VtM Tophet
A downloadable game for Windows
Tophet is a text game set in Barcelona. You play as one of eight Vampire the Masquerade clans. You´re embraced as a new kindred while a war between princes and a series of sinister disappearances threaten the city and your own survival.
-Eight different clans to choose.
-Two different coteries you can join.
-Twelve different endings depending on your choices and relationships.
-Your own upgradable haven.
-There´s eight different companions but you can only have three each playthrough. I hope this helps the replayability.
-You roll the dice. Having the same attributes and skills can provide different results.
-And more! (At least I hope so).
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(SPOILERS) Some advice if you´re dying a lot or you´re not sure about what to do:
The game has five chapters, between each chapter you´ve thirty days of freeplay to increase your skills, meet other characters or survive. There´s some hidden secondary quests and a long investigation quest before the last chapter. Some things only appear during the correct night or depending what your clan or relationship with other characters is.
-Composure and awareness are important to avoid the hunters event but you can defeat them if your character is good at combat, or you can use stealth or drive.
-Masquerade violations make the hunters event more frequent. You can remove them visiting a certain character.
-Each day you gain one Hunger point. If you´ve Hunger 5 you can´t use disciplines and if it surpasses 5 it´s game over so you need to feed before this happens.
-You´ve a very easy way to feed talking to your mawla at your haven but this deteriorates your relation with him/her and prevents you from some endings.
-To increase your skills you need to visit three times the correct location. To increase your attributes you need to extend your haven spending resource points and then you can train the attribute you want to increase there.
-There´s parts of the plot (and one of the variants of the diablerie ending) difficult to understand without playing a malkavian. And even then....
-If you die you can use the "Continue" button at the start screen, so you don´t need to start from the beginning again.
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Notes: The main quest is completed, but the rest (secondary quests, coterie quests, interface, etc) is only the basic outline of the game I wanted to create . Even if the game has like 40% of the things I wanted to add, all the clans have some different extra content. Even so the lasombra is the most fleshed out so I recommend playing this one.
Update 1.1. The 1.0 had a game breaking bug.
Update 1.2 Some more last moment bugfixes
Update 1.3 Another round of small bugfixes. I leave the 1.2 build because that was the last uploaded before the jam´s deadline.
Update 1.4 And another one... now the endings go to the correct screen. Update 1.5 Corrected some typos and the Haven upgrades must improve your attributes correctly now. Update 1.6 The encounter with the strange voice at the hospital must not result in instant death now, the second encounter with Justice has the proper link now, no more "lorem ipsum". You can´t use blood sorcery at the investigation in Jocs Florals street if you don´t have blood sorcery. Corrected some more typos here and there.
Update 1.7 You get the correct companions and sire´s names when choosing Tremere, Ventrue or Toreador. There must be no more instant death when reloading. Corrected some typos I saw at mirta´s streaming.
Update 1.8 The end of the Bonaventura meeting returns you correctly to the menu screen. Laia encounter is not repeatable anymore. The second Hermione encounter uses her portrait. Losing the lockpick check at Joc Florals must not block the game anymore. Loading a save from day 30 must charge day 30 and the correct chapter, not the "day 31".
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A repost from your contest page, in case the comment is helpful to have here as well:
I adore your visual design aesthetic: the dark muted color scheme with white font, displaying character portraits in silvered blood splashes, and the map movement hub page. Brilliant work with the setup of the Character Sheet as well. I, too, got a little confused with how to move the narrative forward sometimes. Became process of elimination for me on a couple counts. Don't know if it would work against what you have going for the map icon or location text of plausible next plot point to shine a little or appear in a slightly different color? Cheers!
Thanks for the feedback!
Hi Wayne Snee thanks for your kind words. Certainly the game needs a better way to clarify its mechanics. Changing the text/map icons colors is really a good idea, thanks for trying the game!
Hello, I might just be a dunce/newbie but I am unsure how to actually start playing the game.
When I download the file to try and play it I mostly get an empty data file I do not know how to open/use.
How do you start the game after downloading the file ?
Hi DoomedDM, the file you download from here is a 7z compressed format. You need some compression software like 7zip, winrar or winzip (I´m sure there´s more programs but these´re the most used I think) to extract the file.
Extract the file in a new folder. Within that new folder you´ll find a Tophet.exe file and another folder named Data. You double click the Tophet.exe file and that´s it.
Right, I gave your game a good go. Good points:
- very detailed opening, loads of stats to choose from, I did enjoy what I did witness.
Bad points:
- you can get stuck on a loop just dying before the night even starts.
- I would appreciate knowing what the place does more than knowing what it is named at a glance.
- I would appreciate knowing what skill-check the areas correlate to as I had trouble even getting myself some blood.
Hi, mirta000!
Thanks for playing the game. I wanted to add a "storyteller mode" like the Night Road game has so players could know what stats are using but I really had no time in one month. Almost all the places have more than one purpose. I know it´s very confusing sometimes.
A mini-guide for the feeding part of the game.
Places where you can get blood.
-Sants: Hunting some sleeping person, checks dexterity+stealth, increases the Sandman Predator type.
-Raval: Seducing some prey at Magnus Lounge, has multiple social checks, increases the Siren Predator type.
-Ciutadella: Visiting the zoo, checks of stealth and larceny, increases the Farmer Predator type.
-Encants: Buying blood has no skill checks but you need one Resources point. Increases the Bagger Predator type.
-Besòs: Stalking and assaulting someone, has brawl+strength check and a stealth check to not get a Masquerade violation. Increases the Alleycat Predator type .
-Poblenou: talking with your mawla (Malta or Salvador) has no skill checks but deteriorates your relation with her/him. Increases the Consensualist Predator type. Later in the game you can build a Meditation Center at your haven. There´s some social checks to feed on your acolytes. Increases the Osiris Predator type.
-There´s a quest at the Maresme Fòrum where you can feed on one kindred. Only the first part of the quest is there, I had no time for more. Increases your Blood leech Predator type.
-There was going to be another way to get blood and increase the Scene Queen Predator type. I wrote it but had no time to code it so it´s not in the game.
You can ignore almost all the skill checks if you´ve appropiate disciplines. The game takes note of how do you feed and assigns you a predator type. Each predator type gives you different attributes, skills and disciplines bonus.
I´ve updated the game after watching your video, I´m not a native english speaker so I´m happy you didn´t find a lot more grammar mistakes. Anyway thanks a lot for trying the game and for the streamings you´re doing. It was great to see someone playing it!
Wow! I may have died pretty quickly, haha, but I was really impressed by:
-the detailed setting
-the sheer amount of content
-incorporating the actual TTRPG character sheet into the game
Hey, thanks AKinginDisguise! Playtesting the game I´m noticing how easy is to die. It seems I went pretty hardcore with the dice rolls requirements, oops!
If you donʻt mind me asking, will there ever be a MAC version? I unfortunately am a Apple apologist 😭
Regardless your game looks SO goodddd ✨
Hi ryelle, I´d love to port the game to MAC and other OS. It´s not impossible but for now I only try to hunt all the bugs I can.
It´s more a prototype than a complete game but I´m happy you like the looks of it!
Graphics won't load. Including the map (I can click after hovering over blank space) and stats (I can't see *any* of my stats rn). Would love to keep playing after I know how to fix these!
Hi ferallynx!
Can you give me more details? When happened this? This sounds like some problem loading the graphics.
The Tophet.exe must be in the same folder where the Data folder is so the graphics load correctly.
Are you using the 1.5 version? (I´ve seen some people still downloading the 1.2 build and this has even more bugs)
If the problem isn´t any of these look inside the Data folder, there´s two files named data and ndata. Send me these two files to Azardev@protonmail.com and I'll take a look at them.
Making sure the Tophet.exe is in the Data folder solved this! Thank you! Loving the storytelling so far ^-^