchestra" was and more than three times the length of Rapunzel. Aleema likes to joke that she doesn't know how to write a short story. We really grew to love this game the more times we tested it, and although we know it could be better, we're both very proud that we made it (mostly) on time. We can only hope all of those who play will also enjoy it.

For future games that we're working on (which there are some) please check out our website~ We tend not to post on Lemma as then we're posting on Lemma and not actually doing anything.

Happy playing to all!
Completed:
Rapunzel -- Fairy Tale Kinetic Novel
(NaNoRenO '11 )
the empty orchestra
(NaNoRenO '14)
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Re: Ishara: Bane of the Seas [Adventure][GxB][NaNoRenO2015]

#8 Post by Heiden »

I'm playing through this right now and I'm REALLY enjoying it!

Except I've gotten to (what I presume) is the last fight
in Felix's route (against Captain Wray)
and no matter what skills I choose for Ishara to bring into battle, I keep getting an error report, preventing me from advancing! D:

I don't know if it's helpful or not, but I've attached the exact traceback I've been running into during the battle.

Do you know of anyway around this error? I really really wanna know what happens in the end!
Attachments
Isharatraceback.txt
(3.21 KiB) Downloaded 138 times
Completed: Elvine (GxB), The Life Threads, Helena's Flowers (GxG)(As Writer, Coder), Dr. Frank's Build-A-Boyfriend (BxB), Beyond the Deep (GxB)(As Artist), The Bog's Heart, The Girl with the Gray Hair Awakens, The Far Rings, NB107A.

All available to play on my itch.io page!

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Re: Ishara: Bane of the Seas [Adventure][GxB][NaNoRenO2015]

#9 Post by nipaa_kazuma »

Hello =) !

Playing the game was really entertaining, I enjoyed it a lot.
As Maegalkarven said I would have liked epilogues
And the story about Felix's specificity explained during the game.
But I can perfectly understand that the amount of time you had was short.

I also wondered after finishing all the four endings
Couldn't it have been possible for Remy to have a happy ending ? I don't know, something like Ishara showing him he was wrong and make his black heart knows something more than hate like when they were younger ? Not necesseraly love even if I tought of it but something to help him. I found him so sad =(...
Also I had the same error than Heiden (and ignored it each time to continue the game).

Anyway congratulations !

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Re: Ishara: Bane of the Seas [Adventure][GxB][NaNoRenO2015]

#10 Post by Starling »

Thank you guys for playing~

nipaa_kazuma, since you played all four endings, did you have the final battle error with all the endings or just in the route that's been mentioned already?

EDIT: I think I found the error finally. It's so weird that it hadn't come up when I was testing it since it's a lot of errors.
I'm getting it Cendre and Felix's attacks only. Ishara's have yet to trigger an error for me
You can get through the errors by clicking "Ignore" constantly and it doesn't seem to actually affect the gameplay... but hopefully Aleema will figure out a way to fix it soon and then everyone can update their games :D
Completed:
Rapunzel -- Fairy Tale Kinetic Novel
(NaNoRenO '11 )
the empty orchestra
(NaNoRenO '14)
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(NaNoRenO '15)

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Re: Ishara: Bane of the Seas [Adventure][GxB][NaNoRenO2015]

#11 Post by amateurismygame »

First off, I love it! The characters and development are a bit rushed--but that is to be expected with NaNoReno! You all did excellency within the time frame.

I have to say my favorite end was the one where you let Cendre come with you. It was just.. emotional for me! Second favourite is when you bring Felix with you :)
I also love Felix (He's a cute rat)

Any other critisim I can give you, is the relationship between Louis and Tal. It was very rushed, and seemed linear as well. It could be because of the time limit. But it seemed as you just slapped together a relationship. A good one too; because I would play an entire game based on those two. Don't get me wrong--You created a new OTP for me!

So too long didn't read;
You should work on your character development, and relationship building, it's too fast. Otherwise, I wish this wasn't a NaNoReno game, because I want more!

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Re: Ishara: Bane of the Seas [Adventure][GxB][NaNoRenO2015]

#12 Post by Aleema »

I found out what the problem was (enemy in the last battle didn't have any attacks assigned to use), and it was a last minute change which is why we didn't catch it. Darn those last minute changes! Uploading a new version now.

I don't know if I'll write another NaNoRenO because the story is not where I wanted it to be, and it sucks to have to be okay with obvious flaws, like Tal & Louis being basically nothing of what we had originally imagined them being, because I have to be done at a certain time. But it's also good, because I'd tweak and write until my fingers fell off if I didn't have a deadline. I'm usually pretty fine with character development & relationship building, I just like to do it on a GRAND EPIC SCALE that I didn't afford myself here. It was like watching Pride & Prejudice the movie and feeling "that was way too fast" - which is how I feel this game is. It plays like a movie.

All that said, I'm proud of myself and the game. :)

I'm glad you guys enjoyed it, error and all.

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Re: Ishara: Bane of the Seas [Adventure][GxB][NaNoRenO2015]

#13 Post by csky »

This was a really well done game and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The battle system was effective and it had a good story line. I've only played through one at this stage but I am looking froward to playing the others, since it was a decent length of game play.
I was also impressed with the quality of the music tracks. However one of the music tracks seems to be an exact transcription from part of'The jihad', a section from the Children of Dune soundtrack, which wasn't mentioned in the credits.

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Re: Ishara: Bane of the Seas [Adventure][GxB][NaNoRenO2015]

#14 Post by Aleema »

Thank you for playing!

All music tracks were chosen from Jamendo, so I only know who composed this piece. It does sound similar though. :p

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Re: Ishara: Bane of the Seas [Adventure][GxB][NaNoRenO2015]

#15 Post by lockpicklogic »

Very enjoyable. I played through all the endings and
I really wanted to save Remy. Even in the other routes I sympathised with him, because he seemed like he'd been hurt or abused in the past. When Ishara went to kill him, I really wanted to knock him out, tie him up and try to save him.
My favourite relationship was the one between Ishara and Talon because it reminded me of my interactions with my best friend. :)
Never grow a wishbone, daughter, where your backbone ought to be.
-- Clementine Paddelford --

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