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What is The Lost Sorceress?
My demo for a PC fantasy adventure game in the spirit of Super Nintendo Final Fantasy.
DOWNLOAD INSTRUCTIONS AND LINK AT BOTTOM OF PAGE
The savage actions of Dracanza will draw Afra into a quest that hangs the fate of the world in the balance, a quest involving a mysterious figure known as "The Lost Sorceress" and a fate that may well be decided by Afra's magic.
What do you need to know about The Lost Sorceress?
I grew up immersed in games and at age twelve, I discovered RPG Maker, an engine that allowed computing newcomers to build Final-Fantasy style games. After countless scrapped efforts, I finished The Lost Sorceress demo in 2005, age sixteen.
The game was intended as "the people's Final Fantasy." Everything that fans of 90's Final Fantasy games wanted, The Lost Sorceress would provide: Expansive, imaginative environments, a world-encompassing adventure, deep, layered characters, an engaging and thoroughly structured skill-building system, a fast-paced, exciting battle system and as cathartic an experience as one can get from mid-90's gaming ideology. Plus a wealth of in-jokes that wink at the quirkier aspects of Final Fantasy!
What The Lost Sorceress aimed to avoid was giving fans the clutter that plagued Final Fantasy from 2000 onwards: Excessive, overblown, confusing narrative, poorly-developed characters, the pushing of graphical glamour over gaming substance and a failure to acknowledge what fans of the series wanted more or less of. The Lost Sorceress would benefit from having a maker that was independent, didn't represent a faceless corporation and lent the keenest ear to the voices of the fans.
I intended to build this game as a full, 60+ hour timesink, but I only ever got it to demo stage. The demo is what you will be downloading and playing! Even if you've never played Final Fantasy, the demo will be simple to learn and fun to explore!
Did I make EVERYTHING in this demo?
Everything but the graphics, music and sound effects. Those were provided by Enterbrain with RPG Maker XP. In my future games, The Gate and Magma Blast, I make my own graphics and audio. LOOK OUT FOR THEM IN FUTURE POSTS!
Why use Enterbrain's assets and not my own? It was a deliberate move to boost the game's popularity. RPG Maker XP was, in 2005, the newest RPG Maker program. By then, I had been learning RPG Maker for five years, starting with Maker 2000 at age 12. I felt ready to make a full, legitimate game using, at first, Maker 2003, the newest Maker before XP.
Whilst writing the game's story, I found online an English fan-translation of the then-Japanese-only Maker XP. I built the full demo with this crudely-translated Maker, then ran the demo through the official English version the DAY it was released. By doing this, I was amongst the first people in the UK to release a legitimate project made with Maker XP, ONE HOUR into the program's UK launch!
I pre-empted the buzz of XP's English launch, used XP's default assets to build The Lost Sorceress, then promoted the demo online as an advertisement-of-sorts for what kind of game COULD be built with XP's assets. I uploaded the demo to relatively-small Maker XP fan-sites that were about to get a surge in traffic with the English XP launch. They could use my demo as part of their English-XP hype campaign to boost their site's traffic, and in return, emblazon their home-pages with my advert/demo and give it strong, self-sustaining promotion.
The move worked! Within six months, The Lost Sorceress demo was downloaded ten-thousand times across it's various host sites, increasing to an eventual fifty-thousand by it's third year, at which point the numbers began to slow down. During this time, the demo got a lot of positive feedback.
So why was the project never finished?
My computer and backup USB were wiped clean in 2008, completely erasing the then-80%-finished final Lost Sorceress game. DON'T LET FAMILY BORROW YOUR PC IF THEY'LL DISABLE ANTI-VIRUS TO WEB-BROWSE!
Months later, I began university and was focused on theatre production work, so I didn't get back to game-making until 2014, when I started fresh and began working on The Gate.
Will I finish The Lost Sorceress?
I'D LOVE TO, but I can't complete it on no money! I tried that enough times, it's NOT sensible! Please go to patreon.com/lenaray - That's...
...and help make the continuation of The Lost Sorceress viable!
I think, if anything, "the people's Final Fantasy" is MORE needed today than it was back in 2005. At least in 2005, we never had Final Fantasy THIRTEEN brought upon an undeserving world! Plus, with the Final Fantasy landscape being what it is today, an excess of sub-par mobile games and XIV/XV as the major Fantasies, it seems less and less likely that Square will pick up where it left off with the simpler but more stirring Super-Nintendo Final Fantasies. If The Lost Sorceress is finished, I will do that picking up! And yes, I will make my OWN graphics, music and sound effects this time!
Also, I'll re-write the awkward dialogue! I didn't mean to imply assault in the lines below! "Assault" was supposed to be in air quotes and the attacking that Largo did "before to others" was "to protect Afra." Clearly, I didn't peak in writing at sixteen!
MINIMUM PC SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS TO PLAY DEMO
OPERATING SYSTEM: Windows 7/8/8.1/10
PROCESSOR: Intel Core2 Duo or better
GRAPHICS: DirectX 9/Open GL 4.1 capable GPU
TRANSLATION FOR NON-COMPUTER MINDS
Any damn machine will run the demo (unless it's REALLY useless).
IMPORTANT NOTE ON RUNNING THE LOST SORCERESS
The demo requires that you download and install RPG Maker XP's Run-Time Package (RTP) from the official RPG Maker website.
RTP DOWNLOAD LINK AT BOTTOM OF PAGE
Don't worry, the download is completely safe, it's free and you won't be spammed or troubled after giving your e-mail address. The RTP is tiny to install, won't slow down your computer and only has to be installed once. It's a very simple, fast process, no different from updating Adobe Reader or some other quick, banal computer task! Believe me, The Lost Sorceress wouldn't be on this blog if the RTP download was unsafe or annoying. I'm not trying to promote RPG Maker, the demo simply won't work with no RTP.
HOW TO DOWNLOAD AND INSTALL
1 - Make sure you've downloaded and installed the RTP for RPG Maker XP (link at bottom of this page, instructions will be waiting at the site).
2 - Click where it says DOWNLOAD THE LOST SORCERESS DEMO (bottom of this page again).
3 - After downloading the .zip file named "TLS-Demo," go to your Downloads folder, right click on the .zip file, select "Extract Files" and click OK (or "Extract All," then "Extract" if that's what your computer says).
4 - Open the extracted folder, also named "TLS-Demo" and open the file inside named "Game." (The file with the round, orange symbol. Don't try to open the other files named "Game," they won't do anything.)
5 - That's it! Enjoy the game! When you are finished, select "Exit" from the Title-Screen Menu or Pause Menu (access it using the controls explained below).
GAME CONTROLS
Arrow Keys: Move Player
Enter: Main Function Button (talk to people, open chests, etc.)
Esc: Cancel Button/Access Pause Menu
Alt+Enter: Turn Full-Screen On/Off
There is a text file named "readme" in the TLS-Demo folder that also explains the controls and full-screen functions, along with other features. Give it a read!
NONE OF MY DOWNLOADS CONTAIN VIRUSES
I promise you from the bottom of my heart, and if I'm lying you can sue me, there are no viruses in these downloads, nothing that will hack you, no scams, nothing to worry about at all. I would never in my life upload anything unsafe to the internet. You'll just be downloading the .zip file to extract/unzip, open and play. That's all there is to it!
WARNING: GAME CONTAINS VISUAL EFFECTS THAT MAY BE UNSUITABLE FOR PEOPLE WITH EPILEPSY.
One last thing, I wasn't "Lena Ray" when I made this demo, so don't be confused when you see "Liam Kelly" in the opening credits! That's my birth name! Same heads-up applies to most of my early work.
>DOWNLOAD<
THE LOST SORCERESS DEMO
>DOWNLOAD<
RTP FROM THE OFFICIAL RPG MAKER WEBSITE
Finished the demo? Here's something extra for those of you who REALLY need to know what happens next!
>READ/DOWNLOAD<
WHAT THE FINISHED LOST SORCERESS WAS GOING TO BE LIKE (MAJOR SPOILERS HERE)
Any questions, confusion or compliments about The Lost Sorceress? Leave a comment below!
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