I'm wondering, are you going to ship with the same character selection system? I feel like that's a mistake.
When learning a game most people stick with a single class, forcing new players to go form the default healer to a darkmender or a blood giver won't gel well with new players. Personally I like random characters run so it wouldn't bother me, just looking at it from a newbie's perspective.
When allowing the player to select what they want you can also squeeze more replayability in the game if you make it so some healers have to be unlocked. For example the blood giver could be gated behind being resurrected by your party. Or maybe the most niche healers could require you to clear some dungeons. In games like FTL or the Isaac games people do runs to try unlocking characters and then a couple of runs with said characters to see if they like them. Paradoxically, having all healers unlocked at the beginning makes me never want to play something like a darkmender or a sunmender.
The rest of the party being random is fine imo.
For the UI, since I understand the current one would do a poor job at letting you choose between all healers, you could have a room with 3D models that you click to select/deselect. Something like Dragon Age: Origins's party selection. Healers could have their own room with hand placed models, locked ones being invisible or made into black silhouettes. On this screen you could also showcase little cockades or medals to show what dungeons you've cleared with each characters, giving completionists the satisfaction of seeing all their achievements laid out in front of them. The rest of the party could be lined up in a tavern. Or maybe tanks could be in an armorer's room and DPS characters could be in a fighters guild type of environment with weapons hanging on the walls and such. I suppose to keep things uncluttered you'd have to select the healers first and then the camera would move to the tanks and then to the DPS, with big arrows to the left and right of the screen to change selection screen manually. That way the player can immediately see all the available characters, the current UI where you need to select a class icon and then click confirm is a bit clunky anyway.
Regardless of how you approach the UI I think giving the player a progression goal in unlocking characters and not forcing them to play a random character every time would improve Healed To Death. Cheers and good luck with launch!
I had the flash heal upgrade that made free spells better as well as the blood transfer upgrades that makes it better at full health and restores your health if you kill something with it, hitting for insane damage and killing enemies in 2 or 3 casts.
The new models are nice but I notices some animations don't loop properly. The new intro is cool too, but I'd like an option to skip the tutorial. The new crit effect is good, much more noticeable.
You should be able to open the spellbook when levelling up. The shop currency icon blocks mouse inputs, making it tricky to click the item/spells/refund buttons when at the shop. The level up menu also reveals the "cost, total" UI that shows up when you mouse over a purchasable item.
Did you make cromwell harder? I don't mind it but I'd say that he's the hardest boss mechanically because aura of agony is a DPS check on an enemy that can heal itself, I can see beginners getting potentially overwhelmed with it. The arcane magistrate is only a matter of dodging damage zones so it might be a better suit for a first boss.
Very fun overall, can't wait to play the new areas too.
I'm not quite feeling it. Technically it's all well made but feels overcooked with all the complexity being thrown into the mix, especially level up upgrades, before letting me grasp and enjoy any nuances of the healing combat. I can't quite come to terms with the camera where I can fully see the back line and the front line isn't tiny, maybe the fov could be lower.
I got a crash when opening the backpack in the second boss' shop. Wish I could help narrow it down more, but I wasn't doing anything out of the ordinary. I think I need to play more 3D Godot games before I say this is a HtD issue.
Aside from that, everything seemed better and I was having fun. The introduction of a story was nice and I didn't notice any shader loading stuttering. Maybe you changed the way the "move to location" order worked or I was getting better because party control felt less cumbersome.
I still don't like the way you're forced to play different healers (which I cheesed by starting and exiting a game until I got one I wanted to play)
The art on the overworld and (especially, since it's the first impression) the intro would benefit from being improved
Aside from lack of enemy variation, I thought the visuals in the dungeon were nice, I liked the fallen bookcase prop
On the topic of books, I wish the armor and spells were combined into one list, since I was remembering to equip armor while at the shop but forgetting to check the spell menu to see if I had any that needed equipping
Now that I'm more aware of party position I realize that I can't tell the difference between friendly and enemy DoT fire zones
The tutorial puts text behind the location where the enemy HUD appears at the same time as you're meant to be fighting them
There are some people who manage to get all the crashes :( . I managed to fix the black out screen crash you got last demo day. That was unfortunately a Godot issue with subportviews & 100 different conditions that made a vulkan error occur. I got no idea what could be causing the crash this time. I'll have a play around and see if there is anyway i can repeat it.
Comments
Hey, Just saw the release date trailer.
I'm wondering, are you going to ship with the same character selection system? I feel like that's a mistake.
When learning a game most people stick with a single class, forcing new players to go form the default healer to a darkmender or a blood giver won't gel well with new players.
Personally I like random characters run so it wouldn't bother me, just looking at it from a newbie's perspective.
When allowing the player to select what they want you can also squeeze more replayability in the game if you make it so some healers have to be unlocked.
For example the blood giver could be gated behind being resurrected by your party. Or maybe the most niche healers could require you to clear some dungeons.
In games like FTL or the Isaac games people do runs to try unlocking characters and then a couple of runs with said characters to see if they like them.
Paradoxically, having all healers unlocked at the beginning makes me never want to play something like a darkmender or a sunmender.
The rest of the party being random is fine imo.
For the UI, since I understand the current one would do a poor job at letting you choose between all healers, you could have a room with 3D models that you click to select/deselect. Something like Dragon Age: Origins's party selection.
Healers could have their own room with hand placed models, locked ones being invisible or made into black silhouettes. On this screen you could also showcase little cockades or medals to show what dungeons you've cleared with each characters, giving completionists the satisfaction of seeing all their achievements laid out in front of them.
The rest of the party could be lined up in a tavern. Or maybe tanks could be in an armorer's room and DPS characters could be in a fighters guild type of environment with weapons hanging on the walls and such. I suppose to keep things uncluttered you'd have to select the healers first and then the camera would move to the tanks and then to the DPS, with big arrows to the left and right of the screen to change selection screen manually.
That way the player can immediately see all the available characters, the current UI where you need to select a class icon and then click confirm is a bit clunky anyway.
Regardless of how you approach the UI I think giving the player a progression goal in unlocking characters and not forcing them to play a random character every time would improve Healed To Death.
Cheers and good luck with launch!
Running badly on my shit computer (4 GB RAM, i3 7th gen, integrated GPU). About 20 FPS during the tutorial.
Maybe adding a resolution slider can help to run on shit computers.
Nice. I beat the overlord with a Blood Giver.
I had the flash heal upgrade that made free spells better as well as the blood transfer upgrades that makes it better at full health and restores your health if you kill something with it, hitting for insane damage and killing enemies in 2 or 3 casts.
The new models are nice but I notices some animations don't loop properly.
The new intro is cool too, but I'd like an option to skip the tutorial.
The new crit effect is good, much more noticeable.
You should be able to open the spellbook when levelling up.
The shop currency icon blocks mouse inputs, making it tricky to click the item/spells/refund buttons when at the shop.
The level up menu also reveals the "cost, total" UI that shows up when you mouse over a purchasable item.
Did you make cromwell harder? I don't mind it but I'd say that he's the hardest boss mechanically because aura of agony is a DPS check on an enemy that can heal itself, I can see beginners getting potentially overwhelmed with it.
The arcane magistrate is only a matter of dodging damage zones so it might be a better suit for a first boss.
Very fun overall, can't wait to play the new areas too.
I've actually nerfed the first boss by a lot. I'll nerf him some more.
I'm not quite feeling it. Technically it's all well made but feels overcooked with all the complexity being thrown into the mix, especially level up upgrades, before letting me grasp and enjoy any nuances of the healing combat. I can't quite come to terms with the camera where I can fully see the back line and the front line isn't tiny, maybe the fov could be lower.
I got a crash when opening the backpack in the second boss' shop. Wish I could help narrow it down more, but I wasn't doing anything out of the ordinary. I think I need to play more 3D Godot games before I say this is a HtD issue.
Aside from that, everything seemed better and I was having fun. The introduction of a story was nice and I didn't notice any shader loading stuttering. Maybe you changed the way the "move to location" order worked or I was getting better because party control felt less cumbersome.
There are some people who manage to get all the crashes :( . I managed to fix the black out screen crash you got last demo day. That was unfortunately a Godot issue with subportviews & 100 different conditions that made a vulkan error occur. I got no idea what could be causing the crash this time. I'll have a play around and see if there is anyway i can repeat it.