A downloadable demo for Windows and macOS

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This is the third playable demo of Song of Asirra. It covers the entire first act of the game, from the beginning all the way through end of the first temple.

This demo was released as a free benefit for Patreon patrons on November 27th, 2021, and became available to the public on December 25th, 2021!

Keyboards and controllers are supported, on the title screen press Enter or your game controller's Start or bottom face button.

The game does not auto-save, but you can save at any time by opening the pause menu with Enter/Start, and you can save when you get a Game Over.

CONTROLS

The game will teach you the controls through tutorials, but in case you need a reference here they are:

Menus

ControlKeyboardGamepad
Pause/UnpauseEnterStart
AcceptABottom face button
Back/CancelSRight face button
Page LeftQLeft Bumper
Page RightERight Bumper

Gameplay

ControlKeyboardGamepad
MovementArrow keysControl Stick or D-pad
Jump, InteractABottom face button
Swing StaffSLeft face button
Use ToolETop face button
Cast Spells (hold, select, release)QLeft Bumper

Keep in mind this is pre-release software and definitely contains some bugs (though hopefully no game-breaking ones!)

If you encounter any problems feel free to comment on this page or contact me via email (talkto@nicholasvv.com) or Twitter (@nickavv). When you've completed the game, feel free to fill out our survey, and your feedback can help improve the final product!

StatusReleased
PlatformsWindows, macOS
Rating
Rated 5.0 out of 5 stars
(2 total ratings)
AuthorDaikon Games
GenreAdventure, Platformer
Made withAseprite, GameMaker
Tags2D, Action-Adventure, Fantasy, Side Scroller, Singleplayer
Average sessionAbout a half-hour
LanguagesEnglish
InputsKeyboard, Gamepad (any)
AccessibilityInteractive tutorial
LinksHomepage, Patreon, Twitter

Download

Download NowName your own price

Click download now to get access to the following files:

SoA-Act1-a.3.2-win.zip 29 MB
SoA-Act1-a.3.2-mac.zip 35 MB

Development log

Comments

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Played through the first few minutes, it's looking legit!  I especially like how the instructions are woven into story scenarios, it's slick.  I also really liked the option to enable high resolution fonts, that's such a good idea that I wish more retro-inspired games would do.  Unfortunately I didn't play that much before falling through the world around here:

I dropped down from the dirt ledge above the angled platform.  I think I fell through the angled platform as well and ended up falling through the whole world.

Also I noticed on the downloads page you had some trouble distributing the mac build.  This tool MacifyZip (I didn't make this) might help - https://github.com/rtouk/macifyZip .  I've used it myself to fix this issue when zipping a mac application from windows.  The only problem is that there's no license or source code so it feels like you're downloading a virus.  If you trust me it's pretty handy, if you don't there are some python scripts that can accomplish something similar.  Hope this helps, and good luck!

Hey Mark! So sorry you fell through the world. Slopes are the bane of my existence. If you pause (start/enter) and save and quit to the main menu you would be able to resume without losing any progress. There's probably a good hour of content past that point so if you want to try again there's a lot more to see!

As far as the Mac zip thing, that's not the issue here. I actually created the Mac build on an actual Mac. The issue is Gatekeeper which quarantines the app because it is unsigned. Gatekeeper used to be optional on macos but is now mandatory. As far as I'm aware there is no clean workaround. Thanks for the suggestion anyhow!

Lemme know what you think if you decide to keep going or if you need any more help

Hey Nick, played some more and left feedback on the linked survey.  I like the pacing and variety of RPG elements but I think the core gameplay could use some polish.  Best of luck on the game!

Thanks Mark, I appreciate the feedback. I'll be going through it all eventually. Cheers for playing the demo!

(3 edits) (+1)

This is really well done. Great pacing.

I did encounter a crash when opening the first chest in the thieves' cave. You can jump up and squeeze through and on opening to get to the chest.


The error is :

############################################################################################
ERROR in
action number 1
of Other Event: User Defined 15
for object obj_chest:
Creating instance for non-existing object: -4
at gml_Object_obj_chest_Other_25
############################################################################################
gml_Object_obj_chest_Other_25 (line -1)
gml_Object_obj_interactive_Step_0 (line -1)
(1 edit)

Yep this has been reported by a few other testers! Sorry about that one, hopefully you didn't lose much progress.

Thanks for playing though, I'm glad you enjoy it!

(+1)

Not a problem!

I just finished the demo and it was very enjoyable.


The temple was great. Difficult in places but achievable, both in terms of enemies and platforming (the one platform section where you have to hit the switch in midair to flip the red/blue platforms so you can get to the block... that took a lot of attempts and I wasn't sure it was do-able without needing something else).

There was a soft lock I encountered when I had the glider and tried to glide over the trees to the left of the Knowfer by the bandit cave. I just quit and continued and everything was fine.


Things I thought could be improved:

  • The jump and staff hit sound of Elia got a little tiresome. It didn't seem to fit.
  • I may have missed it somewhere in the intro but it took me a while to figure out where the inventory was.
  • The action key (X) for the bell felt awkward with A and S being used. 'D' or 'E' would have felt more natural but those may be reserved for future use.


I did occasionally feel a little lost but that was usually quite enjoyable.

Overall everything was thoroughly enjoyable!

Thanks for your feedback, I'll certainly be taking it into consideration!

Sorry about not knowing how to navigate the menu, no there was no tutorial you missed for that. Maybe I need to add one.

As far as controls, the code is actually set up to allow full re-mapping, I just haven't had time to add a user interface for it yet. Sorry you didn't find the defaults comfortable!

And yes I have a lot of ideas for improvements to the temple after watching a few peoples' play-throughs. I would not be surprised if it's significantly different in the final release.

Again thanks so much for the feedback and I'm really glad you enjoyed it overall!