A New Challenger Appears!

 new portrait who dis?

Avee finished this portrait for me today for a brand new character. Who is it? Well, that's for you guys and gals to find out!

Twitch VOD: Working on Mount Houzell

Just finished a four and a half hour stream of me working on Mount Houzell, a mountain dungeon that the party goes to after Oaktown. Check it out at the following link if you're interested!

Twitch VOD

Kassandra Battle Test

Doing a battle test with the newest party member, Kassandra. Specific details on how she plays are found in the previous post titled Arrow and Mimicry Commands.

Portrait Roundup & Additional Character Preview

 It's time to blab on about Avee's wonderful character portraits again, as well as tell you guys about three characters (two of which I have been completely silent about thus far). Let's start with the first character, who is actually no stranger to those who have been following Penumbra Crystallis' development so far. 

Hey, it's Veks! He also has a proper surname now at last. While Veks will not be a permanent party member, I do anticipate that he'll pop up every now and then to help the party out when they're in a bind. Veks currently joins the party twice, first when Vahn and Hans investigate the Branch Sewers and then a second time when Vahn and Vera head to Oaktown. I may give the player the option to have Veks permanently tag along later as an optional character, at which point I may make him controllable as well. We'll see! Veks deserves recognition as a "party member" though even if he isn't a permanent addition simply because players will be seeing a lot of him and he will be a staunch ally.

The resident bad boy general from Blackmoon Prophecy will experience a change of heart throughout the events of Blackmoon Prophecy, but what will trigger him to switch sides? Well, that's for the players to discover themselves since I'm not here to give story details away. What I can say is that Braak's weapon of choice is the greatsword and his main purpose in battle will be shutting down enemies and creating weaknesses.

Wait a second! What game is this again!? You're seeing things correctly, that's Edric Csardim from Blackmoon Prophecy II. Avee redesigned Edric's portrait to make it fit in with the style he has used for the rest of Penumbra Crystallis' portraits. So what is Edric doing here? Well, he's going to be encountered by players just by playing through the game normally and he will still be a military man from Lenadia. That's about where the similarities end. Since Edric will be an optional character, I'll leave what he does a surprise to the players.

There is also one final character, an optional female character (who will be completely new and is not a holdover from Blackmoon Prophecy) that I have not commissioned a portrait for yet, but she will have some interesting gameplay mechanics and will have a unique equip screen that will look like this:

Body

Ring

Ring

Trinket

Trinket

Codex

Codex

Codex

Looking forward to the final character and working out how she'll play, but that's a story for another day!

"Arrow" and "Mimicry" Commands

Kassandra is a bit different from other characters in Penumbra Crystallis so far. Vahn, Hans, Vera, and Oalston all have single unique commands, Kassandra has two - Arrow and Mimicry.

The Arrow Command

Arrow abilities are learned via leveling up and allow Kassandra to do more interesting things with her arrows such as dip them in potions to allow them to heal or reverse engineer remedies to imbue her arrow shots with status conditions. Arrow abilities mostly consume items in order to use them (predominantly twigs - a special item that Kassandra will need for several arrow abilities and can be purchased from item shops). Here are a few Arrow abilities that Kassandra will start with:

Aim: Allows Kassandra to attack twice per turn for a few rounds. Requires her to focus, consuming 25% of her maximum MP to use.

Magic Arrow: Consumes one mana to inflict magic-based physical damage to one target.

Splintershot: Consumes five twigs to fire numerous weak shots at randomly selected targets.

Stun Arrow: Consumes one twig to stun a target for a single turn.

Triage Arrow: Consumes one potion to heal for an amount roughly on par with potions (100 HP), but could be a little more or a little less. Is also capable of inflicting critical heals.

The Mimicry Command

As previously stated, Kassandra is the replacement for Ami from Blackmoon Prophecy, so she's the resident "blue mage" of sorts even though that term is not used in the game. Kassandra's official class is huntress. 

Mimicry abilities are learned in a very simple manner. The party can find monster statues littered throughout the world, and if Kassandra is in the party, she will be able to learn a new mimicry ability by studying the statue and what is written on it. Easy peasy!

While mimicry abilities will become extremely diverse as the game progresses, here are the three basic abilities that Kassandra starts with:

Chopodile: Copies the "All Chop attack that chopodiles use. Attacks all enemies, inflicting non-elemental damage.

Shelldon: Copies the "Gooey Graze" attack that shelldons use. Low non-elemental damage and poisons the enemy.

Skeleton: Copies the "Roll the Bone" attack that skeletons use. Throws a bone at one target for non-elemental damage.

That's about all for the Arrow and Mimicry commands. Kassandra starts with some pretty basic stuff, but she'll be able to learn to do lots of neat things as the player progresses through the game!

A Wild Archer Appears (Part 2!)

Kassandra arrives to save the day! I'm really excited to finally start work on this character, as she has a few little gameplay gimmicks that will make her more interesting to use. She'll use items from your inventory to enhance her arrows, can use a skill that briefly allows her to attack multiple times, and is also the resident blue mage in the game (since she is the replacement for Ami from Blackmoon Prophecy). 

As I started in a previous post, she also has some cool story significance as well that I can't wait to see people who played Blackmoon Prophecy react to!

September 13 Monsters Preview

 This monster preview is a bit different, as it's not random encounters! Instead we have a boss and a summon. First we have the Darksider boss...

Darksider is a big, mean skeleton capable of attacking the party several times in succession due to having four arms. He is encountered shortly after the end of the Penumbra Crystallis demo. He was a bit of a challenge to balance well because of his multi-attack tendencies, and he gave Thomas a good run for his money when testing, so I think he's right where I want him to be. Remember, I want the bosses in this game to push players far more than bosses in any of my previous games!

And with Bones McGee out of the way, we have the first summon sprite from level2janitor, and it is Chione! Demo players will remember her being acquired at the end of the Water Shrine. Here is her new permanent graphic:

I think that level2janitor did a good job with her. The placeholder that I used previously, while decent looking, just looked like a regular woman wearing white. level2janitor's version of Chionne looks properly elemental and "spirity". Having this graphic is also is a huge plus now, as it means that summons and monster graphics are consistently the same style.

Anyway, that's all for now! I should have some stuff to show off soon myself. Even though the "hiatus" is over for the game, I didn't do much work over the last few days as I was distracted by Final Fantasy XIV, doing small fixes/updates to Triple Triad: Tournament of the Elements, and real life responsibilities. I should have some stuff to show off in the coming days, hopefully in the form of the new party member Kassandra!

Hiatus Over

 Hiatus is over. That is all. Full steam ahead again.

Choo choo!

Triple Triad: Tournament of the Elements Released!

 Triple Triad: Tournament of the Elements is now completed! This is probably the largest project that I've ever finished within a one month timespan. This is a love letter to all things Final Fantasy and Triple Triad. Kind in mind that it is a quirky little side project and is not meant to be a "serious" game by any stretch. If you just want to play some Triple Triad, this is the game that lets you do it!

Tournament of the Elements can be download on itch.io or rpgmaker.net.

Hiatus Soon Ending

Penumbra Crystallis' hiatus will soon be ending as my passion/side project, Triple Triad: Tournament of the Elements, is about to be completed and released in the next few days.

While this blog is primarily for Penumbra Crystallis (with the odd mention of Final Fantasy here and there), I feel like sharing this here as well for the exposure.

With just a few days left until this bad boy is completed (in less than a month!), I decided to do one of those fancy "release trailers" that are all the craze these days. While my trailer making abilities aren't fantastic, this is better than nothing!

Triple Triad: Tournament of the Elements will be released in the evening of September 6th unless something unforeseen happens with me offline. The agenda of things left to finish is as follows:

• Final card match against the host of the tournaments, Dionysos the God of Revelry
• Addition of a few additional side quests
• Addition of about 25-35 more cards (they are in the database, just not yet accessible to players)
• Completion of the Market Exchange map (the only map not yet in the game)
• Completion of the Recycling Depot, just need to event about 20 or recyclers
• Cleaning up of various little aspects of the game and additional polish

Honestly, the fact that I started this on August 9th and am going to finish it in less than a month is pretty wild. I thought that it was just going to be a two week project at first, but the scope of the game grew after a few days and I realized I'd need a little bit more time to work on it.

Anyway, looking forward to finishing this and releasing it into the wild in a few days! See you then!

Once this monster is out on Monday, expect updates to start coming in for Penumbra Crystallis again starting with blurbs on how the newest party member, Kassandra, will play. Her entire background and role in the game had been completely altered just prior to the game being put on hiatus, so I'll be excited to share some of those details with you guy's soon as well. Here's a hint though... she's related to someone we all know very well!