Skull Princess: Before the Red Moon
A downloadable game for Windows
Skull Princess is a 2.5D Dungeon Crawler inspired by various things I grown to enjoy, from Dragon Quest to the SMT series and even the Castlevania Soma games. This game can take anywhere from 10 to 20 hours of gameplay moderately removing the lack of resources most of the genre suffers from early on, but keeping the overall expected difficulty. All accompanied by cool monsters and naughty girls!
An unavoidable threat is on the horizon…
Although greatly weakened, sometimes demons are able to escape hell. This however became a problem when a group of monsters led by someone known as the "Skull Princess" escaped from hell close to the night when the red moon rises, which is believed to restore the true powers of any dark creature. Now a group of four heroines must defeat the Skull Princess: Before the Red Moon.
The fated heroines are here!
A strange cult saw a future where 4 fated heroines freed the world from the powerful monster army led by the Skull Princess and her elemental subordinates. Say their names and lead those girls to victory!
[Warrior] The standard effective fighter with no natural skills and 0 MP. Cannot turn against allies by the effect of numerous status ailments like Possessed, Rage, Infatuation or Arousal.
[Social] Talk, Pamper
[Spellcaster] Skilled and courageous fire spell user. Resists Death, but is weak against Water Attribute.[Spells] Fire Lance, Wildfire, Void Call, Unbinding Flame
[Social] Talk, Encourage
[Angel] Versatile and powerful ally, although an egotistical jerk. Cannot use some spells. unless pampered first. Weak against Dark attribute. [Spells] Angel Blessing, Freezing Light, Whirlwind, Magic Superiority [Social] Talk, Insult
[Hunter] Alluring yet gentle fighter. Just like Warrior, she has no natural skills, but they actually depend heavily on both what weapons are equipped and which type of ammo she has.
[Social] Talk, Charm
This game features...
- Provocative beautiful warrior designs
- 4 main classes with a good range of attribute coverage and 2 secret classes for repeated playthroughs
- First person exploration for dungeons
- 5 dungeons with different gimmicks
- A post-game boss
- A "gem" mechanic that allows your characters to learn various enemy skills
- A frontal battle system that breaks free from the very restrictive RPG Maker standard features
- Monsters based on different myths and cultures around the world
The gem mechanic
Unlike most RPGs, characters in Skull Princess do not learn new spells or skills by leveling up, but instead are granted new abilities by other means such as equipping special weapons or gems. Gems are usually obtained by defeating enemies, containing traits from said enemy, it could be a spell they use in combat or even an immunity to a specific ailment!
Properly understanding your weaknesses and necessities while exploring a dungeon or taking on a strong enemy is key to customize and optimize your team for any given moment.
Skill charms
While using enemy skills involves swapping around certain items, there is another way of learning new skills forever. Skill charms are available after Princess Nymph is defeated, they can be consumed to upgrade your starting spells and even learn new ones by destroying special weapons that grants you new skills by equipping it, that way you can keep their abilities without using an equipment with power crept stats.
Beware of underdogs!
Although level ups can make a difference, they are neither your only nor your best way of getting stronger. The Skull Princess’ army is loyal and determined to win at any costs! When cornered by a party of high-level heroines, monsters will activate an Underdog status, buffing all their stats by 50% and even unlocking new skills for the cost of losing their first turn.
Weaker monsters tend to become underdogs before any other enemy in the dungeon, this means no one should be ever ruled out as a threat. Use knowledge, items, spells and gems to make sure no monster will lead you to a bitter end.
[Warning] This game needs the RPG Maker VX Ace RTP to work. You can either use the one that comes with the game or download it yourself from the RPG Maker Web page.
Download
Click download now to get access to the following files:
Development log
- Flavor, flavor, and even more flavor!82 days ago
- First real update after the game's completion!Jul 09, 2024
- Quick fixesFeb 27, 2024
- We did it!Feb 25, 2024
- Finally, the third dungeon!Aug 12, 2023
- Bestiary, battle animations and more!Jun 21, 2023
- The second dungeon is here!Apr 18, 2023
Comments
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Version 1.2 is up! Even more flavor than the 1.1 added, alongside new events, bugfixes and balancing changes.
The new version 1.1 is up! It is focused on making the experience a bit more memorable adding more details to some of the dungeons and fixing some previously known bugs.
What version of RPG maker did you use?
VX Ace!
Some small but important fixes done! If you already started playing the 1.0, you can continue your progress by copying your "Save01 (02, 03...).rvdata2" files to the new 1.0.1 folder.
Gave this game a spin and I really liked what you have. A couple things to fix and It’ll be AMAZING!
Hey, thank you for playing my game today I really appreciate it! I saw the stream, but I couldn't really interact because it started when I was in the middle of work and when I tried to thank you on twitter after the fact I got my account blocked for "suspicious behavior" (already got it unblocked, btw) and the message completely wiped.
Not only this kind of thing helps the game getting to more people, but is also a great piece of feedback for me!
Glad I could help!
Wait the game is done?
Yeah, I already have some ideas for future fixes with the new feedback I'm getting, but you can finish the game properly in both endings and do the entire post game content!
1.0 version (the fully completed game) finally added alongside with some edits in the game's page!
Hi, i just finished the first dungeon here's some of my thoughts. English is not my native language, so bear with me.
It took me 2 hours to explore all floors and all rooms in first dungeon. I don't know what exactly did you mean by "fairly short" experience, maybe it's in comparison to smt and dragon quest series. If i get it right it will be 5 dungeons in this game, if every dungeon will take 2 hours it will be 10 hours, and i think it's pretty long actually.
I almost didn't use run function, i don't think it gives any noticeable boost of movement speed. Also after a few minutes of exploration i was always staring at minimap instead of a corridor. I don't think enemies rewarding enough on first floor, and even on floor 2-3 big pack of monsters gives about 30 shinies, that means i still must to grind money for equipment 320 for taurus, or 180 for gladius, including all armors and consumables.
Well, taking to account all that stuff from above, i think it would be a good idea to make dungeons shorter (or first one at least), delete minimap if possible (there is a big map anyway), make enemies drop more currency, or add some chest with equipment in dungeons as reward for exploration, instead of buffs.
Combat 1.
Well, underdog status is imbalanced, it doubles all stats, including defence. Couple of times i died in this scenario, and it was really annoying:
encounter 5 bats > i use aoe spell to quickly kill of them > i miss/ or bat was faster and used underdog before my turn > i killed all bats without underdog and got killed by buffed one.
I can see the problem in here: since mana potions is very rare in this game, i can't spent more mana on this encounter, since it will slow down my progression/exploration later. In this situation i can also fight this bat, escape, or die.
in first case i probably lose my party member and that means i must return to town, since my party is weakened and this party memeber doesnt get exp
escape means i already spent my mana, and didn't get any reward.
death, no comments.
in all of those scenarios my progression is slowed down, since i must to return to town for some reason. in any case my progression/exloration would be slowed down.
This problem can be solved by plenty of ways: changing underdog status, changing gold this battle to high risk/ high reward scenario by adding more gold for this encounter in exchange of spending more mana/time, adding resurrection items, adding more mana restoring items.
Some other things that i thought worth to mention:
1.I think you should add somewhere in description this game requires rpg maker vx rtp.
2.Imo, controls explanation could be simplified, or even added in game desription on itch.io. I don't think it's neccessary to inform the player about arrows movement over over again, but map key is really important.
3.Diary doesn't work at the beginning, i think it would be nice to add some short explanation about the ancient catacombs and what exactly i must to find in there.
5.I really hate those one way doors, especially that one in the middle of second floor. I was in middle of exploration, and i spent my crystal link before. Going back through 2/3 parts of map was really annoying, not gonna lie i almost dropped the game after it. Personally i don't think this is a good idea to prevent player from exploration, there is nothing fun to return back in already explored area, especially when you find just 2 empty rooms.
6.Shop in pair with merchant girl pose looks more like toilet room, rather than shop lol.
Well, i feel sleepy already. In general i like your game, i think it's nice and deserves more attention, hopefully my comment will be somehow useful.
Good luck!
Thank you so much for taking the time to play the game and leave such detailed feedback!
The game is definitely longer than I thought it would be. I have no experience with dungeon crawlers, but the genre made sure going through the dungeon was not as fast as I initially thought. In my personal tests I can finish the entire main game in a bit over 9 hours, but without knowing exactly what to do I can see this time going over 12 hours very easily.
The first floor of the Catacombs is mainly so the player can reach level 2 before having to deal with enemy team composition and get used to the exploration/combat in the process, but the comment about money seems very sensible to me. I think at the very least, I should be able to give a 50% buff of money to most enemies without breaking to much of the money management part of the game (you are not supposed to have everything, but rather pick and choose what do you feel it is of more importance in the moment). More item crates also don't seem like a bad idea. It felt not so different from the rate I found items in the earlier SMT games, but I did not get much feedback outside of close friends, so a non-biased opinion in the matter feels very nice.
When you download the game, there was already a warning with a link to an official way of getting the RTP, but some of my friends also did not notice the warning, so it looks like a good idea to add a warning somewhere more visible.
The lack of the Diary functionalities before you defeat Princess Pygmy is a known bug, the latest release version still has it, but it’s one of the things I recently fixed.
One-way doors are either a way to separate bigger sections within a floor or a straight up hazard on later dungeons, but the first dungeon is the first dungeon, I did not have any experience drawing floors yet. Thank you for the opinion, I will go back to the first dungeons and change the more unnecessary/mean one-way doors.
Again, thank you so much for the comments! It’s going to help me a lot!
Hi, I'm glad my comment was helpful. Just a small clarification: i think 50% buff of money is not neccessary, in my opinion changing existing crates and maybe adding a couple of extra ones in empty rooms(or in those staring corpses) or even add an item drop from mobs would be a better solution. Buffs such as +3 stat is good for late game, when characters already have a full slots of equipment, on early stages it would be nice to find equipment instead of buffs. If i get a whole item that means i don't need to farm gold for this item, also items buffs stats more than +3.
And it would be nice to find a gun in dungeon, since i can found ammo in there.
Speaking of RTP, why not just provide it with a game as full package. I think idea of downloading some additional soft for the game is repelling players.
Update: actually, money problem could be solved in easier way just by adding some treasure room somwhere on floor 1 or 2, and maybe even adding a treasure room in every dungeon. it will stimulate player to explore dungeon. and treasure should contain some significant amount of gold about ~1000 or more depends of dungeon. Also first quest for diary could be simple as "go to catacombs to find treasure", it can also be pygmy's treasure and maybe she gets angry when she finds out that her money were stolen. i mean this treasure room could also contain some plot twist.
A new dungeon added to the game alongside more NPCs dedicated to the world's lore.
New update added! Tons of cool stuff to make a better experience overall and finally get rid of place holders.