Category Archives: Brave Earth

Brave Earth Q&A: Answers!

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Got a pretty good turnout for questions. Hope this satisfies some of you!

From VioletLinked
How many areas / weapons will be usable in the game?
Can you upgrade and downgrade said weapons?
How many characters will you get to play as?

There should be about a dozen unique stages. Some stages are shared between character and often have paths that are unique to different characters. As for ‘weapons’ and ‘upgrades’ remember, this is not a metroidvania. That said, Naomi has 4 special attacks and can power up one of those attacks at a time. Including air variations, Naomi can do a dozen different moves with her special attack button, though only 5 and a time (only powered up specials have air variants). Sinlen, can hold 1 of 5 spells at a time and each of those spells has a special attack. Trevor has 4 different dodge techniques, but can only incrementally power up his sword, much like a Belmont powers up his whip.

As for the amount of characters? For now I’ll just say 3. I might add extra bonus characters later, but these are the three main characters with their own unique paths and storyline significance.

From Fortinbras
I dunno if this has been covered elsewhere, but since you’re best known for IWBTG, I’m curious what the difficulty level will be.

It has, but no harm in saying it again. I’d say at this point, Brave Earth is harder than Castlevania 3, but not by a lot. To experienced Castlevania fans, Brave Earth might actually be slightly easier. There will also be difficulty sets to help people find their ideal level of challenge.

From Grognor
I know I’ve asked you this before, but I liked your answer so much that I want to share it with everyone! (Also, I forgot your answer)

Will religion be “the real deal” in the Brave Earth series, like it is in most fantasy games?

I forgot too so I hope this answer is still good…

It depends on what you mean by “the real deal”. There is magic, there is undead and there are monsters. There are events that definitely give more credence to the idea of “There might be a creator”. So despite the obviousness of magic and souls and the like, unlike most high fantasy, religion is still an act of faith. Same with philosophical ideas like skepticism. Just because there is magic in the world does not mean we should assume all claims are true, just like, in real life, just because we have amazing science doesn’t mean we can assume all technologies people claimed they invented are real.

These themes will be relatively minor in prologue but will hopefully be an important part of Tower in the Sky if that ever gets made. BE:P will probably have a bit more to say about gender roles, though the NES nature of the game somewhat limits how in depth that’ll be.

From Poki#3
Do you think the self imposed limitations of having it be as close to an NES game as possible limit your creativity, or make you find more creative ways to do things?

Well first, let me be honest: I cheat. A lot. I cheat with resolution (the game is a bit wider than it should be, since NES games are natively ‘square’, and the exact resolution is chose more with resolution multiplication in mind more than accuracy). I cheat with the palette (I edit a number of traditional NES colors to get a few colors that wouldn’t normally exist), I cheat with sprite limits and thusly I can even cheat with colors per character. So I’m not hyper accurate, but I like to be aware of the rules I break and have a reason why. As such the limitation is actually very liberating. I have a lot of aesthetic tools to draw upon and I can cheat them when they are occasionally too strict.

My general rule has been “Would I believe this was an NES game if I played it as a kid?”. I cheat less than that, but if I couldn’t believe it, I know it’s flat out wrong.

From Leylite
It seems like one of the tenets of the game design here is to make it possible for people to go through the entire game without taking damage, and for people to be able to speedrun the game.

So with that in mind, are you going to include your best times in the readme? Just for comparison’s sake, of course.

The game SHOULD track your best times in game. I still have to figure out how to work this across difficulties and stuff like that, but it should pretty much be assuredly a feature. I’m actually somewhat concerned about the game’s fitness for speedrunning and how optimizable it is. But I guess we’ll see. I’ve had some people say that they think the game is very much suited for speedrunning.

From Stew
Will you intentionally leave in a glitch, and try to make the player play around it? (think, shield dash SOTN)

I haven’t found a glitch worth leaving in yet. There was only one that ever came up that was ever an option (think: Zombie Hover) and it was a bit too goofy and unusable to leave in.

From Logo
Well I’m mostly curious about what type of system of hitboxes have you built and how do you manage them since you have a pretty interesting set of moves. Are you using rectangular collisions boxes? Are the timing of the hitboxes run off animation frames or are they timed (ie how do you sync that all up and ensure the moves come out the same each time)?

Okay so each character has 3 sets collision data. One is terrain collision. This is usually a rectangle. Heck, it’s a rectangle even when you’re crouching so you don’t get stuck understuff. That one’s easy. Then you have the attack/hurt boxes, which are a set of image masks that fit over the pre-exisitng sprites. I do them as ‘boxes’ but they’re technically images. Every logic cycle, the attack and hurt boxes set them selves to the same animation and animation frame as the character’s base animation and the player’s position. This keeps everything perfectly in sync pretty easily!

From Yagamoth
Too late for questions? Whatever, I’ll ask anyway:
- What is the focus of your game? Please try answering this question before you read on, I don’t intend to put any words into your mouth.

How scary! I’ll try my best!

I would say the focus of BE:P is in it’s level design and enemy design. Relatively slow, careful encounters, rather than quick, rapid action. I want the player’s actions to have weight. Sinlen subverts this a bit, and Trevor embodies this and Naomi sits in the middle.

I’ve seen a lot of platformers lately. Often they revolve around a single gimmick (for better or for worse). But ignoring the gimmick, the platforming itself is often a bit sketchy and unappealing to play by itself – only the gimmick tries to make the game worthwhile and stand out from the others.
For me personally, I prefer platformers the other way around – the platforming itself should be appealing and make the player want to play the game, just because the controls are THAT good. Super Meat Boy did an excellent job at this. Even IWBTG has (in my opinion) excellent controls – precise and on point with no unnecessary distortion.
If you add a ‘generic’ gimmick on top of that (Say, charge shots and a grappling hook), that’s absolutely fine if it only adds to the gameplay. If a not-so-generic gimmick interferes with the already solid mechanics: For me to accept this as a valuable addition to the game, It has to be incredibly well thought-out, well implemented and interesting enough (=worthwhile). Even a not-so-good generic gimmick can already be harmful for the game if it’s poorly implemented. I’ll probably earn some hate for this, but for example in “They Bleed Pixels” the combat mechanics are nowhere near as good as they should be in contrast to the platforming.

In short, for me a good platformer stands and falls with its controls. How elaborate are BEs controls?

The BE:P controls are probably a tad more elaborate than they should be for the NES premise, but I’d still say it’s relatively straight forward. I think more importantly, you could play Brave Earth without using the special button, especially with Naomi. I think the game is better with the special button (which is why it still exists), but I think it’s important that it isn’t a crutch. Much like how subweapons aren’t a ‘crutch’ of Ninja Gaiden or Castlevania. They exist as a spice. I think the two most important elements are in a good spot — jumping and attacking. I’m particularly proud of the jump, which has the design advantages that come with an old Castlevania games, but an amount of controllability that makes it not feel dated. I’ll have to wait for people to play more to see if I’m right.

The grappling hook in IWBTG is kinda a funny example but I think highlights part of the problem with a lot of gimmick games. They choose the gimmick because it seems neat, not because it suits any design purpose. This can be fine if you build around the gimmick well, but those types of games are a bigger risk. If the gimmick doesn’t pan out, you’re fucked.

People have asked me if future chapters of IWBTG:G will have different gimmicks and they’re always surprised when I say no. The grapple arm was chosen to solve problems I felt existed in making an IWBTG sequel. The precision of IWBTG’s controls meant it was hard to craft new challenges without looking like a cramped, spike ridden fangame. Knowing that I wanted a smooth scrolling screen, a way to open up the game would be nice. Atop while IWBTG is precise, there is very little nuance to the Kid’s controls. So adding a mechanic with inherent nuance would allow me to open up the game without fundementally changing the Kid’s basic controls. The grapple arm fit perfectly and is a mechanic I inherently love. A little off topic but worth talking about.

From Googleshng
I vaguely recall mention of the different characters having different paths through the game. Is the idea that everyone just gets a full on unique game (with heavy resource recycling)? Is it going to be a multiple paths through each level accessed by unique abilities (a la MM6′s jetpack access ladders)? A weird hybrid sort of deal, where people make their way through the same levels, but there’s different enemy placement, and/or the occasional alternate/extra level crammed in for certain characters?

You can think of it as ‘everyone gets a full unique game’ but it all sort of comes together in a more complicated way then that. For example, you unlock Sinlen at level 3 and Sinlen’s path starts at a difficulty curb fitting to that. Also the alternative characters tend to have shorter paths than Naomi’s (which is about 8 levels depending on how I want to count them). Some levels have different paths (Level 3 has Naomi and Sinlen’s path on an alternating sinewave type thing), some are the same levels, but with different abilities, or different times on the stories itmeline. So yeah, it’s a weird hybrid. Hopefully it’ll be cool in practice. Due to my fetishization of level designs and living world, I want it to feel like characters doing their own thing in the same world instead of on their own disjointed levels.

Also, same question for bosses. If it’s pretty much just, “this is level 8, this is the boss of level 8″ people are always cool with it, but for some reason, “this is level 8a, it’s different from level 8b but has a the same boss at the end” that’s somehow psychologically dissatisfying (while changing ONLY bosses, that flies just fine, it’s weird).

There won’t be any shared bosses, at least not in a way that doesn’t make sense. It would not only be dissatisfying, but it would also mess up some of the chronology of the game.

Going all 8-bit retro often pushes people into tossing in limited lives (sometimes even with limited continues). What’s your stance with this on kicking people back to the start of the level/start of the game as punishment for dying too much?

Default game setting will have lives with infinite continues. In fact, once a level is beat, it’s unlocked and you can resume from there at any time. So you might have to restart a stage, but never the game. Also through an option you can turn on the ability to resume from checkpoints after game-overing. I want to encourage people to play in the ‘old school’ style, but they don’t have to.

Kinda related- Difficulty settings. I seem to recall you planning to include them, but how much thought are you putting into them? Just tweaking damage/HP? Altering enemy placement? Changing up attack patterns? Going all Mega Man 10 and including those shame inducing big obvious bumpers in platforming bits? Maybe without being so passive-aggressive about it visually (i.e. just make the pit smaller, don’t throw in big obvious safety bumper sprite)?

Pretty much everything. Health adjustments, some placement adjustments and for certain enemies, AI changes (this will mostly effect the Very Hard difficulty). Easy platforming (and the associated bumpers) are an option that can be toggles individually.

Mind tossing out an animated gif of that skeletal dragon meandering about? That thing warms my cold black sprite loving heart so damn much.

Oh what you mean this?

From Big Ari
s there any truth to the rumor that all of the storytelling will be done through emoji, and gifs of corgis?

That sounds like me and King are making a true IWBTG/Owata crossover!

I guess if I’m posting, I should probably ask a serious question. Are you planning any optional side content like the secret items in iwbtg?

There will be secrets. There’s a whole ‘hub’ map filled with little things. The hub setup is sorta an interactive “menu” you for you to change characters and choose levels (or even try characters on paths they’re not supposed to go on). Chronologically, it exists AFTER the events of the game and talking to some characters on it can give you some insight on some of the things that went on in the game. None of this is required, but for the people who like this stuff, they can dig around and uncover a number of Easter Eggs.

There will also be secrets hidden in the actual stages too. Of course I can’t say too much. :)

Brave Earth: Prologue Q&A

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Just opening a chance for a Q&A for the game. Things are slow and no release date is in sight and people ask me for info on the game so just like, you know… ask away and in a week or so I’ll go write some answers. It’s hard for me to know what people wanna know about and I don’t just wanna give the whole game away right away!

Just don’t bother asking about a release because I doooon’t knoooow.

Brave Earth Prologue: Trevor vos Cruz

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Bio

Name: Trevor Martinez vos Cruz
Age: 24
Race/Nationality: Aistorian Human
Height: 5’11
Occupation: Slayer for the
Holy Order of Saint Alistair

Stats

Offense: High
Defense: High
Range: Averge
Speed: Slow
Mobility: High

(art by Neolucky)

Trevor vos Cruz is the eldest child of House Cruz. Trevor was considered an exceptionally gifted child, being gifted both physically and in his studies. Trevor quickly gained rank and prestige in his Order and is a renowned Slayer for the church.

Reserved and studious, Trevor spends the majority of his free time reading or training, often to the neglect of other responsibilities. While seen as somewhat cold to most, Trevor has a warm and talkative relationship with his sister Naomi. Seeing her potential, Trevor has personally seen to her training from a young age, while also trying to teach her topics like history and philosophy.

Due to the large targets Trevor tends to fight, he was gifted the greatsword, Verbanner, a giant slab of a sword, milled from a cold iron slab. While naturally a slow weapon, Trevor’s immense strength allows him to wield to wield it with surprising speed, making it an ideal weapon for taking out giant enemies. Trevor needs time to recover from swings, which is represented by his charge gauge, which by default is represented by a value between 0 and 100%. The higher this number is, the faster and more powerful Trevor’s next attack will be. This gauge will naturally fill to 50% and can be sped up and pushed to 100% by holding down the Attack button to charge. While charging, Trevor’s movement is temporarily slowed. By picking up Sword Power-Ups Trevor can charge up to 200% (and up to 150% without charging)!

While Trevor can’t maintain a fast pace while wielding his heavy sword, he has developed a number of techniques which focus on short bursts of rapid movement to compensate.

Dash

Command: (c) + Forward/Back

A rapid dash that can be canceled at any point by an attack or a jump. If done in the air, the dash will ignore gravity and allow Trevor to span long chasms. The dash also gradually increases Trevor’s charge gauge and can push it over it’s maximum limit.

Dodge

Command: (c) + No Directions

A stationary dodge. Trevor dodges to the side and becomes temporarily invulnerable. If an attack passes by him during this time, Trevor gains further invincibility and a large bonus to his charge game. While powerful, Dodge is quite expensive to use.

Combat Roll

Command: (c) + Down

A quick roll. While faster than a dash, it is more expensive and takes time to recover. It can be used to roll under enemies, which, like the Dodge, will power up your Charge meter. The Combat Roll must be spaced properly so you pass through the enemy completely.

Leap

Command: (c) + Up

A high, floaty jump that exceeds Trevor’s normal jump height. It allows for full freedom of movement in the air and can be canceled into an air attack at any time. It can be used to dodge attacks or reach hard to reach places, but grants on bonuses to your charge meter.

Artwork: Naomi – Snowy Day

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(from DA)

I wanted to do a quick little profile drawing of Naomi in a window, in casual clothing. “Quick” soon became “Weeks” as I decided to add details, like a stone arch window frame, or the bookshelf or the background.

I tried to work in as much little detail as I could. I wanted to make a ‘scene’ more so than a portrait and I’m pretty happy with the results. I wish I could have done certain things better, but I think when working on a large project, that’s unavoidable. Also tried to work in tiny little setting related stuf, but nothing too overt.

I’m pretty happy with it

Small BE:P Update

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So I’ve finally had some time to work on Brave Earth: Prologue. I haven’t touched the game since ROFLcon and basically got back to doing this earlier this week. Instead of getting right back into content, I decided to make some bigger changes first. Most of this is without any context for you guys though. I’ll be talking about stuff you haven’t been able to play with so it might be hard to say why these changes matter. Either way, you guys keep asking for updates, so have one.

The Jump

Naomi’s jump has always been contentious. I really like the jumps of the old Castlevania games, but they didn’t go over well with everyone. I wrestled with this a bit and thought about making jump control for all characters be an adjustable switch in the options like Castlevania rebirth, but instead I decided to just change the jump. Naomi now has limited air control. She can’t control the height of her jump, but she has some control over her momentum. This is also rolled together with a general speed increase. Where as Naomi previously ran at a plodding 60 pixels a second (1 pixel every ‘tick’ of game logic), she now moves a whopping -66 pixels-, due to a staggering 0.1 increase in her walking speed! That sounds silly, but it’s … 10%, which is enough to make Naomi feel a tad faster on her feet. It also increases her jump distance. Now, none of you have played the game, so there is no frame of reference here, but generally what this means is I’m moving a bit away from “Castlevania” and getting a bit more actiony. A bit more speed and air control means I can make later parts of the game harder in a way that still feels fun.

Also, Naomi is in no ways “mobile”. She cannot turn around in the air line Sinlen can. If you start with a forward jump and hold the opposite direction really fast, Naomi will just barely overcome her forward momentum by the time the jump finishes. Basically, jump distances can almost be seen like this.

Jump Forward (than hold back immediately): Jump roughly one tile forward.
Jump Forward(than release): Jump two tiles forward.
Jump Forward(and hold): Jump 3 tiles forward.

You basically are fighting momentum when you try to change your air velocity. If you wanna have some idea what the jump feels like, imagine the NES Batman jump, but only like 40 pixels high and with no startup. So anyways the hopes for these changes is that Naomi will feel more responsive to players without actually compromising the need to be careful and plan jumps while also giving me a little bit more wiggle room in terms of design space. Hopefully this will be Win Win Win.

New animations

Over time, most of Naomi’s sprites have been changed to some extent.

Here you can see her sprite I made early on, followed by the one I had through most of development so far followed by the current one, which came with these images I posted on twitter months ago. I’ve also added lots of cool secondary cape animations, such as when she’s jumping or stops walking. I also changed what happens if Naomi mashes Attack


(for the old comparison, go here)

This doesn’t increase attack speed, but it does make consecutive attacks easier and looks nicer. It does sorta remove an element of timing (though you do sorta have to time the button press to do it perfectly), but we’ll see. If it proves problematic, I can add recovery frames to make it work out a little better.

Other Stuff

I’m updating the HUD. Not a ton, like some of the mockups that some people made on Twitter — I like keeping it clean and simple, but there is some compositional errors that make it look kinda butt. I’m also messing around with the levels to tweak balance and probably am going to add a few new enemies soon. Now, you guys haven’t seen a ton of enemies, so it doesn’t matter much, but you at least have some idea what I’m working on!

Also my Music Guy, Necrophageon is about to pin down some finished tracks, which really should finish the ‘tone’ of the game.

Brave Earth Prologue: Small Changes

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It’s been awhile, so lemme give some updates on Naomi and Sinlen!

Naomi


First change is one to Naomi’s attack animation. While original the game had more of a “Castlevania 1″ vibe, the tone of the game has been different from that for quite awhile. At the time, a simple attack animation seemed appropriate, but over time it began to feel outdated. As such a much more ‘ribbony’, fluid attack felt more appropriate. I’m rather pleased with the results.

Naomi’s shield has also been changed. Unpowered, her shield can be held out indefinitely for a small energy cost. Damage is then redirected to your energy. It’s not efficient, but it’s almost impossible to screw up. The parry is similar to the old version, but with a larger window and lower cost. It’s hard to use, but exceedingly powerful.

Sinlen

Bomber

Sinlen’s Arsenal always seemed a little too small. With Gunner being the ‘boring default’, and the Forbidden Knife being an weapon many players will avoid, Sinlen was left with 2 ‘normal’ weapons. Sinlen also had a lot more design space to work with, so I figured “Sure, why not?”. Bomber is a slow firing, high powered spell that detonates when the fire button is released. While expensive and slow, Bomber can one shot most enemies in the game and can do massive damage to bosses if aimed right. The projectile can also bowl through multiple enemies in a row!

Magic Break: Barrage

Barrage’s homing projectiles helps balance out bomber’s slow speed. Barrage summons out 3 projectiles that, after a moment, rush toward the nearest enemy. They don’t do a lot of damage, but can clear out hard to enemies with ease.

Gunner and Renka have some updates too. Gunner not only gets a nicer sprite, but a slower projectile speed with higher damage. It makes it a little harder to spam, but all together more useful as it can do real damage now. While Gunner still scales with energy, the effect is much less severe. Renka’s spreading shots have had more projectiles added, but has a slower rate of fire and lower range.

I feel the balance is much better now, with Renka no longer being a clear upgrade from Gunner and Bomber being a fun new addition.

Brave Earth Prologue: Sinlen

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Bio

Name: Sinlen Rothschild
Age: 19
Race/Nationality: Aistorian Human
Height: 5’6
Occupation: State Sanctioned Sorceress

Stats

Offense: Variable
Defense: Low
Range: Very Long
Speed: Fast
Mobility: High

(art by Neolucky)

Sinlen Rothschild is a rather pompous noble-born Aistorian Sorceress. Coming from a powerful and wealthy lineage of mages, Sinlen had all the talent and resources she needed to thrive in the magical arts. Due to her abilities and social position, Sinlen has developed quite a superiority complex that has made it difficult for her treat others as equals. While she enjoys being the life of a party and the center of attention, her conceited nature has left her with few actual friends.

Fortunately, with to a friendship between their two families, Sinlen and Naomi have been childhood friends. While one of Sinlen’s only ‘real’ friends, both their competitive natures and Sinlen’s arrogance make it often appear as a rivalry. While Sinlen has traditionally had an easy time placing her self as superior to Naomi, she sees Naomi’s growing strength as a threat to their friendship.

Sinlen also harbors animosity toward the Holy Aistorian Church and it’s various organizations due to forcing mages in their region to conform to the standards of church doctrine.

Sinlen is a long ranged, glass cannon. Due to the damage she takes, mobility is very important to her survival. Sinlen has the fastest walk speed and highest jump of all the characters, as well as the ability to change direction in mid-air. She even has the ability to levitate for short periods of time by manifesting a magical disk to sit on beneath her.

Her primary attack depends on which spell she is carrying at the time, though in almost all cases she still has longer range than any other character. While her attacks are also often very damaging, her attack energy drains with each shot. Sinlen’s energy operates slightly differently from Naomi’s. While they they both have a maximum of 20 units of energy, Sinlen’s energy slowly recharges and she does not gain energy from destroying enemies. Certain spells also weaken in power as Sinlen’s energy gets lower, so Sinlen has to be very careful in managing her enemies.

Sinlen’s magic lineage also gives her access to forbidden bloodmagic techniques. She can use these techniques perform a unique “magic crash” attack with each spell by pressing her Special button. These Magic Crashes are more powerful versions of normal spells, but they don’t drain energy. Instead they feed off of Sinlen’s life force and reduce her max energy capacity instead. While this max energy can be recovered by picking up gems, overuse of Spell Crashes can leave SInlen unable to attack fast enough to defend her self. Sinlen’s levitation disk can also cause her to experience energy drain, so be careful with how much you use it!

Gunner


Sinlen’s “Gunner” spell is her default attack. While not as great as her other spells, it has excellent range and reasonable damage and a fast rate of fire. Sinlen creates a spell-circle in front of her and rapidly shoots in a single direction and can easily dispatch a large amount of weak foes with ease. Unfortunately, she cannot walk while attacking (though she can attack during a jump) and the spell tends to drain energy rather quickly. Her shots also reduce and size and power as her energy approaches zero, though her shots also become cheaper.

Magic Break: Gun Slicer


While the Gunner spell is somewhat mediocre, it’s Spell crash, “Gun Slicer” is quite powerful. It produces an initially slow moving, high damage, accelerating projectile that can cut through special enemies in one blast and comes out instantly. Gun Slicer can give Sinlen a great emergency source of damage when her energy is low.

Renka


Sinlen’s “Renka” spell functions similar to Gunner, forcing Sinlen to create a spell-circle and remain stationary. Contrary to gunner, Renka fires a spread of high damage rings a moderate distance in front of her. At point blank range, when all rings can hit, Renka can dish out incredible amounts of damage. Like Gunner, it’s efficiency also decreases as Sinlen’s energy does, with the attack firing less rings in a tighter cone.

Magic Break: Burst


While Renka is generally superior to Gunner in all aspects but range, Renka’s Magic break, “Burst” is somewhat less effectivel. When surrounded by enemies, Sinlen can use Burst to create a sphere of renka’s around her body that shoot out in the 8 cardinal directions, hopefully killing everything around her. While useful in a pinch, it lacks the pure destructive power of Gun Slicer.

Chakrams


Sinlen’s “Charkam” spell produces one of 3 boomeranging pentagonal rings which can slice through enemies and can be shot while moving. Chakrams don’t have high damage, but they can often hit enemies multiple times and can cover a lot of the screen. They also have a high energy consumption and no more than 3 can be on screen at a time. Still, due to the coverage and the ability to shoot on the move, Chakrams are one of Sinlen’s most powerful spells.

Magic Break: Soul Nova


“Soul Nova” is chargable beam Spell Break that Sinlen can use to hit whole lines of enemies and do massive damage. Upon pressing Special, Sinlen creates a spell-circle in front of her that she can charge by holding down the Special key. While down, the circle grows and Sinlen’s energy is slowly drained. When released, a beam, who’s size is determined by the charge time, blasts out and can easily reduce a whole swarm of enemies to ruin.

Sinlen can move while the spell-circle is charging, though the spell circle remains in place. Also if a chakram is on the screen when Sinlen presses special, it will convert into the spell-circle instead.

Forbidden Dagger


Not a spell, per-say, but a powerful Rothschild heirloom and bloodmage artifact. Sinlen can use the “Forbidden Dagger” to rapidly slash in front of her at blinding speed and can even attack while moving. In fact, Sinlen can keep attacking as long as the attack key is held down (or until her energy reaches 0). While massively powerful, the hungry dagger reduces Sinlen’s maximum energy every time it’s drawn and will quickly drain her normal energy until it is re-sheathed. This can be offset by killing enemies, which will recover a portion of her max energy. Generally if she can kill multiple enemies in one draw, offset the cost of drawing the blade.

It’s gruesome nature has had weapons like it and bloodmagic in general branded as witchcraft by the church, though the Rothschild family still practices it in secret.

Magic Break: Forbidden Ritual

The Forbidden Dagger does not have a typical magic break. Instead, Sinlen turns the blade on her self. By stabbing her self, she sacrificing some health to completely refresh her energy gauge. While certainly a gruesome technique, it is sometimes necessary when the Dagger has left Sinlen without enough energy to even attack. While mostly used to return her energy capacity to normal levels, it also can be used merely to gain a quick 20 energy and thus keep up a powerful offensive.

Brave Earth Prologue: Naomi

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Bio

Name: Naomi Isabella Victoria vos Cruz
Age: 17
Race/Nationality: Aistorian Human
Height: 5’9
Occupation: Paladin of the Holy Order of Saint Alistair

Stats

Offense: Strong
Defense: Average
Range: Average
Speed: Slow
Mobility: Low

Naomi vos Cruz is a young Aistorian noble-lady and Paladin. While she is generally a friendly, kind and out-outgoing woman, she possesses a fiery, competitive and stubborn side. Her personality and lineage soon brought her to Sacred Order of Saint Alistair. While formerly a militaristic Order, noted for it’s gifted female fighters, the modern role of these Paladins were that of honor guards. Determined to fight, Naomi trained in secret with her older brother and notable Hunter* for the Church, Trevor vos Cruz. Due to both her obvious skill and political pressure from the Cruz family, the Order eventually allowed Naomi to assume combat duties. Brave Earth Prologue chronicles her first experience out in the field.

*”Hunter” refer to anyone specialized in fighting large monsters, demons or various undead creatures.

Naomi’s weapons of choice is her mother’s bastard sword and a large heater shield. Due to her armor, she is rather durable, but is a bit lacking in mobility. Naomi moves at a steady, patient pace and has no directional control when in the air. She must move and attack cautiously.

Fortunately she has rather strong offensive abilities. Her basic attack is a relatively far reach slash that strikes out a distance in front of her. The attack does good damage and has good reach for it’s speed, but lacks any vertical coverage. While she can dish out high damage against a stationary foe, her basic attack leaves a lot to be desired. To compensate, Naomi has a special attack button which can be used to access 4 different attacks. The button it’s self is modeled after Super Smash Brothers. By pressing the (C) button and a direction (Up, down, Left/Right or no direction). Naomi can unleash a variety of special attacks, assuming she has enough energy.

Naomi can have a maximum of 20 units of energy, which she can gain by either killing enemies, or picking up energy gems. She may also find “Ex Orbs”. These orbs, which Naomi may only carry one of at a time, will power up one of her special moves, giving it new properties and allowing her to perform a special air attack. The nature of the orb can be determined by treating the individual symbol as an arrow (figure to the right), making sure you know which move is powered up.

Her attacks, in detail, can be found below.

Forward + (C)


Naomi’s Forward+C attack is a low powered, long range projectile While it does half the damage of her normal attack, it is relatively cheap and has a lot of range.

With the appropriate EX Orb, Naomi’s projectiles get cheaper, can be shot faster and can be charged up for large damage. She also possesses an air fireball that goes down at roughly a 45 degree angle. The attack’s recoil can be used to get Naomi to higher ledges.

Down + (C)


Naomi’s Down+C attack is a ground slide that travels roughly 4 tiles. It is relatively slow, but has a large hitbox that stays out for the entire duration of the move, making it easy to time attacks with. It can also be used to slide under small gaps

With the appropriate EX Orb, Naomi’s Slide goes much farther, much faster and much lower. Her hittable area is greatly reduced and she can slide under many enemy attacks and through multiple enemies at once. Her air attack is a dive kick that does as much damage as her basic attack. When she hits an enemy, depending on the direction held she can either jump off her enemy to the left, right or straight up. If she dives low to the ground, her dive kick becomes a slide without costing additional energy.

Up + (C)


Naomi’s Down+C Is an ‘uppercut’ style attack that hits a huge area above her. It’s slightly slow to come out, but hits an area that she could not normally attack otherwise.

With the appropriate EX Orb, Naomi’s Uppercut comes out near instantly. It also throws out a spinning projectile that flies in a parabolic arc as a secondary effect of the attack. In the air, Naomi somersaults rapidly with her sword out, dealing damage to anything that comes close to her. While an incredible attack, it takes a lot of energy and dampens her forward momentum. Using it during a tight jump could be fatal!

Neutral + (C)


If Naomi presses the C button and no direction, she puts her shield up. While the shield is up, her energy drains rapidly but any hit will put her in a temporarily invulnerable state, protecting her from damage.

With the appropriate Ex Orb, Naomi’s parry mechanically changes, functioning more like a parry. Instead of being able to hold her shield up until her energy runs out, Naomi must specifically time her parry (which activates much quicker, luckily). An unsuccessful parry will have her slowly recover (risking a hit), but a successful parry will not only put her in an invulnerable state, but it lasts longer and her recovery animation is canceled. She also recoups energy, making successful parries extremely cheap! In fact, in some situations Naomi can actually experience a net gain in energy! She can also parry in the air!

The Ex Parry is difficult to use, but should be extremely powerful in the hands of an experienced player.

Naomi is Brave Earth: Prologue’s most balanced character. While she lacks the extreme strength the two other main characters have, she also lacks their extreme weakness and a very robust and flexible movelist.

Brave Earth: Prologue

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Things are rolling here. I’m about 30 or 40% through development. The best release date I could guess would be “Early 2012″. But what I can say is -I will release another game soon-. Even in the worst case scenario, what I have done now would be released if all else fails. So I figure it’s time for me to stop hiding and subtly hinting at things. I’m officially announcing Brave Earth: Prologue.

Brave Earth: Prologue is a 2d, faux 8-bit platformer which draws heavy gameplay inspiration from NES era Castlevania and cinematic inspiration from Ninja Gaiden. The game follows a young and inexperienced Naomi vos Cruz in her first (and unplanned) combat mission and serves as an introduction to some of the characters of the Brave Earth setting before the events of Tower in the Sky. Prologue follows Naomi through at least 6 different levels of classic Castlevania style action, down to intentionally stiff jumps and a slow, but powerful main attack. Instead of having subweapons, Naomi has a Super Smash Bros. style ‘Special’ button that gives her access to 4 different special moves. She may also pick up powerups that increase the effectiveness of some of her moves and even allow her to reach new locations! The game also features 2 additional characters who take different paths through the game and between them have access to 4 unique stages and each of these characters possessing very different gameplay styles.

The game will hopefully be released on Steam (and possibly other services like Indievania) for the planned price of 5 dollars. This is subject to change and there should be a free demo with a decent amount of content released at some point.