Uncommon Time [Fantasy RPG][Music]

[Feral Phoenix]

Uncommon Time
RPG | 15-25 hours | ENG & JPN available | Ages 15+
Download Here

Story & Overview
Eighteen-year-old cellist Alto Cantabile is heir to an ancient legacy, and in order to fulfill her duty, she brings her skeptical best friend, violinist Teagan Almace, along with her to the far northern country of Harmonia. Alto must gather three other players to form a quintet, and find the sheet music she needs for a very special performance.

I've been working on Uncommon Time since late 2013, and since it looks like it's okay to advertise one's RPG Maker games on this forum, I figured I might as well advertise it here too. It has six possible endings, unlockable galleries, and a handful of sidequests.

You may enjoy this game if you like music, worldbuilding, women being awesome, queer themes (gender, sexuality, and presentation), silly party banter, and interpersonal drama/other serious themes. Please come in forewarned that this game features heavy thematic material, disturbing/violent imagery, a few minor jump scares, and mild sexual content. If you need a more detailed list of content warnings, there's one here, but it's full of spoilers, so please only check it if you know you need detailed warnings for your own safety.

It's also got a lot of flashy and screen-shaking animations, so if you have an illness or disability that does not do well with those, you may not want to play it.

You will need to install the RPG Maker VX Ace RTP in order to play Uncommon Time. Because it's an RPG Maker game, it only works on Windows (sorry!).

All illustration and writing (and some of the pixel art) were done by me; the game's grand ending was composed by Mary of *CAMeLIA*. The (extensive!) credit list for all the free and shareware assets I used can be found on the game homepage.

You can find extra art I've done for this game on my art blog's #uncommon time tag; if you're stuck, you can consult this walkthrough. See also the initial release announcement I made on tumblr.


Characters











Screenshots






※Screenshots are from mid-development, and minor graphical details may differ in the complete version.


Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoy the game if you decide to give it a try.

[sherberrie]

I'd really like to play but sadly your link to Dropbox isn't working(something about too much traffic). I'll try again tomorrow since it's a traffic problem and tell you if the error goes away! Either way, I can't wait to play! Fantasy RPGs are my favorite, and it's always nice to see agender characters~ Except I don't know much about music, hahah...

[LilMochi]

aww i would really love to play this game but it send me to a page saying that there is to much traffic i hope i can download it soon and try it out it looks like a great game ill try again tomorrow or later tonight

[Feral Phoenix]

Yeah, sorry for the hassle, guys! I'm hoping to get the download link over to itch.io sometime this weekend; dropbox has a 20 GB-per-day hard bandwidth limit even if you have a paid account, and 20 GB is not very big when you're trying to pass around a game that's nearly 500 MB in size. Some really stressful IRL stuff has been keeping me from having the energy necessary to wrestle with a new website just now...

Thanks for your patience in the meantime 8'|

[ETA]
itch.io link is up and working!

[Seigetsu]

Downloaded it and tried playing it. I got to Stave so far. It's a really nice game and very addicting to play, haha. I like how it's more plot-heavy than many RPGs, and I think the characters are nicely developed. Thanks for making it!

[sherberrie]

No, it's fine~ You've actually responded really quickly and it works now! Thanks!

I've got to play it for an hour(I was having so much fun I forgot to reply woops)yesterday and it was so fun~ Is it corny to say Alto is my favorite character so far? Either way, I love it so far! Thank you for making such a sweet game. C:

[Feral Phoenix]

@Seigetsu: I'm glad you're enjoying the plot/character focus!! You've got some fun stuff ahead of you; I hope you like the rest of the game too.

@sherberrie: itch.io was actually way friendlier to mess with than I was expecting, and I was able to get that done a lot sooner than I thought I would :') I'm glad you like Alto! Hope you have fun with the rest of the game too!

[Coren]

This looks like a lovely game! Will definitely give this a try.

[Feral Phoenix]

This looks like a lovely game! Will definitely give this a try.

Thank you!

The walkthrough is all finished and posted, in case anyone would like to have that. :>

[Seigetsu]

@Seigetsu: I'm glad you're enjoying the plot/character focus!! You've got some fun stuff ahead of you; I hope you like the rest of the game too.

You're totally right! I've just finished Movement 1 and am now on the Fairy Village part of Movement 2. Rehearsal Hell was really awesome. Loved doing those little quests with Aubrey and Meirin. At that point I was really thinking this has got to be one of the most character-focused RPGmaker game I've played (admittedly, I haven't played a lot though). Then I got to the end of Movement 1 and

the quintet fell apart and Alto has to go around finding everybody.

It gets even better! The character development there was really well done. I really liked Meirin's backstory,

but being a Aubrey/Alto shipper from the start, I was even more delighted when they finally confessed to each other.

It was so cute! I'm really intrigued by Alto and Teagan's relationship as well, so looking forward to reading more towards the end of this movement.

By the way, I really want to promote this game on a Chinese yuri forum (seeing as there are queer themes in this game, and there is the Daisy/Lucy NPC pairing) and was wondering if I could post some screenshots there and link to your game homepage. A lot of members of that forum can understand Japanese, so I thought they would be really interested in the Japanese version of your game. I would really appreciate it if you could let me know if that's okay (I can totally understand if you prefer that I do not post about the game. Just let me know ) Either way, I just wanted to let you know that I'm thoroughly enjoying the game and feel that it's really well-made in many aspects. My only very minor little gripe about it so far is that there isn't a gallery of the CGs, but then again, I can imagine that would be quite difficult to code on RPGmaker. I'm just obsessed with collecting CGs, that's all, haha.

Just wondering, are you working on any more VNs or RPGs?

[Feral Phoenix]

Rehearsal Hell was a ton of fun to write, so I'm glad you enjoyed it! The CGs in the parts of movement 2 you brought up were a joy to draw, too. :3

Alto and Teagan's friendship is pretty important to the story, so I hope you enjoy watching where that goes from here on out.

My only very minor little gripe about it so far is that there isn't a gallery of the CGs, but then again, I can imagine that would be quite difficult to code on RPGmaker. I'm just obsessed with collecting CGs, that's all, haha.

Actually, you're in luck--there is a CG gallery! You have to unlock it by getting at least one of the endings (there's a sound room that's unlocked by clearing every ending too, if CG completion isn't enough incentive to start collecting bad ends), after which you can head there via the title screen.

Thanks for asking first about introducing the game elsewhere, and you can go ahead and do that if you'd like! You might want to warn the forumgoers there that the full Japanese version is going to take a while, though (my grammar's kind of a hot mess at times, so even once I'm done translating I always need to have some of my native speaker friends proofread it for me). My hopeful goal is to have it out before the end of 2015, but we'll have to see how that goes :')

Just wondering, are you working on any more VNs or RPGs?

Yup! I'm working on a kinetic NVL called Refinery, which is about mental illness recovery (among other things). It's roughly in the neighborhood of half done, and has got a homepage up here on my art blog and a WIP thread here on this forum.

I've got another short RPG Maker game in the works too, though it's not quite ready for an "official" press release (?) yet.

[Feral Phoenix]

Apologies for the double post!!


Thank you to everyone who's supported my game so far!

I also just released a version update; it's mostly typo fixes but (by popular request) it's now also possible to save in the post-ending-1 extras room. The new file's already available on itch.io, so if you'd like to update, please go through the download link at the top of the thread.

[Seigetsu]

It's nice to hear that there is a version update, except that I just beat the game playing the v1.02 release. Is there any way I can patch the v1.02 release so that I can access the post-ending-1 extras room from the main menu? I didn't know it wasn't accessible afterwards, so after getting ending 1, I actually exited the extras room immediately and didn't look over any of it, thinking I'd go back later...

By the way, just a stupid question:

In the ending 1 credits, there was a picture of someone cutting someone else's hair...was that Meirin and Saki? And if I wasn't mistaken, was there also a picture of Teagen reconciling with Tristan?

Anyway, just want to let you know that the game was amazing, and I felt that it just got better and better until the very end. I'll leave a more detailed comment later on when I have time, but for now, just want to say congratulations for a job well done, and thank you for the release.

[Feral Phoenix]

The postgame extras room will never be available from the main menu, sorry about that! :') You'll have to view Ending 1 again to get back in, but if you're playing v1.03 you'll be able to save while you're in there. You can import your old save and system data to v1.03 though--just copypaste the Save## files and PublicData into the v1.03 folder.

That's not a stupid question!

Yes, that's Teagan going to see Tristan and Meirin cutting Saki's hair in the end roll! You may already be able to guess why Saki's getting a haircut, but it's talked about a little in the extras room if you've also gotten Ending 4; something to look forward to for the next time you beat Ending 1.

Thanks for playing, I'm glad you enjoyed it!

[Skarn]

It is strange that this thread has received so few answers when the game it is about is so good.

I finally finished Uncommon Time with the "true" ending this week, after an impromptu break. It revealed itself to be an unexpected gem in my list of binge-downloaded RPG Maker games. But I suppose I should start with the beginning.

The first five hours of the game are... actually quite underwhelming compared to what will happen next. The main plot is interesting (tuning the music of spheres is a pretty neat idea), but outside of that, it's an extremely standard old-school RPG with all the quirks of the genre. You go from town to town, fight random encounters and conveniently placed bigger monsters, and recruit new allies you met by pure luck. Not bad, but nothing special.

After that lengthy introduction, that's where the fun starts. The transition is quite obvious: the number of dialogues and their lengths skyrocket, as does the number of CGs and custom sprites and portraits. The interaction between the characters, their psychology, their weaknesses, become the main focus, tragedy and hope intertwine themselves, the story unfolds itself in unexpected ways, reaching its peak in the eponymous Uncommon Time.

As for gameplay, bosses are now more memorable (and harder!), crispy RPG mechanics tend to disappear (no need to buy new equipments regularly), and you finally get special attacks where it looks like the characters are playing music (instead of generic RPG Maker animations). Nothing ground-breaking, but it works and is carried out by the story.

In short, after a so-so debut, it grows into a more grandiose symphony about saving the world (a little), music (a lot), and people (the main part), broaching themes such as trust, (un)necessary evil, sexuality, gender identity... A good RPG with an heavy focus on story-telling.


As it's far easier to emphasize the bad points than the good ones, I've kept them for the end.

My main concern is with the random encounters. I found them generic, boring and hard. Enemies have a lot of HP and hit hard, you need to use your best magic to defeat them, which depletes your MP rather quickly, forcing you, especially in the early game, to grind, both for money to buy MP-recovery items and for that extra level needed to kill them with one less attach each. Such a grinding is especially painful since never the level-up (no fun special ability to unlock or items to collect) nor the fights themselves are interesting.

This is especially strange, as, except for a few (the two A's at the end of their respective Uncommon Times), most bosses can be dispatched more easily than their goons, if only because they attack less times per turn (being one instead of a group) and MP are less of a problem (you always have a full refill up ahead).

Near the end, they also tend to break the flow of the story. This is especially bad in Uncommon Time, when a touching scene can be interrupted with a generic whisp popping out of nowhere.

Also, buying new weapons and armors at shop at the beginning is quite boring and repetitive. Later on, the new weapons are simply given to you after a particular boss or quest, which is more rewarding and require less menuing, and I think such an approach for the entire would have been better than a standard merchant just happening to have strictly better gear than their colleague at the previous town.

And of course, the main question: Why isn't running enabled as default?


PS:

Despite her being a complete jerk, I can help but pardon Teagan for a totally meta reason: She does not die when a boss breathes on her, and can punch them quite hard in return, on par with drug-enhanced Alto (I always give all my stat-boosting items to the main character, as it's often the only character you are sure to keep in your party), and as opposed to the far more fragile and not necessarily better hitters, Saki, Meirin, and Aubrey (well, at least Saki can heal pretty well).

Also, she is the only party character trying to save the world, if only a little, for the first half of the game, which is probably worth at least one good point.