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You deserve answers, and I wrote pages of backstory so I will answer your questions. Amelia was the blacksmith's daughter, but also the wizard's apprentice. No one went after Amelia initially because there was a cave-in. (I didn't get time to add that to the cinematics.)

So Lucas decides that being a knight isn't enough, and he needs the power to rescue Amelia, and if necessary, get revenge. So he leaves town in anger. His mother, the baker, tries to stop him, because she named him Lucas, "bringer of light" and she fears this path he's on.

Amelia meanwhile actually uses her magical skills to escape and rescue herself. In that moment, she sees why Lucas wanted to become a knight. Once freed, she returns to the town and finds out from Lucas' mother that he is gone. She assures her father she is ok, and journeys in search of Lucas, hoping to find him training for knighthood.

When Amelia finds the knights, Lucas is not there. They convince her to join and train as one of them. As a magic user, she has the potential to become a paladin, but is warned it will be lots of work. She isn't afraid of hard work though, as her name means "work" and "industrious". So Amelia trains to become a paladin, and adopts the name Ser Amal, meaning bringer of hope. She goes around saving others and searching for her one true love, Lucas.

Lucas meanwhile has decided that he needs enough power to defeat the goblins. He gathers power however he can, becoming a powerful wizard, and then a necromancer. wrapped in shadow, he returns to his hometown after nine years to wreak vengeance upon the goblins who destroyed his town and killed his father and (he thinks) lover.

Lucas takes over the mines and finds no trace of Amelia. In a rage, lost to despair, he thinks this means she is dead. And so he enslaves the goblins and starts raising bodies from the dead looking for her. The goblins bein to worship him as a god, and call him Grunthusk - which in goblin is translated as grunt tusk for he is angry and punishing.

So Ser Amal appears in town after hearing rumors of the necromancer who has taken over the mine. Enter the player who knows none of the backstory, and thinks the knight is Lucas. (In fact, I spent a lot of time masking the fact that I used female efforts and then masked them with sound effects to sound ambiguously deep and echo-y inside her helmet.)

(None of this made it into the cutscene I was planning due to time.) The people know who she is. The baker is angry with her for she hasn't seen her son in ten years, but she has only a few ambiguous vitriolic words for the knight which are unclear. The wizard welcomes the knight back as Ser Amal and gives the gift of a potion sack and healing potions. The blacksmith offers a set of magic throwing daggers, and urges the knight to be safe.

In the first boss room (again ran out of time for a cutscene) the necromancer Grunthusk, appears, swathed in shadow and raises his father's corpse in front of Ser Amal. He is furious that a knight would show now, when none were there to help when the goblins attacked 10 years ago. She calls the zombie "Papa Baker", and curses the shadowy necromancer. Neither knows it's the other.

At the end of the game there was to be a big reveal, where Amelia, like Samus Aran, takes off her helmet. Meanwhile all the powers she gains to defeat Lucas/Grunthusk are dark powers and thus she's able to in the end see the journey he went down to get where he is, because she has also now gone down it. And so in the end, they are able to reconcile.

While I can't fix the game for you yet, I am interested in trying later and seeing if I can get something smaller and more performative. In the mean time, I hope you will take a listen to the playlist of the songs I made for the game. https://suno.com/playlist/8987fde4-eb48-4c6c-9a70-44af335e2243 It contains four versions of Eternal Echoes: Opening, End Credits (my favorite), the Ballad and Pop Remixes. It also contains two versions of Ode to Grunthusk, one of which plays when you discover the jump boots, and was intended to have a background of worshipping goblins to really sell it (but again, time).

It isn't a full playlist for the game, but I'm working on a better music player and a way to just export that as a separate "game/app" on its own for future games. (Because while I don't have rights to resell/give away most of the music, I do have the rights to put it in another app.)

Ooooooh that's all so awesome, thank you!!

I had a feeling there was no way for the knight to actually be Lucas because of how ambiguous you made their appearance on the town to be, but I certainly wasn't expecting all of those turn of events! Thanks for the little novel! It was very fun reading throught that, and I love your passion for it,  it's not everyday you find jam entries with that much of love put into their actual world and characters x3

I'll see if I listen to the playlist at some point if I have the time to. I have my personal reservations against giving too much attention to suno since it's AI stuff, but I'll try to let that aside if I do listen to it

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Obrigado! I'm glad you enjoyed it.

As I mentioned in my devlog, I have my own reservations about AI music. If I were going to publish this game, I'd might use the AI as a way to communicate what I was looking for to someone who actually made the music, but I wouldn't feel right putting it in a game people were paying money for. I'm having a money-based chicken and egg problem though. I can't really afford bespoke sound until I make money at a game, and I can't make money at a game unless the sound is good. All the music in the game that I used outside the theme song and Grunthusk song (and all the sound effects) I paid for from artists because I believe that artists should be able to make a living. I also paid for all the artwork I used in my game as well.

I take no offense if you decide not to listen to it.