The Curious Alliance (light fantasy game) COMPLETED!

[cloverfirefly]

This game has been finished! Please visit the thread in the finished games section in order to download.
Thank you for all of your support!


The Curious Alliance

Story
Since receiving his Summoner's amulet, Albert has searched through out the empire for remnant artifacts of the previous civilization, accompanied by his companion demon Neph. The two arrive in the remote town of Ravensford on the rumor of such an artifact, but find the town ruled by the vampire Darien von Creighton.

The Curious Alliance is a non-branching visual novel in a not-so-serious fantasy setting. I am aiming roughly for half an hour to an hour of play time with light humor, swordfights, and, of course, treasure.

Characters


Neph
Neph claims to be a demon general at least 10,000 years old, but not even Albert knows if this is true or not. While often times loud and obnoxious, she is also a loyal friend. She likes anything salty or sweet, as long as it doesn't have mushrooms, olives or onions in it.


Albert
As a young Summoner, Albert only received his amulet 20 years ago and only has a contract with one demon. He tends to be unfailingly polite to strangers, but keeps them at arm's length if they get too close. Albert enjoys hot baths and a good book.


Darien von Creighton
The von Creightons ruled over the town of Ravensford until vampires killed Darien's father and turned him into a vampire as well. He collects whatever catches his interest, usually things that sparkle, and has a vast collection of magical items left by his parents. Darien quite possibly needs glasses, but claims it undignified for a vampire to wear them.


Saya
Saya has long been the guardian of the forest surrounding the von Creighton estate. She is a shy and sweet-natured girl who speaks only in a soft voice. Although never able to solve them herself, Saya loves riddles.

Screenshots
Please click on the small image for full size.


(Background images are by Tasogare-tei.)

Progress
Script: 100% (First Draft)
Character Art: 100%
Editing: 100% (minus any changes I make after getting some feedback)
Finishing Touches: 100%

[musical74]

This sure sounds intestering...I'd like to give it a go as far as proofreading goes - I've proofread a few other projects here =)

I do have a few questions for you: Albert received the amulet 20 years ago and is classified as *young*? Did he get the amulet as a 5 year old? Just wondering because *young* and *got this item 20 years ago* makes me wonder what you consider *young*

My other question is how big you expect the game to be. Those of us that are on dialup may balk if it is really big.

[Dusty]

I want to volunteer, too! And I'm good at grammar and homophones. And I've got pretty much nothing to do right now.

I do have a few questions for you: Albert received the amulet 20 years ago and is classified as *young*? Did he get the amulet as a 5 year old? Just wondering because *young* and *got this item 20 years ago* makes me wonder what you consider *young*

Well, he's young compared to the 10000 year old demon general. (20-something is still pretty young, right? I'd think most summoners would be old 90+ year olds with lots of magic powers kinda like what Gandalf might look like.)

[cloverfirefly]

Thanks for volunteering. I've finished the first draft of the script and I'm going to do a big art push this weekend to try and finish up whatever I don't get done during the week. So hopefully I can have something ready for proof-reading next week-ish.

To answer musical74's question, Albert is young compared to other Summoners. (According to my universe, Summoners can live as long as they have summons. So there are potentially thousand year old summoners out there. *dramatic music*)

Um... As for the file size, my game is currently around 47 meg currently, most of which is music. And I have to admit, it's been so long since I've had dial up that I don't know if that's prohibitive... (I suspect that it is.)

[musical74]

OK I wasn't sure about the summoning piece...but that makes sense

As far as the file size goes...47 MB is a fair amountm but I have downloaded larger games...but it DOES takes awhile to download them! To Download Ori, Ochi, Onoe (a VERY GOOD game made by this forum's mikey), which is 88 MB, took 5 or 6 hours for me to download it. So long as the game is interesting I don't mind though

[cloverfirefly]

I'll try my best to make it worth the download then.

Checking in with my weekly update: I didn't get nearly as much done as I wanted to this weekend. In all honesty, I wanted to be 100% done with the character graphics by the end of this weekend, but I suspect that was a tad unrealistic... However, I managed to finish up Neph's character graphics and, due to the fact that she's the main character, that means I have a pretty hefty chunk out of the graphics finished up. Albert is also 100%, but Darien and Saya sit at exactly where I left them before the weekend started. (boohiss) I also finished up the base for the secret character.

I'm so close to being done with this dang game, but I still have so much left to do.

[cloverfirefly]

Weekly Update: I'm still behind where I wanted to be but... I finished all of the character art this week! So that's something to be quite happy with. I want to give the script a once over myself before sending it off to be proofread, and hopefully that won't take too long. I give up making time estimates because I pretty much miss all of them.

Added in a new screenshot in the first post. Enjoy!

[musical74]

YAY new picture! (Saya's dang cute, by the way!)

Regarding time estimates: Usually it's better just to say that the game is coming along than to say *it should be done on X day*. Why? That way you protect yourself against surprises. Examples: computer crash - I had a mild computer crash and it still took 3 days to get everything back to normal! You look at a given scene and think *eh, this needs reworking* - and that takes longer than expected. Or just things happen in real life and you need to put the project on the shelf for a bit. So long as you indicate that the project is still alive and you are working on it, we will be pretty easygoing about it

[Midnighticequeen]

I think this is going to be a really cute game and I can't resist looking at your character designs every chance I get. I think they're so cute! Keep up the good work, I can't wait to try it!

[cloverfirefly]

I decided I would take a "little break" from this project and it ended up being more of a 2-3 month break. OOPS!

However, I'm back and I have officially finished editing the script. If the people who had previously said they would proofread for me are still interested, please let me know what version of the game you would want (or if you would just rather proofread the script). If anyone else would like to volunteer, please let me know!

I still need to finish up the image for the main menu, program the credits and make a few minor cosmetic changes here and there, but I'm feeling pretty close to being done with this!

[usul]

Ooooh can't wait to see this one. The character designs have got *style*

[cloverfirefly]

Thanks, Usul! I'm excited to be so close to being done. Now it's time for a sprint to the finish line!

[lepapillonrouge]

I wouldn't mind proofreading.
I may be working on my own game, but it wouldn't hurt. XD;

It seems interesting :3
A fox girl! -distracted- SO CUTE!

[musical74]

I'll still give it a go as far as proofreading Been looking forwards to seeing how this plays out....nice to see this almost finished!

[Magedark]

I would enjoy being a proofreader as this looks quite interesting. Just keep on going and finish!