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


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.


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.


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!
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