A downloadable game

Everything is just like it always is. The king asks some heroes to go forth and slay the Dark Lord. They're level 1, have terrible equipment, and maybe know a single spell.

Uh-oh! The Dark Lord's ritual to end the world is actually gonna be done in an hour, so you better get going right onw oh my gohd

It's time to use every trick in the book to navigate and conquer an entire traditional RPG game world in under an hour.  Grind efficiently, drink those potions, count your steps, escape when necessary -- hell, maybe even actually use Poison and a Stun on that random midboss? Who does that?

Made for the RPG Maker 2025 Game Jam for the theme "Beyond Expectations". The game is a little under 90 minutes long, though it may take you multiple tries to actually complete. A controller is recommended for speedrunning but mouse and/or keyboard works too.

Special thanks to:

  • Karsuman, Silviera, and Unity for testing and emotional support
  • Rasalhage for dealing with my newfound fascination with Dark Souls 2
  • Caz for the amazing icons
  • My boyfriend for understanding why I was up until 12 last night


Published 3 days ago
StatusReleased
Rating
Rated 5.0 out of 5 stars
(1 total ratings)
Authorcrazetex
GenreRole Playing
Tags2D, Dungeon Crawler, RPG Maker, Singleplayer, Speedrun, Turn-based

Download

Download
Long Road to Heck v1.zip 406 MB

Comments

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(+1)

I tried this! And streamed, and you saw it because you were there, but still!

I didn't get very far (to the boat in the snowy bit) but I'm not very good at these time attack games XD It's a game that will definitely benefit from replays and learning its intricacies, though speedrun types games aren't my personal taste (i get twitchy under time pressure).

What I liked:

  • Everyone gets exp even if not in battle: great! Especially since you basically have two teams and are on a time limit.
  • I love having lots of equipment slots (personal taste) to make everyone super strong (maybe, i never got there XD). Very neat that the types of slot they get are different per character.
  • Thank GOD the main menu stops time. I had at least another hour just in the menu.
  • I like that silence doesn't PREVENT use of magic but rather triple the cost, it was an original way to handle it that punished but doesn't prevent your play.
  • Chests having different visuals if they give items/gear is great and helps decide under pressure if you want to bother.
  • The barrier status completely nullifies elemental damage for X stacks instead of added defense: this makes usually dull defensive tactics great if you know what element is coming.
  • Skills and items have more than one effect, such as dmg/heal + buff/debuff. This means most buff/debuffs don't feel like a waste of a turn.
  • As I played it (meaning I didn't skip anything) the game did not feel hard, mechanically. The time limit was obviously the issue, but combat was very doable and not very complex so I could rush through (NOT FAST ENOUGH!)

Some things I didn't like much:

  • Encounter rates felt very high.
  • I get that's the point, but it felt very ew having to walk out of dungeons.
  • You can use (and lose) a escape item because you used it where you should not. Come one man, they're rare enough ;-;
  • The gold values of the first town are complete trolling. Bravo.
  • No game over event when the demon king takes over is a bit disappointing. I'd have taken something as simple as an explosion animation over the world map.
  • The complexity of the game was low compared to all the bells and whistles skills offered. Though this is influenced by how I played it. I'm told it was useful to try and bypass content and make it harder (but critically, quicker).
  • Towns: I feel like npc dialog boxes for shops have to be entirely gone as they add nothing. Either stop time in towns or be snappy with shops (npcs that give hints are ok).
  • Crafting (at least early on) didn't feel like it had a place. Again could be how I played, but considering grinding materials wasn't an option it felt eh.
  • Shops were a bit awkward since only 3 of your members could show up, but that's a plugin/engine limitation so I won't harm too much, and in the end i stuck to one 3-person team anyway.
  • Maps were barebones, which due to time constraints is fine.

Overall enjoyable despite not being my type of game, good job! If a patch or expansion I'd suggest making somthing of time in towns (either stop completely or remove fluff dialog from shops) and maybe smooth the maps to be a tiny bit more decorated and smoother to navigate.


Thanks again for playing! I was literally lowering some of the encounter rates as you were playing. Once I got used to speedrunning my own game a few nasty areas slipped my notice.

I responded to a lot of this on-stream so I'll spare some typing here but yeah, ultimately it's a weird game that doesn't want to be played normally, haha!

Also thanks for finding out that the poison spell was broken, I actually used it on my own runs too but never noticed it was draining HP lmao.

(+1)

period