El Cid & Cult of the Wasteland

An RPG adventure in medieval Spain. Play as El Cid, the greatest knight of the age as he explores the wastelands and uncovers the mystery of the cult of Nyarlathotep. 

Submitted for the Cosmic Horrors Jam and RPG Horror Celebration Jam #3

In the year 1081, on a windswept Spanish plain, an exiled hero emerges ragged, thirsty, and alone…

Where Cosmic Horror meets Spaghetti Western, find new friends, explore the landscape, and defeat enemies in dynamic turn-based battles. Make sure to look for all of the hidden items in the underground levels!


Mobile Controls- (Computer controls in the game)

  • Tap with one finger to move 
  • Tap with two fingers to access the menu


Credits:

Thanks to the KVG Crew

Kaptain Viciorious - Narrative, Level, and Game Design

Ai Daive - Art

Argus Panoptes - UX Design

Pioneer - QA Testing

Music from Pixabay.com: anrocomposer, juliush, caffeine_creek_band, audiocoffee, daddy_s_music, evgenybardyuzha, and litesaturation 

RPG Maker Community: Avery - Horse battler sprite; ninjaconor - Dog battler sprite


Dev Log:

1.1

Just released our first patch for El Cid & the Cult of the Wasteland. We fixed a few bugs that people caught in the comments and improved a few elements as well. We hope that you will enjoy the game even more now.

1.0 

This is my first attempt at making a game in RPG Maker and so far it has gone really well. Not being a programmer, this application made making an immersive game fairly simple. I have been using Twine to make my games so far, but you are very limited in the interaction there, and truthfully I do not enjoy playing this kind of interactive fiction game as much as I do old school JRPGs, though they haven't been my go-to since Pokémon Red and Dragon Warrior Monsters in the late 90s.

For the narrative, I kept it fairly simple this time, focusing on the feels rather than dialogue, though I think the dialogue you get is fun, adding to the atmosphere. I am a big fan of Spaghetti Westerns, especially by Sergio Leone like "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly", so that is the vibe I was going for here. Though it does have a horror twist.

Download

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Click download now to get access to the following files:

El Cid-Windows.zip 151 MB
El Cid-Mac.zip

Development log

Comments

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I was really impressed with this game. The music selection was very on theme and excellent for the whole feel of the game. The maps are well made and there are a lot of interactions available. I always felt engaged and was able to pick up items and the items were flavorful (ie tobacki). It was a nice flowing story, however I could not find the key to the door in the cave, the enemies were doing 0 damage and missing El Cid a lot. Overall GREAT GAME, lots of fun.

Thanks for playing! I'm glad you enjoyed it. In my next update I'll try to put in a hint of where to find the key (it's in a jar on the left side of the dungeon) and work on balancing combat some more.

Slightly disliked it in the beginning because the desert areas were a bit too monotonous and open, resulting in some confusion. But I stuck with it, and I'm glad I did.

I found all items and the genie, and was quite OP on the lower floor. The Nyarlathotep fight, while not exactly easy,wasn't difficult either.

Adding some landmarks to the desert areas would be nice, and I suggest making Nyarlathotep, and the enemies on his floor, just a bit tougher. But then again, I don't know how balanced that would be without the genie and the secret weapon.

Will we be able to import the saves into the next chapter? If not, I don't see the use of all the crafting components. Or I missed something.

Hey Oknodian Games,

Thanks for your feedback! Yes, the beginning lacks specific directions, and that was our intention as it mirrors classic Spaghetti Western films. However, I do think it would be a good idea to make the player's goals more clear and maybe add some more landmarks as you say.

Without the Genie and magic sword the lower level and final battle are pretty hard, but I will take your suggestions into consideration when we do an update (hopefully soon).

We are hoping that saves can be ported into the next chapter, but that will likely only work with a downloaded version. The level designer was just thinking that the world felt more real and filled out with the crafting items, and we do hope to add a crafting component to the game with the second Episode.

Again thanks so much for playing and your feedback! We will try to incorporate as many improvements as possible with the next update.

I never used RPG Maker, so I don't know what's (im)possible to do with it, but maybe you could make the lower floor and Nyarlathotep difficulty increase/decrease to a degree, depending on whether the player has the sword equipped and/or found the genie.

Now that I read your response, I know what your intention with the crafting components was, and it does make sense, but as a player without any insight into the development cycle of the game, I saw crafting components and expected that means there is crafting in the game. I don't know if RPG Maker supports the miscellaneous type of items whose only purpose is to be sold, but if it does, my suggestion is to make these flavor items that type. Then, introduce the crafting components in the same episode you introduce crafting itself in. If that's not possible, maybe add a notification to this first episode that crafting will become a thing in the future.

The biggest problem with the first desert area was that I was running around in circles, and was interacting with the same cacti a lot of times. Adding a few distinguishable features to the first desert map would be great, so people know they'd already visited an area. Lacking specific directions is fine since El Cid was there by accident.

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I didn't make it very far in the game- after a good 20 minutes of running around checking everything I can't find this key that I need to apparently need to get through an underground gate- but what I did experience was pretty unique and caught my interest immediately. Animal companions in an RPG are a fun concept and the way the skills are set up gives each party member their own battle identity and flavor. I also like that pretty much everything in the environment is interactable in an intuitive way. You can get healing items from cactuses, money from gold and silver bars laying around the underground mine and commonplace items like ropes and pickaxes just lying around as props are also collectable by the player. A lot of RPG Maker games are loaded with props that look pretty but don't do anything so giving them some purpose is a nice change of pace.

Aside from having no idea where to go next my main concern with the game is some polish issues. One example is that the battle music should probably be extended longer or at least have some variations so we aren't hearing the same relatively short loop multiple times per fight. Also, there are multiple instances of NPCs that don't move anywhere and can't be interacted with even though they're clearly bad guys, which makes me unsure if the game is bugged out somehow or if I'm supposed to do something specific to trigger a fight/conversation.

One of the most unusual features of the game is the ability to use skills seemingly without limit outside of combat. The horse in particular can not only fully heal the party's MP/HP for free after every single battle, it can prebuff defense and agility multiple stages outside of combat which carries over into the next fight you encounter. You can even use some weird skills like Holy Strike (normally just a strong single target damaging attack) outside of combat which doesn't seem to do anything other than drain MP. It seems really broken that you can buff several stats to max before the start of every fight at no cost but I'm assuming there may be some issue with how the some of the skills are programmed.

Anyways, a cowboy/lovecraftian adventure RPG seems like a really neat concept and I really enjoyed the small taste of gameplay I got as well as the presentation and visuals. I really do like the concept of this project and I hope the author continues tweaking the game with some patches in the future.

Thanks so much for playing El Cid! The key is there, but you'll just have to keep clicking on the props. My playtesters found it fairly quickly, however, they did not notice some of the other bugs you pointed out. So I am really grateful for your help! I will work on those and make a patch after the GameJam voting is finished. 

When it comes to the music, I was a bit limited in time, so did not have time to get something made specifically for the game, but rather used free music I found online that fit the theme, but I agree that battle music should definitely be extended. 

I'm really happy that you enjoyed the game concept! And yes, I will continue to work on it and make more installments in this IP. 

Really cool

Thanks!