Game:Bok's Expedition
| Bok's Expedition | |
| |
| Developer(s) | Eddie Lee |
| Release date | March 31st, 2020 (contest demo)
September 16th, 2020 (complete) August 8th, 2021 (minor fixes) |
| Genre | Sci-Fi/Fantasy RPG |
| Characters | Enemies | Items | Secrets | |
Set approximately two thousand years ago in the distant First Nherbi, Bok's Expedition is the story of the Blurby explorer and map-maker Bok, who sets out to the far reaches of his solar system in the spacecraft Ummiboro 5 in order to explore the uncharted planet Ihctogo. He is joined on his quest by powerful warrior Norgu, young scientist Ondu, and expert healer Crikki. Will the expedition go as planned, or is there something more going on deep beneath the planet's surface...?
Bok's Expedition is loosely based on a story I wrote during my late elementary school years, perhaps in 1997 or 1998. Many things have changed from the original version of the story, of course! I started working on it as part of the 2020 Ridiculous Games Contest, which was built around the restrictions of the 1998 versions of the OHRRPGCE. This is part of the reason why I chose to base the game on that old story -- not only is it built with the 1998 OHRRPGCE version's limitations in mind, it's also based on a story that existed back when those versions were current, so in that sense it's a game I could've made back then in more ways than one!
In order to follow "1998 OHR" rules, the entire game is crammed into only four maps (one for the surface of the planet, one for the inside of the ship, and two for the vast network of caverns and tunnels stretching down far beneath the Ihctogan surface.) Another quirk of the game is how the equipment system is built around the level-up glitch (which causes equipment bonuses to be permanently added with every level, accumulating more and more over time), meaning that nearly all equippable items provide small bonuses to stats in order to not go out of control too easily. And of course, newer-than-1998 features such as plotscripting, status ailments, and sound effects are not used.
Version History[edit]
An incomplete version of Bok's Expedition was released as part of the 2020 Ridiculous Games Contest. Though it reached a pretty decent stopping point (right after one of the biggest boss battles of the game, at the end of the "dungeon" area beneath the planet's surface), the story was not quite complete; if you returned to the surface afterward, the final boss was not yet present and there was no ending.
The completed version released in September 2020 features the continuation of the story beyond the contest demo's stopping point, with Bok and company returning to the surface of the planet Ihctogo and encountering new enemies that were not present at the beginning of the game. Though mostly still following the "1998 OHR" contest restrictions, it does add in a few "post-1998" features not present in the contest version, such as attack descriptions and captions in combat.
A minor bugfixing update was released in August 2021. All of the fixes were textbox-related, and mostly only came up if you chose to fight Xunzeig, Osogross, and Yourgh in a different order or skipped one of them during your first trip into the depths; the only one most people will notice on a typical playthrough is that Chazeda and Smuya now use their "about to leave" textboxes at the end of the game rather than the same ones from the beginning.
Downloads[edit]
The game can be downloaded from both the Slime Salad and Castle Paradox gamelists.