City Nightmare Demo

City Nightmare is a low-poly retro style JRPG set in 2006 Delaware. You are Alex Owens, a psychic who goes around the state investigating supernatural cases and banishing spirits. Each chapter unravels a new mystery you must solve with your party, while you uncover Alex's mysterious past.

Disclaimer

If you're having framerate problems, try forcing the game to run on an NVIDIA graphics card, if you have one, or any other graphics card that has high OpenGL compatibility.

1. Type "graphics settings" on the Windows search bar and open the top result (should say "system settings" right underneath it)
2. Alternatively, open the settings app, then go to System > Display > Graphics
3. Click "desktop app" and then "search"
   
4. Find the .exe file for City Nightmare and double click it
5. Click on "options" right underneath the file directory for City Nightmare
6. Select your preferred GPU and click "save"

Story

Chapter I follows Alex in her daily life, as she learns more and more about the strange disappearances happening all over Delaware, with the capital city Dover as their hotspot. Her childhood friend, Carll, joins the team and they end up discovering something very disturbing.

Combat

Fight with your spirit energy! You can use a basic attack or one of your skills to damage the enemy. Once the enemy has been beaten up enough, use Alex's banish skill to end the fight! If you're so inclined, you can keep hitting an enemy until they're totaled, which rewards you with extra ECT (Ectoplasm) for you to level up! You can rest between turns to recover your spirit energy and prepare for the next attack.

Certain actions have a quick minigame you must pass in order to get the best outcome. Most attacks can be dodged with good timing, while some you can only defend! The icon on the bottom left lets you know what type of attack it is:

• Running figure: you can completely avoid an attack;
• Shield: you can only defend against an attack;
• X symbol: you can't dodge or defend against an attack.

Every time you take damage, you get a strike, shown as red X's under your character's name. Get a third strike and you'll begin to bleed! Make sure to use healing items to avoid that. Dodging will also reset your strikes, but not remove bleeding.

Many actions will also affect your current ES (Emotional Status). The more STY (Sensitivity) you have, the more erratic your ES will be. When you rest or dodge an attack, your ES will go down. When you take damage or use certain attacks, your ES will go up. If it reaches either extremes, your emotion will change to either tranquil or enraged, respectively.

• Being tranquil reduces damage taken, slows down minigames, and replaces your third skill with a more supportive one, but it also reduces your damage output.
• Being enraged increases your damage output and replaces your second skill with a more powerful one, but speeds up minigames and increases damage taken.

Your emotion will only go back to neutral once the ES meter reaches the center. Take advantage of your ES to win a difficult battle!

Your equipment is worth way more than just its raw stats. Some armors have a passive field effect, represented by a green card on your equip menu, which changes gameplay in the overworld, while some have a passive battle effect, represented by a yellow card. Some weapons have a passive character bonus, represented by a purple card, while some give you an entirely new skill, represented by a red card.

Even when you find better equipment, you can keep some of your old ones around for their secondary use! Certain weapons and armors can be used during combat when they're not equipped by anyone. Some of them are consumables, and some can be used infinitely!

Controls

Keyboard controls:
Move	WASD
Confirm/interact	Enter
Decline/sprint/switch inventory mode	Shift
Inventory/exit chalkboard.net	Esc
Options	F2
Quit game	Backspace
Page scrolling on chalkboard.net	Shift + W/S

Gamepad controls:
Move	Left analog
Confirm/interact	A
Decline/sprint/switch inventory mode	X
Inventory/exit chalkboard.net	Y
Options	LT/RT
Quit game	Start
Page scrolling on chalkboard.net	Right analog