Tess

Jul 1, 2014 at 1:55 AM
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p185441-0-hhd5her.png


Tess is a platformer run-and-gun game. It follows the story of Tess, an odd little girl who had a bad day.

You run and you shoot and you can pick up exp to increase your total number of hearts.

Download (ver 1.0.1.0)

Playable in the following languages:

English
French(Français)
Korean(한국어)
Japanese(日本語)
Spanish (Español)
Chinese (中文)
Portuguese (Português Brasileiro)


More screenshots in the spoiler below.

p185441-1-kutgf1c.png

p185441-2-hwotbeb.png

p185441-3-psguzpt.png

Please read the "readme" file included with the download for more information about controls and how to play.
 
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Jul 1, 2014 at 2:10 AM
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I saw this on Tumblr and I had to try it out! And then I quit almost as soon as I got outside! Yay! :D

idontevenknowwhyididijustdidaftermyfirstdeathXD
 
Jul 1, 2014 at 7:18 AM
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This is a great game a fun great game.

Best of luck in the contest. :debug:
 
Jul 1, 2014 at 10:42 AM
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apis said:
Fun game! But, it's too short.

It's bound to be short, as it's for a competition and usually games made for competitions are short but show off a lot of the creator's abilities, such as how they did the script, the controls, the programming, and stuff like that.
It's like a good mint. The whole time you're "sucking", or playing, it you feel fresh and good. Then when you're done you say, "Hey, I want more of that action," so you play other games made by said creator.
And then you become a fangirl/fanboy but that detail isn't really important.
 
Jul 1, 2014 at 11:20 AM
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Spiritga said:
I saw this on Tumblr and I had to try it out! And then I quit almost as soon as I got outside! Yay! :D

idontevenknowwhyididijustdidaftermyfirstdeathXD
Hopefully you can eventually beat it.

ryan66679 said:
This is a great game a fun great game.

Best of luck in the contest. :debug:
Thank you!

apis said:
Fun game! But, it's too short.
As spiritga has sort of already said, the shortness is a product of the circumstances of the creation of the game. Submissions for the contest were supposed to have an hour's worth of gameplay (and will not be played past the 1 hour mark), and also submissions were to be made in a 30day time frame. Both of these were factors that influenced the length of the game.

Also, I've updated the OP with a download link to a mac version of the game.
 
Jul 1, 2014 at 8:43 PM
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Was kinda sad that there isn't any background music (even if it does add to the atmosphere).

The game and it's world-building are snazzy though.


Edit: Wait… is there supposed to be background music? I didn't hear any on the mac port.
 
Jul 1, 2014 at 9:10 PM
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Ok so looks like they've implemented the voting for the RPG maker contest, so here's a little guide on how to do it.

1) Make an account on their site here

2) Play one of the game or all of the games there, or as many as you want.

3) If you liked the game, press the "Vote +1" button on the game's submission page.

I tested voting myself and it seems that you can vote for as many submissions as you want, so don't feel like you have to pick your absolute favorite and only vote for it.

So please, play Tess and vote for it if you liked it. Every vote counts!


EnlightenedOne said:
Was kinda sad that there isn't any background music (even if it does add to the atmosphere).

The game and it's world-building are snazzy though.

Edit: Wait… is there supposed to be background music? I didn't hear any on the mac port.
There IS supposed to be bgm (in fact I'd say it's one of the game's strongest points), so I'll look into this right away.
 
Jul 1, 2014 at 9:19 PM
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An interesting thing though is that it might just be a problem on my end (possibly).

I thought that by "windows" you meant your standard executable file, but after downloading I found out it's really just a .jar (which can open natively on any Mac as long as it has the Java player.)

So really the Mac port is unnecessary in my case, as I can just open the .jar file.

So nothing is wrong with the Mac Port, it's just that my Mac isn't playing the music regardless of .app wrapped or not (I'll try updating Java and whatnot to see if I can get it to work myself).
 
Jul 1, 2014 at 9:22 PM
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EnlightenedOne said:
So really the Mac port is unnecessary in my case, as I can just open the .jar file.

So nothing is wrong with the Mac Port, it's just that my Mac isn't playing the music regardless of .app wrapped or not (I'll try updating Java and whatnot to see if I can get it to work myself).
Yeah the Mac Port is really just a disk image installer that installs the game nicely as an "app" so that Mac users don't have to deal with the actual jar (or so I'm told, I don't actually have a Mac and a friend makes these "ports" for me).

And were SFX working in the game, or was only BGM absent?
 
Jul 1, 2014 at 9:30 PM
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GIRakaCHEEZER said:
Yeah the Mac Port is really just a disk image installer that installs the game nicely as an "app" so that Mac users don't have to deal with the actual jar (or so I'm told, I don't actually have a Mac and a friend makes these "ports" for me).

And were SFX working in the game, or was only BGM absent?
Okay, so this is mostly my fault as it turns out.

Both versions used to only play SFX, but after re-updating Java the unwrapped version now works fully (whereas the disk image wrapper is still SFX-only).
 
Jul 12, 2014 at 6:22 PM
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EnlightenedOne said:
Okay, so this is mostly my fault as it turns out.

Both versions used to only play SFX, but after re-updating Java the unwrapped version now works fully (whereas the disk image wrapper is still SFX-only).
Ok I'll treat this as a "resolved" issue then. I recommend that maybe you give it another run since the music is a heavy part of the experience IMO.

Tess is now available in 3 other languages!

French(Français)
Korean(한국어)
Japanese(日本語)

Also here's a link to the OST on bandcamp: Tess OST

UPDATE:

IndieGames.com wrote a short feature on the game.

Voting has been extended to the end of the month for the contest, so please play and vote for Tess.
 
Jul 13, 2014 at 9:04 AM
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Ah, I really like this one. It's short and abstract, but has a lot of atmosphere without going into too much detail. Sorry, that might come off weird.

Most frustrations I had were with the controls and the movement of the camera. The camera panning seemed a tad too fast and I believe it was the main cause of my deaths, which were mostly falling off pits. Landing on the edge of the ground also felt slippery, even when I wasn't in the ice area. Maybe that slipping wasn't intentional; it just felt awkward to me. The shoot key seems to freeze all movement for a brief moment, and I ended up taking hits because I wasn't able to turn around after shooting an enemy, particularly during the final battle. Also, is there a reason why there's no death animation for falling in pits?

Storywise, I definitely wanted to know more, like why Tess was having a bad day and what exactly happened. This was good, but the game alone felt like it was setting up for something bigger. Perhaps you would consider expanding it? Then again, sticking with a more abstract impression and leaving it up to the player's interpretation is not bad.

Tess' naivity was somehow comforting. I interpreted the aesthetics of the world to be how she viewed it in her own perspective. Tess' feet seem to blend in with the darkness of the background in the first part of the outside world, which bothered me a bit because it looked like they were disappearing half the time I jumped.

The gameplay mostly felt like Cave Story, but I love the touch of screen wrapping. The enemies were quite neat - my favourite was the one that stayed solid after death and how it had to be manipulated sometimes to get to higher places.

Soundtrack was wonderful and set the tone for the game. I felt like "Tess" loops too suddenly, but aside from that, I had no other issues with it.

Oh, your friend Milly was by earlier.
I'm sure this was intentional, but it didn't seem to read right for me. Maybe "stopped by" or "came by" would have sounded better. I dunno; it's just me. I never heard it said like that before.

I wish you all the best in the contest!
 
Jul 13, 2014 at 8:35 PM
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Just played through Tess today, and I got to say that it reminded me vaguely of Terry Cavanagh's Don't Look Back, just because you start off kind of confused as to what is currently happening, and once you make it to the end the metaphorical bomb is dropped.

Needless to say it got me to make a random account on the competition website to vote for Tess.

On a side note, it seems as though I got the "bad" ending by following Milly and jumping off of the edge. I'm calling it an ending because some people in the Skype group were saying that you could also just turn back. Though I haven't done so yet, it doesn't seem right to just try to end the story there instead of seeing where it will go.
 
Jul 13, 2014 at 8:59 PM
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Dunc2403 said:
it's "bad" as in the outcome for the protagonist
Isn't it also bad to never know what happened to the protagonist's friend? It also seems like she's the only other child of the group since everyone else up until then looked to be older than Tess, so there's that, too.
 
Jul 13, 2014 at 9:25 PM
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Random-storykeeper said:
Most frustrations I had were with the controls and the movement of the camera. The camera panning seemed a tad too fast and I believe it was the main cause of my deaths, which were mostly falling off pits. Landing on the edge of the ground also felt slippery, even when I wasn't in the ice area. Maybe that slipping wasn't intentional; it just felt awkward to me. The shoot key seems to freeze all movement for a brief moment, and I ended up taking hits because I wasn't able to turn around after shooting an enemy, particularly during the final battle. Also, is there a reason why there's no death animation for falling in pits?
The camera panned too fast? Do you mean it followed you too fast, because that sounds like it would help the player more-or-less, and right now I think it's set to a moderate follow speed. Also I guess the default friction value could be increased some more for non-ice ground. I'm not sure why the shoot key froze your movement, but directional locking while shooting is intentional, infact it's a mechanic that was inspired/ripped off from Kero Blaster. It's so that you can shoot while running away from enemies (I'm thinking of making it togglable via the options menu, since some people prefer the Cave Story style of shooting for some reason, even though directional locking is clearly superior). Turning around is easy if you just let your finger off of the shoot key for a second. And exactly what kind of animation would play when you fall into a pit? It sort of happens offscreen, after all.
Also thanks RSK and Seasons, I'm glad you enjoyed what you played.
 
Jul 13, 2014 at 9:30 PM
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Oh yeah, I nearly forgot to mention. Kind of like what happened in the earlier versions of Rip, sometimes when I was moving and jumping in the earlier bits of the game I could move, but not jump. It mostly happened when I was trying to jump from the edge of a platform onto another platform, so it possibly could have been that. It wouldn't hurt to check, though.
 
Jul 13, 2014 at 9:54 PM
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GIRakaCHEEZER said:
I'm thinking of making it togglable via the options menu, since some people prefer the Cave Story style of shooting for some reason, even though directional locking is clearly superior.
Yeah jeez like why would you want to turn around while autofiring that would just be annoying. It's actually one of the reasons I don't like the Machine Gun too much.
 
Jul 13, 2014 at 11:59 PM
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because god forbids you just release the shoot key and hit it back immediately in order to turn around oh no it's way better and easier and versatile to go forwards for a fraction of a second, then turn around and shoot the enemies pursuing you, then turn back and continue advancing for a bit, then turn around again and shoot, then turn again to run, then shoot then run ad nauseam
 
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