Jaded Slasher Day 1 Updates

I've gone ahead and updated some elements of Jaded Slasher today. Those edits can are noted below.

New Stuff

• Added 10 new quests. This brings the quest total among all areas to over 60.
• Added new NPC dialogue and new signs to describe certain gameplay elements.
• Added town teleporters to campsites. These appear after reaching town. Some other teleporters have also been added at other campsites.

Modifications

• Balanced some enemy EXP and Coin rewards.
• Balanced some quest EXP and Coin rewards.

Fixes

• Fixed leveling up only healing to 10HP.
• Fixed inconsistency with music volume on a plains level.
• Fixed a incorrectly named enemy in a quest for the Forest.
• Removed duplicated line of code submitting scoreboard scores twice.

Check out these changes by playing the game!

Jaded Slasher is now available to play!

Welcome to the world of Jaded Slasher!

After the Wicked Witch chases you through the around the world, you must unlock rooms, level up, and beat those darned enemies that stand in your way! Slash your way through over unique rooms with enemies, fellow adventurers, questers, and more!

Upgrade Your Skills

The more you slash, the more EXP you gain! The player can level up and enhance their skills with skill points. Will you invest in health, defense, attack, or maybe luck? You can spend your hard-earned coin on upgrades through the shopkeepers as well!

Quest with the Quest Masters to Get Ahead!

Visit campsites to speak with quest masters, healers, shopkeepers, and other NPCs. Quest masters offer a selection of randomized quests that allow you to earn bonus EXP and Coin while you slash away!

Beat The Wicked Witch!

The witch waits for you at the end of the road! See if you have what it takes to challenge her and un-block the town!

Discover Hidden Bosses...

Two bosses lurk around the less traveled paths of the world! Be careful, these bosses aren't to be messed with!

Jaded Journey features...

60+ Discoverable Rooms.

65+ Encounterable enemies.

30+ Unique NPCs to talk with.

50+ Randomized quests between all zones.

3 Bosses, two hidden throughout the game.

Just a quick posts & update:

Jaded Slasher will be released this Thursday. Due to the Thursday release the trivial trivia scheduled for this week will release on Friday (will also give me time to fix a minor bug).

Update: I will plan to release the trivia game next Tuesday. thanks.

Thanks for reading!

Jaded Slasher will be released during the week of the 21st! I am looking at either the 24th or the 26th to release the game. All of the core gameplay is finished along with quests, shops, and more. Some music and advanced quests have a day or two of development to go, but besides that the next two or so weeks will be spent polishing, balancing, and touching up on the end of the game. I plan to spend the first of the week of the 21st adding NG API integration for badges and leaderboards. I have a lot of stats to collect & make leaderboards for!

I'm excited to release this game as I feel it's the best non-idle game I've made to date. It's certainly the longest with the most personality compared to my other games. This game also has a definitive end unlike Jaded Journey, where you'll know when you finish the game.

Anyways, expect another post from me on Thursday/Friday as this week I'll be releasing a new Trivial Trivia game. See you then!

Hi all,

I'll be elaborating on my submission for the flash jam a bit more here. I'm actually very relieved the deadline is the end of next month, as it'll give me plenty of time to polish, add, and balance everything I want. Keep reading if you'd like to learn more about Jaded Slasher (name still WIP).

The Premise

Our main character finds themselves at the dead-end of a forest wondering how she got there. She must fight through the forest to get back to town. Along the way she finds other travelers with quests, story, and uncovers various secrets of the area she's in.

The Gameplay

Jaded Slasher takes quite a bit of inspiration from Bush Whacker and games like it. You travel room to room and need to unlock each new room you visit. Key pieces are unlocked by defeating enemies in the room. The stronger the enemy, the more likely you are to get a key piece! I plan to have at least 30 rooms to visit and unlock, so this will not be a short game. Enemies also get stronger in further rooms, so you'll need to level up and apply those still points to get ahead!

Skills & Stats

Let's not forget about stats. Every enemy (passive or otherwise) drops EXP and a chance of gold. Gold can be used to purchase stuff further into the game. EXP is used to level up.

Each level the player is rewarded with a skill point, which can be used to increase either the attack, defense, health or luck (gold gain/crit chance). Luck will have a maximum skill level, while the other three will not.

Here's a quick rundown of each of the skills:

• Attack: Deals 1 damage extra per level. Hurts enemies.
• Defense: Adds 2 additional defense per level. 4 defense negates 1 damage. Defense can be pierced by difficult enemies.
• Health: Gain 2 health per level. Amount of damage you can take before dying.
• Luck: Increase gold gain and crit chance by 1 each level. Plan to max this skill at level 10-15.
• Key Chance: Purchasable upgrade. Will allow for key pieces to be found easier.

These skills are built into the game already, but are not currently used. I just added the leveling feature yesterday and will have these apply in the next few days.

Quests

Since the Flash Jam deadline isn't until the end of next month, it gives me plenty of time to flesh out other features. Quests will allow the player to earn additional EXP when a quest-giver requests something.

Quests are planned to be a mix of one-time quests and randomized quests. One-time quests will be more focused on achieving something once (finding lost item, killing boss, etc.) while randomized quests will require the player to kill various enemies X amount of times. Quests are still at the first stage of development, so this may change.

Campsites

Since the town is quite a far ways away, travelers have set up various campsites along the way. These campsites allow the player to heal, shop, and chat with other NPCs. Some of these NPCs are quest-givers as well.

Progress Thus Far & Plans

I began developing this game on the 22nd of this month and have had the premise for awhile now. I was originally going to develop this in HTML/JS which (in my opinion) was going to take months longer to develop. I originally skipped over the ActionScript 2 part of the flash jam. I was originally developing this game in ActionScript 3 until the 25th, so had to spend an extra day converting everything. ActionScript 2 is great, but different, so I've had to learn a differences along the way.

What has been made so far is the following:

• 10 Unlockable rooms across two tilesets
• 2 Campsites
• 16 Enemy types
• 2 NPC types

What I want to have by the end of next month:

• 30 Unlockable rooms across 3 tilesets
• 5 Campsites
• 35 Enemy types
• 10 NPC types
• Quest system in place

Since most of the core system is in place, I am thinking the planned features should be accomplishable within the timeframe.

Future Updates

I'll plan to be posting another update with this game later next month probably within a week of it being complete. In case anyone would like to get a taste of this game, you can view a basic demo here: https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/project/1583773

This demo was created ~2 days ago after the implementation of room key pieces. It only contains basics of the game and does not feature leveling, questing, or anything other than enemies and room unlocking.

Feel free to DM or comment below with suggestions, ideas, or anything else!

View the Trivial Trivia: Yakuza Kiwami 1 & Yakuza Kiwami 2 Below

Trivial Trivia: New release

Today marks the last Thursday of the month! It also marks the release of a new Trivial Trivia game (see above). This game is the first to have two trivias bundled together. After speaking with a member of the community & getting feedback I determined it would be best to bundle similar games together in an effort to keep a good release schedule while contributing the same amount of trivia. This will affect other games down the road, so I have released an updated version of the release roadmap I shared last week. You can find both below:

New Release Schedule | Old Release Schedule

Note: Progress on the European Flags game is incorrect. Since this file was uploaded work has been done on that game.

As you can see no themes have been removed all while keeping to a more sparse release schedule until the end of April. When picking new themes I will plan to include a multi-trivia game every month.

In other news I plan to release a small update tomorrow on the game I am currently working on. I'll go a little more in-depth with gameplay, story, and other features.

Thanks for reading!

Jaded Slasher - A new entry into the Jaded Journey realm

Hi all,

I've decided to create a game for the Flash-forward Jam! I've started creating the game a few days ago and progress has been good enough that I feel comfortable sharing some details on my entry.

I will be entering a game called Jaded Slasher (name may change) which is a spin-off of the Jaded Journey game from 2019. It will feature a mix of familiar graphics and new graphics I am currently creating. Characters/enemies will still be mainly sourced from the artist Elthen over on Patreon. I figure keeping some of the characters the same as the 2019 version will both let me focus on other game elements while being able to show some relation to the other game.

Without going into too much detail on the game, I will say it has more gameplay, more upgrades, and more content than Jaded Journey. It is also not the same playstyle, so expect something totally different gameplay-wise. Gameplay is very similar to a popular flash-based game from earlier last decade. That game had quite a few monetization decisions built into the gameplay as well, which I was not a fan of. My goal here is to make a similar game with less grind, less money-focused decisions all while keeping unique in its own right. I'll discuss details on the gameplay and which game I am referencing in a later update.

I originally planned to no-life development on this game till the 31st, but since I see the deadline is now end of February, I feel this will give me time to polish and add more content. I will also plan to release a public beta demo for anyone interested to play. This will help me figure out an appropriate balance before the official release.

Thanks for reading as always!

Hello all!

Here's a quick recap to the week of trivia.

Base Game Update

The base that runs each game has been updated a few times this week. I've added support for image quizzes, which I have a few ideas for. There's a few other misc. improvements/changes as well, and you can read more about it in yesterday's blog post: https://applessmillion.newgrounds.com/news/post/1138686

Wednesday Trivia - US State Flags

Yesterday I released trivia based around the United States of America state flags. This trivia offers a normal and extended mode. One thing I found out real quick is there are a lot of state flags with the name of the state plastered in big bold letters somewhere on the design. This made extended mode a little easier than it usually is for other quizzes.

You can find the trivia below:

Thursday Trivia - Yakuza 0

Yakuza 3-6 will release later this month for PC! Since I am a fan of the series and am pretty excited for this release, this weeks' theme is Yakuza 0. Expect Yakuza 1 and Yakuza 2 to have trivia coming up in the next few weeks. You can play the Yakuza 0 trivia by clicking below:

Hello all!

I've made a few adjustments to the backend of the TT games. I plan to roll these changes out in the next day or so. Most changes will only affect the QoL of the games, so it's nothing too major.

A quick rundown of these changes include...

• Better button positioning (more consistent when longer questions are displayed)
• Better handle loading larger font files
• Include backup font in case loading goes wrong
• Clicked buttons will now be color-coded to whether you answer correctly or incorrectly.
• Support for pictures in questions

To celebrate the new ability for picture quizzes, I will be releasing one tomorrow for Inauguration Day! It's an American-themed quiz featuring up to 36 quizzes. I'll post more about it at the end-of-week review.

Thanks for the read!

Hello!

Today marks the day of two new Trivial Trivia games! I decided to sneak a bonus Among Us trivia in with today's scheduled theme, Blade Runner 2049.

Blade Runner 2049

A sequel to the original Blade Runner movie, Blade Runner 2049 takes place in the year 2049. The trivia for this movie can be found below:

This game offers the normal mode of 21 questions, 12 seconds to answer.

Bonus: Among Us

I decided that I wanted to release an extra trivia as the next two weeks will follow a single game series. Since I had not prepared a new theme until literally yesterday, it resulted in the double-feature today.

The Among Us trivia features a pretty basic quiz, 21 questions with slightly more than 12 seconds per question. Per a few suggestions I've gone ahead and dazzled it up a bit with a small animation at the bottom of the game. Check it out if you haven't already!

Week in Review

This week also brought a few smaller changes to the other trivia games. Browser compatibility was improved & the games should work slightly better on Firefox and other modern browsers. Users using Internet Explorer will be told their browser does not work instead of the game just being broken.

Cyberpunk 2077 was also updated this week with an Extended mode. This mode features 36 questions and a new scoreboard and medal to earn. You can check out the game below:

Future Weeks in January

Next week will feature another video game trivia focusing on the prequel in this series of games. That will be set to release on the 21st.

For the week afterwards you can expect two trivia games. One will release on the 26th, with the final one releasing on the 28th. Both of these games will follow the same video game series as the trivia releasing on the 21st.

Thanks for reading!