This thing on?

All right. Looking at the board I see a lot of mario and zelda titles, so I hope I'm not breaking any unspoken rule by making something not along those lines.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Pariah's Creed truly started coming about when I was spending three months looking after my grandmother up in Axton, Virginia, i.e. Middle of nowhere. To keep my self something resembling sane, I started work on this.

Then, I had to continue work on it for a game design class... and it snowballed into the work in progress it is today.


Pariah's Creed is about a young adult boy named Lohste, who has the misfortune of being Pariah to the town of Pahne. A Pariah, chosen in early childhood, is condemned to be the spiritual and physical scapegoat for all the townspeople's faults and sins, beaten in their place for their shortcomings and damned to suffer for all eternity once they die after a lifetime of anguish and suffering. As you might have guessed by now, Lohste is neither a very happy or very polite person to this town.

After 13 years of abuse, Lohste is called in by Elder Oremas, spiritual leader of the Vindisism religion held dear by the people of Pahne, and defacto leader of the town. The elder desires a Grimoire, supposedly containing, in layman's terms, the workings of all magic, which is contained in the completely misnamed Grimoire Tower. When Lohste has the audacity to ask why the hell he would help the elder retrieve the book after a lifetime of being trapped in a living nightmare, the Elder offers him his freedom- physical and spiritual- if he should succeed.

So of course if Lohste survives he's going to be able to walk around Pahne a free man, right? Surely someone who sent him on a suicidal mission would have the spine to keep their word, right?

Of course not. When the hell has that ever happened?

Fortunately for Lohste, however, he's greeted at the Grimoire Tower by the very female incarnations of the four elements themselves... and they're none too happy with Elder Oremas.

Good heavens, could this be the start of some sort of alliance?

Screenshots & Information


Systems included in Pariah's Creed so far:
*"Momentum" based Tech system. Cast magic enough with a staff equipped, and you can follow up with a cheap ball of energy. Defend while holding a prayer rosary and you can cast a cheap healing spell. The more methods you use before using techs, the more powerful techniques will be available.
*Player-motion based monster movement. In dungeons, monsters move when you move too close.... most of the time. Some will move only when you do, some will pursue, and some will follow completely arbitrary patterns.

New Demo available. This one should work. Honest.

IMPORTANT: The games below are the base version of pariah's creed- the buggy, godawful one. They are necessary to download for use with the update patch shown below. If the patch doesn't work with your current Pariah's Creed, keep your save file, erase your old Pariah's Creed, and download the new one and the patch.

Without RTP!: https://rapidshare.com/files/2825975645/PariahsCreedGame.7z

With RTP!: https://rapidshare.com/files/24821072/PariahsCreedGameRTP.7z

The Glorious Patch!: https://rapidshare.com/files/1076446/pariah_s_creed_updater.exe

Pre-patched, no-rtp file: https://rapidshare.com/files/2813136409/Pariah_s_CreedUpdated.7z

Post critiques, bugs, "For God's sake CrazyRob, how could you do this that badly" below!

Opinions? Comments?

This game looks pretty good! I personaly don't see anything wrong with posting non-fan games on this forum, I've actually been concidering it for a while.

The only game that doesn't use people from the gaming franchises. Nice.
I can tell it'll be great because most of the bad RPGs you'll find are mostly the ones that use Mario, Sonic, Kirby, Mega Man, and the like.

Nice, it's refreshing to see someone not make a fan game. Good luck, and hope to hear more!

Btw, how far is it along?

Well, I started in summer of 2009 and am still working on getting a workable demo that won't leave people hating the game.

So far...

*Demo version of skill learning menu is done for two of three of the playable characters.

*Working on monster groups- with all the battle event shiznit going on, it's a big deal. Kalie the thief can inflict "Flurry" status on herself to attack multiple times for several turns. Lohste can charge up his spells to do more damage. Those two take up some space. The tech system demands each character have a battle page for each relevant command (attack, defend, skillset).

*Alchemy system not even begun. Going to make it so that you can take some of the dropped items you get (enemies rarely drop money, and so you have to sell their dropped loot for cash) and turn them into potions that don't cost as much as store-bought.

*Is relying heavily on Terranigma music ever a bad thing?

Sounds like you have some cool mechanics going on!

Yea, enhancing the battle system through battle pages is annoying because you practically have to be done with the battle system before you can start making monster groups. Seven Sages had about 14 pages if I remember correctly, but thanks to scripting in Starlite Worlds it only has 2, both of which call common events that do all the processing.

I'm really interested in how your battle system turns out.

So much interest on my first post. I'm flattered.

The battle system is coming along nicely, yes. One minor thing that is vexing me is this:

Lohste, the hero, has a permanent Tech called "elemental charge", which, depending on how many ranks you bought (up to 4, or Element Charge X) increases spell damage by 150%, 175%, 200%, to a whopping 250% damage. It sounds simple in theory- turn one, afflict self with status. A battle page calls a common event to handle the status checking, which in turn replaces your normal elemental damage spells with boosted counterparts, or reverses the process when you're no longer in the charge condition. Of course, when you use Lohste's "Elements" skill, it checks to see if a switch is turned on, and then flips it off along with canceling the Charge status.

Problem- something turnwise needs to happen before Lohste goes again, otherwise, if he uses Elements, he'll only get his normal spells, but the status will cancel and be wasted. So far I've handwaved it with "May take some time..." in the skill description, but if Lohste is the only active member and everyone else is stopped/dead, problems may arise. I may have no other choice but to accept this...

Let me see if I understand what you're saying.

The special processing that goes into Lohste's elemental skill won't activate until some other hero uses their turn? Sounds like an odd problem if I'm reading this right.

Yes, because how it works is thus-

1. Lohste uses self targeting technique to inflict charge on himself.
2. The "Every 1x turn page" checks to see if he's in charge condition by calling a common event. I don't know any way to do this in just the battle events.
3. when the 1x turn page trips, then Lohste gets his special boosted spells. However, if he uses his Element command before then, the "Use element command" page strips him of Charge regardless.

Hmm, it seems like 2k3's odd way of counting turns is to blame. Well, I guess that comes with having an ATB.

The Use Element command strips him of the charge state, correct? Does it strip him of his spells to?

Is the problem that he's not getting his boosted skills?