Pokémon Heritage​

This game was made for the 2019 PokéCommunity April Game Jam​

Plot​

In this tale inspired by the Mystery Dungeon series, become one between three rare Pokémon, and embark on a journey to discover your forgotten identity and save the world from a menacing egg thief plotting to use its new-found powers to rule the world!

Features​

• Character portraits and music from PMD
• Get your starter Pokémon through a quiz(?)
• 3 recruitable Pokémon
• 8 Dungeons imitating the PMD series

Screenshots​

Download​

Credits​

Hey, this is pretty good!

I've only just finished Surrounding Sea.
But, I've found a small bug.

When Pikachu, and Treecko head south to pursuit Ditto at The Crossroads.
If you try going north, it does the usual "can't go this way, yet" and prevents you from going north.
But, then it doesn't let you move, essentially you're frozen in place.

wanderlustmage said:

Hey, this is pretty good!

I've only just finished Surrounding Sea.
But, I've found a small bug.

When Pikachu, and Treecko head south to pursuit Ditto at The Crossroads.
If you try going north, it does the usual "can't go this way, yet" and prevents you from going north.
But, then it doesn't let you move, essentially you're frozen in place.

Click to expand...

Thank you ~ I'll do my best to fix this as soon as possible

oh shoot it's out, ima play!!

I was made aware that there was a bug stopping progress in the final dungeon. If you've come across it, you can either download the latest version or this patch to fix them ~

I was a critic during the April Game Jam 2019, and here's my personal review of the game.

Mapping

Most of the dungeon maps became very repetitive, but the maps not related to dungeons were just fine; not too long and enough to keep them interesting.


Gameplay

The game mechanics are all about Mystery Dungeon-esque dungeons in which you battle Pokémon that you walk into. While normal to some extent for Mystery Dungeon, there were way too many dungeons with too little story/plot development in between dungeons, which makes a lot of the dungeons a chore to complete. There were very little rewards for side-tracking and each dungeon seemed to be 10 to 12 levels long. This became repetitive rather quickly and took away from the fun that Mystery Dungeon could be. This was strongly amplified by the lack of background music for wild battles.


Story

The plot started fine, with amnesia portrayed in a pretty cool way. The visions were also an interesting way to remember more and more. As a sub-plot, the egg theft was also a decent drive to explore the dungeons. Ho-oh was of the Mystery Dungeon world though, but it knew about the main character and Ditto's origins. It felt rather odd, and the way the main character and Ditto disappeared was not explained other than "you have no purpose anymore".


Inclusion of theme

There are various moments in the game where I could see the underlying theme. Surrounded Sea, Eggs, Qwilfish, circular dungeon maps, and more. Perhaps the trio could also be seen as a circle, as they're bound together and "meant" to be together, especially when you see Ho-Oh for the first time (which coincidentally also has circular shaped wings). Overall, it wasn't too intrusive but you can see the references if you look at them from perspective.

---

Thank you for participating in the April Game Jam 2019! We enjoyed playing your game and hope that you had equal fun creating it!

Herro Judge Hoolio to give you my review of your game! <3

Pokemon Heritage

Plot

The long cutscenes and awkward teenagery dialog really cut my attention to the plot. I think there were at times good bits of conversation. But I literally facepalmed during the mysterious note on the ground sequence. When ditto turned into a maniacal egg thief, transforming into Ho-Oh. The plot overall was very half baked. I think it needs more development to reach its true potential.

Click to expand...

Mapping

Being a PMD style game, the maps and tilesets from the official games were needed. I was surprised You could have formatted the tilesets to essentials within a month unless you found preformatted tilesets on DeviantArt, which avoids that point. At any rate, with that in a mind, a characteristic feature was the random dungeons, and while I think the dungeons appeared to be randomized, I have no idea how he managed to have overworld wild encounters seed.

With that in mind, and through an error at the end of the game, did I realize that the maps were not random, but were carefully constructed to look like a random PMD game. You did a good job of imitating the style!

I was a little confused why there were Umbreon encounters (an incredibly strong pokemon) amidst a forest full of Sunkern and Shinx as well as Zigzagoon and Wurmpules in the lake map as well. Did they drown? If so that really bugged me.

I liked the user being a pokemon but having them all walk while staying put had me feeling uneasy. I don't remember off the top of my head but he really could have cut that out. It looked like every pokemon was on a treadmill.

Click to expand...

Gameplay

Being a Rougelike game on a platform designed with a different battle sequence must have been an interesting challenge. You went over this by having fixed overworld events that will see you and activate the wild battle, unfortunately, it took us to the essentials battle sequence but with no changes in battle BGM to simulate the overworld encounters we normally experience in a pokemon game. It was jarring, but it was the best solution for only being a month.

The pickup items, the money, although I could never use it, was interesting and gave us a ridiculous amount of berries. You gave us three pecha berriers before the qwilfish which was nice, but I wound up not needing them.

I managed to evolve my Treecko and the talking sprite didn't update, but considering that may or may not be compatible (having a game switch activate upon treecko evolving). Lucilky, I managed to keep my team consistently levelled and the encounters never really got too hard. Honestly the first Umbreon I encounted in the wild was more difficult than any of the bosses (because somehow electric pokemon are not immune to paralysis). The qwilfish boss was pretty tough, all things considered.

Click to expand...

Relevance to the theme
I'm really not sure! Rebirth? The eggs?

I was a Critic during the April Fan Game Jam 2019, and this is my personal review.

Mapping
While the overworld areas are on the plain side, the dungeons themselves are where this game shines in map making. Each of the dungeon maps looks as if it were a dungeon randomly generated from the games themselves.

Gameplay
A decent portion of this game takes place in various dungeons with wild Pokémon wandering through it. Entering their line of sight makes them initiate a Pokémon battle.

Some of the dungeons go on for quite a while, and you don't really need to actively battle any Pokémon to be at a level to fight the bosses. Running from battle also make the wild Pokémon go away, so sometimes I used that to get through the area quicker, or at least to avoid the drain on PP.

Story
Can't have a PMD fangame without an amnesic main character. We follow many of the large story beats of a standard PMD game, with slowly remembering a mysterious memory, to being told that we don't belong in this world by a legendary Pokémon. I honestly cried at the ending though. Even when I knew what was going to happen, by virtue of it being a PMD game.

The one thing I didn't really understand was exactly how Ditto, the main villain, comes into place as we learn that neither the main character nor Ditto belong to this world of the game. Ditto is never really explained beyond "it stole the eggs and copied Ho-Oh".

Inclusion of theme
The main objective of the game is to rescue the stolen Pokémon eggs, which are round in both shape and sprite.

---

Thanks for participating in the April Fan Game Jam 2019! We enjoyed playing your game and hope you had fun making it!

Wow one of the greatest games i seen so far a Pokemon Mystery Dungeon fan game with little things in i already see the potential for this love the idea.

wow a mystery dungeon fangame? This is unheard of for me! I've been here for nearly ten years and not once have I seen a mystery dungeon rom hack let alone pokemon essentials fangame.

The game crashed when Qwilfish saved Pikachu from Ditto in the boss room of Misty Forest

looneyman1 said:

The game crashed when Qwilfish saved Pikachu from Ditto in the boss room of Misty Forest

Click to expand...

Thanks for reporting! Will look into it ~

This looks very nice!
I have never seen a Pokemon Mystery Dungeon fangame so far

Best of luck :D

So uh
I had an error.
Imma Meowth and Ditto just went Ho-Oh on Qwilfish then an error hit ;v;

btw I love this game so much and I made a profile just so we can figure out a way to fix it so I can finish it because it's just
so cool.

Nooodle said:

So uh
I had an error.
Imma Meowth and Ditto just went Ho-Oh on Qwilfish then an error hit ;v;

btw I love this game so much and I made a profile just so we can figure out a way to fix it so I can finish it because it's just
so cool.

Click to expand...

I'm glad you enjoy it ~
Could you send a screenshot, and possibly say if Qwilfish was in your party before meeting Ditto in the dungeon?

Yes, I ran the dungeon with Qwilfish in my party.
I fear I can't show you a screen shot. I tried to send it when I first went to post here but it said I need to post a certain amount to show you x-x
sorry ;n;

Pokémon Heritage v1.35

The crash at Misty Forest has been fixed.

I always wondered if there was a Pokémon Mystery Dungeon inspired fangame :D

Hey, I need permission from you to download this, please help!

Pumpkaboo92 said:

Hey, I need permission from you to download this, please help!

Click to expand...

Fixed, I think