Little Eidolons
An open-world rpg where you can catch, train, and battle with over 100 varieties of monsters!
Gameplay Overview
Gameplay is performed by navigating the overworld until you encounter either a wild Eidolon or an opposing trainer, which transitions the game to battle mode. Battle mode uses turn-based mechanics across a grid to allow you to fight - until all foes are defeated!
If you (the little wizard guy) fall in battle, it's an immediate game over! So you'll want to use the rest of your team members to protect them. But there's benefits to getting the finishing hit - if they defeat a wild Eidolon, you'll catch it and add it to your team! And if they defeat a trainer or their Eidolons, said character will drop an Eido Gem, an item you can have a unit pick up during battle to permanently enhance them.
Explore Mode Controls
Arrow Keys: Move player
❎: Pull up team menu, which allows you to view your Eidolons, and toggle party members
Battle Mode Controls
Arrow Keys: Move Cursor
🅾️: Select character, choose a space for them to move, or an enemy/ally for them to perform an action on
❎: Deselect character, pull up unit info sheet
Stat/Types Overview
A Special Note
Credits
Coding, sprites, and sfx were made by SmartAlloc
Music was made by Gruber and Oto
Uses UltimaN3rd's Binary Save System
Uses thisismypassword's shrink08 minifier
Cover art was made by Redlink101
Additional thanks to FReDs72, Heracleum, merwok, ultiman3rd, AcousticLemmon, null, pancelor, morgan, and SquidLight for help, beta testing, and feedback.
Changelog
1.0.1: Resolved an issue where a speedy player could input a second action before a unit's first one finished.
1.0.2: Resolved an issue which allowed players to teleport their units.
1.0.3: Added a new menu theme, compliments of Oto!
1.0.4: Fixed spawn intersection issue, legendary respawn issue, and modified the way the X button affects enemy range display and enemy details display. In addition, buffed the action 'Maximum Jelp'.
1.0.5: Resolved an issue where game bugged out when multiple button presses where made after catching an eidolon, and one where you could teleport the evoker after defeating a foe.
1.0.6: Minor map and volume changes
The big project released at last! ✨
How long did the development (+optimization phase etc..) take since day 1? I guess more than 3-4 months?
Well congrats! 🥂
Thanks Herac! Couldn't have done it without ya helping me from the beginning!
Yep, looks like it took me 4 and a half months. I love that Pico-8 forces me to keep my scope small - I don't think I've ever made a game in less than a year before lol.
you can spam z while attacking to attack more than once, you can cheese through multiple bosses this way. This is how i defeated the champion.(it can crash your game too.). question: can you catch jelpi?
Nice catch! Fixed!
And yeah, you totally can catch 'em. Bet they'd help a bunch with the final boss.
question:can you catch the champion?
glitch(i think): if you catch a boss(aquadynamo) during the boss fight and die in the fight since the monters it summons are wild and not enemy , you cant get the boss to show up anymore and can not get the end text after defeting it.
glitch 2: ALSO monsters can spawn on other monters that will make a soft lock
glitch 3: somethings, u can move in a direction, to fix it i will move the opposite direction and move to direction wanted.
You should be able to catch them, yep. Anything with a yellow health bar should let you.
Huh, thanks for finding those bugs, I'll be sure to look into them! In regards to the 2nd one, is it your monsters spawning on top of them? And if so, at what point in the game?
Very good job on this, I have 2 little nitpicks though:
-
you should probably not be able to repeatedly open/close the popup with holding x.
- it would be convenient to remove the enemy attack range by pressing x and without the popup showing just like you can with your own characters.
I'm curious how you went about storing the map data for a big predefined map? I'm new to pico-8 but the built-in map is really limiting.
Thanks for the input, Les!
In regards to the first, there's really not much I can do without burning a ton of tokens I don't have - it's just the way that Pico-8 handles button presses. You have to hold down the button for like 2 seconds to see said issue though, which I imagine most users won't do.
I was thinking the same thing though in regards to disabling enemy ranges, but are also torn between not wanting players to accidentally disable all enemy ranges just because they wanted to see the details of a specific unit. I'll have to see what I can do.
In regards to the map data, I generated in Tiled, exported it as a json containing an array of Tile IDs, and then compressed the array into a blob of booleans. Said blob is read in during runtime, decompressed back into a bunch of Tile IDs, which are then drawn to the screen if they're visible to the player.
Feel free to reach out to me on the discord server if you want me to detail it further! But if you're just looking for a simple way to get more map space, there's a couple of tools such as https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=46225 to help you out!
Thx a lot for the info, i'm sure you are aware of this but poke(0x5f5c, 255) allows you to disable the repeating btnp without having to make it a toggle. I think btnp is what's causing the repeats?
About the enemy ranges, I think it's better to let people easily disable them since battles are up close and not over large distances they start overlapping quickly.
I actually wasn't aware! And yeah, that's pretty fair. No skin off my back, removing that feature saves me tokens lol. Implemented both of your suggestions.
there is a max number of monters you can hold.
yes, it spawn on each other and it is during a fight.
Very well made game, reminds me of the good old days when gaming sites were good.
EDIT: My favorite Eidolon so far:
Thanks, much appreciated!
And mcman, hopefully that issue is resolved now! And you are correct, there is a limit of 40 Eidolons (not including your Evoker) that you can have in your party.
Found A glitch where if a eidolon on your party defeats an enemy while spamming z, if the player has not moved the evoked yet then the evoked will teleport to the defeated enemy's spot.
Finally caught a Jelpi and made a full team of them, very OP.
Thanks!
More bug fixes were made - I love it when resolving issues actually lowers the token count. I should use the extra room to add in a superboss!
Nice game !
A QoL feature would be to finish the turn quickly. Like, when you just want to move a character, you could move, press Start then select "Finish Turn".
Also, I wish we could release catched Eidolons.
Working on the sequel right now, I'm gonna be sure to implement both!
I can't get the latest version to run when I try to export it to bin or html, it only works when I run the p8.png version.
Sorry I have my own game front end where I see and load all my games from hence why I was keen to use the exe option.
Do not catch the slime at the fence before claiming your starter, it deletes the starters.
I remember playing it a long time ago. Awesome game, but is there a final boss or do you just get Jelpi and dip?!
@randomgoober Yeah there's a final boss, it's at the end of the dungeon that you can catch Jelpi in. And sorry for the late response Pineapple, but Jelpi is in the northern dungeon, when you take the right path after entering.
Seriously? Pico-8 keeps deleting my save files. I lost the one for this one too.
Incredible game, though a bit confusing at times.
The eidolons' variety and color changes are so cool.
Will you publish a map, a guide, and/or a poked... an "encyclopeidolon" ? Also, is it possible to remove eidolons from the inventory ?
In any case, really impressive work ! :D
@Hell_Cat Yo congrats! I actually had to go back into the code to check - looks like it's a 1 in 250 chance!
Also dang, you should really play on a different browser or just download the game so that doesn't keep happening, that's awful!
@Petroletta I probably won't create a guide, but anybody else is always free to make one! Afraid there's no way to delete your eidolons from your inventory. It's very much a proof-of-concept kind of game. Someday I'll make a full game based on this concept, with much more depth and polish!
@Hell_Cat If you have a Pico-8, you can click the lower left hand corner of the above game (little cart icon) to access the cart, which can then be saved to your computer and loaded into your Pico-8.
Elsewise, there's a download link on the itch.io page: https://smartalloc.itch.io/little-eidolons
is there a way i can guarantee a full save if im just playing on the browser? like saving for when i close and reopen the tab, not just using the save points
This is a really good game! I think a lotta the rival fights I encountered ended up more difficult than intended, though; They're often close enough to a generic evoker encounter, which results in an extra 3 or 4 enemy units in the battle. Also, for some reason, their team can reach level 13 but all of mine max out at 12.
Other than that, the game's polished, balanced, and fun :)
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