The Hero’s Journey is a sidescrolling swordfighter, similar to Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link; you navigate side-scrolling maps, with your trusty sword and shield, to defeat the Evil Lords besieging the land of Aylea.
It all started when Tim the Knight and his father were spelunking, and discovered a suit of crystal armor! However, the cave collapsed, injuring Tim’s father. Tim went to the neighboring nation of Aylea, known for a healing herb called Goldensage, expecting such a trivial request to be granted with no issue.
…Instead, he found a realm besieged. Can Tim the Knight defeat the Evil Lords and save Aylea? Or, will the world find itself at the precipice of a new Resurrection War?
Also, my players on NewGrounds provided some excellent feedback which is making its way into a patch to fix things that are broken. This fix should be done by the end of this week.
My post-mortem will come once all four of the portals I’ve submitted the game to get me the results on how the game did financially this first month (as, the first month is where the majority of a game’s income comes from.) We’ll see if the $30 investment I put into this game is returned in any appreciable amount at all…
I’ve just released Patch 1.1 to The Hero’s Journey! My release on Kongregate, GameJolt, Wooglie, and NewGrounds has earned me quite a few plays and comments of the game. This week, I went about fixing some of the problems that were noted.
Pause Menu - There was a bug in how the Enter key was bound, that caused it to be necessary to spam Enter to pause or unpause the game. Now, a single press toggles the game’s pause state.
Combat Physics - One of the complaints about combat was that the physics felt wrong - the player’s attacks were too forceful! I reduced the player’s attack force to a more reasonable level. I also added a slight force feedback effect to enemies when they are hit.
Interact and Attack Separate - Tim has had problems with his mental state since surviving the cave-in that injured his father; this manifested in the form of Tim trying to stab the head of people he was trying to speak to. After intense developer therapy, we have cured Sir Tim of his chronic Head-Stab-itis by separating the attack key (X) out from the interact key (Z).
Side-Quest - Dragoon Kayn was reported to eitiher unspawn or become unresponsive at a certain point in the main storyline. This has been fixed.
Instructions - Added an instructions pane to the title screen, since different sites communicate play instructions slightly differently.
Title GUI Cleanup - Let’s not mince words: the tile screen was ugly before. I cleaned it up to be tidier, and more visually appealing.
Map Escape - A player found a mountain that could be crossed on the Aylea map. I fixed the mountains to prevent anyone from escaping the land of Aylea before their quest is complete, even directly into the ocean.
I always love player feedback, so please play and enjoy the game! If you find anything I should change, give me a note so I can get to patching it.
As always, thank you for supporting The Hero’s Journey - and, if you want more games like this, consider a more substantial show of support, by donating to my Patreon campaign so I can keep the free games coming!
Hi everyone! I’ve posted my post mortem of the game here. If you’re a gamer, don’t worry about reading it. If you’re a fellow dev, it may shed some light on some things for you.
I’m planning a 1.2 patch to add a helpful feature to some players of the game, and am considering restoring the Lake Aylea minidungeon at some point.
I remember seeing you post this a while back and I kept saying to myself I have to play this because I have been watching your dev thread progress over time on this project and then you finally finished it and released it. It’s a great feeling when you finish a game. A lot of people, especially on the unity forums, they start a dev thread for a game and then they disappear and the project they started is never heard of again. You on the other hand finished your project (43 weeks is some impressive dedication man) and now its out there. So once again congratulations on the release!
Anyway, I finally got around to playing it. I played it on wooglie. While playing I took these screenshots. I hope you don’t mind if I do a little review of your game.
Review: The Hero’s Journey
I didn’t beat it but I ended up playing it for a good amount of time. I spent most time just exploring. I wanted to explore the game world you have created.
What I liked: Zelda feel:
First, I am a huge zelda fan boy. It is one of my favorite game series. And I know you are going for a Zelda 2 type look and feel. After playing this game I feel like you nailed that very accurately. It felt like Zelda 2. The art style and gameplay mechanics. It literally made me say “I feel like im playing Zelda 2 on the nes” haha. So good job on that. You created what you were aiming for.
Music: The music was one of the most impressive things for me. I was actually surprised at how good it was. Again, the music even sounded like it would be zelda music. You even have separate themes for each area, so for example if you enter a house/building this nice home music played, similar to the house music in zelda games. My favorite music I heard in the game was the music playing when you are out in the main field of the game.
Graphics: I thought this looked pretty polished actually. I really enjoyed your style. Your pixel work combined with 3d environments is unique and very nice to look at.
Impressive map to explore:
The map was actually a pretty decent size with a lot of different things to explore. Even when you go into some castles they felt like they had a lot to explore as well.
like this castle I found:
there was so many doors to check in this area of the game.
Secrets on the map?
Eventually, I realized that I could only go to places that where either caves or castle looking objects. But then, while walking along the mighty fields I came across this tree and “Enter” popped above it.
This got me real curious because it was kind of surprising that I could enter a tree that looked like all the other trees on the map. It felt interesting and had me wondering, I wonder if there are any other trees I can enter or other secret areas on this map I have not yet found? This element of curiosity in games is a key ingredient I believe personally. If you do something to get the player curious or keep them curious they start wondering what else is in the game and it keeps them interested in playing. So using the power of curiosity to drive part of the player’s experience in a game is powerful.
Familiar Enemies:
I noticed a lot of familiar enemies that are zelda like. I mean this in a good way. Again, you where trying to go for a zelda 2 type feel and I think you did a excellent job getting that zelda 2 feeling, especially with the enemies. Such as this spider
What is impressive about the enemies in your game is that you got them to behave very similar like the enemies in zelda 2. You even created a pretty good variety of different enemies.
eventually I came across this man, who stabbed and killed me three times
After putting my shield to good use and not just running at him I finally killed him. Is this black knight a reference to Shadow link?
Lots of people that each have something to say:
Although I prefer not to much dialog, some games, esp zelda-like games use a lot and thats ok because there is so much different things to talk about. It was actually cool to come across multiple characters in your game and see that they each had something different to say. That must of taken you a long time to do.
I came across this guy and he said something about not letting an evil guy take his wife, so he locked up his wife in a hidden place or something like that? haha, I can’t remember exactly what he said but it was something about his wife. Then I jumped up and saw this lady
The angry pixel husband turned and faced my direction. I don’t know if he was mad at me. But is this his wife? Did I find her hiding spot?
talking to seamstress here: I believe she was hinting for me to go on a side quest
Then she said something about royal family, and then I suddenly remembered my last experience when I had to do something royal family related:
no thank you seamstress! find someone else to go on your quest.
Difficulty:
I found the game to be pretty challenging. Each person is different, some people love challenging games. I did die, a lot when I was playing. This is good and bad in my opinion. Bad because it was kind of too hard to get past a part but good because it had that challenging feel of a classic nes game.
I could not get past this part at all:
Lots of lives lost here. It does feel satisfying when you defeat and enemy though. Just a personal opinion but I think the difficulty should be toned down a bit.
What I did not like:
The trees here
haha I know I mentioned that in a different post of yours before.
Overall Rating:
I give “The Hero’s Journey” /
(4 cool guy smiley faces out of 5)
The game is actually really cool and fun and I enjoyed it. I can tell you put a lot of time into this. Might go back and play it again to try and get past that one part in a cave.
Future thought:
I think this would make a cool mobile game. It would be cool if you ported it to android or ios.
Ok that’s about it Mr Asvarduil. Great job. Keep making more games and I look forward to seeing what you have next!
That was the first time I ever reviewed someones game on the unity forum.
(hmmm, I might do it some more to other peoples games on here every once in a while…)
That’s quite a review. It’s very detailed, and helpful. You totally should do more Showcase Section Reviews.
I see you found the hardest spot in my game - a map I affectionately call ‘Cave 2’, comprised of the Slime pit, followed by Shototo column, followed by Shototo shaft, followed by another Slime pit with a Spyder and more Shototos. You see, the entire point of that part of the game is to demonstrate that you don’t need plot advancement to gate off a challenge; if you’re familiar with the concept of a Beef Gate, this is more like a Beef Combo Lock. It forces you to use your platforming and swordfighting skills to the maximum level possible.
I may have done too good of a job on it. I’m not sure if, even if you get every other Heart Rune in the game that it still wouldn’t find a way to wreck your day. You’d survive certainly, but it’d all leave a mark. I like to think that this area would make Lord Artasandro, the final boss of the game, weep, even though he has a whopping 64 HP (Garlan and Barbariccia each have 16 HP; you start the game with 8 HP.)
The Steelguard is not a Shadow Link reference - he’s actually the most common enemy in the game (this game is about swordfighting, y’know ) and is patterned off of Zelda 2’s Darknuts. His name is a Final Fantasy XIII reference (Snow Villiers is so big of a ham, that it left impressions), and his sprite is a palette swap of the player’s with a more intimidating helmet. The first boss, Garlan, is a palette swap of this guy, who is tuned up and has a lot nastier of a bite.
But, yeah, the game’s challenge level was something that I didn’t get a lot of feedback on, so I don’t know how well I did. This gives me a much clearer picture. Thanks!
EDIT: And, I apologize to everyone who’s ever played this game for two things: the main story line, and the trees. I will do better next time. Hell, it’s hard to do worse.
Hey guys, long time no see! While I didn’t expect to dig this topic out of the depths of hammer space, well, I have one more thing to add (for now, I want to add more)
The Hero’s Journey is now available on itch.io! Just click the link and you can play it over there as well. If you like what I did, feel free to leave a donation, as it helps me make more, and better, games.
) and is patterned off of Zelda 2’s Darknuts. His name is a Final Fantasy XIII reference (Snow Villiers is so big of a ham, that it left impressions), and his sprite is a palette swap of the player’s with a more intimidating helmet. The first boss, Garlan, is a palette swap of this guy, who is tuned up and has a lot nastier of a bite.