Tales of the Lumminai Story Ideas

[Sinnistar]

Alright, so I have a bit more of a solid idea on this game project now. It's coming along nicely! And yes, it will have 2 sides to the story so the player can play through the game twice with a different outcome for both times.

Plot so far:

The story takes place in a dark fantasy world, engulfed in the flames of war. The world is governed by 8 Lumminai Spirit Beasts, that are kept in line by the Heralds of the Great Cities. Many years prior to the present, the Lumminai were sought after for their power which could be used for evil and to open a portal to another dimension that would destroy all linked worlds. The first generation Heralds thwarted the "One True Overlord" and his plot to open this portal to create a new world in his image. As a result, he was encased in a stone prison for eternity.

After over 200 years had passed, the stone prison was damaged releasing his evil unto the world. The Heralds were being hunted down and slaughtered for their Lumminai Crystals that housed the souls of the spirit beasts. A new generation of this evil empire rises to once again attempt to destroy the existing worlds to create their own.

A young 16 year old teenager (boy or girl) is thrown into the midst of this chaos when (her father) or (his uncle) rides off to fight the enemy head on with overwhelming odds of defeat. The teenager flees with the Herald of the village, Lumi, and find themselves on an adventure to try capturing the spirit beasts before the vile empire can and complete their evil plot.

With the power of their first Lumminai, they quickly learn how to utilize its power to fight against the enemy and liberate the conquered lands from its grasp. Lumi, having lost her Herald abilities with the destruction of her village, assists the hero into learning the ways of a Lumminai Charmer and the pact with the spirit beast. One such benefits include the ability to transform based on the element of the spirit they pact link with, granting them overwhelming power in the heat of battle.




So, what do you guys think of the story idea so far? I am going to upload a playable demo for the girl's storyline first level and first city. The boy's is still under construction, and her's only has 1 building you can enter. But hey, I would like some feedback on what I've got first so I can know whether or not I need to improve on certain areas of it.

The game will have a transformation/summoning system known as "Pact Linking" which will replace the battler with a beast or transformed/armored version of the battler. This replaces the entire party however, so it will have to be used wisely, but the benefits are great, from stronger abilities to a god tier all out attack from the beast's soul spark. As an extra to that, all the beasts will be customly designed by me, so they shouldn't look too much like the RTP battlers eventually. There's a lot to the game and a lot of it isn't even close to being presentable lol, I've been busy with it though and this project is now my primary focus.

 

[Micro]

I think it's a great idea! I especially love the idea of two main characters--boy and girl--that is SO rare! I can only think of a handful of RPGs that have done that. I also love harnessing the power of elemental spirits, I'm a big fan of that kind of thing.

looking forward to seeing updates on this one. :)

 

[Sinnistar]

I think it's a great idea! I especially love the idea of two main characters--boy and girl--that is SO rare! I can only think of a handful of RPGs that have done that. I also love harnessing the power of elemental spirits, I'm a big fan of that kind of thing.

looking forward to seeing updates on this one. :)

Games like Golden Sun inspire me greatly with their elementals. Same for the Eidolons/Espers in FF. I only recently figured out a way to make them "capturable" using an item with common events but I'm not sure I can make it work with the way the battles will go though. It will certainly be an experiment.

I love having different stories that are similar but have great differences and so multiple character choices makes that possible. There really are so few RPG's that have that nowadays. Most are linear and one main character. I may eventually make them meet up too, since if you're playing as one, you never see the other, but I dunno on that yet. (Just makes sense since one is the Jarl's son and the other the Knight Commander's daughter lol they live in the same village, only makes sense for them to meet eventually.)

Anyhow, glad you like the idea. I'm pretty inspired with this one too so it should go along pretty well. I really want to do parallaxed maps for it though so it can look amazing, but I suck so bad at designing those x.x Might figure it out someday.
[doublepost=1453005502,1451982445][/doublepost]Alright, so I have an updated idea that I've been working with for this project. If I manage to do this right with the help of a couple others, it should turn out really nicely. I still need to improve on some of the backstory, and make that look more professional, but that's the basic idea I'm gonna go with. There's a lot of placeholder images yet too, but I will refine everything as I go.

 

[Macro]

Capturing games seems to be a big thing in RPG Maker, I never really noticed till I joined this forum. One can easily that tell Pokémon/Digimon/whatever influenced so many of us. xD I'm trying to sway away from that habit myself now though. I think it's good to have to have some good character development for all of the characters else I'll be left with a bunch of generics.

 

[Sinnistar]

Capturing games seems to be a big thing in RPG Maker, I never really noticed till I joined this forum. One can easily that tell Pokémon/Digimon/whatever influenced so many of us. xD I'm trying to sway away from that habit myself now though. I think it's good to have to have some good character development for all of the characters else I'll be left with a bunch of generics.

Well my capturing idea for this actually follows more of games like Final Fantasy and Golden Sun or Shaman King. Not like Pokemon heh. There really are a lot of pokemon inspired games out there, I'd rather try going with other ideas like the not so heard of Shaman King games lol. They had good ideas behind them but was poorly executed for the most part.

This project, is basically an original idea though inspired primarily from one of my novels i've written. In the novels, the characters would gain access to the spirits to use their power to fight against an evil empire, which somehow twisted one of the heroes against the others. It was dramatic lol.. So this is sorta like that, where the spirits effect the character's skills, armor, weapons, and their overall personalities. That's the plan anyway.

 

[Macro]

Yeah there is quite a but of them so I just named the first off the top of my head. I don't remember capturing anything in Golden Sun myself, it's been a while and I never got too much into it. As for Summons, yea, they are definitely up there for me too, up with Shin Megami series. I know that no game (or basically anything) is truly original or anything though, so I gave up with that goal, and shoot for "less done".

Truthfully, I have not heart of Shaman King, but it sounds like a nice idea to have summons directly influencing personalities. I just wanted to mention that my main gripe with summoner/catching/recruitment games is that the summons (or whatever you want to call them) always get the "short end of the stick" when it comes to character development. I have seen several anime/games where the summoners "wear" or get buffs from the summons as armor/weapons/spirit links though (Fairy Fencer, Soul Eater, Summon Night to name a few).

Now if I am reading this right, and you say that you are trying to make a game where changing the specific equipped summon instantaneously changes the character's personality, that would be really something. That could easily lead to multiple story paths and endings. Certainly a lot of work, but definitely unique.

 

[Sinnistar]

In Golden Sun you would fight the elementals and then "capture" them to use their powers. By capture I mean they became allies after they were beat. Mine will be similar to that, and such. Nut yeah my idea isn't gonna follow any already existing one but instead it'll be like a bunch of existing ones all twisted together. I don't like being generic lol but yeah there's no such idea as completely original anymore since someone will always compare it to something else, and that's the joy of the gaming industry. If your game is compared to a famous one, I guess that's a win right? lol

Shaman King was a very short lived anime series that had a couple games in the late 90's. Those games were pretty fun but they never really continued the idea behind it.

And yeah, that is my goal. My summons each have their personalities, and when the player would use their pact linking ability, they replace the entire party with a taller battler that's wearing armor based off of the chosen elemental. As well, their battle preferences and personality will also change. For example, if the girl links with Laguis which is a water elemental, she's gentle spirited (like calm waves brushing into the shores) but capable of getting quite fierce if provoked (much like a storm at sea). This would reflect to the girl and change her naturally shy like cowardly behavior into the spirit's behavior. There will of course be cut scenes and such where they are linked as well, which is where the personality change will be evident most. Similarly, if she links with the fire spirit, she completely changes to that of a battle hungry fighter thirsting for the chance to completely destroy the enemy before her. If that makes any sense.

It's a system that I've seen in a few game titles, but it wasn't a primarily system for those. It will be for mine however. I plan for multiple endings and such too based on the actions and choices of the player. I'm gonna also included choices such as go after spirit A or spirit B, whichever you don't choose the enemy will go after to counter your advancing power. Things like that are what will make my game unique xD just hope I can pull it all off alright.

 

[matthe815]

Yeah, we need some story ideas, I'm running a bit dry.

 

[Sinnistar]

Yeah I'm just following the set I put on the wiki so far. But idk after that's done.

 

[Luninareph]

Good luck! I'm a big fan of FFX's Aeons--my favorite summoning system in any FF game--so your Pact Linking sounds most intriguing. If you need ideas, you could try checking out Tales of Zestiria; its Armatization system sounds similar to your Pact Linking and may be useful to investigate (unless you've already played it, of course).

 

[Sinnistar]

Good luck! I'm a big fan of FFX's Aeons--my favorite summoning system in any FF game--so your Pact Linking sounds most intriguing. If you need ideas, you could try checking out Tales of Zestiria; its Armatization system sounds similar to your Pact Linking and may be useful to investigate (unless you've already played it, of course).

I've played that title a tiny bit lol never owned it myself so don't know anything about it really. But yeah sure if you wanna throw some ideas our way, my team would make use of anything interesting xP. (We're actually thinking of making a team recruitment thread to get the full benefits and functionality of working as a team on this.) More heads = endless ideas is how I think of it lol.

 

[Luninareph]

I've played that title a tiny bit lol never owned it myself so don't know anything about it really. But yeah sure if you wanna throw some ideas our way, my team would make use of anything interesting xP. (We're actually thinking of making a team recruitment thread to get the full benefits and functionality of working as a team on this.) More heads = endless ideas is how I think of it lol.

Well... there's a limit to how much I can really say with just the information from this thread, but I can say that the thing I like most about the Aeons is that they have barrels more personality than any other incarnation of the FF summons--and yes, that includes the ones like FF6 (my personal favorite) where you actually talk to some of them. I love how when you summon Ifrit, he busts out of the ground in a raging mass of fire and flying rock pieces... but he catches Yuna gently and puts her down so protectively. He's wild and crazy and ready to shed blood, but he's fiercely devoted to protecting his summoner even in his berserk rampage. I love how when you summon Shiva, she tosses Yuna her shawl without even looking, in this bossy but simultaneously absolutely confident way that says, "I have this so under control that all you're going to need to do is make sure my shawl doesn't get dirty. Don't worry about a single thing." It's not just the way that the Aeon acts, but specifically the way the Aeon interacts with Yuna that is so demonstrative and evocative.

On a more technical level, it's also very important to think about what you want each spirit form's niche to be in battle. Elements alone are (usually) not enough to distinguish battle roles, especially when you hit endgame content, where enemies often have no weaknesses. Since these Pact Linked battlers replace the entire team, each spirit fusion needs to have a different flavor of gameplay that allows them to take on challenges differently. Kind of like the special dresspheres in FFX-2: the Floral Fallal was heavily magical and had powerful healing abilities, but it couldn't restore its own MP, so it had to kill enemies quickly or run out of juice. The Machina Maw had a lot of physical and ailment-inflicting power, but couldn't hit elemental weaknesses, and the Full Throttle had a blend of physical and elemental damage but was short on AOE for groups. So make sure you're considering more than just elemental affinities for these Pact Link fusions, so people can really get into the fighting style of the Lumminai they like best.

 

[Sinnistar]

Well, I can tell ya that the 3 beasts I have so far are Whilabeast, a fierce tiger looking wind beast dedicated to serving his summoner loyally and he's very protective over Lumi. Then there's Laguis, a small cute and cuddly glowy water spirit that idk what it looks like beast wise, but maybe a miniature Shiva looking thing, that one is bossy with an attitude (ironic for the cuteness of it lol) and refuses to assist unless she's given full control (as stated in the wiki page for this game, she doesn't actually agree to give all her power to Lucia). And the one that is Leon's first one, (forgot the name off hand lol) but it's a giant tortoise looking beast that is very tanky and brawny (think like a giant who thinks of everything else as flies). That one is calm, and mostly ignorant to danger as he doesn't feel anything from it that could threaten him. He's the Lumminai of Gaia element (earth so it's gonna be tanky xP).

As for the strengths and weaknesses, those are more Matthe's field since he's doing the database stuff with the skills and balancing. But I know what you mean by they should have their own style that they're best suited for, and I absolutely agree. I wouldn't want it to just be one summon that can just take on everything the entire game, but instead have it so every one you got was useful in some way the others aren't. So for example, Laguis and the Lumminai that's light are the only two that can heal (Laguis single target, light one is aoe). If the player doesn't choose light then the enemy will gain access to the aoe heals themselves and they can also Pact Link with it bringing out the personality like it should. But neither of them can recover mana during their links, so it would have a bit of a challenge behind it if you waste the mana during the time it's linked. Something like that, I wanna see that for all of the 8 main ones and the 4 minor (hidden) ones that will be able to be captured.

Because you are familiar with the Aeons in FF, you might be able to help us make unique personalities for ours if you'd want xP

 

[Luninareph]

Really?! I mean, I would love to--making characters is my favorite thing to do--but I wouldn't want to step on anybody's toes in your project. But I would love to be of assistance if I can!

 

[Sinnistar]

Really?! I mean, I would love to--making characters is my favorite thing to do--but I wouldn't want to step on anybody's toes in your project. But I would love to be of assistance if I can!

Well do you have Skype? Best way would be the three of us to use Skype (now that I finally got it downloaded and situated x.x took forever to get it to work). We can bounce ideas for personalities there and you could build off of those probably. The fun part, I'm the only one dealing with characters right now, so doubtful you'll step on anyone's toes with it lol. The personalities are an important part of the summons/links since when linked, their personality takes over entirely and will change their fight style accordingly (if I was skilled enough with the pixel art, it'd change their stance too but alas I'm not lol). Anyhow, on Skype I am Sinnistar91.

 

[Luninareph]

Well do you have Skype? Best way would be the three of us to use Skype (now that I finally got it downloaded and situated x.x took forever to get it to work). We can bounce ideas for personalities there and you could build off of those probably. The fun part, I'm the only one dealing with characters right now, so doubtful you'll step on anyone's toes with it lol. The personalities are an important part of the summons/links since when linked, their personality takes over entirely and will change their fight style accordingly (if I was skilled enough with the pixel art, it'd change their stance too but alas I'm not lol). Anyhow, on Skype I am Sinnistar91.

Sure, I have Skype. When should we talk? PM me the details.