Finally played this after seeing it around for a long while.
- Art simultaneously looks great and low-quality. Like the Raconteur scene is top-notch, while some of the enemies and heroes look far worse. The manticore I fought on level 5 was especially bad.
- There is a ton of polish, yet the UI feels incomplete and rough. Like, the elements moving away from the mouse is cute, but then some passives/relics caused buttons to be pushed off the little card itself. The UI for passives, swapping abilities, and party members felt intuitive once you knew the right inputs, but getting there was all on me.
- Same thing for information in combat. There are a lot of things that would be super useful to know at a glance, but I could not find them. The biggest one for me was the Fighter's Momentum. No clue how to see that at all, which sucks because all of their abilities rely on it. (I played a second run and finally saw it in the bottom right corner. Boo!)
- Since I just got to the manticore, that bastard one-shot my party! I'm not sure how I was supposed to deal with it, since increasing raw stats doesn't seem to be an option anywhere in-game. This is another one of those things where it could be there for all I know, but it was never explained.
- Music was dope.
- I do like the combination of Darkest Dungeon plus roguelike relics. And getting extra actions on crit/denying enemy actions on miss is cool, too, once I figured it out.
- The map movement just felt weird. In hindsight, I encountered a bug, but I actually really liked it, where I was spotted by an enemy on a different path, and it crossed over the chasm to get to me. It also wasn't clear how much movement I'd get beyond the initial 6. Some enemies I could outrun, and others I couldn't? I also never bothered with dice or fixed movement because it seemed superfluous. I can see the intent, but it feels bolted on right now.
- Unless there's a reason not to take everything in chests/event rewards, I hate having to click each one and then click leave and then assign them to individual party members...
Overall, really fun, just an odd mix of very well-polished and not polished, but the core gameplay is there, and it's well-done after figuring it out. On my first run, I was just fucking around until I died, but then on the second run it clicked, and I got to the manticore, who wiped the party.
Made it to floor 2. Combat started clicking after a couple fights, but I spent way too long hoarding MP because I had no idea when it came back. Also had to stop and look up what half the status effects actually did. Pretty fun once I understood what was going on.
- The game doesn't launch in fullscreen by default on Linux, and I can't find the settings to change this.
- I recommend naming "The Tower" and "The King". It'd give the game more personality.
- Events are a cool inclusion but you should probably display the odds to succeed before picking a choice, or at least have a more concrete description for the difficulty than "standard". As an example, in the world of dicerolls, you'd say that a challenge with 50/50 odds is difficulty 4+ with 1 standard die.
- Is it normal to teleport around randomly? I figure it's a floor gimmick because I also encountered elite gates, floor spikes and invisible paths, but there should be some sort of warning for that one in particular.
- Furthermore, awarding experience for exploration is a novel idea, but what do you get from combat? I saw that the end screen says that I got varying amounts of glory. I'm assuming that's a resource meant for meta progression later: Permanent upgrades, unlocks and the like.
- Moreover, awarding exp for every space on the board runs the risk of making exploration feel like mowing the grass or turn based Pacman. Just to give an example, in Darkest Dungeon you want to explore every room because there's treasure in them. It's functionally the same as a value going up, granted that the player has inventory space, but the main difference is that it's better contextualized.
- Likewise, the level layout is unknown until it's explored, so uncovering the board is useful even in the absence of extrinsic motivators. Revealing the board from the start is good if the player gets to plan their run through the stage like in FTL or Slay the Spire, but here you want to explore everything so I can't help but feel like there's something missing.
- As for the difficulty, I couldn't beat the demo this time. I think the biggest issue are the wolves; I either one shot in one turn or they do the same to me with no in-between. The combat in general is very snowball-ish since you can gain extra turns off your extra turns. This also has the side effect of making the cleric worthless.
- I think that leveling up should be juiced up more. It's an integral part of the RPG experience and people love seeing numbers increase, even if they don't get to pick their attributes. You are leaving cheap dopamine on the table, basically.
- What's the deal with chests? I opened several of them but I only managed to get something in my inventory once. I couldn't tell if this was an error.
- Cool loading screen by the way.
- Overall, the game seems to be progressing well, and the combat has more going on even if it's a bit unbalanced at the moment.
Mm, we'll see. The goblin slayer naming convention is intentional but I do see that people can think it's bland
>Events difficulty
Agreed, might change the presentation.
>Teleports
There are teleportation tiles that throw you around randomly yes. The tutorial that warns you should've showed up, but I'm making a better introductory dungeon next
>Combat rewards
In a run, nothing for now. Except MP refunds when you finish one without taking damage. This might change
>Exploration
Planning is important, that's why the layout and enemy types are visible from the start. You're meant to take the paths of the least resistance until you get stronger. I'll redesign the floor layouts to better reflect this of course
>Snowball
Yep, the combat is snowbally if you don't have the defensive options. It is intentional for the wolves specifically to die in one or two rounds while being able to do the same.
>Leveling up
Agreed. Good idea
>Chests
Not an error. There are relics and passive abilities that drop from chests. Relics show up in the relic menu (always active), passives show up in the party menu when you try to equip one. I will introduce a quick equip system
Mmh yeah, it’s a decently competent DD clone. Some fresh ideas that even seem kinda interesting.
To give my honest take on this, I feel it lacks some appeal. B/W graphics and pretty plain drawings to top it off. The combat animation concept is pretty cool I guess. But the rest doesn’t really make me excited to click.
What are some 2D art-focused games that do draw your eyes if you don't mind me asking? Just for future reference. It could help me with this game's art direction down the line.
Well, the style of the original DD is interesting enough. The characters are varied and distinct, enough so that some of them I liked to include in my party just because of their style.
No controller support? (Sad emoji). Tutorial so far looks great. Good job. Fantastic art. Inside the combat, the game is black and white, so extra care needs to be taken with the UI. It looks good so far, but identifying which character had the active turn was a bit tricky at first. I think you should on top of highlighting the active character, make the other characters slightly darker, when they are not active.
AOE atacks, like rising slash, still doesn't communicate that they are AOE, except though the text. You should invest in informing it through the UI as well, like in Darkest Dungeon.
Enemies can cross gaps, they don't follow the same rules as the player? Also, I couldn't find a way to "pass turn" in the map, to let the enemy come towards me. Is this intended or was it explained somewhere and I didn't read it?
I think enemies should not be able to cross gaps, and that I should be able to skip my turn in the map, to lure enemies to my range, and be able to strike them first.
Controller support will come in the next big update (and so are some needed UI updates).
Enemies cross what look like gaps because those gaps are actually illusory tiles that are invisible to the player before they step on them. If you use WASD to step over them you'll also be able to do the same.
>Passing turn
It is intentional right now that you can't "pass your turn". You are supposed to use the dice to change your movement to ambush the enemy or stop movement early to bait them. I may change this in the future, or introduce it in a proper tutorial level, but it is a deliberate choice that you can't easily control where you stop.
Played until I got filtered on the second floor. I really like the art although I feel like adding just a few select spots of color would work really well instead of it just being gray and can be used to make certain thing stand out (I'm not counting damage numbers)
There's also a lot to take in on a first play, I wouldn't have minded a bit more of a slow introduction to all the mechanics. Not in the form of a cute anime girl yapping at me but an actual playable tutorial (the cute anime girl can yap at me while I play the tutorial)
The popups were largely fine (although people tend to not read) but the game just throws a lot at you at once. Some things that I feel were missing is a little bit on how MP works (can I use it per fight, does it recover, when does it recover) and some information regarding how much damage an attack deals. And also something regarding the status effects e.g. Shield Bash: "Gain 3 Momentum and applies Fragile" ok what is Momentum? At least fragile I can check but also only after I've successfully hit the enemy with it.
And there is immideatly a lot of that because 3 party members with 3 abilities each. That's why I meant maybe a slow start with 1 party member, a tutorial area with a single fight and the raconteur going over it while playing + some more information on the abilities. The "how to win fights" section would be great to have as part of the tutorial imo.
Comments
Finally played this after seeing it around for a long while.
- Art simultaneously looks great and low-quality. Like the Raconteur scene is top-notch, while some of the enemies and heroes look far worse. The manticore I fought on level 5 was especially bad.
- There is a ton of polish, yet the UI feels incomplete and rough. Like, the elements moving away from the mouse is cute, but then some passives/relics caused buttons to be pushed off the little card itself. The UI for passives, swapping abilities, and party members felt intuitive once you knew the right inputs, but getting there was all on me.
- Same thing for information in combat. There are a lot of things that would be super useful to know at a glance, but I could not find them. The biggest one for me was the Fighter's Momentum. No clue how to see that at all, which sucks because all of their abilities rely on it. (I played a second run and finally saw it in the bottom right corner. Boo!)
- Since I just got to the manticore, that bastard one-shot my party! I'm not sure how I was supposed to deal with it, since increasing raw stats doesn't seem to be an option anywhere in-game. This is another one of those things where it could be there for all I know, but it was never explained.
- Music was dope.
- I do like the combination of Darkest Dungeon plus roguelike relics. And getting extra actions on crit/denying enemy actions on miss is cool, too, once I figured it out.
- The map movement just felt weird. In hindsight, I encountered a bug, but I actually really liked it, where I was spotted by an enemy on a different path, and it crossed over the chasm to get to me. It also wasn't clear how much movement I'd get beyond the initial 6. Some enemies I could outrun, and others I couldn't? I also never bothered with dice or fixed movement because it seemed superfluous. I can see the intent, but it feels bolted on right now.
- Unless there's a reason not to take everything in chests/event rewards, I hate having to click each one and then click leave and then assign them to individual party members...
Overall, really fun, just an odd mix of very well-polished and not polished, but the core gameplay is there, and it's well-done after figuring it out. On my first run, I was just fucking around until I died, but then on the second run it clicked, and I got to the manticore, who wiped the party.
Made it to floor 2. Combat started clicking after a couple fights, but I spent way too long hoarding MP because I had no idea when it came back. Also had to stop and look up what half the status effects actually did. Pretty fun once I understood what was going on.
- The game doesn't launch in fullscreen by default on Linux, and I can't find the settings to change this.
- I recommend naming "The Tower" and "The King". It'd give the game more personality.
- Events are a cool inclusion but you should probably display the odds to succeed before picking a choice, or at least have a more concrete description for the difficulty than "standard". As an example, in the world of dicerolls, you'd say that a challenge with 50/50 odds is difficulty 4+ with 1 standard die.
- Is it normal to teleport around randomly? I figure it's a floor gimmick because I also encountered elite gates, floor spikes and invisible paths, but there should be some sort of warning for that one in particular.
- Furthermore, awarding experience for exploration is a novel idea, but what do you get from combat? I saw that the end screen says that I got varying amounts of glory. I'm assuming that's a resource meant for meta progression later: Permanent upgrades, unlocks and the like.
- Moreover, awarding exp for every space on the board runs the risk of making exploration feel like mowing the grass or turn based Pacman. Just to give an example, in Darkest Dungeon you want to explore every room because there's treasure in them. It's functionally the same as a value going up, granted that the player has inventory space, but the main difference is that it's better contextualized.
- Likewise, the level layout is unknown until it's explored, so uncovering the board is useful even in the absence of extrinsic motivators. Revealing the board from the start is good if the player gets to plan their run through the stage like in FTL or Slay the Spire, but here you want to explore everything so I can't help but feel like there's something missing.
- As for the difficulty, I couldn't beat the demo this time. I think the biggest issue are the wolves; I either one shot in one turn or they do the same to me with no in-between. The combat in general is very snowball-ish since you can gain extra turns off your extra turns. This also has the side effect of making the cleric worthless.
- I think that leveling up should be juiced up more. It's an integral part of the RPG experience and people love seeing numbers increase, even if they don't get to pick their attributes. You are leaving cheap dopamine on the table, basically.
- What's the deal with chests? I opened several of them but I only managed to get something in my inventory once. I couldn't tell if this was an error.
- Cool loading screen by the way.
- Overall, the game seems to be progressing well, and the combat has more going on even if it's a bit unbalanced at the moment.
- Keep up the good work.
>Settings
No settings for that yet, but I'll add that now
>Names
Mm, we'll see. The goblin slayer naming convention is intentional but I do see that people can think it's bland
>Events difficulty
Agreed, might change the presentation.
>Teleports
There are teleportation tiles that throw you around randomly yes. The tutorial that warns you should've showed up, but I'm making a better introductory dungeon next
>Combat rewards
In a run, nothing for now. Except MP refunds when you finish one without taking damage. This might change
>Exploration
Planning is important, that's why the layout and enemy types are visible from the start. You're meant to take the paths of the least resistance until you get stronger. I'll redesign the floor layouts to better reflect this of course
>Snowball
Yep, the combat is snowbally if you don't have the defensive options. It is intentional for the wolves specifically to die in one or two rounds while being able to do the same.
>Leveling up
Agreed. Good idea
>Chests
Not an error. There are relics and passive abilities that drop from chests. Relics show up in the relic menu (always active), passives show up in the party menu when you try to equip one. I will introduce a quick equip system
Thank you for playing!
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2866671745
Mmh yeah, it’s a decently competent DD clone. Some fresh ideas that even seem kinda interesting.
To give my honest take on this, I feel it lacks some appeal. B/W graphics and pretty plain drawings to top it off. The combat animation concept is pretty cool I guess. But the rest doesn’t really make me excited to click.
Thank you for playing!
What are some 2D art-focused games that do draw your eyes if you don't mind me asking? Just for future reference. It could help me with this game's art direction down the line.
Well, the style of the original DD is interesting enough. The characters are varied and distinct, enough so that some of them I liked to include in my party just because of their style.
Writing as I play.
No controller support? (Sad emoji). Tutorial so far looks great. Good job. Fantastic art. Inside the combat, the game is black and white, so extra care needs to be taken with the UI. It looks good so far, but identifying which character had the active turn was a bit tricky at first. I think you should on top of highlighting the active character, make the other characters slightly darker, when they are not active.
AOE atacks, like rising slash, still doesn't communicate that they are AOE, except though the text. You should invest in informing it through the UI as well, like in Darkest Dungeon.
Enemies can cross gaps, they don't follow the same rules as the player? Also, I couldn't find a way to "pass turn" in the map, to let the enemy come towards me. Is this intended or was it explained somewhere and I didn't read it?
I think enemies should not be able to cross gaps, and that I should be able to skip my turn in the map, to lure enemies to my range, and be able to strike them first.
I think those are my 2 cents so far. Good job!
Thank you for playing!
Controller support will come in the next big update (and so are some needed UI updates).
Enemies cross what look like gaps because those gaps are actually illusory tiles that are invisible to the player before they step on them. If you use WASD to step over them you'll also be able to do the same.
>Passing turn
It is intentional right now that you can't "pass your turn". You are supposed to use the dice to change your movement to ambush the enemy or stop movement early to bait them. I may change this in the future, or introduce it in a proper tutorial level, but it is a deliberate choice that you can't easily control where you stop.
Visual style is good all around. The defeat screen has these underscore names which should be changed before this becomes a Steam demo.
Played until I got filtered on the second floor. I really like the art although I feel like adding just a few select spots of color would work really well instead of it just being gray and can be used to make certain thing stand out (I'm not counting damage numbers)
There's also a lot to take in on a first play, I wouldn't have minded a bit more of a slow introduction to all the mechanics. Not in the form of a cute anime girl yapping at me but an actual playable tutorial (the cute anime girl can yap at me while I play the tutorial)
I guess the pop up tutorials weren't adequate? Gotcha
Thank you for playing!
The popups were largely fine (although people tend to not read) but the game just throws a lot at you at once. Some things that I feel were missing is a little bit on how MP works (can I use it per fight, does it recover, when does it recover) and some information regarding how much damage an attack deals. And also something regarding the status effects e.g. Shield Bash: "Gain 3 Momentum and applies Fragile" ok what is Momentum? At least fragile I can check but also only after I've successfully hit the enemy with it.
And there is immideatly a lot of that because 3 party members with 3 abilities each. That's why I meant maybe a slow start with 1 party member, a tutorial area with a single fight and the raconteur going over it while playing + some more information on the abilities. The "how to win fights" section would be great to have as part of the tutorial imo.
Yeah, I agree with everything you've said. Thanks!
(typing as I upload)
Change log:
- Enabled floor randomization
- Fixed minor bugs
- Disabled the log for now, it was causing the random Godot crashes, for some reason
- Refund MP you've spent in a combat if you've finished it without taking any damage
If you've played v0.120, skippable. Unless if you want to explore random floor layouts or get the achievements
Bigger build coming soon with extra dungeon options and new art