Hello, everybody! I’m happy to finally introduce the project I’ve been working on the past few months, The Forgotten Schism!
This is a completely original project made in the Lex Tailonis engine. The main focus of this project is the all new magic system, shamanism. Certain units can use powerful skills that use up sanity, a new stat in this project. When a unit’s sanity reaches 0, they will go berserk and attack friend and foe indiscriminately. Managing your army’s sanity while taking advantage of their impactful skills is key to surviving in this project. Download
Features
All new shamanism system
Sanity stat
Many new classes, items, and skills
An accessory system with equippable shields, armor, rings, and more
A Tellius-style base menu
A soundtrack made up with music from across the video game industry, plus a few remixes made by myself
A high difficulty with gameplay inspired by Shadow Dragon, Engage, and Thracia 776
Story Summary
In the impoverished highlands of Sarenas, a new story begins. When Vernados, a young bandit, is cornered by an army of invading foreigners, he awakens an ancient power that has been slumbering for centuries. Unbeknownst to him, this awakening is the first play made by a shadowy force in a continent-spanning war that will reshape the very fabric of society. None of that matters to Vernados and his crew, though. All they care about is where their next meal will come from, no matter the consequences.
Credits can be found inside the the_forgotten_schism.ltproj folder. They will also be implemented into the game itself at a later date. Please let me know if anything is wrong or missing!!
Content Warnings
Drug use
Drug Addiction
Misc
Any questions/bugs can be left in this thread, since I’m terrible at answering messages lol
Yes, the magic system was completely ripped off from The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang
Thanks to anybody that takes the time to play this! Any feedback/critique is greatly appreciated
It’s been a while but it’s time for a progress report! I’ve been taking my sweet time with this but I’m almost ready to release chapters 1-4. I’ll probably drop them some time next week, once I’m finished. In the meantime, here are some screenshots of the upcoming chapters.
New balance patch is out for the prelude, you can get it from the download link in the top post. The chapter should be less infuriating now. All players units were buffed, especially Faisal. His Tornado ability now only targets one enemy, so you can actually use it to break the ring formations. Delphine also now comes with a Thunder Sword, so Piercing Lightning should be a lot more useful.
I hit a little slump so I’m just releasing chapters 1 and 2 now. They’re both complete and fully playable. Chapters 3 and 4 are still coming soon™. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated!
Just tried the Prologue and got my head handed to me XD The thing that sunk me was giving Edouard a Poppy Seed, which was kinda my own fault for not paying attention to his skills. But man, these enemies hit hard. The weapon triangle doesn’t do much to blunt them either, which was jarring. I ended up using a lot of Combat Arts and Longbow shots, which meant I was probably screwed if I reached the map’s end anyway =P
Glitches/WIP spots I noticed:
Missing descriptions in the options
Maria’s mouth not moving in the cutscene
“Now channeling” popups happening twice
Items showing up in Spells menu
Monochrome, film-like palette on Yael
Tomahawk axemen doubling even when I do
Still a cool game though! The music slapped, the animations were pretty and the Combat Arts were fun to use. I plan to give it another, more thorough shot soon. Good work!
Thanks so much for the feedback!! I’ll leave my responses inside the spoiler thingy so they don’t clog up the thread
Summary
Do you think the difficulty was too high, or was it a good challenge?
I’m actually working on making a different map animation for each of the 3 levels of shamans, so your problem with Edouard won’t happen again hopefully
I’ll definitely buff the weapon triangle since I intend for it to be impactful
The fighters doubling is actually intentional. The berserker standing near them is holding the whale ring, which makes nearby allies always double and always get doubled
As for all the technical stuff you mentioned, the shaman system is held together with gum and scotch tape right now lol. Hopefully I’ll figure out how to iron all that stuff out in the future
progress report time i can say (confidently this time) that chapters 3 and 4 are coming next week. After that, I’ll just release chapters as I’m finishing them since I can’t get motivated using this current release schedule
Ok, attempt number two and yeah, I’d say the challenge is a little too high here. I’m having to weaken half the enemies with Revelation just so I don’t get murdered by their counterattacks. I actually got Delphine high on Opium, lol. Meanwhile there’s reinforcements coming from every direction, to the point I can’t keep track. I ended up getting killed by the three from the south after forgetting about them while trying to prep for the Gold Knights from the east.
I did notice the weapon triangle being impactful, though. Faisal took 4 less damage and had a much higher hitrate with the Hand Axe at one point. It’s just that even when you’re on the good side of it, you can still face 60% hitrates for 20 damage sometimes.
Also found a couple more glitches/things I couldn’t explain:
Maria seems to be immortal. After she lost all her health, her death quote didn’t play - she just lived on with 1 HP. Almost saved me from the mess I got into cuz units kept wasting their turns…but not quite.
This time Delphine got poisoned. Maybe because Edouard was the first one to use Opium on her? Maybe you should give Maria an antidote herb just in case.
I think part of the difficulty here is how far you’re thrown into the deep end with the Shaman system. You’ve got to know which units have which skills, know how much you have of a stat that’s only shown on the stat screen, know not to use Poppy Seeds while already channeling, know not to use too much Opium (though that one’s kinda common sense XD), etc etc. Dealing with all that while dealing with reinforcements while dealing with enemies that can two-shot you was a little too much for me. Of course I’ve never been that good at these games, so this may sound like heaven to a better player lol.
Chapter 3 is out now! I’ve been in a slump with the end of summer and school starting back up, so I’m just dropping what I have finished. As well, the prelude has been dumped for now and will show up later in the game as an interlude, when players have had enough time to learn how the shaman system works. Chapter 4 is in the works, with only playtesting and some writing left to do. After that, I’m working on a fairly major story overhaul, so no promises on when anything after that will come out.
UPDATE TIME
No “new” chapters this time since I’m lazy but there are a bunch of big changes/overhauls that basically make this a different game. The download link in the top post should have the new version available.
Changes
*Poppy seeds are gone, units can now use their shaman skills at any time. Sanity was already enough of a limiting factor on when you can use your skills so getting rid of the seeds makes everything run a lot smoother.
*The prelude is back with an extended bottom section of the map and some reshuffled enemies and reinforcements. The map should flow better and be hopefully not as hard as it was before.
*New unit in the prelude, Ianthe, with a custom portrait by me!
*New/updated portraits for Maria (young and old), Sporocles, and Raquel.
*Skillset overhauls for Faisal, Adannaya, Delphine, Vernados, and Don.
*New skills for Segundo and Salvatore.
*A couple of changed accessory effects.
*A couple of new weapons.
*New music.
*New enemy faction palette.
*A few talk convos I forgot to write in the last version.
*Marlin’s songs now work as I originally intended them to.
*General gameplay tuning for chapters 1-3.
I’m still kinda stuck on chapter 4, but all it needs is playtesting and it will be ready to go. Hopefully after that the updates will come quicker. As always any feedback is greatly appreciated!
EDIT: I just realized that the brawler combat animation causes the game to crash for some reason, so until I figure it out it’s prob best to play with animations off when fighting brawlers.
i can say (confidently this time) that chapters 3 and 4 are coming next week. After that, I’ll just release chapters as I’m finishing them since I can’t get motivated using this current release schedule
)
link in the top post should be updated. also brawler animations are gone while the crash is still being figured out