Submission #9359: CasualPokePlayer's DS Present Party in 08:55.92

Nintendo DS
Present Party
BizHawk 2.9.1
32062
59.82609828808082
12902
PowerOn
party080330.srl
Submitted by CasualPokePlayer on 10/25/2024 7:26 AM
Submission Comments
Present Party is an unreleased game by Game Freak, the makers of Pokemon. At some point, a prototype turned up in the wild, showing off this game to the public.
Present Party is similar-ish to Pokemon in that it's a turn based RPG, although instead of Pokemon, you have toys. To collect toys, you collect presents throughout the levels. You are intended to give these toys away to get more of this game's currency, but for beating the game this doesn't matter. Toys are able to eventually be combined and turned into following units later within the game. Only 4 toys can be active at the same time. Each toy unit (e.g. combined toys are one unit, but following units are separate) can hold onto 3 presents, for a theoretical maximum of 12 presents (although that assumes you do not combine any toys together and instead have each one following you separately).
What's present in this prototype is just 3 levels, in which only one needs to do any actual fights. Each level has a goal which must be met before exiting the level, otherwise the level will not be successfully completed. The first and last levels just have a "bring back x number of presents" (x being 2 for the first level, 7 for the last level), while the second level has a "bring back 3 armor toys" goal. Note that presents from the previously completed levels can be brought over to later levels and will count towards present totals. Toys currently combined or following will also count towards the present total.
The game does have various RNG events, although it's fairly hard to control. RNG here is just a simple MT19937 implementation, and only advances when it needs to. Initially, the game will seed RNG using VBlank Count * RTC Second (VBlank Count counts vblanks since game startup, RTC second is 0-59). Your "starter" toy stats end up getting generated with with the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th RNG calls (I'm not sure what the first RNG call is actually used for, its value is placed in RAM but doesn't appear to be significant anywhere, perhaps it's some player ID?). Once you actually get in game however, the game proceeds to reseed RNG with a fixed 0x190 seed. So whatever RNG is given is the RNG I have to work with.
The "starter" toy I mentioned has 3 options (like Pokemon again). There isn't any actual reason to pick any particular one here, they all perform identically for the few fights they're in. So I pick the bear, which has the shortest name, so saves the most time whenever its name is mentioned.
The game is entirely controlled with the touch screen, leading to fairly awkward movement. Movement can either be done by holding the touch towards the direction you want your toy to go to, or by tapping the toy and dragging it over to a location, which it will proceed to go to. The former is typically faster, however the latter ends up being better when going over "slow areas" such as ladders and mud, and it weirdly appears to ignore the slowdown from "slow areas."
Much of the TAS avoids toy fights whenever possible. This either comes from sneaking around toy patrols so they are not alerted (or alerted too late), or alerting the toy patrol at the same time as passing them. When a toy patrol is alerted, it jumps up, and in that jumped state it cannot start a fight, giving time to run past it. There also appears to be "invisible walls" for these toy patrols, so once you're past that wall, you're "safe."
The ending here is a bit odd, it's not really a defined ending per se. The ending dialogue here goes on to question what your rival character is up to (or something of that regard) then proceeding to say the game is over (since it's a prototype) and states you can continue on repeating level 3 forever. I choose to just end input once "END" shows up in this dialogue spiel.

nymx: Claiming for judging.
Last Edited by nymx 2 days ago
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