ERA - Eon Revolution Apparatus
Working Title: Project Era
(http://i.imgur.com/zxzlIOX.png)
"Four strangers find themselves caught in the middle of catastrophic events that threaten all of history. Even though they are to blame, they have become the world’s only hope (that’s the scary part)."
Project Era, hitherto called ERA as we begin the process of changing our logo, began as an RPG title rooted as a cross between Chrono Trigger and EarthBound. Since its start in 2012, ERA has grown into a full blown indie epic. We come bearing the fruits of our labors to be judged, praised, criticized, reworked, and finally, played. Since this site welcomes pixel art themed posts we'll try to focus our topics to that focus, though we'll also be sharing a good amount of news and updates based around our game's other aspects.
(http://i.imgur.com/AIKxYsk.png)
From left to right: Peter, Tia, Joey, and begrudgingly, Rico
Features & Content
- A unique "spin" on turn based battles... Battles in ERA take place on the field, where you'll find numerous enemies in your way. Upon starting a battle you'll be greeted by the Battle Spinner, which will determine which party members get to act during that turn. As the fights progress you'll be challenged with thinking ahead; will you attack incessantly and risk a bad spin, or will you prepare for the worst case scenario every turn? These choices are highlighted through the Battle Spinner itself, but you can overcome it completely! If you run the chance of having your entire party endure an attack, or prepare enough and heal the entire party, you'll light up a red or green cog respectively and land the maximum amount of characters for a turn.
(https://projecterateam.files.wordpress.com/2016/05/screenshot.png?w=730)
- A level up system that lets you control the difficulty... To eliminate the need for grinding while still making stats feel important, we've created a level up system where you decide to level up manually. So, after gaining enough EXP to increase your level, you can immediately level up and be treated to some quick stat boosts, or you can wait and gain Bonus EXP which will add up to major stat bonuses down the road. Choosing the best times to level up and which stats to focus on for each character will ultimately determine the game's difficulty.
(https://projecterateam.files.wordpress.com/2016/04/menu-mockup.png?w=730)
- Over 100 songs in our awesome soundtrack... Since we have four musicians currently on the ERA team, it's no surprise to find that we have a killer soundtrack in the works. As the title suggests, ERA revolves around a time travel based plot across four time periods. Each one has a unique musical style (8Bit, 16Bit, Orchestrated, etc.), including remixes of certain songs that span across all four eras. Though we have shared some tracks on our blog in several posts, this music preview will surely give a good impression of what you can expect in our soundtrack.
Music Preview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_ukIthOQTg (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_ukIthOQTg)
- An optional storyline... By this, we mean that we're including almost 100 optional scenes that encompass the game's lore and character development. Not every player likes to sit around and scroll through mandatory text dumps, so we've combined our big moments with restaurants (acting as inns per RPG trope). There players can enjoy the game's quirky characters, hilarious dialogue, and rich backstory. Naturally the main plot is still intact; you'll just have more options as you explore!
The Plan:
ERA has turned into quite the ambitious title, especially for a team of eight people who volunteer their time and talent for the game. We're endlessly appreciative of the work that each individual produces, and with all our skills combined we're turning this game into a reality! Here's our schedule:
Q3/Q4 2016 - We'll be releasing a showcase demo. This demo will include an entire level to run through, with enemies, a couple NPCs, and some neat level design. We're making this demo as evident of the final product as possible, so we're releasing in three stages. After an initial release and survey among team members, we'll be bringing the demo to a select few volunteer testers (sign-ups welcome) who will give feedback and a survey after their play session. Anything we need to fix, we will, and then we'll release the demo openly to the public as to give a streamlined view into what ERA will offer.
2017 - During the course of the following year, we'll be working like mad to finish off the rest of the game's assets. As mentioned earlier, the soundtrack is halfway completed, our script is nearing its finalized form, and our coding ventures have been going smoothly! The biggest hurdle here is the artwork, mainly the environmental assets. One person simply can't do such beautiful work overnight, and we're not about to rush quality for quantity. Until the time comes when we can find two more environmental artists to replicate our style and help us carry our mission forward, we'll be sifting through our artistic to-do list and sharing our news with you.
2018 - Given the possibility that everything goes right (as unlikely as that seems) we'll be staging our release for sometime that year. Again, this largely depends on our artistic capabilities at the time, but we're confident that we can have the game releasing or near-releasing in this time frame. We're planning on going the Greenlight route through Steam, though that's a topic for another day!
Contact:
Although we're planning on having a heavy influence on this site and others, you can still contact us in a variety of ways. Whether it be a post here or elsewhere, we'll be sure to respond right away!
Official Blog: https://projecterateam.wordpress.com/ (https://projecterateam.wordpress.com/)
Email: projecterateam@gmail.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/projecterateam/ (https://twitter.com/projecterateam/)
Whew! Always a lengthy introduction with us. Our hope from you guys at Pixelation is that you'll leave a comment and spark some discussion about what we can do better, what you're excited for, or whatever other crazy thing you might want to say! Anything at all is always great, we can't do this without you! But for now, that's all from us!
Regards,
The Project Era Team