The Mystical Journey - DSi Browser game
By Daniel Gump. Saturday, 22. August 2009, 13:09:33
The upcoming Nintendo DSi Browser RPG is both my oldest and newest project related to the website. The Mystical Journey started in development on a Commodore 128 in 1995 but quickly moved to MS-DOS, where it was released as an extended demo a few years later with a play style similar to the classic Final Fantasy games. It had smooth-scrolling tile-based levels with NPCs and photographs for backgrounds in fight scenes. In all, the demo contained 13 levels, 5 battle backgrounds, 7 enemies, numerous NPCs, and MIDI music for each level. Characters could fight and cast magic in battle, and pausing the game would bring up a configuration screen.
The Nintendo DSi Browser version will build upon the old extended demo and be made into a full game. Rather than using a tile-based engine, levels will be comprised of giant PNG images of the tilemap for faster scrolling on the browser. The will allow more variety in level graphics since tiles can be blended more easily. The battle engine will be ported in a very similar manner, with all visual effects for magics intact, like waving and rippling. Levels will be released as episodic content so that the storyline can adapt and expand to player requests.
By its nature, TMJ will be single-player, although a battle arena will allow players to fight each other online. The first component of the game to be released will be the battle arena.
A teaser and scroll-test are available as http://dsipaint.com .
WIDGETIZE