2430: I Made This

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It’s been a surprisingly productive day, both in terms of “things I wanted to do” and “things I had to do”. I got the bit of work I had to do done, and even had time to write a hefty piece on One Way Heroics’ mechanics over on MoeGamer and make a short video about Atari classic River Raid.

Here’s said video, if you’re curious.

I wanted to take a moment to talk about making this video, as its production involved the discovery of a really fine piece of free software: Hitfilm 4 Express.

Hitfilm 4 Express is a fully-featured non-linear video editor in the Final Cut mould, with a particular emphasis on compositing. It allows you to import media in a variety of formats — both still images and video sequences — and edit them together using an extremely professional-looking (and rather daunting!) collection of tools. Once your masterwork is complete, you can then export it to all the usual formats as well as upload it completely seamlessly to YouTube with minimal fuss.

I’m particularly enamoured with the YouTube connectivity as my past experience with making movies using my PC has been with Windows Movie Maker, which by default exports in a horrible format that YouTube then has to spend several hours converting and optimising after you upload it. This video, meanwhile, was ready to watch mere minutes after uploading, suggesting that Hitfilm 4 Express was smart enough to encode it in the appropriate format for YouTube automatically without me having to do anything else. It even kept it in 1080p/60fps format, which is arguably a bit wasteful for a video about an Atari 2600 and 8-Bit game, but eh; YouTube viewers are picky bastards and whinge if you don’t upload in the highest quality possible even if it is of practically no benefit to the source material whatsoever.

Anyway. I’ve barely scratched the surface of what Hitfilm 4 Express offers so far, but I’m in love. It’s a full, professional-grade package for free that can be further expanded by purchasing effects modules that plug into it — which is where they make their money. It’s free software that isn’t riddled with toolbars for your browser, pop-up adverts and nag screens — it’s simply an excellent package that did exactly what I wanted it to with minimal fuss, albeit a little bit of reading the manual.

On that note, probably time for bed. (If you’re wondering about the posting time, Andie is working nights at the moment which means both our sleep patterns are pretty screwed. I’m taking advantage of the quiet time to Get Things Done.)

2405: Revisiting One Way Heroics

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Upon realising that the Spike Chunsoft enhanced remake of One Way Heroics was, in fact, coming out in just three weeks’ time, I decided to revisit the original game, which has long been one of my favourite takes on the roguelike genre thanks to it being quite unlike pretty much any other game I’ve ever played.

For the unfamiliar, One Way Heroics places you in a randomly generated world map that continuously scrolls, like those old Super Mario World levels that everyone hated. This being a turn-based roguelike, however, One Way Heroics only scrolls when you take an action, be this moving, attacking or fiddling around with something in your inventory.

The aim of the game is ostensibly to defeat the Demon Lord and save the remaining part of the world from being consumed by the mysterious darkness that is just out of shot on the left side of the screen. More often than not, you will fail in your task, either by yourself being caught in said mysterious darkness by miscalculating how many turns it would take you to cross the mountain range you found yourself stuck in the middle of, by dying embarrassingly to a nearby feral dog who gave you a nasty nip right in your most sensitive areas, or by forgetting you had a bag full of highly flammable (and explosive) items and then going toe-to-toe with a fire-breathing imp.

It’s not an insurmountable challenge, though. In fact, defeating the Demon Lord is more a matter of persistence than anything else; she (yes, spoiler, she’s a she) appears at regular intervals throughout your journey, sticks around for a few in-game hours during which you can either attempt to do some damage or run away from her, then she disappears again for a bit. Damage you deal persists from encounter to encounter, though she does have the chance to heal a few HP and erect a few magical barriers in between your various clashes. As such, so long as you can keep yourself alive, you can eventually wear her down bit by bit rather than having to defeat her all in one go.

Except, if you look a bit deeper into the game, defeating the Demon Lord isn’t the only way to finish the game. In fact, it’s arguably the easiest way to clear the game, since the other endings mostly require all manner of convoluted requirements and lucky rolls on the ol’ random number generator. That said, the game’s “Dimensional Vault” system does at least allow you to carry useful items over from playthrough to playthrough, so you can effectively prepare for the more complex conclusions a bit at a time, much like preparing to fight the Demon Lord, only over the course of several playthroughs instead of just one.

The other ways to beat the game vary from defeating the Darkness itself (which requires a Holy weapon, a very rare find indeed) to reaching the End of the World at the 2000km mark. The subsequently released One Way Heroics Plus expansion also added a number of other ways to clear the game, including finding your way into a whole other dimension to discover who or what is really behind this whole creeping darkness thing, and then either surviving until the end of that dimension or defeating said ne’er do well once and for all.

On top of all that, there are character-specific endings, too. During each playthrough, you have a chance of encountering a number of different non-player characters who, assuming you meet the prerequisite requirements to recruit them (usually some combination of cash and charisma levels) can join your party. As they fight alongside you and you meet various conditions (different for each character), they gain affection for you, and after having had three separate conversations with them, revealing their backstory and the truth about themselves — including, in many cases, why there appears to be a version of them in each and every dimension out there, more than aware of what you’re up to — clearing the game gives you their unique ending on top of whichever particular finale you went for.

These little stories that are attached to the party members are one of the most interesting things about One Way Heroics, because they elevate it above being a simple mechanics-based roguelike and give it a touch of narrative. Not enough to be obtrusive — the emphasis is still very much on preparing your character to clear the game in whichever way you deem most appropriate — but enough to give you a real feel for who these people are and what their place in the entire mystery of One Way Heroics is.

One particularly interesting thing about them is that you can go a very long time without encountering any of them at all, and thus assume that One Way Heroics is entirely mechanics-based. Another is that their storylines are all pretty dark in tone right up until the end, which is all the more effective due to the fairly breezy tone the rest of the game has going on. I defy anyone not to shed a tear at Queen Frieda’s ending in particular, though I shan’t spoil it here.

Replaying One Way Heroics over the last few days has reminded me quite how much I like this quirky little game, and I’m extremely excited to see how the new version pans out in comparison. From the looks of things, it takes the basic mechanics of the original and gives it a fresh coat of paint along with a new setting and storyline, plus a number of guest characters from other games including Danganronpa and Shiren the Wanderer.

All being well, I’m probably going to devote next month on MoeGamer to this game, its expansion and its new version, which will be out partway through the month. It’s an underappreciated gem, for sure, and one which everyone the slightest bit interested in the more unusual side of RPGs owes it to themselves to check out.

1910: Please Proceed to the Right – One Way Heroics

I’ve been revisiting a game I reviewed a while back: One Way Heroics from Japanese indie developer Smoking WOLF and localisation specialists Playism.

I made a video, even.

For those disinclined to watch a complete 40-minute playthrough of the game (the first time I ever beat it, fact fans — lucky I was recording, eh?) I shall also use the power of written words to explain what’s going on and why you should give this game a shot.

One Way Heroics is a sort-of roguelike crossed with the auto-scrolling levels from old Super Mario Bros. games. If that sounds strange, you’d be right, but that’s what makes the game interesting.

The concept is simple: the Darkness is swallowing the land a bit at a time, and it’s up to you to track down the Demon Lord supposedly responsible for this whole mess and punch him in the face until he stops being such a rotter. The encroaching darkness is represented by the scrolling screen — every move or action you perform causes it to advance slightly, and if you fall off the left side of the screen, you die. Naturally, this opens up the possibility of getting “trapped” in places, so you have to plan your movements pretty carefully to make sure you don’t get stuck.

There’s a selection of different character classes to play, each with their own distinctive pixel-art appearance and base stats. They can be further customised by choosing “Perks” at the outset of the game, which give you skills such as lockpicking, swimming and mountain climbing, or simple bonuses to your base statistics. Each class has its own starting equipment and skills, too, and you’ll have the opportunity to unlock additional skills and abilities as you progress.

This is a game in which you shouldn’t get too attached to anything — the town you just visited, your character, your equipment — and should instead keep pushing onwards. As you progress, the path your journey takes will see you finding new items or upgrading your existing ones with scrolls you discover. Eventually, the basic weapon you start the game with can become something like what I had by the end of the video above: a high-quality sword that is difficult to break, sets things on fire and confuses enemies.

Although your characters and the worlds they explore are inherently “disposable”, there is a degree of persistence in the game: completing a run, whether or not it was successful, rewards you with “Hero Points” that can be spent on purchasing new perks and character classes or expanding your Dimensional Vault, allowing you to carry items across into a subsequent playthrough.

There’s also some interesting online features. Every day, a specific random world “seed” is set aside as one for online play, and while you don’t directly adventure alongside other player characters — it’s not “true” multiplayer — you get updates on how other people are doing and may occasionally run into the ghosts of those who were less lucky. If you successfully complete the game, you’ll be told how many people got there ahead of you and you’ll have the opportunity to compare your performance with them. It’s a simple, subtle and unobtrusive use of online features, and it works very well in the context of the game.

I’ve really enjoyed revisiting this game recently, and was delighted to hear the news that it’s being kind-of remade for Vita by Spike Chunsoft as part of their Mystery Dungeon series. As you’ll know if you’ve played it, this game would be perfect for handheld play, so I’ll absolutely be there when it releases!

For now, I’ve got a Demon Lord to punch in the face.