SAWD stands for Simple ASCII Walk-around Demo, and is a short RPG developed in C with very little C++ in as little time as possible by Richard Marks. Tools used were Microsoft Visual C++ Express 2008, Notepad, and MSPaint.

The story is pretty much non existent, with only a few short dialogs that happen at certain places in the game.

The game focuses on battling to prepare yourself for the stronger enemies that you will face at the end of the demo.

A very simple item and magic system has been employed, and the battles are designed to be very easy to play.

Your character can be any one of four classes, Warrior, Dwarf, Thief, Mage. Each character class can use its own weapon. Warriors use Swords. Dwarves use Axes, Thieves use Bows, Mages use Staves.

You can equip your character with 3 types of armor. Vest, Boots, and Gauntlets. Giving Upper, Lower, and Middle armor attributes.

For magic, only a Mage can learn magic spells. Other classes need to purchase Magic Scroll items to cast spells.

If you are a Mage, you can learn magic spells in the Magic Shops. Once you learn a skill you can use it for the rest of the game. You will use MP each time you cast a spell. Magic Scrolls can only be used once each.

Unlike the battle system of WiTCHHUNT where you had to jump through hoops to play, SAWD features battle menus that you control using the keyboard arrow keys and the spacebar to select an action, and Backspace to cancel an action.

The field map controls are also the arrow keys with the ESC key opening the menu.

Story Dialog boxes are closed by pressing the spacebar.

Decision Dialog boxes can be used with the arrow keys to select an option, and spacebar to accept the selection.

updates:

3-17-2008 -- uploaded final final release. Fixed major bug Added a second sidequest.

3-16-2008 -- uploaded final build of SAWD. I'm calling it finished now. If I missed anything, then oh well.

3-14-2008 -- uploaded my contest entry. I'm forced to enter my nearly-finished demo. Not everything that I wanted to have was able to be implemented due to my health. :(

3-12-2008 -- uploaded screen shot of the character name entry screen, I've implemented nearly all the game states and menus and stuff now, there is only a few more things to do before I can call this game finished. :)

3-10-2008 -- uploaded screen shot of the battle system, finished shop interface. skeleton framework for audio has been implemented as well, though the audio calls have been removed for this demo to give more time to finish the rest of the game instead of not finishing and having a few midis playing. If there is still time to add the audio once the rest is completed, then it will be done.