13 replies to this topic

[Twilight Knight]

 

Download quest here (made for 2.55.10)

 

This short quest made for the 64 quest contest let's you play as Frozenblood, a talented and powerful mage. Follow his story of how he left his insane former mentor Argon, and plans on defeating him.

 

The quest features 3 unique boss battles, some chaotic battles and a decently sized overworld to explore. I'd say the quest is already pretty tough on medium difficulty, as there is no natural way of health regen, but there is a difficulty selection on the title screen for those who'd like to spice things up a bit.

 

Unlike most quests, this one doesn't feature any dungeons or gear/stat upgrades.

 

Guide

A - Firebolt

Your primary spell, simply does damage

 

B - Frostbolt

Freezes most enemies for a short time.
Hitting a frozen enemy deals extra damage.

 

X - Charge bolt

Extremely powerful, but must be charged.
Cast once to charge and cast again to fire.
The bolt will explode if you are interrupted while charging, or if you don't fire it after 10 seconds.

 

Y - Rain of Fire

Great for taking out multiple weaker enemies.
Casting will stop if you are interrupted.

 

L - Ice Shield

The shield will shatter if you get hit while it is active, negating all damage, and the shards can freeze enemies.
Active for 3 seconds and will heal for 1 heart if not consumed.

 

R - Dash

You are fast and completely immune while dashing

 

Furthermore you'll find a counter with a sad red face next to it in the passive subscreen. This is your Reputation meter, it indicates how much the townfolk and guards like you. Improving your Reputation is the primary objective of the quest.

 

64-isms
I tried to add some stuff in celebration of the 64 quest contest:

• 62 gameplay screens (58 overworld, 2 houses, 2 caves). Sadly 2 screens short, but I will add these in the final version.
• 8 MIDI tracks
• 16 hearts
• 8 magic containers
• 256 reputation limit
• and maybe more (I forgot while writing this)

This has been a fun contest!

 

 

Credits
I will make sure to include the correct credits once I upload a final version to the PZC database. For now, you can assume the credits are the same as those for the Argon's Evil Lair demo
 

I'd especially like to thank my friend Gnugget for thoroughly beta testing the quest for me!

 

Also some special thanks to CastChaos. He wasn't involved with this quest, but the Nargad's Trail story and "universe" were co-created with him.

 

 

Download quest here (made for 2.55.10)

Edited by Twilight Knight, 24 October 2025 - 07:47 AM.

[Cobgoblin]

Just cleared it, quite fun!

 

If this were part of a whole quest, I think this would be a pretty great dungeon/pre-dungeon area.

 

Is this city going to be present in another game in the larger series in better conditions? I liked the flooded area of the town.

 

The bandit boss battle was a highlight for me. The witch battle was a bit of a bullet hell, but at least I had the ring of power before I went allowing me to stay alive with the ice shield.

 

I thought it would've been funny if the old lady was still mean even after your reputation had improved.

 

Anyway, nice work!

Edited by Cobgoblin, 22 April 2025 - 12:30 AM.

[Twilight Knight]

Thanks a lot Cobgoblin, I'm glad you enjoyed it and your feedback and questions are much appreciated

 

This mini quest takes place during the events of Argon's Evil Lair, and because that quest is notoriously buggy and tedious to play I'm working on a complete remake.

And a restored version of the city is present in the sequel: Crystal Crusades, but the harbor and lake areas are not accessible there. In Crystal Crusades this is kind of the most peaceful area of the quest funnily enough.

 

I'm glad you liked those bosses also, but maybe you missed the "moblin" (the arrow shooting lizard things) boss in the southeast? It's the least convoluted boss though.

 

And that old lady actually is mean to Nargad in Crystal Crusades too. I think you have a good suggestion here, maybe now she can complain about something else instead, like construction costs.

 

 

Now in regards to the other Nargad's Trail quests, making this mini quest was a good idea for a few reasons:

1. I can copy this overworld to make it a bonus area in the Argon's Evil Lair remake. This was previously impossible, as I changed too much to the base tileset by now.

2. I can copy the abilities of Frozenblood over to Crystal Crusades. I originally was planning Frozenblood to be a playable character in that quest, but this was scrapped. And I am planning to give Crystal Crusades a good update also (nothing as rigorous as the full remake of Argon's Evil Lair)
3. This finally gives Frozenblood some much needed backstory, and forced me to make up my mind on him about some things. I was actually planning to make the Doomed Kingdom all the way back in 2010, but I was unable to make the scripts back then. And I was a lazy teenager.

4. It gave me some much needed change as I've been working on the Argon's Evil Lair remake for much too long now. This gave me some fresh energy.

5. And unintentionally I ended up with several improvements of scripts and graphics which I can import into Argon's Evil Lair.

[Rambly]

Nice quest! Pretty cute -- I liked the way the NPC dialogue changed as it went on, and the abilities were fun (although I admittedly never really figured out how to use the charge bolt very effectively...?). Also pretty short. I 100%ed it in about an hour.

[ChefBear]

Enjoyed this! Gave me an adventure rpg vibe, which I like. I could not for the life of me figure out how to get my last 2 reputation points, so I don't know if I locked myself out of them somehow with the way I was fighting enemies or what. I played on easy because I'm a wimp, but even so, the witch fight still taught me that I should probably use something other than fireball.

[Twilight Knight]

Thank you both for the feedback and playing :-)

 

I could not for the life of me figure out how to get my last 2 reputation points

Hmm, that's peculiar. I did do some last minute messing around with enemies though, so maybe I just missed 1 or 2 mobs somewhere. Consider it 100% 

 

The witch fight is indeed very difficult, I might have to make her a bit less evasive or less bullet spam. The best thing is to sneak in some charge bolts when you can.

I wanted to make a worthy adversary for Frozenblood

[ChefBear]

Thank you both for the feedback and playing :-)

 

Hmm, that's peculiar. I did do some last minute messing around with enemies though, so maybe I just missed 1 or 2 mobs somewhere. Consider it 100% 

 

The witch fight is indeed very difficult, I might have to make her a bit less evasive or less bullet spam. The best thing is to sneak in some charge bolts when you can.

I wanted to make a worthy adversary for Frozenblood

Will consider it so!

Also, I was more saying that as a compliment about the witch fight. I don't think it should be changed. It was satisfying to have to do it a few times with different movement/spell strategies!

[Moosh]

I remember reading about this quest on the listings on TWCCGaming back in the day and looking forward to it along with all the other Nargad games. Looking back on the site now I'm realizing you published an unfinished build years back and I never checked it out. Huh.

 

It's really cool to see the idea make a return even with the very limited space this contest provided. The system of building reputation was an interesting one and helped boost my sense of connection to the game world. It's just dang fun having a "helping people score". I just love accumulating social credit! Frozenblood's abilities were also pretty fun. I think in the spirit of pure contrarianism I decided to be the opposite of Rambly and went all in on the Charge Bolt. I found it immensely satisfying to use even to my own detriment. I imagine it falls off in usefulness significantly on higher difficulties though. If you ever want me to thoroughly enjoy your game though, let me take big gambles on huge damage.

[Twilight Knight]

Thanks a lot Moosh, I'm glad you enjoyed it and thank you for your kind comment. Especially never expected anyone to be excited about the original Doomed Kingdom 

 

The original scope of the quest would've been much bigger, with dungeons and more spell abilities. I'm glad for the contest though, it forced me to decrease the scope and actually make this quest. The reputation idea I nicked from World of Warcraft (also the spell icons), though I assume they in turn stole that idea that from some other RPGs.

[ShirleyVaga]

Played it and got all the reputation

I only played in easy mode thoug maybe i do the other ones later.

Was fun .

[CastChaos]

After so much time it's finally here, after all. The idea is very interesting and I'm sure it expands the Nargad universe.

It will be so interesting to play this character, I hope I can get around to do it in time.

[CastChaos]

Finally had time for this.

 

10/10

The reputation system is fantastic, the bosses are very good (especially the witch) and the whole environment is really neat and fitting.

It feels so good to play a character that was an NPC in the other quests, especially Frozenblood. The magic system is also fun, but I can't really rate it deeply, since I mostly just spammed fireball. I was so used to jumping mechanics that it was strange to be earthbound and I couldn't really get usedto phasing, either, though it's a really exciting concept, I always envied that from blue wizzrobes.

 

This had a long development time, with the first try, the several years of hiatus and finally the actual quest. Though it would have been a full one, it fits the series' story in this form.

[Twilight Knight]

Thank you both for playing and sharing your comments!

 

And I'm happy you could have the time to play it CastChaos, even though you are very inactive here. This quest wouldn't exist without your involvement with the NT series!

 

 

I had fun playing the other entries and I'm happy with the results of the contest! And for those interested a final version of the Doomed Kingdom will be made and released to the database... soon.

[DarkFlameSheep]

I'm waiting for the final version for recording gameplay videos. Or I will play this version as practice after finishing the current run of Yuurand.

Edited by DarkFlameSheep, 12 May 2025 - 11:27 PM.