Res Judicata: Vale of Myth
In Res Judicata: Vale of Myth, journey into a 30 hour dark alt-history fantasy JRPG about a gruff Scotsman and his dysfunctional allies battling monsters across the old world.
Res Judicata: Vale of Myth is a thirty hour JRPG developed by a team of twelve people over five years. It runs on “RPGMaker MV”, which provides a 2D RPG engine for PC and mobile platforms. The game follows Garbhan, a gruff Scotsman, Francis, a bard notorious for his utter lack of singing talent, and Daron, a chivalrous ex-knight notorious for skirt-chasing. They are joined by a female ronin, Eve, and a shapeshifting spirit. They battle their way across the old world, come face-to-face with the leader of the Templar Order, and even journey through the land of the dead. The game is split between a physical world and a Shinto-influenced spirit realm. Spirits provide the world’s magic, and they pass freely between the physical and spirit realms. Vale of Myth is both new and familiar, highlighting the many wonders (and horrors) of our world.
Narrative
Game Design
Leadership
Res Judicata Screenshots
Systems
I designed a rumor system that allows NPCs to speak about the state of their town. Each rumor defines dialogue and game conditions including area, job and social class. These conditions ensure NPCs speak consistently about rumors currently affecting them. For example, say a merchant NPC was going to talk about bandits, but the player already killed the bandits. As a result, the NPC will instead thank the player or speak about another problem.
Since Res Judicata uses many terms, pressing a button during dialogue opens a popup window that briefly defines all terms in the current dialog box.
Characters
Each Player Character (PC) has a character arc, keepsake, religion, set of values and fears, backstory, social class, and sin. PCs have unique combat, passive, and trained skills. Because teamwork is an important theme, PCs can learn trained skills from each other. In addition, PCs have gameplay benefits outside of combat. For example, when the player first crosses into France, a guard speaks to the player in French. Francis the Bard says he will translate. All future dialogue (regardless of language) appears in English.
Accessible by Design
Vale of Myth is accessible by design. With that in mind, there are five difficulties for combat and three for puzzles. Sound effects and music have closed captioning. A log records recent changes to items, experience, skills, and gold. Players with sensitive eyes can disable screen flashes entirely.
Skills are explained to the player before use to reduce memorization. This includes an estimate of damage dealt, cost to use, element, and status effects removed or inflicted. Quests are tracked in a journal and enemy weaknesses are indicated to the player in battle.
Healing items use percentages so cheap items don’t become ineffective. Players can hold up to nine of each item to avoid players buying enough healing items to cheese the game.
Combat is difficult. Enemies can use super moves, which adds more variables for players to manage. All these emphasize the brutality of the game world.