Crystals: Legend of the Sword

Back in 2007 (if I remember correctly) a forum-goer by the name of RPG created a joke post on Gaming World concerning the game Crystals: Legend of the Sword. It was everything you'd expect: cliche, bland, grammatically ignorant. The post was flooded with horrible screen shots and included the complete plot of the story (oh man I wish that thread was still alive). Needless to say everyone got a good laugh from it.

Around the same time I was working on my "main" project and had learned what I really needed was practice making a game. Game making, I realized, was like writing. You can't expect to write the next great novel on your first try. You have to mess up first, write something you'd wish you hadn't.

Thus was born Crystals.

I'm not even going to bother talking about the plot here because if you're familiar with the RPG scene you already know it: there's a big bad, a hero whose village is destroyed, some sacred sword you need, and a bunch of crystals to collect. Your hero is totally emo, your brother's evil, and your best friend is a muscle freak.

That's not to say Crystals is a bad game. The point of it, after all, was to practice making games, not go Duke Nukem Forever on the world. So while not shiny around the edges it still possesses fairly strong execution of the core gameplay mechanics, mapping, and balance. And despite it's simplicity I don't think it disappoints.

One note on gameplay: I know a lot of people like to hold down the shift key to speed through text when playing. I've setup most sections of the game to accept that input. However, certain cutscenes do include the auto-close message handler in order to time the words with events or the music. To be safe, try to avoid using the shift key during cutscenes, especially when you see the text move slowly (I know, I know! That's exactly why you'd want to use shift!).