Completed THEFT on the MAGNET TRAIN EXPRESS

Shgeldz · Aug 10, 2020

This was a lot of fun to work on. Evan truly did most of the lifting here so direct your most of your praise and all of your criticism to him.

We definitely wanted to do something that wasn’t too “out there” like GALMI, but we also know that our personal favorite Jam Games are bite sized, self contained stories that you can knock out in an hour. I know when writing a lot of dialogue and planning out the story, one of my influences was Paper Mario, which we were both playing during the initial planning phases here. We added in a few QoL things like Warp Panels, but wanted to have a game with some light backtracking that wasn’t annoying, while still showcasing what I think is my favorite part of this - writing and making fun events.

Thanks to the team at Relic for hosting another Jam, know things are a bit weird but hopefully you can knock out a quarantine hour with our silly game.

Tomix9tomix · Aug 10, 2020

I just finished up, got all 3 endings, and here are my thoughts:

The game was nice and short, like scott says, a good bite sized hour long game! It was a lot of fun to play. I think my favourite thing was the dialogue and flavour text, it had a lot of character in it.

I really liked the plot twist that you were the thief, that was cool and put a nice spin on the objective. Also that last scene on top of the train, very cool.

If I had to be ultra critical, I'd say that the clue section was a bit scary. It didn't take me too long but the thought of accidentally missing one thing to interact with and being stuck was scary. Maybe you did, but I think it would be nice to include more clues than the player needs (also I liked all the Clue jokes from Blues Clues to Clueless)

Thank you for the great jam game! Great to see another Looker game in this batch ;)

Evan · Aug 10, 2020

Thanks for playing, and I appreciate the feedback very much! Spoilery response below:

Tomix9tomix said:
If I had to be ultra critical, I'd say that the clue section was a bit scary. It didn't take me too long but the thought of accidentally missing one thing to interact with and being stuck was scary. Maybe you did, but I think it would be nice to include more clues than the player needs (also I liked all the Clue jokes from Blues Clues to Clueless)

Yeah that's a good call--honestly I was thinking of giving each clue its own switch instead of just adding to a variable, so that if you spoke to Looker he could give you a specific hint about where a clue you're missing could be. I'll take that into consideration for v1.1, which will likely happen some time this week, as I've gotten some other feedback about minor errors in events.

Iron_Rx · Aug 11, 2020

Evan · Aug 11, 2020

Iron_Rx said:

The chance is 1%! Congrats!

Install the fonts!!!!!!!!

Iron_Rx · Aug 11, 2020

Maybe on my next playthrough I'll find the other!

(but I still probably won't install the fonts)

KennyCatches · Aug 12, 2020

Hey Evan! I just finished your game and I loved it! It was a fun little adventure, thought the story and writing was great!

Evan · Aug 12, 2020

KennyCatches said:
Hey Evan! I just finished your game and I loved it! It was a fun little adventure, thought the story and writing was great!

Thanks for playing, Kenny! I'm glad you had a good time, makes all the development worthwhile :)

_pheebs · Aug 15, 2020

I've just finished playing this, I got one of the endings. (won't say which for spoilers sake)
And, I loved it, or most of it.

Everything works good, and is pretty well made.
I'm probably not going to go back and get the other two endings though.
Fighting is tedious, and so is the grinding.
And, you've only got 5 fresh waters, and 1 potion as means of healing. Unless there's a shop, I couldn't find it so if there is make it a bit more obvious? if there isn't one, consider adding a Vending Machine that you can spend money on, or a small clerk in the Dining Cart.

Overall, I'd give this a 7/10, it's a good game, good ideas. Just the grinding to be strong enough to not need healing items was tedious.

Evan · Aug 15, 2020

_pheebs said:
Fighting is tedious, and so is the grinding.
And, you've only got 5 fresh waters, and 1 potion as means of healing. Unless there's a shop, I couldn't find it so if there is make it a bit more obvious? if there isn't one, consider adding a Vending Machine that you can spend money on, or a small clerk in the Dining Cart.

Overall, I'd give this a 7/10, it's a good game, good ideas. Just the grinding to be strong enough to not need healing items was tedious.

Hey, thanks for playing! I appreciate you playing thru to whichever ending you got, and I'm glad you enjoyed it.

Currently working on version 1.0 and I think i'll be adding a merchant in the dining car who will sell some healing items...though to be honest I was hoping that the game would be slightly challenging without requiring grinding, so I may try to tweak things a bit. I purposefully kept the number of trainers pretty low so it wouldn't halt gameplay too quickly.

Anyway, thanks for the critique, it will definitely be considered as I work on v1.1!

_pheebs · Aug 15, 2020

Evan said:
Hey, thanks for playing! I appreciate you playing thru to whichever ending you got, and I'm glad you enjoyed it.

Currently working on version 1.0 and I think i'll be adding a merchant in the dining car who will sell some healing items...though to be honest I was hoping that the game would be slightly challenging without requiring grinding, so I may try to tweak things a bit. I purposefully kept the number of trainers pretty low so it wouldn't halt gameplay too quickly.

Anyway, thanks for the critique, it will definitely be considered as I work on v1.1!

It was mostly the Raticate, and the Marowak that got me. (the way i actually managed to beat Marowak was finding the Mew.)
Either level them down, have more items to find, or introduce a shop would work, imo.

Evan · Aug 15, 2020

Ok, version 1.1 is up, with some quick fixes:

1. No longer getting infinite clues
2. Added a merchant in the dining hall to sell you more FRESH WATERS
3. Made clue gathering clearer in Botanical Room, and added more interactable dialogue in Luggage Car.
4. Fixed some other small issues, typos, music cues, etc.

grookies · Aug 15, 2020

Hi, I played this game it was fun. I did lose a lot of times (before you added the updates) and ended up skipping some battles and missed the rare candies. But it all turned out fine I still got one of the endings. I think it was well written from the story, to the characters, to all the little bits of dialogue from interacting with everything. In summary, I appreciate that even though I sucked I could still beat the game and get an interesting story :^)

Shgeldz · Aug 15, 2020

grookies said:
Hi, I played this game it was fun. I did lose a lot of times (before you added the updates) and ended up skipping some battles and missed the rare candies. But it all turned out fine I still got one of the endings. I think it was well written from the story, to the characters, to all the little bits of dialogue from interacting with everything. In summary, I appreciate that even though I sucked I could still beat the game and get an interesting story :^)

Thanks for playing! The endings aren’t that radically different, more of just a thing we put in because we wanted to be somewhat hands off with requiring the player to get things.

We wanted to not outright spoil that you were the theif, nor did we want to direct you how to play the game in terms of talking to everyone - we just wanted to reward that behavior.

NurseEthi · Aug 22, 2020

I really enjoyed this game! It had a lot of little things that could easily be missed if you're not careful and I know I missed plenty of stuff during my play through. I loved the setting because you were able to take such a small location and put things neatly in place to build your caper. Seeing a game in the generation 2 style makes your game stand out to me this year because it's not as common of a style to see people make a game in as generation 3-4. I loved playing the detective and trying to help Looker in his case!
Oh!!! And Looker's dialogue was amazing! I was very excited to see his speech mannerisms replicated so well. That's something I'm always picky about when people put Looker into their games.

I had a couple of moments where I was confused about how I was supposed to progress that I wish were a little clearer such as the part with the little girl.

That one gripe aside, I thought it had good execution and I cannot wait to take some personal time outside of streaming to play again and try to get the other endings and hopefully find some of the secrets I've learned more about now that I've read more of this thread.

How was I supposed to use the paint? I know I was missing something.

PokeBoy1238 · Aug 25, 2020

Howdy! I downloaded the game and I am yet to try it out, but by the screenshots it looks awesome and also love the gen 2 style! :)

TechSkylander1518 · Sep 10, 2020

This was a lot of fun! I managed to get 2/3 endings, and soloed it with Vulpix, which I was pretty proud of!

The aesthetics of the game were so accurate to Gen 2, it made it feel like an alternate timeline expansion pack in a way! I know keeping true to the design of the canon games is sort of the point with most fan games, but it felt especially nice here!

I had a lot of fun exploring all the nooks and crannies in the train, and seeing all the flavor text there!

The writing is really fun, I think the gross bin and Master Ball jokes were my favorite. (And yes, I clicked all the way through on the Master Ball) Oh, and all the "Clues" you find in the luggage car!

Ellen and Kiana's designs are really cool!

I did feel like the plot twist didn't leave much room for mystery. There's never any details on the case until we get the reveal of Vulpix, and when it happens, Looker immediately points out that you have one right there. TotMTE is definitely still fun as a heist game rather than a mystery, but I kind of thought the mystery was supposed to be a major point, given the thread description.

One thing I think you could do to change that would be to maybe add some "theories" from Ellen when she finds clues, and gradually reveal what was stolen. So, at first, Ellen finds the hat, and she mentions which people on the train it might have come from. Then Looker gets the woman to reveal that a Pokemon was stolen, and Ellen says "Oh, it was this Magikarp, wasn't it?" and then Looker finds out, no, it's a Vulpix. (That'd probably involve rewriting a fair amount of dialogue, though)

The fact that only one of Vulpix's moves was animated (initially, at least, I know other moves after leveling up had more animations) made battles feel a little more boring, since it was just tackle animations a lot of the time. I know it'd be insane to come up with Gen 2 style moves for every new move, but maybe you could do Ember for Will-o-Wisp, and Shadow Ball for Hex, since those moves aren't used elsewhere?

The save screen still shows the badge numbers, which feels a bit awkward when they don't have anything to do with the game. Maybe it could be rebranded to "Number of cars" or something similar?

There's a few places where the font causes the text to be spread out over several lines, even with the screen at full size. This was the most frustrating example:

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The reason why I only got 2/3 endings is because I had already saved with the shiny doll in the making, and there was no way to undo it. I could get the winning/losing endings just fine, because the final battle is just right there, but if I wanted to undo the shiny doll, I'd have to start over entirely, and that felt like too much of a hassle to go all the way back through. I wish you could talk to the painter and just ask him to cancel the gift, it'd make it way easier to see all the endings. (I know I can just look in the files to see the newspaper, but I'm curious about the dialogue)

I was asked if I was okay with overwriting my file each time I saved, which got a little annoying. I know it's what the canon gen 2 games did, but in this case I think convenience is better than staying faithful to the source.

A few battle transitions seemed a bit out of place with the Gen 2 aesthetics- I remember one that had the screen breaking into small squares that spun around, looking more like a powerpoint transition than the ones in gen 2.

Most of the game does just fine at the speed it's at, but in wild encounters, I feel really slowed down by them. I think I counted 10 seconds between the initial animation and getting the chance to run in one case.

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It's hardly a big deal, since there's only two cars where you can encounter wild Pokemon, but it was a little frustrating to be slowed down like that. (It also turned me off trying to find Celebi or Mew, since it seemed like they would be rare wild encounters?)

Kiana will praise the player's resourcefulness for catching Pokemon on the train even if the player just has Vulpix in their party- I thought it might be interesting if she had different dialogue for just using Vulpix.

I don't think there's a cry for Stufful? I didn't hear one, at least, and I played that battle a couple times.

This ladder gets cut off by the engine:

There's a passability error in the Quiet Room:

Quotation marks display this weird character instead:

I think this guy is supposed to have dialogue, since I could interact with the trash can, but nothing happened when I clicked on him:

(Well, for the most part, text inconsistencies)

Pokefeller is spelled as POKeFELLER in the parlor car, but Pokefeller in the Quiet Car.
The books usually say "Read more?", but in the Quiet Car, they say "Read More?"
Candy kid says "Hey friend," should have a comma after Hey

Thanks for sharing such a fun game!

boonzeet · Oct 1, 2020

I had a lot of fun playing this, and enjoyed the theme (I looove Agatha Christie & Poirot).

I ended up winning the game with a Lv 27 Cottonee though after Vulpix kept fainting, that sleep powder/leech seed combo is the one.

The theme, as mentioned before, was great. I love Murder on the Orient Express and the similar plot (Train blackout, theft in lieu of murder).

Looker was really well written. His dialogue fit the dialogue of previous games and his quirky weirdness.

All the written text segments are fun and interesting, a big contrast to the main series games - found the bin with the tin foil particularly funny.

It was a nice surprise being able to run into legendaries, although I got fainted by them both times trying to catch them!

Crystal was the first game that I was really old enough to remember playing. Massive nostalgia trip! Loved it.

Some of the dialogue was overly lengthy and stretched over many, many screens of text (the kid talking about the ribbon his grandma lost comes to mind).

The levels difference between your 'mon and wild Pokémon/Trainer Pokémon was variable, some of the earlier battles were very difficult (that same kid) while the later Rocket battles were a cakewalk.

I agree with Tech, there could've been more actual investigating, snooping, and questions to really drive in the 'mystery' angle. It was fun searching for things, but nothing was actually done with the clues.

Cheers for making the game, it was really fun!

ranko · Dec 19, 2020

Hey I completed your game! Great job finishing a Game Jam Project, which is a feat of its own!

opinion, everyone is free to disagree

This game looks absolutely amazing. The level of visual polish is incredible, and I adore devs trying to keep things like the overworld consistent and looking great, and especially the battle scene. It feels really authentic in a sense, and it's a huge +. I also really enjoyed the writing in this game, it was very cute overall with a lot of nods and jabs I liked. Usually not super big on overly clever stuff, but I didn't feel it was overbearing at any time, mostly because of the next part. The narrative of the game itself was actually fantastic, and I love how the events are set-up to eventually reveal the thief without making it too obvious, and I liked the way the endings were set up. I went back to get the second ending after completing the first one, even. It's really REALLY cool, how after the realization seeps in on the first play-through, the player's goals will instantly change and they realize what the game is REALLY about, and then move accordingly. It's actually really impressive of how this game is set-up, and I really really loved the premise of this alone. It's actually excellent. I absolutely loved this game, it's really clever.

Bonus points for the dialogue beyond the flavor text, mostly at NPC dialogue and such. It's really strong overall and done incredibly well. I feel I should point that out since that tends to be hit or miss in fan-games. More bonus points for audio cues, strong music selection, and more I can't I can point out off the top of my head.

I think the way the investigations were set-up were a bit underwhelming though, as I eventually realized to progress, all I had to do was click through everything in the room. Figured the dialogue makes up for a bit (since the player doesn't actually want to investigate lol), but it'd be neat to see alternative forms of gameplay here. It works but, it's kinda disappointing when you realize it, yknow? I think I wiped a few times too, but it wasn't anything huge and I don't remember losing to the point of frustration. It might've been above average difficulty I think, but I'm personally okay with that, and there weren't a lot of battles anyway.

Yeah, I didn't have much else in the notes! No major bugs or anything, it was solid and near perfect execution for what I think it wanted to be. Every aspect of this game and every technical area was beyond polished. Great job y'all <3

Completed THEFT on the MAGNET TRAIN EXPRESS

Shgeldz

:eyes:

Tomix9tomix

The beetle is waking up

Evan

game director, Pokémon Sea & Sky

Iron_Rx

Novice

Evan

game director, Pokémon Sea & Sky

Iron_Rx

Novice

KennyCatches

can he catch his w's?

Evan

game director, Pokémon Sea & Sky

_pheebs

Demoness on the prowl!

Evan

game director, Pokémon Sea & Sky

_pheebs

Demoness on the prowl!

Evan

game director, Pokémon Sea & Sky

grookies

Wanna cookie?

Shgeldz

:eyes:

NurseEthi

Novice

PokeBoy1238

Discord: PokeGuy1238 #3086

TechSkylander1518

Wiki Dweeb

boonzeet

Developer of Pokemon: Secrets of the Ages

ranko

The Wind and Snow Continue to Stare