A downloadable game for Windows

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A short game made in less than a month, developing an idea I had in mind from long time ago after playing lots of bad RPG Maker games.


Edinya, the guardian of the sacred tree, is suddenly awakened by one of her guards, who reports to her of inexplicable events within the forest that she must urgently go investigate...

The two creators of her world, the two game developers, are in conflict over who holds the intellectual property rights of the game, and their character Edinya is right in the middle.

Help her find exploits within the games in order to put an end to their struggle that is wreaking havoc on the entire game world.


Exploit Keeper is a puzzle game, where you have to change the version of the game between the well developed one and the poorly developed one, to find the game bugs and exploit them to be able to continue the plot.
Badly programmed mechanics might be useful if used in the right place...

Between features that work poorly, repeating events and unindexed values, you will find every kind of nightmarish bug for beta testers!


Probably not intended

Length: 30-60 minutes.
There is a "solution system" if you can't solve the puzzles.
There are two standard endings, and a super secret one!
Game both in English and Italian.

Credits: In the game folder

StatusReleased
PlatformsWindows
Rating
Rated 4.8 out of 5 stars
(5 total ratings)
AuthorWaldorf
GenreAdventure, Puzzle, Role Playing
Made withRPG Maker
Tags2D, Fantasy, Female Protagonist, Multiple Endings, RPG Maker, Short, Singleplayer
Average sessionAbout an hour
LanguagesEnglish, Italian
InputsKeyboard
AccessibilitySubtitles

Download

Download NowName your own price

Click download now to get access to the following files:

That's My Exploit Keeper! v3.1.1.zip 182 MB

Development log

Comments

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(10 edits) (+1)

Small issue is that the Options menu has one more option, the Sound Effects, to be scrolled into, but nothing indicates that it *can* be scrolled.

Is the Tree missing a Hint for after getting to the Town? I dunno what it's talking about Hazardous Terrain... But other comments make it make some some sense...

And finished the Secret Route. The trickiest part was how to use the Portable Menu, since there's nothing demonstrating how to use it before you have to get to the bottom of the town. I kept running into the Cathedral Doors before I thought about the comments from "Generatoror" some more.

Should this Event Scope be in reach?



Also, Fence Walker:



And Wall Walker:



Wall Walker 2?


And Water Walker 2:



Can walk on the Inn's benches and big table... ... Oh, so running out of money isn't an issue. hm.

(+1)

Congratulations on completing the Aker route! There aren't many hints in the game, but some are present outside of the game in a game folder.

The "hazardous terrain" refers to events that prevents you from getting out of bounds at the village exits, as some sort of metaphore.

Thanks for reporting the errors, I'll fix that when I have time!

(3 edits) (+1)

Heh, glad I played Respawn Banter before this one! Sober Slime! heh.

Do I need to have picked up the Gold Dust to continue on the secret route? Nevermind. Got it!

EDIT: So, this isn't intentional?




(+1)

Yes, I love inserting a small reference there and there in my games. 

The secret route is really hard to crack, it's easily missable right at the start, but when you do the right things, you're locked in.

The walking on water is not intended, I missed a collision check there, thanks.

(2 edits)

Thanks! I was getting into battle against the Town Guarding Monster, and I was worried that I might've missed some monster fighting gear in the town or needed a specific combat style that I didn't choose. I'm very glad I was wrong on those fronts.

(+1)

I finally completed all of the routes!

Spoilers below!












(1 edit) (+1)

I'm currently doing the secret route, and OH MY GOD IT'S NEAR IMPOSSIBLE TO AVOID THE CUTSCENE TRIGGERS!

Anyone have a map to route my jumps?

You can find it using a link in the game folder. :)

(1 edit) (+1)

I meant a map with the recommended path on it.

Edit: Never mind, I think I got it!

(1 edit)

I got stuck several times on the secret route. I can help you if you want. What you needs depends on what you have figured out but you don't avoid the triggers by routing your jumps as much as skipping the trigger with a bug.

From there the trick is reaching the crate on the elevation with stairs instead of proceeding as usual.

(8 edits) (+1)

I think I figured out everything the fanart folder mentioned. (Pressing W and Z/Enter at the same time when near water so I can jump repeatably, learning how to get the hidden item, etc.), but I can't think of a good route that doesn't make me jump directly into a trigger.

A path drawn through the official game map or a video would be appreciated. :)

Update: Ok, I THINK I got it, but I think I went too far, and got stuck inside a tree. Oh well. Still can't get to the box, though.

Update 2: OH MY GOD I DID IT YES... and I got stuck on the part immediately after I jumped off.

Update 3: Got past the monster, sold the amulet, and restored the portable menu. Now what?

Hey, can you help me with the third section? How do I get in the cathedral? I think it has something to do with me selling my amulet to take it off before I got my portable menu.

That's the rigth thing to do, the order in which you do things doesn't break the route after the progress dev stops talking afaik. If you can already use the portable menu, the way i like to think about it is similar to the first part where you need to skip the trigger, before i figured out what to do, I had originally tried pausing but that did not work probably cause rpgmaker prevents it. The jump in the old game was added externally which is probably the reason it can cancel triggers.
Once you figure how to use the portable menu the question becomes which triggers may be helpful to cancel.

(1 edit)

Like, say... the trigger that prevents me from entering the cathedral or the lower part of town.

I got into the cathedral! Now, I'm in the dev room. What do I do next?

(+2)

I forgot to say you should save in the cathedral. You can't escape the devroom unless you do something before hand. I think if you interact with the tree at this point it gives you a hint about needing to go outside the normal bounds of the dev room in more cryptic words. Play around with the teleportation orb in the new cathedral, you'll realise there's a place you haven't been before in this route. This room has something special that no other room has.

(+1)

Hey, I was wondering how to obtain this note. I think it has something to do with the statues in the area this is in.

(+1)

Yes, you're correct!

You can walk on the top of the statues because of an error. You can also walk on the ceiling. So if there was a way to walk on the ceiling using the statues.... ;)

(+1)

I did it! Thank you!

(+1)

Hello,

Last weekend I streamed your game. Overall, I actually really enjoyed the game, it was really well put together, but it's not without some flaws.

The mapping itself looks really nice in the "new version". The writing is good, and I enjoy this meta narrative. Actually, the reason this peaked my interest is that my own game that I have been working on has a somewhat similar story concept to this, so it was interesting to see how someone else explored this idea.

There are some flaws though; my record with puzzle games is pretty poor, I guess I am too much of a smooth brain sometimes, but I do genuinely feel that the game starts asking a lot out of it's players before giving them a chance to come to grips with the core puzzle element.

After transferring back to the new version of the world for the first time, I started getting weird frame timing problems, and then those frame times ballooned into poor frame rates. It seems the game could do with an optimization pass. (In the stream I didn't remove the technical point from your game's grade for this error, however, I have since changed that and removed the point from the game's technical score)

And finally, the game could really use configurable controls. I understand RPG Maker's archaic persistence to use arrow keys, but some players prefer to use WASD and being able to provide the option so users can decide which control scheme they prefer would go a long way. I believe you are using MZ. I don't know what the equivalent plugin would be for MZ, but likely it's available for free from Visustella since Yanfly's Keyboard Config is a free plugin for MV.

I hope that you expand on this concept in the future, I would be interested to see what else you make!

If you'd like to watch my experience with your game, I've linked the archive below. You can click the timestamps to jump to when I start playing your game.

(+2)

Short and sweet, i really had a lot of fun with this and some parts made me laugh out loud. It makes me lowkey nostalgic cause i played a lot of buggy rpg maker games in my past.
Will see what i can do about that super secret ending. 

Thanks! I'm happy you enjoyed it!

For the (permanently missable) secret ending, I suggest you to check the "Fanart" folder.

(2 edits) (+1)

Just finished the secret ending. It was a blast although pretty hard. I kinda hope i didn't accidentally skip a part of the route but i think thats the intended way to complete it. Has me really excited for whatever you do next even if unrelated.

PD: I had seen the "fanart" folder but i wasn't sure if i was on the right track so thanks for that. Still gotta find the secret bad ending but ill leave that for later, already spent many hours on this.

Congratulations! That's not an easy task! ^_^  
I had some fun using some bugs that I found and making them features!

The bad end is achievable with some... uh- "Naruto escaping". :)