Grey Legend

The Council of the Land has issued a proclamation: "To all able-bodied adventurers. The recent earthquakes has opened up a den of monsters to the north. Gather yourselves and take up an expedition to investigate the source of the monsters. If possible, end the blight so we may go back to our lives." You are one such adventurer, and though you may be inexperienced, your determination knows no bounds. Go out, investigate, and return alive, no matter the danger!

Grey Legend is a short love letter to gameboy and NES era rpgs. You'll find many nods to those times, while some conveniences have been provided. Fight your way through monsters! Gain experience and level up to tackle greater dangers!

This short game was created for Decade Subjam #1. Honestly, about halfway through the month I forgot that I was doing a jam and slowed down a bit. As a result, some things are thrown in rather hastily, but this is a (short) complete experience. This game was made in GameMaker, coded lovingly (sometimes) from the ground up. Some things work really well, and other things work just enough. I hadn't touched GameMaker for years, and this was my first experience with GameMaker Studio 2, so be kind. (Please don't tell me how bad the battle text box is. I already know!)

Controls

This is a keyboard or gamepad (untested!) game. 

• Movement - Arrow Keys, or WASD (gamepad d-pad)
• Interact/Select/Confirm - x or enter  ("gamepad button 1")
• Back/Menu - z or escape ("gamepad button 2")

Helpful Tips

There's a lot going on in this game and not a lot of it is explained, so here's some things you might want to know.

• You start next to a bed. This is your bed. You can interact with it to recover your HP and MP. It will also save the game when you do!
• Make sure whenever you get equipment to go into Items in the menu and select the equipment to equip them. The game won't do it for you!
• If you die, you are returned to the Council with half your gold removed. The game saves on each death.
• Speaking of saves, there's only one save file. The game will save whenever you rest or die in battle. If you complete the adventure, your save file will be wiped, in case you wanted to do it again. (Sorry the system is so odd, I ran out of time for making a better save system!)
• If things are too tough, make sure you're exploring and talking to people. You might get some helpful items!
• You can only use your items outside of battle!

Features

• A 4-bit palette inspired by the Gameboy Pocket screen
  • (that's what I had growing up)
• Some excellent 8-bit music (that I did not make. See acknowledgments below!)
• Dragon Quest-style combat where you're often outnumbered
• 6 whole monsters, some more dangerous than others
  • Some really simple enemy AI to balance that out
• At least one weapon and piece of armor to find
• 2 whole spells, plus some skills you'll see but can't do yourself
• A dungeon and 2 towns to explore

Acknowledgments

I had a lot of unbeknownst help with the art side of things (I'm not good at putting the pixels or the bloops together!). So, here is my long list of acknowledgments.

The music is from Frelon_K. Some of the sound effects are from Swiss Arcade Game Entertainment. Other sounds were made in jsfxr.

The tiles that you see are (mostly) the Zoria tileset by DragonDePlatino along with a tile or two from MaterialFuture. I did a lot of custom tile in addition, especially for indoor and decorative things that I didn't get from either source.

The wonderful monster sprites in this game are by LuckyCassette, and I am so glad I found them. I spent a lot of time looking at the Staroid sprite (it's now the rarest encounter in the game!). The character sprites are from route1rodent. The main character is based on the proportions, but otherwise is my own sprite work.

The font in this is Reboot by WildLeoKnight.