Long Way Around — Uzziel Malolos

Long Way Around title screen with New Game, Load, and Quit options on a green background. — Title screen — New Game, Load, Quit. Clean launch point for the four-act story.

Long Way Around screenshot of Theo standing in room A of the pixel RPG with a green wall, chest, and patterned floor. — Room A — Theo’s starting room. The slingshot is on the floor, the chest waits to be opened, the patterned floor and wood wall set the warm interior tone.

Long Way Around village scene with Theo talking to an NPC named Ida, who says 'You walked past twice this morning. Third time's for me, then.' — Village dialogue — Ida stops Theo on the road. The third-time’s-the-charm line sets the tone for Act 1’s first-lie beat.

Long Way Around battle scene with Theo 24/24 HP facing a green slime, with Attack/Skill/Item/Talk action menu. — Battle encounter — HP bar, slime enemy, action menu. The fight loop is the back half of Act 1, the pillar everything else stands on.

Long Way Around is my second Godot RPG — smaller scope than Heart and Soil, more narrative weight than TIRADOR. It runs at 384×216 internal resolution on 16×16 tiles, built in Godot 4.6 with a strict asset pipeline documented in ASSETS.md so every itch.io pack has a license trail.

The story arc shipped through June 2026: Act 1’s first-lie beat and toy quest, Act 2’s Juno branches and letter choice, Act 3’s Vael content, then Act 4 with a title screen and three endings. Along the way I wired an interiors pipeline (LimeZu packs), Hollow Step zone traversal, distinct NPC idle animations, y-sort for walkers, battle cutscenes, and a 74-check smoke test suite that gates exports.

Audio got the same discipline — JDWasabi SFX imported with license records, an Sfx autoload on a dedicated bus, and a ship script that fails the build if regression tests or export presets drift.

The game is playable start-to-finish. The remaining work is polish passes and an itch.io launch, not fundamental systems. I am treating it as proof that I can close a narrative RPG solo, not just prototype combat loops.

Long Way Around case study page on the portfolio — All milestone smoke tests passing via headless Godot 4.6 — M0 room loading and player movement, M1 dialogue choices and flags, M2 inventory system and UI, M3 combat with healing items and defeat recovery.