Valor Seed announced
Wes Falls of Secret Arts Games writes in to announce the development of Valor Seed, a retro jRPG designed to mimic the sound and appearance of an NES game. Wes reports that he’s managed to get the likes of Alexander O. Smith and Sean Beeson working on the game with him, which is fairly impressive for an RPG Maker project like this. His summary of the game follows:
Valor Seed is an NES retro-clone made to feel, look, and sound like an RPG made for that system. It uses the NES’s color palette for graphics, and sound chip for music and effects. Unlike actual NES-era RPG’s, Valor Seed will sport modern game play elements such as dialog, item creation, multiple endings, and a very flexible battle system.
The setting of Valor Seed places Pharamonde in a Dark Age following its repulsion of a foreign Crusade. The Crusade ended with the deaths of all of its heroic personalities. There was no victory for anyone involved, there was simply a return to the state of being before it all began with one significant difference: there was nobody to believe in, anymore. No King, no Roland the Hero. This is how The Calm snuck in. The Crusade was the product of men reaching too far for what they did not need. Therefore, if no men reach, no more Crusades will come. Blacksmiths quenched their forges, coopers left their barrels half-assembled, and everywhere the people cast away their gold and silver coins for their then pointlessness. Each town became an island in the wilderness, surviving all on their own. In the capital, the Heart of Pharamonde, the addle-minded Prince ignored the duties of the Royal Throne, Siege Pharamonde. With no strong Will guiding the Heart of Pharamonde, the land and its people stagnated.
Wes reports that they’ve just jumped the last hurdle in creating the battle system, and are now focused on designing windows (of the GUI variety, I gather) and the item crafting system. A free version of the game, made in RPG Maker XP, is due for release sometime late this year; a commercial version created with XNA is planned for the future release this fall.
There is no official trailer for Valor Seed yet, but you can have a look at some in-progress screenshots of the game below:
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Done in XNA? I’d love to see a port of something like this come to WP7. Serious open market right there.
@Fleon – I am much more skilled with game design, than with programming one. Still, after reading your comment, I hit Google up for its thoughts on this WP7 matter. I am near certain such a port would be possible, though I will still consult my on again/off again programmer, John Minor. Thank you for this suggestion, I plan on pursuing it, when at the right time.