Game Update
The MisAdventures of Xenos has completed its first year of release in its "2.0" state, further down. First, I want to thank everyone who has interacted with the game, even though this game looks silly and dumb it plays an important part in my life. I know, I know, you're not here to read about me, but about the game so let's address what the changes are.
- New area that's tied to a new event tied to NewGame+
- Added new dialogue to Zarah.
- Fixed various object interactions that weren't set up correctly.
- Fixed bug where you could break outside of the defined World Map dimensions.
- Fixed bug where Igor Swinnyhouse would not interact with the player under certain conditions.
- Fixed bug with calculating exp, will round up decimal exp instead of truncate.
- "Lastest News" to the Main Menu, allowing players to stay updated on the series via the game.
- Added DLC
- Added in three achievements
- Updated Credits to add me to them.
- Changed WTF to Why TF wherever applicable.
New Area & DLC
Let me explain the New Area and the DLC now. The new area can be accessed if the players choose a different option than the default option in a new event that the player cannot miss since it's part of the Main Quest, but only reachable on NG+ which can be found towards the later part of the game, if you get to the last "dungeon" of the game, you've gone too far. I don't want to spoil anything, so I'll leave it at that. The DLC is Free, for now, and it is the entire game of when it was on RPG Maker VX Ace. This version of the game isn't as feature complete as the main game, features very limited side quests, plays differently, has different dungeons, and has some weird oddities. This version of the game was the alpha that was handed out ten years earlier for a playtest event. This version of the game has somewhere between 2 to 3 hours of gameplay. As of this post the DLC hasn't been released yet, but the store page for it should be appearing shortly.
Xenos 2.0
Going back to the 2.0 comment from earlier, The MisAdventures of Xenos was released originally on Android only in December 2020. This version of the game was broken, so when I got motivated because of someone, I went back in added new quests, fixed a bunch of bugs, and added the optional town. With all of those things added to the game, "2.0" made sense.
Series Update
Before I start getting into the reminiscing part of this, let me announce two things, this will most likely be the end to the content updates of the game, so it would not come as a surprise if there aren't any more updates after this post goes live. The last thing is I would like to announce that I've been adapting the plot of the game to a book, I'm still very early in the writing, so it will be some time before I release it, but when I do there will be a new post. I'm excited about the book because there's a lot to the story I was unable to get to in the creation of the game, I also planned out the plot for sequels and other games in the universe which I planned as bundling a few of those into my first book.
Game's Development
Now, I'd like to write about the game's development. Someone and I else worked on this game back in 2008 using RPG Maker VX. We were messing around trying to learn the engine, which caused me to playthrough older RPGs like Super Mario RPG and Chrono Trigger, and I came up with the idea to write an entire plot for a video game. This version of the game didn't get that far in development, I believe only the Castle, Kingdom Town, and Moonlight Town were created, and these versions of the map are much more simplified and later overhauled. Well, the Castle originally had a hallway where all the guards stood, but the King and Queen sat an extremely long distance from the exit. The guards were placed so far apart that the player could only see one guard on the screen at any moment, I believe from talking to the King, it took somewhere around 2 minutes to reach the exit, there is a reference to this version of the Throne Room in the current version of the game by talking two guards.
When RPG Maker VX Ace came out, it was decided by this person and me that we would restart the game creation because we didn't get far and also because we would be creating it in a newer engine. During this era of the game, I completed finishing the plot of the game, all of the main side quests, the dialogue, the locations, and characters, and started on the universe of the game with side story games and the like. We also grew in size from two people to six people and found around 25 people who would be interested in working on the game outside of the engine, so we had writers, play testers, songwriters, and people interested in doing vocal work. There are reasons, most I can't remember, that caused us to lose momentum in the game creation, and because by the time the play testers got to play the alpha, they were not happy with it. With everything going on, the project went on ice, everyone left, and it was now myself, the original other guy, and the sixth person on the team earlier. But by this time, it was late 2014/early 2015, and RPG Maker MV was right around the corner.
I remember the day when RPG Maker MV was announced, it was the day when the race began and we all tried to get it out before MV came out, we didn't make it in time, and that's when a three-man team became a one-man team. I ended up buying MV and worked on porting the game over to MV. So many things had to be left behind in this porting process, so I had to fix up all of the maps that got broken graphically, redo all of the events, and write JS scripts that covered what was necessary to have feature parity with the VX Ace version. This game became something I constantly burned myself out on and became this entity that was always weighing on my mind causing it to get placed on the side. Well, after a while, I started working on the game again only to quickly stop it, but because of this I brought it up to someone that I've been working on the game, and they convinced me to continue working on it. This happened in 2020 which is what pushed me to finish it and release it on Google Play.
Well, a few months later I received a message from a fan of the game informing me that the game is personal to them and that the version of the game I released is very challenging. I looked over the game and noticed that I made it so that if you level in the game you become weaker, and you couldn't unlock any of your skills. Well, I informed the fan of the problem and sent them over a build of the game on PC so that the problem could be solved for them. And after that, they and I started talking, I handed them over the code base to the game since they wanted to try to complete what I started. Well, I checked in with them after a bit and found out that they are learning how to use the engine and had plans of what to do. Upon hearing about this, I jumped back in motivated to fix the game, and to add a bunch of content so I could feel proud of the game. That is what leads us to the version that made it to Steam.
I'm proud of what I managed to create even if it isn't what I originally had in mind, but this update made me realize that I need to stop trying to breathe life into the game. Anything I add needs to fit in what is already in the game, and the engine is very unstable with the project. Every little thing I changed had about a 25% chance of crashing; this includes saving. I still have a story to tell, and there's so much that I want to share which is why I'm writing a book, I want the book to be a definitive version of The MisAdventures of Xenos, and who knows it might even do good. Anyway, I know this post is long, and I don't expect anyone to get this far, but thanks for listening.
Thanks,
ZestyTS