Isekai: Budget - The Demo

In the distant, far reaches beyond that of the known universe, the world of Budget is in serious trouble. An alien lands on the world, declaring itself the Demon Lord. It wreaks havoc across the world; destroying bridges, flooding the world with monsters and being an all-around nuisance that keeps everyone from enjoying their lives.

The Goddess of Budget, limited by what she can do to intervene (Mainly because she only spent 131,072 god points on the planet, which seems like a miniscule amount to spend), has enshrined the towns with protection, but that will only last for so long. She is searching for a hero powerful enough to slay the Demom Lord, but the search is proving problematic. Meanwhile, the people of Budget must prepare for the eventual arrival.

Enter the player.  Assuming the role of a brave knight who happens to have talent for magic, he must help obtain the sacred hero weapons and bring them to the kingdom for safekeeping.

Introduction

---

The goal of this project / challenege was to create a game no larger than 128kb in size.  Originally, the challenge was set for 64kb, but that proved to be an unrealistic goal, so it was increased to help make such a project possible.  The demo and full game are complete, but the demo has been released first to 'test the waters' for this project.

The demo showcases the potential of this low-filesize RPG engine and the resource editor that was built and used to create all the game's resources: Palettes, tiles, sprites, maps and objects, music and sound effects, dialogue, effects, inventory, monster details and arrangements, the list goes on. The project uses no external resources and was built entirely from scratch.

How did I keep it so small?

I built and use a resource editor to compact the data into a resource file that stores all the critical data. Compressing everything to make each byte count did wonders for the filesize of this project. For instance, the raw graphics for the demo and final version is 12kb, as it uses 3 128x128 sheets for the source, plus a couple more kb for setting up the sprite sheets. Even the music takes advantage of the browser's native web oscillator support, making the largest music tracks for the game smaller than 2kb, each. These small amounts do add up, which can put pressure on the size of the dialogue, source code and other setups, like enemies and inventory.  Ultimately, the final project is less than 100 bytes shy of the 128kb target.

Why is there a silly "Press Action" at the start?

You can thank chrome browsers for that. An update made some time ago prevents anything like web oscillator from auto-playing and it confirms that someone is on the recieving end before starting anything up.

Features

---

• Play and complete a fully playable sidequest related to the story. The world contains several towns and dungeons to explore.
• Explore a world loaded with monsters that want you for dinner and towns that want you to save them.
• Graphics, music and sound effects generated by the web browser.

How to Play

---

Keyboard Set1	Keyboard Set2	Touch Controls	Description
Arrow Keys	WASD	Directional Pad	* Move the player around * Select options on the menu
Spacebar		O	Action Key * Execute command on a menu * Interact with obejcts/NPCs on the world map
Escape		X	Cancel Key * Return to the world map on the menu * Cancel option/action

• Please refer to the "How to Play" manual for details on the playing the game, inventory and enemy details.
• Changes to the keyboard set will not take place until after the player leaves the OPTIONS page.

Latest Updates

---

Version 1.01 / Build 5 (May 20th, 2024)

A couple bug fixes and one minor update.

• Fixed the following:
  • Non-useable items in inventory would leave gaps on the inventory page while selected.
  • Title screen arrow would disappear if the player cancelled starting a new game after having entered in a name.
  • Up and down arrows when purchasing equipment were not appearing.
• When selecting a blank space in Items/Spells, a cancel sound effect plays, instead of a list of options being presented.
• By request, WASD support has been included.

---

Version 1.01 / Build 4 (May 17th, 2024) -- This is a big one...

Fixed

• Additional inventory with improper element checks were corrected. Since some equipment still made use of Mute and Curse effects (which are not in use for the side quest), the resistance to these were removed so they do not show up on the Equip, Items and Spells pages.
• Most of the Slime-class were missing the expected strengths and weaknesses.
• Combat damage scale was fixed. The multiplier/reducer was looking at the wrong values for an enemy.
• The debug that is normally turned on for the developer end was in the wrong place on the page. Re-locating it to the top allowed me to track a number of variable problems that 'could' have caused memory issues with the browser. What was found was corrected and updated, even though it bloated the code a little. Ended up having to track down anytime a variable issue cropped up and patch it as the game was replayed through until no more errors appeared.
• An issue cropped up where entering another room while Repel was wearing off would prevent the player from entering. Priority was given back to entering another room.

Project

• Matched most of the new tricks and code compression that was applied to the main version of the game.
• Changed and updated the OST.

Game Content

• Expanded the ice dungeon slightly.
• Added a dungeon that includes a number of switches the player must flip to reach the Active Icon (re-located from elsewhere).
• Re-included Poison and Paralysis knives. They may both be found in chests.
• Re-adjusted the base defense offerings of many of the icons.
• Added a unique Knight Sword and Knight Shield. They are for sale at the fire caves.
• Shuffled items around a bit to include a few more stat. boosters.
• Increased the base damage of the Wizard staff to 80.
• Updated the Sir Knight sprite.
• Added a few more NPCs and changed a bit of dialogue around (Not enough to change the story of the side quest)
• Replay bonus was changed to 5 gold and 2 EXP per each play-through. The maximum starting bonus for both are 65,535.
• Beholder and Constrct were given EXP and GP drop buffs, given they were also given increases to their HP (and noticing that Beholder's 2nd-level attacks include the 2nd-most powerful attack spell in the game). Beholder was also given a chance to drop MP and both enemies have their drop chance set to 10%.

Menu

• Added a dedicated tracker for scrolling save files. This holds onto the position while the game is played.
• Equip page now includes what elements and statuses the player will resist.
• Items and Spells pages now include an option to examine items for additional information.
• Bumped up the "Cannot Sell" panel by one step. Rather than have the player go through the amount of money offered, it will skip straight to 'Cannot Sell' if the item is a keeper (Hero equipment, key items, etc.).
• Removed the mention of difficulty on all menu pages, given that only Normal mode is available.

Sound

• Music player has improved track looping capability. Since looping requires precise timing that javascript cannot 100% guarantee/handle, depending on circumstances, I setup an alternate method that could cause shifts in the how the track loops when the browser is minimized or while other activity is being performed on the system, but it auto*adjusts much better than it used to and in the long run will no longer clip tracks.
• Added and changed several of the music tracks, giving the demo a fairly different OST.
• Cancel sound plays when the player tries to start a game without a name.
• Added cancel sounds to spells when the player cannot cast them (like using a cure when the player already has full HP)
• Added a sound effect for a when a switch if flipped (to better signify that 'something' happened.
• Lowered the volume of the 'heal' sound effect.
• The project 'technically' includes an unused track which will be included with the OST.

Version 1.00 / Build 3 (July 30th, 2023)

• Changed the save setup from cookies to local storage.  I fired up the game, set multiple saves and re-uploaded the project to see what would happen (5 times).  The saves stayed, so unless there are more reports of bad save files, I'm going to write this off as fixed.
• The Axe weapon had an issue with wrong characters representing it.  That has been fixed.
• Found an issue with status effects not showing up during battle.  That has been fixed.
• "Out of MP" text was displaying the wrong text when trying to cast a spell with insufficient points.
• The ending would crash, preventing the player from seeing the entire finale. This was due to an unexpected variable problem that was showing up in chrome browsers.

Version 1.00 / Build 2 (July 28th, 2023)

• Updated the Constrct's drop rate on the HP item from 0% to 8% (Normally it does not drop anything, but an exception was made for the demo). It was possible to obtain this before since the player's Luck stat contributes to the % chance of an item drop, but it turned an already low chance drop to non-existent.
• Thanks to aswhalergamer for noting a problem with the treasure chests. It turns out there was a bad dialogue ID set for chest when trying to get an item while the player's inventory is full. That caused the game to freeze.  This has been corrected.
• Couple minor dialogue touchups.
• The status effects setup was not properly displaying the right characters. I missed this when I had to change the extended character set because itch.io uses a different charset than I normally do.
• Tail and TailSlap attacks now use the correct icon (Before it has a sword...  Honestly, I have no idea why, but it was a whip prior to the charset overhaul).
• It looks the way I handled this update was not the best way to do so: The way I handled the update wiped out my own save files.  My apologies for this.  Fortunately, it's just the demo and not the full version of the game, so it's good to know this now, rather than have it happen later.  Either way, I'll take steps to make sure it does not happen again.
  

Version 1.00 / Build 1 (July 16th, 2023)

• Game has been launched on itch.io

Screenshots

---