Within Her HeArt
A Magical Girl RPG Short Story, and sequel/side story to "A Change of Heart."
[Fullscreen recommended!]
June is surprised when her friend Tama calls to invite her as her only guest to the opening of the Student Art Showcase at the Basin Lake Museum of Art. Tama usually sticks with her friend Paisley like glue. What neither of them realize is that a strange adventure is about to unfold...
Submission to Turn Based Jam by 8 Bits to Infinity, created over the course of 1 month!
This is part 1 of Tama and Paisley's adventures. Please try the other games if you'd like the full story! To play them in order:
- Within Her HeArt (You are here)
- https://shibeyfacegames.itch.io/paisleys-heart-a-magical-girl-origin-story
- https://shibeyfacegames.itch.io/entangled-hearts
- https://shibeyfacegames.itch.io/a-birthday-surprise
Controls, Platforming sections:
- [ARROW KEYS or AWD] to move and jump.
- [DOWN KEY], [S], or [LEFT MOUSE] while over an object or character to interact.
- [LEFT MOUSE] click on buttons to advance text and screens.
Controls, Battle sections:
- [LEFT MOUSE] to select menu commands.
- [RIGHT MOUSE], [DOWN KEY], or [S] to cancel some commands and choose again.
Some battle commands have action elements:
- Rapidly [LEFT MOUSE] click LARGE TARGETS when they appear to boost damage!
- [LEFT MOUSE] click small targets when they appear. Click as many as you can to boost damage!
- [LEFT MOUSE] click flying petals and stars to boost their effects! Click as many as you can!
Art, Game Design, Scenario, and Program by ShibeyFaceGames!
- shibeyfacegames.itch.io
- @ShibeyG on Twitter
Music and Sound Design by Facemelting Solos!
- facemeltingsolos.itch.io
- @Facemeltingsolo on Twitter
Development log
- Within Her HeArt V1-2 Update!Apr 29, 2021
Comments
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Are there multiple endings? Also I loved it so much aaah I've replayed it like a million times
Thanks so much! I'm glad you've been enjoying it, I really appreciate hearing that!
This game was made on a super tight-deadline (and almost missed the submission period to the game jam due to an extended power outage....) so it only has 2 main endings, a good end and a bad end. Spoilers below, in case you haven't found both....
Turn back now if you don't want spoilers.....
Ok, you've been warned. I won't spoil the story element though, however small it is...
The bad end is reached if you are defeated and continue during your playthrough. The good end is achieved by doing a no-defeat playthrough. In hindsight, I don't know how fair/nice this mechanic is, but it does serve a purpose story-wise.
There isn't a HUGE difference between the two endings... most of it is the same, but the bad ending has a stinger at the very end, and the good end has a final happy ending art card.
Shibey, this is SO GOOD!!
This game literally delighted me! I love the story, the visual style, and I really loved the reveal at the end! Somehow I wasn’t expecting it
The battle system is fun; at first I was afraid it was going to be too challenging, but once I figured out how everything works it was just the right difficulty and I got to the end on my first play thru.
The pacing was perfect for a jam game. I like that the story unfolded quickly . . . I sometimes have a problem with taking too long in my own work
Your animation and art are always so cool and individual, and I really loved what you did with all the different paintings here, from the blotches hanging in the air in the first one to the stylish pointilism to the moving platforms in the abstract one. Really good job!
Sorry I’m gushing, I just really enjoyed it XD
Aww, thank you so much!!!
Between all the artwork and discovering that RPG combat is actually hard to build manually, this was a tough one to fit into a jam period. Hence the fact that I just recently added XP and leveling for the 1.2 update!
No worries about the gushing, hearing that you enjoyed it so much made my day! :)
Added it to my “to play” list! ^-^
Thank you! :)
I've just updated to version 1.2, which adds leveling and XP! Both features that I had planned, but got cut during the original jam period due to time.
So good! nice art and i like that the combat active elements are there. lots of scene changes hey.
Platforming and movement was a little clunky is main feedback but really nice. good work
Thank you for playing, and thanks for the feedback! The platforming did get neglected compared to other aspects of development, so I'll keep that in mind if I do any updates.
Nice work as usual! I liked the balance between healing, recovering glamour, and attacking, seemed like you spent a good chunk of time playtesting :)
I really like the animations you've got (Particularly the sleeve slam move). Must have taken quite a bit of time considering it's all hand drawn.
Some transitions would've really added to the polish since you go between scenes so frequently. I like how you "end" the various scenes (The enemies/player change color and it pauses for a second when you're about to enter battle, the victory/fanfare after battles, etc) but there should be a sweep or fade in/out between those scenes as well.
Although the platforming wasn't the main focus, a jump sound would have been good.
(Art nitpicks from someone who's not that good at art) For the main character's head, the eyes bugged me a bit -- she's either missing upper eyelashes or missing eyebrows. I think adding in some upper eyelashes to go with the bottom ones would make sense since the bottom ones are pretty prominent. It'd also be good for the right eye to be smaller since it's a bit further away. On the second character, the hair makes it look like the front of her head is jutting out pretty far. The line weights for all the characters seem a bit sporadic. Since you're animating it it'd probably be best to limit it to 1-2 weights, maybe one for outline and one for internal details.
Thanks for playing! I'm glad you noticed the battle loop I was going for... when I realized that leveling, items, etc weren't going to make the cut, I refocused the combat around the balance you mentioned! I'm happy to hear it worked. I did do quite a bit of playtesting, but credit goes to my wife for giving me a cold dose of reality. She played it twice, and I MAJORLY re-balanced after her first attempt.
The animations definitely took a big chunk of my time, but I'm happy with the overall result! Better transitions are definitely something I'd have liked to add if I had more time. I have no excuse for the jump sound... I'll fix that once uploads are re-enabled (they are close for judging)
Thanks for the feedback on the art! I was trying a different style, as I often do. I tried to simplify everything for easier animating, but not sure if it really saved much time in the end. Line weights are something I've always struggled with, I'll have to make a conscious effort to work on that. I was going to try animating in Clip Studio Paint, which would have given some additional line control, but chickened out on learning a new workflow for the jam. I defaulted back to Adobe Animate (flash), and the paint brush tool is pretty tough to control line weight. There is that pencil tool I guess (sound of crickets...)
As for the characters themselves, I appreciate your thoughts and suggestions on the designs! I was pretty happy with them overall, but I'm glad to get some feedback and hear what's not working from the outside. I don't know that I'd do this style again, but if I do I'll probably refine the character designs!
Very well made story with very creative mechanics. Love all the artwork metaphors from the world and the enemies. Overall love it -- very well made. :3
But damn that last stage was tough. I couldn't recover anything from fighting enemies, and during the boss fight it was very tough to make sure my healing could keep up until I finally decided "meh let's just finish the boss ASAP before it could harm my chars too much" and fortunately it worked... barely.
Some issues though... although I suppose some of them are a little bit much to expect from a game jam:
1. Well... with no levelling system or recovery items (as I said... I know it's too much to expect from a jam game) when I played it I found no reason to engage with the enemies unless I have to and so during the platforming section it becomes a game about just avoiding enemies -- esp. when both of the characters are in full HP/GL. I guess otherwise there is a motivation to recover HP/GL. Is this gameplay intended?
2. In the second artwork, in the area around the boss, the platforming section is a little bit... annoying. After defeating the boss it took me a while trying to jump to the portal m(_ _)m
3. Some of the enemies' attacks... are different in animation only. I'm talking about "Nagging Regret"'s attacks; which either shoots or melee attack but what they do are basically identical. I guess this is not too big of an issue but I do notice it :P
4. For Tama's normal attack: Being able to click just three (or two? I kinda forgot) already gives the full 3 damage attack output. However; it is possible to click up to 6 when lucky (usually I could only click up to 5 tho). I feel like this should be rebalanced -- either by making the full 3 damage attack output only done when clicking at least 4 OR by giving a 4 damage output during lucky attacks when 6 targets get clicked.
P.S.: Nice music from FaceMeltingSolos again. Very awesome
P.S. 2: I just realized moments after the fact that the best strategy to recover HP/GL esp. during the last stage is to leave the weak enemies and then cast drain and use healing spells
Thanks for playing! And thank you for all the feedback, super helpful! I went into this thinking it would be easier to build than an action game, and boy was I wrong.
1. I really, really, really wanted to have more "RPG" elements like leveling, items, equipment, but this one got away from me. At a certain point, to save my sanity, I had to let that all go. I do realize that this makes skipping enemies a good option, but you are correct that I hoped players would pick fights to restore their resources carefully.
2. Thanks for letting me know... I wasn't sure about that area, and I guess it could use a rework.
3. You caught me! I left that just for some visual variety, but yeah, the little guys have only 1 attack basically.
4. Tama's max damage output comes from 4 clicks. I just played to make sure, 1-3 clicks gives 2 damage, and 4+ is 3 damage. You must be much better at click those circles than I am! Maybe I should add a 4 damage tier at 5-6 clicks for skilled clickers.
PS: Yes, he's great! He nailed it again :)
PS 2: You're correct (SPOILERS AFTER THIS TEXT STOP HERE ANYONE WHO HASN'T PLAYED) ----- The weak enemies are intended to help keep your characters fueled in the boss battles. There are a few ways you can use them. The strategy you listed is definitely one of them!
Thanks again for playing, and taking the time to give all this feedback, it's appreciated and very helpful! Hopefully the next one will be for MGGJ2, hehe.
I LOVE your hand drawn UI buttons. The animations were great and the gameplay was solid. I can see a lot of work went in to all the art.
As a trackpad user, I would have appreciated a key to press for the attack/magic interactions, aside from the left click.
Great job!
Thanks for playing! Glad you liked the art, I definitely sunk quite a bit of time into it.
Speaking of time, if I wasn't so busy an additional control scheme would be something I'd have added. In fact, the "[down key] or [S]" to cancel commands was added knowing some people have 1 button mice. I hope it wasn't too hard to play with the trackpad!