Alfred's Island

Hello, friend! This post is about Alfred's Island, a small game I made in 2 weeks for Pirate Software Game Jam #17.

Synopsis

You play as Alfred, a regular bloke who lives alone on an island. Or at least... he used to be alone. Recently, a bunch of slimes have appeared out of nowhere and invaded the island!

The mission is simple: find the source of the slimes, and get rid of it! Should be easy, right?

Except Alfred has had a rough life, and his past experiences have left him slightly... inconvenienced. To get started, you must pick one (or more) "challenges" that affect Alfred, which will persist until the end of your play-through. 

Player experience

In terms of actual player experience, Alfred’s Island is a turn-based combat game with grid based movement and abilities.

The goal is to defeat a final boss, the slime-lord who invaded Alfred’s island, which requires the player to slay enemies, gain experience and level up to unlock new skills, get stronger and competent enough for the final battle.

As they explore the island, the player will encounter different types of slime with varying characteristics and movement / attack patterns, which they have to analyse and understand in order to plan their actions and defeat the enemies.

Jam theme and interpretation

As the jam's theme was "Only One", each challenge is themed around having "only one" of something.

The challenges offer different levels of difficulty, and picking and combining different ones will provide you with a different playing experience if you decide to play through the game multiple times.

Each of the available challenges, which the player is required to pick at least one of, follows the idea of limiting a certain part of the game to “only one” of something, tying into the jam’s theme of “Only One”.

The available challenges are:

  • 1 Life
    Alfred is just a regular man. Once he dies... there is no coming back. (hardcore mode)

  • 1 HP
    Alfred is already nearing his end... you start with only one health point, and can never go higher than that.

  • 1 MP
    Alfred has injured his legs rather badly... you start with only one movement point, and can never go higher than that.

  • 1 Action
    Alfred is growing old, and can only do so much before he needs to rest. You are limited to a single action per turn.

  • 1 Skill
    Alfred is a stubborn, hard-headed man. Once he decides on using a skill, he can't do anything but that for the rest of the fight.

Inspiration

Dofus

The game is strongly inspired from Dofus. It uses the same type of isometric grid, as well as similar combat mechanics, abilities, and open-world experience. 

The challenges in Alfred’s Island also somewhat resemble some of the random combat challenges from Dofus, with the main difference being that Alfred’s challenges are persistent across the entire character journey, while challenges in Dofus are random, optional, and are only active for a single fight.

Hardcore addon for Classic World of Warcraft

The game also borrows from the Hardcore addon for Classic World of Warcraft, with the idea of giving the player different challenges that persist throughout the entire character’s journey, and that provide variety, added difficulty and replayability to the game.

A few more screenshots...

 

Play the game

You can play the game online on Alfred's Island itch.io page.

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