The Slime's Journey by VDZ

[raw]
made by VDZ for LD33 (COMPO)
(Updated on August 27th, 2015. For judging, use the original version (first link). For just playing for fun, the post-LD version is recommended instead.)


In this game, you play the role of a young slime on a quest to
avenge its parents, who have been killed by a cruel adventurer.



How to play:

The entire game is fully text-based; the controls consist entirely
of pressing the keys indicated as available actions.


A simple explanation of commands:

Wander - The most important command in the game. Once you choose
to wander, two random events from your location are picked and
you can choose one of them. The results can be anything from
sudden combat engagements to experience gain to receiving
damage. (You cannot back out of wandering after the events
to choose from have been picked!)

Rest - You will inevitably receive damage throughout your journey.
Resting up allows you to recover your health. However, there is
a chance you may be attacked in your sleep. Rest success/danger
depends on the location you decide to rest in.

Grow - Spend your experience points to raise your stats or gain new
mutations. Mutations are special characteristics that modify the
game rules or help you out in other ways. Events may play out
differently depending on your mutations.
NOTE: The specific mutations available will vary per location.

Item - Although by default, you cannot carry or use items, mutations
allow you to do so. Some items can be equipped, others are
single-use, and yet others do nothing.

Drop - Allows you to drop items you don't need.

Status - Displays your health, strength, defense, experience and
mutations.

Quit - Quit the game.


You win the game if you manage to enter the city and kill the
adventurer that killed your parents. You lose the game when your
health hits 0.



This game is public domain. Feel free to do whatever you want with it.

Ratings

Coolness 41% 1578
Overall 3.95 39
Fun 4.05 25
Humor 3.53 126
Innovation 3.05 435
Mood 3.57 145
Theme 3.86 171

Feedback

GhostBomb
24. Aug 2015 · 03:24 UTC
I'm amazed you came up with all this in 48 hours.
SelfTitled
24. Aug 2015 · 11:15 UTC
I really quite enjoyed this, I wondered around a cave for a bit attempted to enter the city and died :)
TooMuchPete
24. Aug 2015 · 20:21 UTC
This reminds me of my BBS / MUD days -- I'm not sure if you planned out the amount of lag between statements showing up on the screen, but if so it worked out really well. Awesome!
VampyVampire
24. Aug 2015 · 20:24 UTC
Beautiful text adventure.
vividhelix
24. Aug 2015 · 20:27 UTC
Wow, that snake almost got me. Saving this to play later, I'd like to take my time. Well done, curious to see what those mutations do!
🎤 VDZ
24. Aug 2015 · 20:48 UTC
@TooMuchPete
Yes, the 'lag' is entirely intentional. I messed around with several aspects of displaying the text (including timing of the messages, color usage and so on) to make it play better, and I found it makes a world of difference.
inurashii
25. Aug 2015 · 01:06 UTC
This is an impressive amount of content for a compo game. Well done! I do sort of feel like permadeath isn't great for this kind of RPG, as it's frustrating to get pretty far and then die and have to go back to fighting sturdy plants. Still and all, very fun.
Logan
25. Aug 2015 · 09:22 UTC
Heh, I really enjoyed this! I loved all the little details, like how you can equip a flower, or fight a sandcastle. I think the only gripe I have is that there's no way to back out of a new mutation if you select that, and there's no way to see available mutations otherwise. While getting vampirism ended up being a good development, I would have liked the option to refuse.

I ended up spending 111 turns before I faced the fateful adventurer. I almost felt kinda bad, dealing 90 damage a turn...
Miziziziz
25. Aug 2015 · 15:44 UTC
Great game!
I played for maybe half an hour, but didn't manage to win. It's frustrating having to build all the way up again after dying. Otherwise, very fun and I could see this becoming a full-length game.
Kuchalu
26. Aug 2015 · 00:33 UTC
I don't usually like text-based game but thought i'd give this a try. I got engrossed for quite a time, enjoying it more than I thought I would have. I like how the story is different each time you play it (not sure if that's normal in text based games as I don't play them). I was a bit disappointed when I died after 1 hit though, I was minding my own business on the beach, went up to say hi to a fellow adventurer and he sought to attack me. XD Overall surprisingly good. The enjoyment in this game is a testament to your writing skills.
rnlf
26. Aug 2015 · 14:35 UTC
Really cool game. Played it for about one and a half hours (I know that you know that already, we were talking on IRC the whole time :D)

I really like the game, even with the minor flaws in terms of usability it has. It has really a lot of content and text, the writing was awesome ("The adventurer sighs, grabs his sword, and attacks you!").

I thought it must be a really awesome sight, having a three-sworded slime dodging his enemy's strikes and draining his life from him :-)

Good job!

Btw, I needed four tries to finish it, the last one taking 135 turns (but i think I was maybe a bit overly cautious, the final boss was a bit easy to beat with my final powers).
zuurr
26. Aug 2015 · 15:44 UTC
great entry. much more fun than i had expected it to be.
Tijn
26. Aug 2015 · 19:00 UTC
This is a great entry. I had a blast playing this game and eventually (after 3 tries) finished the game in 92 turns. I continued playing after that (that's how much fun it was), but eventually stopped after having acquired every single mutation, 275 hp, 77 strength and 68 defence I decided to call it a night :P

Great job!

By the way, it works great in Mono on Mac OS X. It might be advisable to promote this a little bit more, as I thought this was a Windows-only entry by your description.
🎤 VDZ
27. Aug 2015 · 00:57 UTC
Game updated to version 2.
amras0000
27. Aug 2015 · 12:46 UTC
The writing's decent, the mechanics relatively intuitive. My main concern is that it took far too long to get to a level where I could even think about approaching an adventurer, even with a sword, and the combat required to get to that level took a good while thanks to the text delay. Because of this, the game quickly got tedious.
The mutations mechanic was really nice, though, and actually involved the theme in a way other than flavor. So good job overall.
Enrymion
31. Aug 2015 · 09:56 UTC
For some reason this is my favorite game so far. It reminding me of novels about reincarnating as a slime might have to do with it. I think I played it a bit too carefully since only thing that even did noticeable damage to me was the Murderous Adventurer.

Cave going nowhere interesting, not being able to enter the sea with some mutation, child event not having more possible results, sky having only some weak bird instead of a occasional dragon or access to a new area and town not having a castle are my main "complaints" about it.
Jacktheviper
03. Sep 2015 · 00:02 UTC
It is impressive the amount of variety one can get out of this style of gameplay if you are just willing to put in the time.
Darkflint
12. Sep 2015 · 23:10 UTC
I fucking love this game! More! I want more! I want to win against an adventure xD