itch.io

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!

This was really good! Well-written, with some exciting „avoid the horrible death” choices (normally not my favourite style of gameplay, but here everything was well communicated – I could actually make informed decisions, and not just randomly click links hoping I wouldn't die). The styling is great – obviously, a lot of effort went into it – and the two-button input worked really well for me!

Obviously, there is more going on with the story that the demo shows. I wonder what the deal is with the mysterious cargo...

I only wish the text area was a bit bigger (I had to scroll a couple of times to read everything, while having a ton of empty space on the screen). I also wasn't a fan of the timed text. It was okay during the diagnostics part (and added some nice realism – again, awesome styling!), but the final, longer bit of conversation really tested my patience (I imagined everyone speaking very, very sloooowly).

And now I'm going to wonder if P-Rix is a distant relative of Stanisław Lem's space pilot Pirx I had to read about in primary school.

Thanks for sharing!

Hello!

First of all, a bit of technical advice. The way the game launches now, some of the links may be cut off (for example, on PC I only see one link on the very first screen – good thing it's the one that moves the story forward). To fix this, in Project settings, under „Embed options” you should select „Click to launch in fullscreen”. You should also check the „Enable scrollbars” box below, so that you can scroll on devices with smaller screens.

Now, let's get to the game itself. I'm normally not a fan of the „each page has two choices and one of them kills you” type of interactive stories, but your game is short enough that it didn't really bother me (the arrows that let you reverse your choices also helped). Gameplay-wise it was simple, but functional. I didn't find any bugs. The story was quite interesting, and I liked how some things were being foreshadowed early on (people on the pier when you go running etc.). I found some of the choices confusing – for example the very last one; to me „Back to the…” and „Jump to the...” were basically the same thing, but they led to radically different outcomes?

A small note: at one point, the story changes from second to first person („Next to me, a man was still sleeping”) – probably an oversight from an earlier version?

Thanks for sharing your game!

I've now played through the game twice, reaching endings A and B – I wonder if there are any more?

My biggest issue with the game was the language – it was awkward, with some misspellings and grammar/word choice issues. This could really use a proofreading, preferably by another person, fluent in English. (That being said, the issues were not serious enough to affect the understanding/gameplay - just the presentation.)

With that out of the way, I had some fun with this brief game. If it's your first effort in Twine, I think it isn't bad at all! The mini-world model with multiple locations to visit and the light puzzle at the end were nice touches. I also appreciate colour-coding the dialogue for different characters. I found the story amusing, with zombies acting just like regular people – it wasn't at all what I expected.

I found one bug/issue with tracking items – if you select „Leave this room to find the other things.” in the lab, you then see the item overview screen again. At that point, I had the cookie I had already given to someone back in the inventory, and had to go through the process of giving it to the same person for the second time.

Thanks for sharing your game!

Hello! I'm trying to play your game, but there is a technical issue right at the start - the game opens in a small window and the bottom part of the passage is cut off, so I can't see the links or progress to the next passage. I managed to solve this by right-clicking and selecting "open this frame in a new tab", but I don't know if this is an option in all browsers (I'm using Firefox).

To make it easier for the players to play through your game, I'd suggest going to your project settings and, under "Embed options," changing "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.

This is just a heads-up about the technical stuff. I'll play through and be back with some thoughts about the game itself.

The game autosaves after you've sailed to a new island, not every time you visit the island's "main screen". You can still save manually in each "Savespot". (This is because the size of the game - as you've probably noticed, saving takes a lot of time, and I didn't want to introduce this long pause every time a player goes back to the island's main screen). Basically, whenever an autosave gets recorded, you get a "Game saved automatically!" message at the top of the page, and Savespot means you can save manually. Sometimes both happen at once.

Glad I could help, and good luck with the rest of your run!

Yes, the strategy thread goes into a lot of detail about all the individual quests etc., so it can be confusing if you haven't encountered them in the game yet! To simplify, the safest early game strategy would be to avoid combat (you should always carry a couple of Bottled Mists to be able to escape from strong monsters without rolling) unless with really weak enemies, check rumours on various islands to start quests (some will be too hard at first, but many require no combat/skills at all and give significant rewards) and visit markets (you can earn a lot of money by buying and selling trade goods). If your character has Charisma, listening to stories at inns and later "selling" them to the lady at the Academy also gives you a nice silver/exp boost.

Hi there!

You can find some basic hints on getting started inside the game, in Journal -> How to play -> Beginner's tips.

There's also a great (and very detailed) strategy thread on the game, with lots of information compiled by a player. Available here:https://intfiction.org/t/4x4-archipelago-strategy-etc-warning-spoilers/53190 (it contains a lot of spoilers, but they're all tagged. Also, it's based on an older version of the game and doesn't mention things from the 1.2 update, like perks, but what it does mention is still accurate).

Hope that helps!

I published a small update (v. 1.2.1) today.

It changes the following things:

FAST REFLEXES

This perk now also adds +1 to all rolls made to avoid traps.

The perk was fixed and now also works (prevents player death) on traps in mines, unstable deposit collapses, traps in Heavenly Spire and in Vault of the Four Captains.

MERFOLK MERCHANTS

The merfolk merchants the player can meet during their travels now sell 1 additional item in each encounter. There's a 1 in 3 chance this item will be skyhunter jelly, otherwise, it will be a pearl.

I'm happy to announce the release of 4x4 Archipelago version 1.2! This is a major content update which adds, among other things, underwater adventures, super-bosses and companion quests.  It also fixes some old bugs.

As always, thanks to my testers and everyone who played, commented on, and suggested changes to the game!

Here's a detailed changelog for 1.2. 

4X4 ARCHIPELAGO 1.2 CHANGELOG

CHARACTER

Added perks: various permanent bonuses bought for EXP points on the level up screen. Perks have primary and/or secondary skill requirements.

New level 1 spell: Magic missile

New level 2 Combat technique: Gather strength – reduces the remaining cooldowns of all other techniques

Improved evasion: Replaces Evade if the character has Survival 2. Works like Evade, but grants a +5 defence & magic defence bonus, instead of +3

QUESTS

New boss quest: Merfolk in trouble

COMBAT

Super-bosses: Shadow Dragon / Hellfire Dragon

New boss: the Anglerbeast

New enemies: Bandit Shadow, Unstable polyp, Venomous polyp, Merfolk Raider, Mefolk Warlock, Curious Fluffball, Defiler Worm, Wight, Fallen Champion, Octaur

New allies

New status effect: Blinded – reduces accuracy of attacks and spells

EXPLORATION

New area – the Flooded mine

New area – Lair of the Ancient Dragon

New "underwater" travel events

Unique, one-time explore encounters for each of the 8 hire-able companions (healers, mystics, mercenaries & elite mercenaries)

New random explore encounters

New traps in dungeons and mines

ITEMS

New legendary armour: Dual Coat, Magic Shell

New legendary weapons: Serpent's Spear, Song of Sparks, Soul Thief, Tentacle Whip, Crystal Spear, Akchaa's Battle-axe

New consumables: Gills potion, Vial of Venom, Cursed oil, Clear vision potion, Wight Stone, Seal of Doom

New amulets: Magic Shield Charm, Blackthorne's Charm of Healing, Fluffy Talisman

New rings: Ring of Sparks, Glass Ring, Magic Eye Ring, Goblin Queen's Ring, Fluffy Ring

New resources: skyhunter jelly, pearls, Rare pearl

BALANCING CHANGES

Fortify, Weaken: the duration of the spells was changed from 3 turns to 2 + 1/2 Spellpower (rounded up) turns.

Dark Mist: The spell was reworked; instead of increasing the player's defence and magic defence, it now attempts to inflict Blindness on the enemy for 2 + 1/2 Spellpower (rounded up) turns. Blinded enemies have a -2 penalty to all attacks. The cost of casting the spell was reduced from 8 to 6 MP.

Evade: cooldown was increased from 1 turn to 3 turns.

Max. number of uses for some of the stronger tamed beasts was reduced.

Levelling up the Focus secondary skill no longer requires the Magic main skill.

Increased the attack bonuses for some of the stronger enemies.

Magic attack bonus from Sage's Staff was reduced from +3 to +2.

Curse Master's Ring now also adds a +3 bonus to rolls against enemy magic defence when trying to apply Weakness.

The Collector now additionally sells 1 Elixir of Power.

Basic attack bonus for Mercenary allies increased.

False Sorceress Mirlanda's enemy type was changed to Legendary.

BUGFIXES

Fixed a bug where enemies would always miss with their attacks if the player was in dragon form.

Fixed a bug causing player's max HP to be reduced by 10 upon exiting dragon form for the first time.

Fixed a bug where choosing the "Bluffing" option while gambling would actually select a "tricky" playstyle.

Fixed an issue with combat messages for enemy volley attacks displaying incorrectly.

Fixed a bug where you could sell an equipped heavy crossbow.

Fixed various typos/grammar issues.

Attacks made with Sungleam now affect enemies with physical immunity.

Fixed an issue where in the marsh encounter with a wisp, the initially mentioned colour of the wisp was incorrect.

In the exploration encounter with the tiny woman, giving her Royal Jelly is now an option.

Thanks for the details - I'll see if I can do anything about this bug.

Sorry to hear about the bug. It would be weird if just casting the spell caused it, though. Were you only using Fire? What happens if you switch to a different spell, then back to Fire? 

Unless it all happened during a single fight, the issue could have been with a different button as well - I tested it and the passage transitions are fast enough so that if you spam click, you can click another button that appears on a new screen without even seeing it.

If this is indeed some weird Twine issue, with the engine breaking down if you spam click too fast, I'm afraid I can't do anything about it, but if the problem is somewhere in the code, I'll try to find it and fix it.

You're right, it was a bug - I had a typo in the code. Thanks for reporting! I fixed it.

Thanks! I posted an update fixing these issues, except for the repair kit one. You're right - changing this would be complicated, and it's not a bug, just an unrealistic feature (that benefits the player).

Also - are you sure that 400 credits was enough to buy common goods at the bugged market? I found the typo that caused this issue, but it required 500, not 400, to buy the goods, and now I'm wondering if I missed something.