Blake, Thank you for sharing a bit about the process of pixel art. As an old school gamer who rarely has time for gaming today (due to a number of other obligations in life) I do enjoy trying new games on my iPhone. Your artistic talent hasn't gone unnoticed and love what you have done with this game! Congrats with your accomplishment and I really do appreciate learning more about what it takes to create art for games.
Great look at the art. I'm a little disappointed I was never able to play through story mode, though I understand why it was cut.
The pixel art is amazing.. It does look a bit fuzzy on ipad but I'm sure you guys will eventually address that.. The sprites are awesome and more importantly, the gameplay is fantastic..
I have been waiting soooo long for this game and I love it, thanks devs!!! Gotta check out 100 rogues once I can put down Auro... A small suggestion: how about a possibility for beginners to see, once you select a spell and the direction/target, which monsters are affected and maybe also have an indication in which direction they would be bumped? I know there are only 9 spells but in the beginning, the results of a spell are often surprising... Thanks again, I am having a blast!
We will be including a text feed for the "event list" of what happens, and also will be including longpress features for enemy damage range/info. However, when it comes to certain feedback, we have to balance visual clarity/cleanliness with adequate information. If we're not careful, too many symbols all over the screen will have a backfiring effect, making the game feel oppressive and cluttered. We're always trying to strike the balance between the two. And I'm sure in future updates, we'll get closer to what the perfect balance really is. But don't worry. The spells only take like, a day to really internalize. It's all the emergent combinations and synergies you'll be discovering for years to come =]. And that's part of the magic! WE don't even know all of what's possible.
I just bought this, primarily based on all the positive feedback and the great developer interaction here. I look forward to getting into it, but my immediate comment is (as others have mentioned) that the art looks pretty bad playing on my iPad Air 2. I know from reading the thread that this is a scaling issue. I sure hope it gets addressed soon.
Don't know if the Devs got my email at dinofarm but I'd really like to get my hands in the beta versions! =D
Puzzles aren't just jigsaws when you consider them as a genre. Consider video game puzzles as every single game where the player cannot impact the rules themselves. These games can be either turn based or 'active', but these games generally have a planning and 'resolve'/play -phase. Auro is certainly something that fits that description. Auro is a dead system in terms of character progress and the impact of char.dev. on game influencing mechanics. Those do not exist. Your definition of puzzle seems to be extremely narrow. Chess indeed is a strategy puzzle game in my books. The scenario is wide open in front of you, which you then turn by turn attempt to solve to best of your abilities. Consider the genre an active puzzle. Auro certainly can be defined in same manner. I truly believe you are wrong in your argument that 100% of players aka rest of the world wouldn't define chess etc in similar manner I just did. At the same time, I would call Angry Birds a puzzle as well. A 2d dynamic physics based puzzle. "How do I get the three pigs, with my three birds." I don't like Angry Birds either for the same reason. I do like it better than Auro though, as the player at least has 'skill' based factor on the dynamic force/aiming controls as opposed to Auro's turn based tile set, which at every point can be just 'dissambled to the rules to find the best course of action'. I adore turnbased games as you can 'easily' balance them even when the rules change. But when you take the character development away, only the turn based puzzle scenario remains. Your description of a RPG would indeed fit a terrible and bad RPG. The trick is to balance a game in a manner that there wouldn't be strong cookiecutter builds etc. But at that point the game is already presenting the player options to build that cookiecutter build, which essentially isn't anything else but a (too) strong way to tackle the issue at hand. That's something that Auro completely lacks. Everything is thrown to the player and there's no change of rules via character progress. For me that's the main reason to play games. "How can I impact the rules which would influence game mechanics to tackle the game?", is a question that doesn't exist in Auro. No choices, just passive "here's the scenario, these are the rules - solve it or fail." I absolutely loved 100 Rogues, but Auro just isn't for me. It's not too complex or difficult. Instead it's just boring as nothing changes in terms of rules. You can reshuffle a deck of cards and call the scenario new and unique, but if the player cannot impact the rules themselves, there's very little intensive for me to keep playing. I want to impact how the game plays. There certainly exists a player base for these "active puzzles"' but I don't think we hardcore players generally are part of that. If the character dev. portions existed in Auro and it was more of a roguelike in terms of RPGs (choices!), I'd certainly enjoy thr game. Perhaps in Auro 2. Auro is polished and I'm sure it will be a success, but it certainly isn't for everyone. I consider it too dull. I can't see the fun in it. In real life the rules are set to stone. The fact that those rules can change in games is what makes them fun for me to play. Not the fact that a scenario can be random and different from previous ones. That's part of the great, emergent narrative, but not the only area.
Q to the DEV's - I've noticed you speaking about a graphical bug on Retina iPad's... does this same bug exist on the iPhone 6 Plus, the graphics just look "blurry." Any plans for a fix?
Hmm. As long as the ratio is 9:16, the screens are so dang huge that square pixels should stay squares. I don't know how our's or apple's magnification works. Rest assured, we will attempt to maintain native aspect ratio and avoid anti aliasing wherever possible. Thanks so much for playing
This post is a follow up to my recent comment on the art looking bad on my iPad Air 2. I don't play many games on my iPhone 5c, but I downloaded Auro to it just to see what it looked like and I do like the game's art when viewed on the phone, so I am pretty sure my issue is with the scaling on the iPad. I will still play the game on the iPad (and hope for a graphics fix to appear soon) and I am enjoying it so far. It is quite challenging but gets easier with practice. Clearly the developers have put a lot of love into the game and it shows. I hope it does well on IOS and continues getting great support.
Ok, if "chess is a puzzle", then yes, by that definition Auro, too, is a puzzle. For people who don't think chess is a puzzle, Auro is also not a puzzle. However, I must re-iterate that this sentiment: ... is completely wrong about Auro. You can say that you don't like the game, but to say that it doesn't offer real decisions and sacrifice plays, and that it's just a "solve" thing, is wrong. Artifex 28, Is it possible that you've only played the Tutorial missions? Because I think those are indeed much more puzzle-like. Make sure to play Play Mode a few times, because that's the real game.
Let me quote Touch Arcade on that one: "This is most definitely not a puzzle game with a single solution, though its mechanics are very puzzle-like." See what they did there? Not a puzzle game with single solution. Meaning it's a puzzle game with multiple solutions. Like Chess. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_puzzle While the Chess puzzle refers to static scenarios, the game isn't that different. Instead of 'clearing the puzzle', players attempt to strengthen their position and/or strategize to trick their opponents. Chess, defined to the very extent, would be "strategic turnbased active puzzle game for two players". I do stand behind what I wrote earlier - I don't enjoy games with set rules that do not change as the game progresses. Instead the constant change has to be in the core of the game. Emergent narrative is what interests me when combined with choices that keep changing how the game plays out. Auro was a 2/5 experience for me compared to the 5/5 100 Rogues was. I played through half the tutorials and then jumped to play mode. Nothing changed really. Felt the exact same in play mode too. "This isn't fun or interesting. I don't like random generated Sudokus with jumping numbers either." Yet again, I strongly believe Auro will be a success, but it won't be a game for the people looking for a truly emergent experience in terms of roguelikes. I would never publicly review Auro for a site/magazine, since it's obviously "isn't for me". I know that much.
That Wiki page refers specifically to a Chess puzzle, or Chess problem. Not the game of Chess itself. Which I personally do not consider to be a puzzle game. To me, it's the original turn-based strategy game. Having puzzle elements does not make it a puzzle game. If that was true, you could call almost any game from any genre a puzzle game.
I really love this game. It's easy to get into and and I'm always thinking of what I should have done after the fact. I'd say 868-hack is the closest play wise and that's a great thing. Because of the play field size and shape variation Auro feels a bit more open to play. In 868-hack I really consider almost every individual turn but this in this game I feel there is more room for error or mistakes. You can mess up and still gain overall from the round. I love the animation and artwork, but I much much prefer the original icon!
Ok, I'm going to admit that I cannot even beat level 12 in the tutorial. Perhaps I'm just not understanding something about the rules/mechanics of the game, but (as cool as this game seems) I'm just not clicking with it.
The tutorials are special in that you can use every spell only once. You need a spell to get the brute. Move towards the water and check every turn if the fire bumps him into the water. Or position yourself so that is water behind and the brute in front, switch places crating a vortex, step back and push him in - the vortex allows you to push. I think it is possible to kill the heavies with either given spell in the tutorial. The others you can get rid of without any spells by pushing them into the water - takes a few moves though. Actual gameplay is somewhat different, but in the tutorial you can practice using each spell.
Which I indeed pointed out in my reply with the link... And yeap. Puzzles are a common and wide range of games, when you broaden to 'active puzzles' and games that generally play 'puzzlelike'. As I pointed out in the reply, even Touch Arcade called Auro a puzzle game, with more than one solution.
