Roadwarden [Fantasy/RPG/Pixel Art]

[Aureus]

Hello there!
I used Ren’Py to work on Roadwarden for almost 4 years, and now it’s available on Steam! It’s an illustrated text-based RPG in which you explore and change a hostile, grim realm.



Originally, I intended to make an NVL game with bits of adventure game systems, but as the time went on, things grew more complex. Now it offers a 30+ hours single player campaign, though I expect most players won’t uncover all of its mysteries with a single playthrough.

It’s a slow game that rewards patience and curiosity, with many branching quests, endings, and high responsiveness. I’m convinced every playthrough will be a meaningfully different experience.

I tried to portray a melancholic mystery with a relatable story and cohesive lore. If you have any questions, I’d love to answer them.

[noseflautist]

Hi Aureus!

I've now played through the game twice (first mage, second scholar) and I absolutely ADORED it. It is a really wonderful game, well done! I'm recommending it to a bunch of friends.

You say you started with a Ren'Py NVL game and it grew more complex... if you were starting from scratch again, would you use Ren'Py again? If not, what would you use?

And secondly - I'm looking for an engine to make a text adventure game myself, in particular with access to menus like yours for Save/Load, Journal and most importantly Inventory... was the Inventory difficult to make in Ren'Py? I'd love to know more about how you did it! Though I will understand if you don't want to give away all your secrets.

Noseflautist

[Aureus]

Hello, and I'm glad you enjoyed it!
I believe Ren'Py was very good for this game, and the main issue is I'm not a programmer - anyone who sees the amount of questions I ask on this very forum can confirm that. I don't use fancy Python classes and other obvious tools that would take some codding, just a multitude of vboxes, hboxes, imagebuttons, and textbuttons. I now face questions about translating or modding, and my terribly programmed game supports none of that by default. You can see the inventory screen in the "inv.rpy" file. It works, and it's somewhat easy to add new items to the game. But it's a mess.

So for example, thanks to the help I received here, I was able to do some interesting things with the dialogue choices, making special choice-presets for various characters, adding grayed-out options, making choices disappear or appear depending on the chosen attitudes / skills and so on. These features are not a part of the generic Ren'Py tools, but they were very easy to build, especially thanks to the old threads on the forum. But to me, they took A LOT of time, simply because they're so outside of my skill range (which is nonexistent).

Because of this, I'd feel uncomfortable throwing any mud at the engine.

[SupersizeMyHeart]

Duuuude! Congrats on the release! Had a crazy couple weeks so couldn't play it day 1. But I literally just picked it up now on steam and can't wait to play tomorrow night after work. Awesome job, this looks so friggin' cool!

[SupersizeMyHeart]

GOOD GOD, the reviews! I didn't even look. They poured in - crazy good, too! Congrats on the stellar release!

[Aureus]

Thank you! : )) The negative reviews turned out to be a bit of a crazy house, but it feels great to see the game resonated with so many people. <3 It's been my dream to finish a project that could connect with someone the same way other RPGs connected with me.