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Hi! Thank you for your kind words. It always makes my day when I learn people are still enjoying Archipelago, years after I first released it!

I fixed the bug, the Codex entry should display now (it was a single incorrectly capitalised letter which broke the link!)

Hi! It's fun to know people are still playing my game! Sorry about you poor ally... it's a very rare thing which only a few enemies can do. Unfortunately, that ally is gone - you can always try to find another one (and there's one companion in the game which will refuse to get devoured). Slightly spoiler-y strategy hint: enemies are more likely to eat your ally when your character is low on health, and this goes off instead of their special move (in a sense, giving your main character some protection).

Yeah, the whole idea behind that enemy is that once the fight goes on long enough for it to fire its "ultimate", it's game over.  I added it in the 1.2 content update, alongisde the ancient dragons, because some players said you could get too overpowered in the end game and wanted more challenging fights :D

Hi!

So, I can't really replicate this one - I think it has to do with the layout. With these three spells in the spellbook, Stone Skin should be in the right-hand column, and it is when I test on my PC:

The name of the spell and the mana cost are part of the same link, so the game must be displaying the name somewhere, but there likely is some wrapping issue which makes it invisible.

Did you have a similar issue with any other spell/command names?

Glad you're having fun with my game!

"Study" is a battle command normally available through the Survival main skill. It lets you view the stats and descriptions of enemies that aren't in your Codex yet (enemies you haven't defeated before), and adds them to the Codex upon use. Inventor's Eye adds this command on Survival level 2, meaning it works on all enemies (Survival 1 doesn't let you study some of the more powerful creatures).

I managed to fix the bugs! (Also, at first I uploaded game files with test variables left in, so for a short while when you launched the game, it started you with 999/40 HP... But that too is now fixed).

Merry Christmas Eve!

Congrats on beating the dragon, and thanks for reporting the issues. I'll take a look at them when I have the time, probably in a couple of days, since they're not game-breaking (but they're still bugs and I very much want to fix them).

Sorry about the nasty bug - it was just a missing chevron, but it rendered the Elixir of Power unusable. Somehow, no one has ever reported this, so thank you very much for helping me fix the game (again).

The Elixir should be working now. Good luck with the dragon, show them who's boss! :D

Hi!

Thanks for the kind words - glad you're enjoying the game!

As for the fallen champion - I haven't played the game myself in a while, so I don't remember how I used to fight them myself, but from what I do remember, plus looking at the code: it's the strongest non-boss humanoid enemy, so you may need an end-game character to beat them. As they're immune to magic, Combat 2 and high Brawn are actually very useful. Because of the healing and permanent damage buffs, it's essential to focus on high physical damage (def. try to get a legendary weapon - I'm also trying to avoid big spoilers, let me know if you want more hints on which weapons would be the best and how to find them), use Fortify on yourself. You may also try to use evade when the champion readies the big attack. Stun immunity will be helpful, and if your weapon damage is too low, but you have a lot of silver, Bottled Explosions can deal with almost anything in the game.

Hope this helps!

Hi! First of all, thanks for the kind words about my game. It's been a couple of years since its release and I'm super happy people are still enjoying it!

Thanks for reporting the bug, too. You're correct that I forgot to close an if-statement. I've added the missing tag and it's all fixed now. (Funnily enough, I've changed PCs since I last edited the game, and the biggest challenge was finding the correct old version of Sugarcube which wouldn't break everything.)

(Also, that's  lot of cash, experience and renown!)

They just give you 2 (out of 5) main skills as your starting ones, and some starting equipment. You can select a 3rd main skill later.

Thank you for the comment! It's great to hear you enjoyed the game and found it inspiring.

I must admit I haven't worked on or even looked at "The Tree" in a couple of years, so I had a difficult time answering your questions. Looking at the code, the Merchant has one unique dialogue option near the end (and gives you a small buff) if you spent a lot. 

I agree the game is not perfectly polished or balanced, there are some bugs I sadly were never able to fix, some enemies may be too strong or too weak, and the RNG can ruin even good plans. It was a "speed project" for me (I worked on the initial release and each of the two big updates in bursts between writing another, bigger game, and I think I only spent 2-3 weeks total on it), but it was a good way for me to test out new ideas. If you think about learning Twine, I'd say go for it - it's great fun - and consider starting with something small. I also can't recommend the 'intfiction' forum enough - it's a super friendly community focused around text games and a good place to find beta testers, help with your code and general design, news about competitions you can enter to showcase your work, etc.

Thanks for the comment!

First of all, you don't actually need to level up all the skills to beat the game. I think it's easiest to focus more on "finding things I can do/beat at the moment", and the EXP will come (the toughest enemies give a lot). Your biggest source of EXP right now should be the hard dungeons - if you find the enemies difficult, look for better equipment/allies/consumables (Bottled Explosions solve a lot of problems if you can afford them!).

If you haven't already done all of the side quests (found by checking rumours), they're a good source of rewards as well. Another one is joining the Academy which will open up some new areas (you can also discover those randomly by exploring or by gathering information with Charisma 2). 

There's three islands infested with bandits/beasts/undead, respecitvely. You can grind for EXP there. If you defeat too many enemies, they withdraw for some time, but return later. This is quick if you're strong enough, or have lots of money and can afford bribing the bandits.

Exploring the islands and travelling has a chance for encounters with EXP, but I wouldn't call it a "quick" way of earning it.

False Mirlanda will appear at the Academy once you've achieved a certain fame threshold. But her staff is actually more useful for characters without the Magic skill, I would say!

Hope this helps! The game was designed for multiple plays, with lots of procedural generation, but the core structure remains the same and it gets easier/faster on subsequent playthroughs.

EDIT: Oh, I forgot about the gills potions! You can buy them from the Witch once you've brought her the ingredients - she'll tell you what she needs.

Thank you for playing and for your comments!

Thanks for the bug report as well - I updated the game to fix the broken link.

Thank you for your comment!

Just a heads-up, I made 4x4 Galaxy before Archipelago and it's a much, much simpler game.

Cool, glad to help!

Sorry, are we talking about the "Lux walthrough" file? It's very simplistic, but it does take you through every step required to complete the game.

I'm not sure which fuse(s) you're missing, so quoting all relevant parts from the file (easiest to find by ctrl+f "fuse"):

SECTION III of the station:

-Go south-east, then through the western door to the lumber room. Check the parts on the table and pick up the fuse.

-On the docking module platform, check the note on the wall. Then, examine the filling station.

Examine the control panel. First, open its cover and take the fuse.

-In the lift room, examine the fuse box and place the two fuses (you need to choose them one by one from your inventory).

Once the fuses are placed, program the cart to go down in the lift, then go to the lift and go down yourself.

-Time to look for some fuses again. Go to the starting room of section II (south, through the lock, then through the eastern lock, east and through the eastern door). Remove fuses from the lift control panel. Return to the lift to section I (through the western door, west, through the lock, through the northern lock and north). Select a fuse from the inventory and install it in the lift control box; do the

same for the other fuse. Finally, take lift to section I.

Did that help you get unstuck? There's also the possibility of a bug, if the fuses aren't to be found in places listed, but I'd say it's unlikely at this point.

Hi! Did you check the walkthrough in the download section? It lists where to find the two fuses.

Thank you for your kind comment and feedback!

I'm sorry to say that, but right now I have no plans for further updating the game. This is partially because I feel it's complete (previous updates were all things I had planned for the original release, which didn't make it in back then because of time constraints of IfComp), and partially because the game grew so big Twine editor cannot handle it any more. You noticed how long the code is - this is also because it's poorly optimised (I learned many functions as I worked on the game, and didn't learn some useful stuff until later, which would help clean and optimise the code). Right now, adding more stuff to the game would basically require rewriting and improving everything, and I rather make new games based on what I learned from this one. I don't categoricallty exclude the posibility of making a "remaster" of Archipelago one day, and then I'll certainly add new content, but this is all preliminary ideas now.

As for Coral City: it is intended to be difficult, as it's an optional dungeon, and the only puzzle-like one. That's why there is an autosave before you enter and no autosaves in the dungeon - so that you can easily reload if you get stuck. A hint for exploring the City, if you want to return there: pay attention to how long the current carries you each time. It helps figure out where you end up. For full solution, there is this excellent map a player made a while back, which explains everything: https://intfiction.org/t/trizbort-or-other-maps-for-ifcomp-2021/53008/10

Cheers,

Agat

Hi, thanks for letting me know about this. I was sure I had "enabled scrollbars" activated in itch's settings, but I didn't for this one project. It's fixed now.

And I'm glad you had fun with the game!

Sure - it's more of a task list, given that you don't have to do most of this in order, and you can gain more points than required to finish the game, but I added a walkthrough file to the downloads.

Hi!

Thank you for your kind comments about my game. It's really awesome to know it's useful for your class, too!

As for the code: Twine games are by definition open-source. You can download Archipelago and open the „index.html” in the Twine editor to see everything. A warning, though – as an amateur developer with no background in coding, I did a poor job with optimising my code – for one thing, it contains a lot of unnecessary repetitions. (I've learned a lot since publishing Archipelago, so now I can see how messy that code is). Because of this, the editor also works very slow with this project, at least the offline one – the online editor available at https://twinery.org/2/ handles it a lot better.

I'll gladly share some info on how the procedural generation was designed from the conceptual standpoint – which will be more transparent than the actual code.

One of my goals with Archipelago was to create a game that has a lot of replayability, but also feels as fair as possible, despite all the procgen. There is a lot of randomness and luck involved, of course, especially with travel events and exploration events, but the „skeleton” of the game is always the same, with equal number of quests of each main type, dungeons, mines etc.

There are about 70 presets for islands (name, terrain type, unlockable story) in the game. Those are for flavour only, as the actual activities on each island are randomised later (except for a few bonus „special” encounters, like the puffins on Puffin Island). I created two „activity” pools (arrays) – one contains markets and NPCs (Witch, Enchanter, Collector), and the other – dungeons, mines and „overrun” areas (those places where you can fight a lot of enemies of a single type). So, an island can have a market and a dungeon, but it won't have a mine and a dungeon, because they're similar, exploratory activities.

Side quests are also divided into categories (A, B and C in the code). Quests A typically require no combat or resource spending, so they can be completed at the start of a playthrough to get some EXP and silver. There are always 3 quests A, randomly selected from a pool. Quests B have some requirements – like having a skill or spending resources. There's always 3 of those as well. Quests C feature a big boss enemy, unique for each quest, but in almost all of them the combat can be avoided. This requires spending a lot of resources or having high-level skills. There are always 2 quests C.

Dungeons were also fun to create from the procedural generation point of view. There are 2 easy, 2 dangerous and 2 deadly dungeon „maps” (passage arrangements in Twine), and each always has one of 3 room connection presets applied, as well as a „thematic overlay” (name, description, enemy pool, trap pool, boss). There are 3 categories for those overlays – crypt, cave and ruins. So, for example, Bare Bone Hall can appear as any of the 2 „easy” dungeons. Room description and names will be assigned randomly from the „crypt” pool, and the enemies will include frail skeletons, death wolves, skeleton warriors and skeleton archers, as determined by the Bare Bone Hall preset.

Those are some methods I used to try and make the game varied and replayable, while also avoiding wild differences in difficulty between playthroughs.

If you, or your students, have any particular questions, post them here – I'll be happy to answer them.

Cheers, Agat

Thanks for catching that! I fixed it. 

Glad you're enjoying the game!

So, it is possible to beat the Red Knight just with strong equipment and skills, but there are some tricks to this fight. As a merchant, you may recruit a companion to fight in your place - though you'll have to learn a thing or two about the Knight first for them to win. If you fight by yourself, there is one very helpful thing. I won't write the full spoiler just yet, but have you noticed that the Red Knight only attacks with an axe - no bow, no magic? There are ways to exploit that!

Thank you for your kind comment! I managed to improve the accessibility of my games a lot after people discussed some of them on the audiogames forum, giving me some helpful feedback. I made 4x4 Galaxy before that, and I know there are issues with the map - the names of the planets are displayed via tooltips, which screen readers don't recognise. I published a separate version that fixes that - it's the "screen reader friendly" file available for download. Are you playing this one?

Note that this version still does not distinguish between "known" and "visited" locations on the map (that was only added in Archipelago), so the map will just say "???" for planets you know nothing about, and the name of the planet for ones you visited or simply know about (like the "hub" planet, or the tyrant's planet in that one scenario).

Hello! You're not the first player to ask this question. I created a new thread for strategy, and posted some hints about the ancient dragons in it: https://itch.io/t/2655166/hints-and-strategy-thread-ask-questions-share-your-str...

Hope this helps!

Ancient dragons:

Some players asked about the ancient dragon superbosses and how to defeat them.

These bosses are extremely difficult to beat by design – I added them in an update for players who commented that all the existing bosses were fairly easy when you had late game equipment and skills. Because of this, there is no single trick that helps you beat the ancient dragons – you should fully develop your character (skills, perks, equipment) and use all the resources you have in the encounter!

Some general hints that may help:

- If you have Survival 2, Study the ancient dragon. You'll gain a lot of useful information that will help you develop a strategy for the fight.

- Focus on one type of attack (Magic/Combat/using allies with Charisma) and try to get as many attack/damage bonuses as possible – the bosses have a lot of health and fairly high Defence.

- Make sure you have plenty of HP/MP restoring items and items that remove negative status effects. Prepare for a long fight.

- If you have Trading, you can buy a single use item from the Collector which will help a lot.

- Equipment that revives you if you die in combat (Glass Ring, Saint's Hauberk) can help – as long as you have "revives" left, you can mostly ignore defending and dish out more damage.

Have fun, and I hope you'll beat those dragons!
 

This is a thread for players to ask for hints (either general or about particular encounters and enemies), as well as share their strategies.

Hi!  The 1.2 update I published a while ago added these exact options, as they were requested by more people. Check the "advanced start" option in the main menu to see them.

Thanks for the comment, and cheers!

Thank you for the feedback!

Right now, I'm not planning any updates to the game, and I'm not quite sure if I'll ever update it at all (other than bugfixing), but if I ever do, I'll consider your suggestion! I think backstories could be nice - your particular example, +1 level of a main skill, seems too powerful, but something like a minor skill, extra cash or a special "heritage" item would certainly be possible.

I'm glad you found my comments helpful!

I guessed from the theme of this jam this was likely your first game. For a debut, it does a lot of things right, but obviously there is a lot of room for improvements, so it's nice to hear you're planning to work on a longer version. Good luck, and I hope you'll have a lot of fun learning about Twine and about game development in general!

Hello! Thanks for your kind comment. I'm really glad you're having a good time with "Archipelago"!

As for your request: other people have also asked about this, so I decided to add it in an update, alongside another small feature I had planned. Combined, the new "Advanced start" option lets you select your class, give the character a custom name and optionally start the game with more EXP and/or silver.

I did not add the option to select the objective, because the objective influences many aspects of the world generation, so it has to be set as the first thing after running/restarting the game. Changing this would be really complicated. However, since there are only 3 objectives, I hope it won't be too bothersome to restart until you get the one you want, then change everything else in the Advenced start menu.

Cheers!

Thank you! I'm glad you had fun with the game!

Thanks for reporting the typo! I fixed it.

A nice demo! It looks great (obviously a lot of effort went into the custom styling), the writing is descriptive and the premise seems really interesting (I found the whole „obsolescence” concept terrifying). Too early for me to say more about the story itself – but I'll be waiting for the next instalment.

I found it a little jarring that the game would sometimes prompt me to enter a save title when switching passages – I would be fine with auto-named autosaves. It only happened three times though, so it wasn't a big issue.

This was a nice bite-sized sci-fi thriller! I liked that the game actually had some level of difficulty and obstacles to overcome, and that sometimes I could take risky choices without immediately getting a game over, so that there are multiple paths you can take and still win. Having various degrees of success possible (just eliminating the director vs. freeing all the prisoners) was cool too.

I noticed one small bug: When I chose to press two blue buttons in the control room, then went to the director office, the game stated, on the same screen, that I killed the director and that the director managed to escape safely.

The language could also be polished in some places (one misspelling I noticed was „quite” instead of „quiet”).

But overall, this is a fun short game. Thanks for sharing!

Hello! First, a bit of technical advice I've already given to a few games in the jam: Because your game is set to run in a small window, the text is cut off in some passages and the links don't display, so it's impossible to play through to some endings unless you open the game's frame in a new tab. To fix this problem, you should go to your project's settings and under "Embed options" change "Embed in page" to "Click to launch in full screen". You should also make sure you have the "Mobile friendly" and "Enable scrollbars" options below checked, in case someone wants to play the game on a mobile device.

As for the game itself: story-wise, it's so brief it's actually difficult for me to say much. It touches upon an existing real-life issue and seems to have a message at the end, but then the choices are very simple, and some are downright silly. The language was a bit unpolished at places as well.

Fortunately, it's a lot better on the technical side, especially if it's your first Twine project. It makes use of several of Twine features, like customised background colour, images, a popup for the player to enter some text, and variable tracking. That's neat!

A final suggestion: the game has multiple endings and is short, so it can be easily replayed many times. It would be nice if the last passage linked back to the start, so that I could play again without spam-clicking the back arrow or restarting my browser.

Thanks for sharing your game!

Like with some other games in the jam, I had issues with the text being cut off in longer passages (here, it was after clicking on „Talk to the manager”). The links are not displayed and it's impossible to continue unless you right-click on the game and select „open the frame in a new tab”. To fix this, in project settings, under "Embed options," you should change "Embed in page" to "Click to launch in full screen". You should also make sure you have the "Mobile friendly" and "Enable scrollbars" options below checked, in case someone wants to play the game on a mobile device.

About the game itself: I thought repeating the „day” to achieve different goals was neat – this adds some „game-y” structure. The ending, in which I could use things I obtained earlier, was pretty neat, and in general the „slice of life” with some mysterious, supernatural things going on was enjoyable. The game is really short though, and sometimes I felt like achieving solutions was very easy – too easy, perhaps. The language could use some polishing as well – though at least I didn't have trouble understanding or anything.

Thanks for sharing your game!

Glad to learn you enjoy Lem. I think his stuff is well worth reading! And Pirx, though in my opinion not one of his best, has a special place in my heart because of the written assignment we got at school when we were discussing the book. Normally, for things from our reading list, we would have to write an essay about some aspect of the book (short and simple, but it still was boring to us kids). With Pirx, our teacher told us she disliked sci-fi so much she couldn't come up with a topic, and we were told to write any science-fiction short story. Anything with space, rockets or robots would do. That was the first piece of sci-fi I ever wrote, of course strongly inspired by Pirx.

I'm excited to learn there are improvements coming to the game, and I'm waiting for the next part!

Also, I've only realised just now - it's a funny coincidence your trucker's named P-Rix and my game in this jam has a creature called the P-Rex!

The game was so short I don't really have much to say about it. It worked, some replies were somewhat funny, and the very ending hints at possible plot developments. The decisions weren't terribly exciting, but I sort of liked the fact the negative outcomes of some choices were delayed – it's more interesting than insta-death screens. Though one has to be careful with that design – if the eventual negative outcome is a game over the player may grow frustrated knowing they were allowed to continue playing even though they had already been locked into a bad ending. (Not the case here, as the story is very brief). But in general I think it's better when the delayed negative outcome is some new obstacle for the player to overcome, or an alternative path that may be less „good” (perhaps a likeable NPC died, or we lost an item), but still lets us continue playing.

Thanks for sharing!