This guide aims to provide a detailed explanation of every game mechanic in The Legend of Quintavius. If you have any questions, difficulties, or curiosities, then this is for you.

You don’t have to know any of this to play the game. It’s designed so you can just jump in and figure everything out as you go. All you need to know are the basics: move around, heal allies, and attack monsters. This is simply for anyone who wants to know more.

Since this is a chunky post, here’s a table of contents for your convenience.

• Basic stats
• Character AI
• Morale: Difficulty curve
• Difficulty scaling
• Quintavius’ stats and abilities
• The magic ring
• Soldiers’ and Monsters’ stats and abilities
• Boss’ stats and abilities
• Where to find the lost pages

Another thing I’ll make clear is the terminology I use for describing characters, so it’s not confusing who I’m talking about. The first is of course “character,” which just refers to any and all persons in the game. “Soldier” and “ally” refers to anyone in your party fighting alongside you. “Enemy” refers to anyone who fights against you and your party, and “monster” refers to most standard enemies, while “boss” refers to more powerful and unique enemies. “Target” refers to whoever a specified character is attacking.

Greul is a little different because he isn’t a boss, but he has boss-like qualities. You could say that he’s more of a miniboss. He’s basically just a very strong monster.

“Player” can refer to either Quintavius or you yourself, the person playing the game. Sometimes the two terms can be used interchangeably, but other times the distinction matters. It just depends on the context.

Basic stats

All characters start at max health, which is of course the most health they can have. All damage always reduces the health of all characters by 1. This means a character’s max health is a measure of how many times they can take damage.

After taking damage, most characters are immune to damage for a brief moment (0.2 seconds). Quintavius has an additional 0.4 seconds of invincibility frames after that, unless you’re in hardmode (see Difficulty scaling). Theroth has no i-frames.

Characters can move in 4 directions, up, down, left, and right. In Stencyl, 1 unit of speed is equal to 10 pixels per second, so a character’s movement speed in pixels per second is 10x their listed value.

Attack speed is the time it takes for a character to attack. When a character attacks, they play an animation, and at some point during that animation, damage is dealt or a projectile is fired. The time it takes to do that after the animation begins is what I call a “windup.” Then after that, there’s some amount of time before the character can attack again.

For example, Quintavius has an attack speed of 0.7, with 0.3 windup. This means that when he attacks it takes 0.3 seconds for him to fire, and 0.4 seconds after that before he can attack again.

A character with 0 windup instantly deals damage or fires their projectile.

Most characters actually have one of only two attack speeds, either a slower 1.6 seconds with 0.4 windup, or a faster 0.8 seconds with 0 windup. So because of that, and also for simplicity and ease of understanding, I’m listing the attack speed of characters below as “fast” or “slow” next to their exact value. You don’t have to know the exact value, you just see that a character in particular is a fast attacker or a slow attacker in general.

Character AI

Soldiers and monsters, your allies and most enemies, have an AI that controls their actions in battles. The first thing they do is look for a target character to pursue, usually one closest to them. Then they move towards their target, navigating around obstacles and other characters in the way. Then once they reach their target, they begin attacking until the target is defeated or some other interruption happens.

Most characters are melee attackers, dealing damage if their target is close enough to them.

• Strategies: Most melee enemies have a windup time before they deal damage, so you can allow them to collide with you and begin their attack animation, then move away from them at just the right moment, effectively dodging the attack.

Other characters can attack their targets by firing a projectile, preferring to keep their distance to avoid taking damage themselves. Projectiles have a set speed and can pierce a certain number of targets before they disappear, and in most cases they follow the same 4-way movement. So ranged attackers have to line themselves up with their target on either the X or Y axis before firing.

As you can imagine with 20 or so characters all fighting each other at once, things get complicated, and characters need to be able to adapt to the situation. Most characters will attack a target they weren’t already pursuing if they just happen to bump into them. If a monster targets or bumps into a ranged soldier and damages them, the soldier will move away instead of continuing to attack their target. And soldiers won’t look for a monster if there aren’t any, or if they need healing, and instead they’ll try to return to Quintavius.

Notice how I say things like “try” and “usually.” Because as you can imagine with 20 or so characters all fighting each other at once, things get complicated.

There’s also some characters with special/unique abilities that bend or even break these rules, so those will be described with them.

Morale: Difficulty curve

Because this game clearly isn’t complicated enough, and because I wanted it to be even more interesting and dynamic, I wanted to try my hand at adjusting the difficulty of battles dynamically.

The first way I did this was by increasing the difficulty curve with a stat called “Morale.” It makes soldiers weaker and monsters stronger the closer the party gets to the dungeon. Morale is +1 in the town, 0 in the fields, -1 in the forest, -2 in the mountains, and -3 in the dungeon, where a positive value boosts soldiers and a negative value boosts monsters. Quintavius and bosses are not affected by Morale.

The way each character is affected depends on whether they’re classified as either “fast” with a high movement speed or “tough” with high max health, because usually a fast character is not as tough, and a tough character is not as fast. Any character with 10 or more movement speed is considered fast, and any character with less than 10 speed is considered tough.

The idea is that the weaknesses of soldiers are worsened, while the strengths of monsters are enhanced. So tough soldiers will get slower and lose speed, fast soldiers will get weaker and lose health, tough monsters will get tougher and gain health, and fast monsters will get faster and gain speed. Speed is adjusted by Morale flatly, and health is adjusted by 1.5x Morale, rounded up or down (that’s +2 health for 1 Morale, +3 health for 2 Morale, and +5 health for 3 Morale).

Interestingly, since Morale is a positive value in the town, it has the opposite effect and improves the soldiers’ weaknesses while lessening the monsters’ strengths. In the fields, everyone’s stats remain their base value. I also list the values of characters’ stats in the dungeon, where Morale is most extreme, next to their base stats.

Difficulty scaling

The second way difficulty is adjusted is to make the game easier if the player is struggling, to try and figure out what they’re struggling with and adjust that accordingly. It’s different from the difficulty curve, which is applied after winning battles to increase difficulty. In some cases, difficulty scaling can cancel out the difficulty curve.

Difficulty scaling is applied every time Quintavius is defeated and the player receives a game over.

First, every ally that was defeated before Quintavius gains +1 max health, up to a maximum of +5. The game assumes they struggled to survive, so it makes them a little stronger.

If the party was fighting a boss, or if Greul was present, their max health is reduced. For Greul it’s -1 to a minimum of -10 (65 max health), for the gnome it’s -1 to a minimum of -5 (30 max health), for the dragon it’s -2 to a minimum of -20 (30 max health), and for Theroth it's -5 to a minimum of -50 (200 max health). This makes boss battles less difficult the more you lose to them.

During regular battles, if more than a third of the total army of monsters was defeated, that total count is reduced by 5. If more than two thirds of the army was defeated, it’s reduced by 10. The total number of monsters can’t fall below 60. The game assumes that you aren’t really struggling, so it just shortens the time it takes to win the next attempt. This doesn’t apply to the gnome battle, where the army is endless.

Otherwise, if you lost the battle quickly, the game determines if either Quintavius was too weak or the monsters were too strong. If any other allies were also defeated, the max health of all monsters is reduced by 1, to a minimum of -5. If Quintavius was the only defeated party member, then he gets +0.1 seconds of invincibility frames, up to a maximum of +0.6 seconds (a full 1 second in total).

Note that this also doesn’t apply to the gnome battle. Skeletons won’t lose max health because they already have only 5, and Quintavius won’t gain more i-frames.

By typing “hardmode” on the title screen, you can start the game without difficulty scaling if you don’t want it enabled. It also removes your extra invincibility frames, so you have 0.2 seconds like all other characters.

Quintavius’ stats and abilities

Ranged attacker

• Max health: 20
• Movement speed: 10 / 100 pps
• Attack speed: Fast (0.7 seconds, 0.3 windup)
• Damage over time: Attacks deal additional damage every second after the initial hit, up to 5 times (this means a counter tracks how long a character has had this “debuff,” and if they are hit by this attack again, it resets back to 5).

Fireballs

• Projectile speed: 50 / 500 pps
• Piercing: 5 or 1 (see magic ring)
• Doesn’t collide with tiles (except during dragon boss battle)

Quintavius also has the unique ability to heal allies, which the player controls by holding down the heal key. While healing, all allies within 100 pixels of Quintavius have their health increased every 0.4 seconds, and Quintavius’ mana is reduced by 1. He has 10 mana in total, and at 0 mana, he cannot heal allies.

The amount healed is divided among the allies, so the more allies you’re healing, the less each ally is healed individually. The exact equation is “heal amount = (ally’s max health / 8) / number of allies healed,” and this amount is rounded to a whole number. Additionally, if an ally is “in danger,” meaning they have 3/8 or less of their max health (just under half health), they’re healed by 1 more health point. Lastly, the final amount healed can’t be less than 1.

• Strategies: If you’re trying to heal an ally in danger while your other allies are fine, you can try to position yourself away from them, so the one in danger gets all the mana.

While the heal key is not held down, mana recharges by 1 every 0.4 seconds in the fields, every 0.6 seconds in the forest, every 0.7 seconds in the mountains, not at all in the caves, and every 1.2 seconds in the dungeon. The rate is determined by the amount of sunlight in the environment.

See Theroth’s stats and abilities below for the additional abilities Quintavius gains during the final boss battle.

The magic ring

The magic ring is my way of adding optional playstyles to the game. It has a different effect depending on which hand Quintavius wears it on.

By default it’s on his left hand, which allows his fireballs to pierce up to 5 enemies before dissipating. This is an active playstyle for people who want to juggle the responsibilities of both healing allies and helping them fight monsters.

But on the right hand, Quintavius’ fireballs lose their piercing very shortly after they’re fired. Instead, Quintavius has healing over time: +1 health every 10 seconds in the fields, 12 seconds in the forest, 13 seconds in the mountains, 20 seconds in the caves, and 15 seconds in the dungeon. This is more casual, for anyone who wants to focus more on healing and dodging monsters, making battles slower but slightly easier.

• Strategies: You can still hit multiple enemies by firing right next to them, so the fireballs hit them before they lose piercing.

It’s meant for you to choose which hand to wear the ring on at some point early in the game, depending on how you want to play, and you can change your mind any time.

• Strategies: If you can juggle another task, you can swap the ring from one hand to the other mid-battle as needed.

Soldiers’ and Monsters’ stats and abilities

Fredrickson

Tough / Melee attacker

• Max health: 45
• Movement speed: 9 / 90 pps (10 in town, 6 in dungeon)
• Attack speed: Slow (1.6 seconds, 0.4 windup)
• Takes attention: This character forces the character they damage to target them instead of whoever they might’ve been targeting instead (a “taunt” ability).

Vanguard

Tough / Melee attacker

• Max health: 35
• Movement speed: 8 / 80 pps (9 in town, 5 in dungeon)
• Attack speed: Slow (1.6 seconds, 0.4 windup)
• Shield: Characters with a shield can block melee attacks, as long as they’re facing the attacker and aren’t also attacking themselves. They will also delay their next attack to block an incoming attack.
• Takes attention

Swordsman

Fast / Melee attacker

• Max health: 25 (27 in town, 20 in dungeon)
• Movement speed: 10 / 100 pps
• Attack speed: Fast (0.8 seconds, 0 windup)

Dmitri

Tough / Melee attacker

• Max health: 40
• Movement speed: 8 / 80 pps (5 in dungeon)
• Attack speed: Slow (1.6 seconds, 0.4 windup)
• Shield
• Takes attention

Paladin

Tough / Melee attacker

• Max health: 35
• Movement speed: 9 / 90 pps (6 in dungeon)
• Attack speed: Slow (1.6 seconds, 0.4 windup)

Mystic

Tough / Ranged attacker

• Max health: 30
• Movement speed: 9 / 90 pps (6 in dungeon)
• Attack speed: Slow (1.6, 0.4 windup)

Magma spheres

• Projectile speed: 15 / 150 pps
• Piercing: 3
• Collides with tiles

Nevariel

Fast / Melee/ranged attacker (see below)

• Max health: 30 (25 in dungeon)
• Movement speed: 11 / 110 pps
• Attack speed: Fast (0.8, 0 windup)
• High evasion: This character dodges all attacks while they’re moving.

Double bladed sword

• Projectile speed: 50 / 500 pps
• Piercing: infinite
• Doesn’t collide with tiles

Nevariel has a unique ability to throw her weapon, every 5 to 10 seconds or so, as long as she isn’t already attacking an enemy at melee distance. Her weapon pierces all enemies and slows down before returning to her like a boomerang.

Assassin

Fast / Melee attacker

• Max health: 20 (15 in dungeon)
• Movement speed: 11 / 110 pps
• Attack speed: Fast (0.8 seconds, 0 windup)
• High evasion

Archer

Fast / Ranged attacker

• Max health: 25 (20 in dungeon)
• Movement speed: 11 / 110 pps
• Attack speed: Fast (0.8 seconds, 0 windup)
• High evasion

Arrows

• Projectile speed: 50 / 500 pps
• Piercing: 1
• Doesn’t collide with tiles

Goblin

Fast / Melee attacker

• Max health: 15
• Movement speed: 10 / 100 pps (9 in town, 13 in dungeon)
• Attack speed: Slow (1.6 seconds, 0.4 windup)

Orc

Tough / Melee attacker

• Max health: 20 (25 in dungeon)
• Movement speed: 9 / 90 pps
• Attack speed: Slow (1.6 seconds, 0.4 windup)

Troll

Tough / Melee attacker

• Max health: 50 (52 in forest, 55 in dungeon)
• Movement speed: 5 / 50 pps
• Attack speed: Very slow (2.0 seconds, 0.4 windup)
• Knockback: This character will shove aside any other characters in their way while they pursue their target. When they damage their target, they’ll also push them back a little.

Greul

Tough & Fast / Melee/ranged attacker (see below)

• Max health: 75 (85 in dungeon)
• Movement speed: 12 / 120 pps (13 in dungeon)
• Attack speed: Slow (1.6 seconds, 0.4 windup)
• Takes attention
• Knockback

Axe

• Projectile speed: 50 / 500 pps
• Piercing: infinite
• Collides with tiles

Greul’s Morale gives him a flat boost to both health and speed in the dungeon. In the mountains, his stats are the base value.

Greul will also throw his weapon every few seconds, similar to Nevariel. However, after he throws it, it slows down and falls to the ground, and he has to retrieve it. He cannot attack without it.

Greul is notorious for waiting to enter battle until his opponents have been weakened by his minions. In the mountains, he only joins partway through, and in the dungeon he flees when he’s about to be defeated, returning a little while later with 20 health recovered.

Boss’ stats and abilities

Gnome

Ranged attacker

• Max health: 35
• Movement speed: 12 / 120 pps
• Attack speed: Slow (1.6 seconds, 0.4 windup)
• Cannot be set on fire

Magic orbs

• Projectile speed: 15 / 150 pps
• Piercing: 5
• Doesn’t collide with tiles

Being the only enemy who is a true ranged attacker with no melee attacks, the gnome will try to avoid you and your allies. To keep his distance, he’ll try to run circles around the battlefield.

• Strategies: The easiest and fastest way to defeat him is to get your allies to surround him and prevent him from escaping.

Every few seconds, he will stop and perform a ritual to summon skeletons to fight for him, if there aren't already enough skeletons in combat. Skeletons attack quickly and are very difficult to dodge, but they’re also very weak.

• Strategies: Setting a skeleton on fire just once will ensure their defeat, because Quintavius’ fire deals damage over time 5 times, and skeletons only have 5 health.

Skeleton

Melee attacker

• Max health: 5
• Movement speed: 10 / 100 pps
• Attack speed: Fast (0.8 seconds, 0 windup)

Dragon

Ranged attacker

• Max health: 50
• Movement speed: 0
• Attack speed: Very slow (7 ±3 seconds)
• Cannot be set on fire
• Damage over time

Magma vomit

• Projectile speed: 40 / 400 pps
• Piercing: infinite
• Collides with tiles, until enraged (see below)

The dragon doesn’t move and deals contact damage, preventing you from moving past her. Instead she periodically leans forwards and spews several projectiles at you. The average time between each attack is 7 seconds, but this can vary by up to 3 seconds. She might take 10 seconds to attack, and then attack again 4 seconds later.

She has 2 projectiles that she spits in a few different patterns. One is a ball of magma that falls to the ground and explodes with a small area of effect, and the other is a fireball that flies straight and sets you on fire, dealing damage to you once every second for 5 seconds (the same as Quintavius’ DoT).

However, there is also water in the scene, which douses you and stops the damage over time early whenever you step into it.

Her attacks will collide with tiles, allowing you to hide behind them, until her theme loops back to the start for the second time. Then she will become enraged, indicated by a roar, after which her projectiles no longer collide with tiles.

Unlike all other enemies, the dragon is defeated when she falls to 1/8th of her max health.

Theroth

Melee/ranged attacker (see below)

• Max health: 250
• Movement speed: 7 / 70 pps
• Attack speed: see below
• Cannot be set on fire

Strange matter

• Projectile speed: random
• Piercing: infinite
• Doesn’t collide with tiles

Theroth doesn’t stop moving when he collides with you, instead trampling you and dealing contact damage.

Theroth follows an attack pattern, where every few seconds he performs a unique ability.

• First, if Quintavius is within striking distance, he winds up for 0.6 seconds and then swings his extendable chain sword, dealing damage up to about 200 pixels away from him in a straight line. If enough time passes without Quintavius ever being within this striking distance, Theroth moves on to the next attack in his attack pattern.
• Next he stops and sprays projectiles in a wide area in front of him for a few seconds, which fall to the floor and splat, remaining there for 10 seconds. In phase 1, these projectiles instantly defeat Quintavius.
• Then he will attack with his chain sword again. If Quintavius never gets close enough, Theroth moves to his next attack.
• Next he stomps the floor, causing a few holes to appear around the arena, creating small obstacles that Theroth is tall enough to walk over but Quintavius needs to move around.
• After that, he spews projectiles again. Then he returns to the start of his attack pattern.

In phase 1, Quintavius can charge a spell while he isn’t moving, which grants him a duration of i-frames at the start of phase 2 equal to the time he spent casting the spell in phase 1. Theroth will end phase 1 after his theme finishes playing, performing a cinematic drain ability that has no effect on gameplay. This triggers a cutscene that leads to phase 2.

In phase 2, Quintavius gains his i-frames and additional new abilities. Theroth’s projectiles no longer instantly defeat him, and his heal ability, which now recharges every 0.4 seconds again, now cleanses Theroth’s projectiles. Quintavius also throws 4 fireballs in quick succession whenever he attacks, and they also destroy Theroth’s projectiles. Theroth doesn’t have i-frames so that every fireball will damage him.

Where to find all lost pages

There are 13 in total. I won’t point out their exact location directly, but I will tell you what scenes or areas they’re in so you know where to look. And look carefully; some of them are very well hidden.

The first page is in the cutscene that plays before the title screen. If you missed it the first time, you can wait on the title screen until the song ends, or type “cutscene.”

6 pages are in each of the areas you explore; the fields, forest, mountains, caves, stronghold, and dungeon.

There’s a page in the town hall, at the old wizard’s tower, and where you fight Theroth. And there’s a page in each of the 3 ending scenes (and you have to be quick with that last one).

If you’re still stuck, here are some more hints.

After you’ve found them all… what do you do with them? What do these symbols mean? Maybe it’s written down somewhere else . . .

I hope this guide was helpful or insightful. Like I said, ultimately the gameplay is about people running around and hitting each other with pointy sticks. The fact that there’s so much going on that you should only keep track of the information you need, is really the whole point. So take from this what you will, and I hope you have fun playing.

I just released a minor update to The Legend of Quintavius. It may take a little longer to load again with the new project file, and I also ran into something weird over on Itch.io when I tried to jump to a save point and it broke something, but I fixed it by erasing my save data (which you can do by typing “erase” on the title screen). So just let me know if anything happens.

The most notable changes in this update are some of the things that other people have suggested. You can now attack and heal with the mouse and skip game over screens sooner, and the button for the magic ring now has a fire and light icon for each playstyle, so you get a better sense of what it does.

I also did my best to make obstacles in battles easier to see. Someone said they should have more noticeable outlines, which makes perfect sense because characters have them, too, and that is in fact the same reason why I gave characters outlines. Sometimes I just don’t think of something, which is why I look for anyone who might have thought of it.

I was also asked to alleviate the dragon’s damage over time somehow, because it is pretty rough. You take damage every second for 5 seconds every time you’re hit by a fireball. But in thinking of ways to help, I got the idea to add more water to the scene and make it douse you, stopping the DoT. You just have to get to it fast enough. It’s a great new game mechanic.

Lastly, I fixed the logic error with Theroth’s difficulty scaling. But I haven’t fixed anything else from my known bugs list yet. Those are bugs that I knew of before launch, but couldn’t figure out how to fix. But since they don’t mess with the game or the story, I’m not prioritizing them. You might not even notice them.

There is one bug, though, that causes the game to soft-lock after winning the dungeon battle, before you talk to Greul. That was submitted to me in a bug report (thanks to that person for letting me know), but as much as I tried, I couldn’t reproduce it, which makes me wonder if it has a really low chance of happening. I just hope updating the game engine will have fixed it, but I’ll keep an eye out.

I’m still working on an official trailer, which seems a little late at this point but I just want it for anyone in the future. Then after that I’ll work on putting together the soundtrack for release. I also still plan to write blog posts about the game every now and then, and of course do anything else that might need my attention whenever it comes up.

One post in particular will be some sort of guide that explains the game’s mechanics for anyone interested or looking for helpful hints. It’ll also have some clues to finding the lost pages. I have a draft for it, I’m just still trying to figure out how to organize the information.

Before any of that, though, I’ll take a little break, because it’s been hard to keep up. And there’s also a pixel artwork I want to make. But right now it’s late, and I’m tired.

Happy Easter, by the way.

I'm almost done with my 1.1 update, I just need to keep testing it some more and make sure it doesn't crash and burn.

My head is full of goo, and that’s really slowed me down. I don’t know when I’ll be able to release an update. But, among other things, it will include a reloadable title screen cutscene, skippable game over screens, exit-able secret wizard scene, and a fix for Theroth’s difficulty scaling that I discovered is actually just a logic error that I made. Oops.

It looks like my game hasn’t been setting any computers on fire, which is a huge relief. I was ready to push out emergency patches but it looks like that won’t be necessary. There’s just some minor changes I’m looking to implement, some of which are some of the bugs I have listed but which don’t really have a big impact on the game, so it’s no rush.

I’ll need to take my time. Because…

Well it turns out Stencyl released their 4.1 build, on the SAME DAY I published my game.

Now there are more tools to work with and help me find problems, and even some new and convenient features. Apparently they even fixed right click not working, which is awesome because I wanted to add mouse controls to gameplay, left click for attack and right click for heal, so now I might be able to do that. So I downloaded the new version.

However…

Things in my game are broken now that weren’t before. And I don’t really know how to go back, nor do I even want to. I could probably figure it out pretty easily, but… right click tho. I just need to do extensive testing on my game again, before I publish an update.

There’s still so much to do, and I’ve been taking a moment to breathe because I’ve been busy with a lot of things. So I’m very grateful this launch went about as smoothly as it could’ve.

I’ll drop some more tips and tricks here real quick.

• You can dodge most monsters’ attacks by letting them collide with you and starting their attack animation, then running away immediately so you’re out of range (this doesn’t work with skeletons).
• Always attack Greul, he’s the win condition in every battle he’s in. Set him on fire and run away, and see if you can get your party to target him.
• You can go right up next to the dragon, where only one of her attacks can reach you, so if you’re fast enough you can defeat her before you burn to death.
• I haven’t heard of any trouble with Theroth yet, but I’ll say this anyway. He’s invincible at first, you just have to avoid him until he triggers the next cutscene. You cast a spell when you aren’t moving, which will help the more time you spend on it (I am avoiding spoilers).

I’m releasing the official, finished, 1.0 version of The Legend of Quintavius tomorrow on February the 29th.

I meant to announce this earlier. There’s just been a lot of last minute work to do, as there always is, to the point that I’ve had to prioritize. I have a new bug list and bug report form, and I’ll get started on future patches soon, because I am so sure that there’s many things, even totally obvious things, that I’ve just completely missed. But I set this date as my hard deadline, after delaying it yet again and again, and I’m sticking with it.

I’ve made all save points accessible by default, so if something weird does happen you might be able to bypass it. If you played during the open beta, you might have a save point already, so you can start over by jumping to the prologue. It’s like a book or a movie. If you choose, you can skim through or skip to any chapter. It’s also just a nice feature. I see no reason to remove it.

The most important thing for you to know is that I’ve discovered that this game has a memory requirement, which is about 4 GB. If you don’t have that much available RAM, the game can’t finish loading. So I put a warning before the loading screen, because that’s a lot for a web game. And there’s a funny story about how I found out about this, for another day.

There’s several other things I just ran out of time for, so I’ll get to them when I can. They include an official trailer and soundtrack release. The problem with those is that it’s hard for me to export videos on my computer because I don’t have a lot of storage space left. I might just release the soundtrack on Newgrounds before Youtube.

I also just want to talk about the game. There’s a lot to it. So expect more blog posts over the next indeterminate extent of time.

If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to me. I am a loner, and not very good at talking to people, but I don’t want that to make me seem unapproachable.

And thank you for being patient with me while I was making this game.

I want to talk about two of my games. The first is Quantron’s Game, which I’ve finally finished and just released after, well… 5 months. After I said it’d take 3 weeks. It took so long that the next Ludum Dare is starting now.

The second game is The Legend of Quintavius. This is also the explanation post I said I’d write. Will it be coherent and well-organized?

…No. TL;DR, I still don’t know what I’m doing.

My original plan for Quantron’s Game was to jam for 3 weeks straight and make a bigger game for Ludum Dare Extra that I could in just a weekend, as I’ve said before. But that plan evolved into a series of potential backup plans as I began to see the errors of my ways. I started this project even though I knew I’d be away from home for a week, thinking I’d have far more free time to work on it than I actually did. Then I got my work schedule, and I had to go to work for 6 days straight right before my time away. So I thought maybe I could still make half of the game for the jam, maybe the first 2 worlds, and release the other half in a content update sometime later. But ultimately I was only able to release just one… level. And it wasn’t even finished.

Needless to say, I overscoped. I can’t believe I fell into this trap, even after making over 10 other games. I truly cannot fathom how I thought I’d make this in 3 weeks.

For this game, instead of experimenting with one or a few ideas, I designed it to be as cookie-cutter as possible, so obviously based on other games and genres, and I tried to simplify every mechanic as much as I could. Not just because I like them and wanted to explore them, but because I thought they’d be easier to program, and therefore viable for a jam.

Then I went and made an entire AI for the second player character to be able to play the game itself. And it isn’t even good enough to play alone. You have to help it.

5 worlds is a lot of content, and I really should’ve just cut most of it. If I had been on track to finish the game before the jam deadline, I would have forced myself to. But after I missed the deadline, and for this game in particular, I just couldn’t bring myself to remove all this stuff. And instead of scrapping a project and moving on like most probably smart game devs, I tend to decide that, at a certain point, I’m in too deep and can’t turn back now. So I do more work, and then I feel that way even more, yet the goal post seems to be moving farther away. It deeply upsets me that I seem unable to fully realize my vision, even if I try to course correct.

I think Fitzcarraldo from the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows pretty much sums it up.

I guess it’s one of those artist problems, that you can’t ever make something exactly the way you imagined it. And at this point, I realize the jam was just an excuse for me to pursue this idea. It was never a jam-sized game to begin with.

For crying out loud, I composed not a single song, but a whole soundtrack. For a failed jam game.

Remember when I said I’d never call myself a musician? Well I want to retract that statement because that’s not what I meant. I now realize I don’t really like that viewpoint, and that it might even be a little hurtful. And I will not hesitate to reevaluate a viewpoint of mine if I learn this to be the case.

I am of the belief that if you make art, you’re an artist. Because that is what an artist is, by definition. What I meant to say is that I’m not a professional musician. It's not my career, not how I make a living, and I don’t plan on making it that. I’m an amateur musician, but still a musician nonetheless. The same is true for pixel art. I don’t even make it consistently, but I do make it. Sometimes. Thinking this way, it turns out I’m a lot of things, which isn’t surprising since I make games by myself. I just have a hard time seeing myself as a professional… any of them.

I’m an artist with impostor syndrome who hates his own art. But while that isn’t really new around here, it isn’t much of an exaggeration. I’m proud of every game I’ve made, but lately I’ve been finding myself frustrated with the process.

Reaper and Sleeper are a lot like the 2 vastly different mindsets I have right now. One of them wants to eradicate every flaw, every deadly glitch, and make the world perfect, a task that we all know is impossible. The other wants to abandon the whole thing, to shut it down and start over, and to try again a different way or with something else entirely.

It’s about my inability to vanquish my own creation. I care so much about my games that I can’t let these things go, and at the same time I feel like I have to just get it over with and release something broken if I ever want to be done with it. And I know there'll be people who won't read any of this (not that I blame them) and then shit on the game because of how many bugs there are, and I am sorry but I’m not going to fix all of them. I don’t think I can. I will still try, but the game is jank on a fundamental level, and I have to move on at some point.

No game has suffered more from this struggle in my head than that ever-infamous “one game I’m making.”

After I graduated and went looking for a job in the industry, I found it rather difficult. I began to think I was simply not capable of doing the things that I earned a degree doing. So I began the year of 2022 planning to focus on something else, to finally finish The Legend of Quintavius. But everything slowed down after I had to get a day job. So I started making some hard decisions.

For a long time, I had stubbornly wanted to make the dragon sprite myself. But I recently decided it would be more practical to commission someone far more experienced in the art of drawing dragons, someone who could do it far better than I ever would have.

I also released the game unfinished and called it open beta. It’s important to get your game in the hands of players, because it will never really be finished. You can’t make it perfect, and there’s always something more you could do. It’s why scope is such a big deal. But I also released early because I figured it’d be helpful to know what bugs would actually bother people. Yet to this day, my google form still has 0 responses. I have no feedback. It’s just the fact of the matter that, without cold hard criticism, I can’t get an objective look at my work. No, I haven’t really been properly marketing this game lately, but I did try to.

I decided that I'm not going to fix most of what I considered to be bugs, for that reason and many others. It’s just not worth it. Of course I’m not allowing any game-breaking glitches, but if the archer gets stuck under a rock, or runs off into the wilderness and gets swarmed by orcs, that’s not a bug. That’s a feature. I talked about this more in another devlog, about how the fog of war makes the game more realistic, its characters more like real people, even if it isn’t great game design. At the very least, if I can inform players of every known bug, that helps.

The gameplay is just an ambitious idea I had 4 years ago. What really matters is the experience itself.

It’s a labor of love, a carefully crafted work of art, a world and characters that I truly care about. Every game I make is a fan game of something, and this one is a fan game of the entire fantasy genre, of stories like Lord of the Rings and Eragon. And what started as the second game I’ve ever made became the biggest game I’ve ever made. Part of me believes that it could be successful, reach new audiences, maybe even form its own community. I already have ideas for potential sequels. It’s one of my greatest achievements, and I’ll never regret making it. I’ve given as much of my soul as I could to it, and it’s never enough for my own insurmountable standards. I’ve given up on it several times. Part of me thinks this game has been a failure the whole time, that I should just get it done and move on without regard for quality, or not even do that and just cancel it, because it was never going to go anywhere and nobody cares about it. I feel like I don’t care enough about it, that I didn’t work hard enough or that I wasn’t smart enough. I’ve been wasting my life on it. I’ve been questioning whether I even want to do this anymore.

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Why am I still doing this? This isn’t a hobby anymore, if it ever even was. I don’t make games for fun. Sometimes it is and sometimes it isn’t. But I don’t make them for money, either. It would be nice if games could pay for my existence fees, but it still seems far from a viable career. And that was never my main reason anyway.

I make games because I have to. Because it’s the only thing I can do. The only thing I do, at all. I am compelled by something to create. Any time I’m not making games, I’m thinking about them while I do something else, or nothing at all. It’s what I decided to go to college for. It’s what I have a degree in, what I accrued student debt for. In case you were starting to wonder, I’m not going anywhere, because there’s nowhere else for me to go. If there’s anything I’m to do, it’s this. Nothing else is more difficult for me, but nothing else is for me. It’s the only purpose I’ve ever had.

Every game I make has a story. Every game I make is part of one big story. That’s why I couldn’t stop myself from making Quantron’s Game, why I refused to give up on it even though it drove me crazy. It connects every single game I’ve ever made. It shows how everything is part of just one universe, and how it was always meant to become something so much more, a larger story that I no longer feel I will ever be able to tell by making games.

I’m not giving up because it’s difficult, I started in the first place and I’m still going, because it’s difficult. That’s why all my games are so hard, because otherwise I feel like they’re not worth playing. And that’s one thing in particular I’ve been trying to figure out, too. How do I design a game that’s both fun and easy AND still challenging, that’s rewarding to play instead of just rewarding to beat?

But I feel like I’ve reached the limit to what I can do by myself. That’s why I asked for help with the dragon. And there are even bigger games I would love to make, games that I know I could never make alone. I have thought about how I might put together a team, but that’s a whole other set of challenges that I don’t think I’m ready for right now.

So what am I going to do? Or rather, try to do? Because I haven’t been following through on my plans. I’m tired of saying I’ll do something and then beating myself up for not being able to do it.

Well, I want to return to The Legend of Quintavius, and I will not start making another game until it’s finished. And instead of banging my head against the wall trying to solve bugs, I’ll take a more artistic approach and focus on refining the story, visuals, and music, one last time. Hopefully this means I’ll be able to meet the approximate deadline I have in mind, but I still won't say when that is because I don’t really trust myself anymore.

It will be the last big web game I make for the foreseeable future. I just don’t have enough time to keep making them at this rate anymore, not without stressing myself out.

I still want to make games sometimes. After all, I know more about this field than any other. But they have to be either tiny, simple web games made during a weekend, like for a game jam, or a single large project with no deadlines that I work on every now and then, for fun or maybe to sell eventually. But these medium-sized experiments just aren’t feasible.

Instead, I’m going to focus on doing something completely different. I’ve been reevaluating how I might tell more of my tall tale in a much easier medium. Because it doesn’t have to be just games. Stories come in all shapes and sizes. And for my next story that I’ve been itching to tell for years, one I originally planned to be a game, I think I found an even better way to create it.

But I won’t make any promises. I can’t make any promises. Because I put all the skill points I had in game development, and while a few of them will transition over to this new idea, there’s a lot more I’ll need to learn.

I feel bad for venting, but maybe you relate to some of these things. If so, then I just hope this is something you needed to hear.

Here’s a more positive look at the Quantron’s Game situation. Maybe the one level I did end up releasing for Ludum Dare 53 was enough for a game jam after all. Something that explores the idea and gets it in people’s hands. That’s the whole point. It doesn’t have to work, it’s just a neat little thing that I made.

Thank you for reading.