Are you by any chance a Killer Instinct fan? The vampire knight seems Mira-like in several powers. I understand you don't want to dilute the Overmind and you've already got Mind Control on the necromancer so there's no really good place for a vampire's traditional hypnosis ability, but I would have still liked a contagion effect on the Blood Feast and/or Red Mist that creates an infection status (stolen from Ghast, maybe) that spawns a vampire minion when the target dies. Because without mind control or contagion, I think you're missing some key Vampire tropes. Also, the Blood Feast heal doesn't seem to be scaling with level, at least in my early uses. I did something like 40 damage and healed 4 (or at least that's the number that popped up). And "level" in the Dark Blast description is missing it's second "l." But here I'm just complaining that my free cake doesn't have my favorite flavor ganache, so, really, ignore me. Thanks for the continuing support and hunting down bugs, its really nice to see a developer being so responsive.
I am indeed. The Vampire Knight character was heavily inspired by Mira in her design. Inspired is perhaps too kind ... a blatant rip off is probably more accurate. You're right that a vampire domination type ability is well suited for her. I'm actually doing a whole host of Vampires for Temple of Shadows and I'm giving the Vampire Elder a mind control ability. In that game, the Vampires are enemies so players will have to deal with them mind controlling their party members. I may add a mind controlling ability of some kind as I test her a bit further. Due to the nature of these extra characters, they have not been tested as much as the earlier characters so they are bound to be updated and tweaked in future updates. I could perhaps have her 6th level vampiric gift ability be able to target enemies and turn them to the Vampire's side? I really like your idea of having a unit be summoned when the victim dies. That would require a fair bit of coding but is a really cool concept. It would probably have benefits for other character abilities like the Shadow Ghoul's bite ability. I'll look into it and see how hard it would be to implement. Thanks ... I'll check out the ability. It should be scaling. Will fix if it isn't for some reason.
Wow! I haven't pushed the button on this game yet, but I've been following this thread very close. I absolutely LOVE how interactive the developer is with the game, and they are always posting up to answer any questions. They are also very open to criticism and user feedback which, if you ask me, a huge bonus with any good game. Excellent job, Wave Light Games! I'll definitely be making the purchase now!
Thanks for the gracious response! Hey, waitaminute... now that I look at it the Blade Dancer looks familiar too! Any chance Baalia and Elsen are sisters? On the "getting your characters mind controlled" front - I've been trying to counter this by using my own Mind Control options to get allies back, and it's never worked. Am I just hitting the fail chance or does the game resist this as a solution? I get that the coding for the Vampire contagion could be too onerous. Might have applications for the necromancer as well, though - a "when enemies dies, create a minion" trigger could open up your toolbox significantly, from reanimation to vampire / zombie plagues to implanted eggs...
I suspect the similarity is between the Blade Dancer and the Huntress. They're both based on the same base character model but with different clothing, face mesh and hair style. Interesting factoid, the name "Elsen" for the Vampire Knight comes from how my 2 year old daughter pronounces Elsa's name from Disney's Frozen. She absolutely adores her ... but she also loves Teen Titans so perhaps there's some hope for her. Yeah, that's actually a bug. In theory, it should work but for some reason it doesn't. It's on my list of things to look into and fix. Yeah, it would be a really useful trait to add to the repertoire. Just gotta figure out the best way to implement it. One thing that's always bugged me though in some games is when you kill a giant robot and it creates a human skeleton. I'd want it to only create a zombie / skeleton / vampire thrall from units where it makes sense. So it would be a complicated thing to implement but I do need to add some more variety to abilities and things to add some new tactical options so I'll try and figure it out.
Yeah, happy to discuss future plans. Right now I and a couple of helpers are working on 2 games simultaneously: - Demon's Rise: Temple of Shadows - narrative adventures set in the northern kingdoms just after the big battle of level 10 of Demon's Rise 2. It features some new tactical / gameplay elements like random weather effects and lighting effects during night battles. The setting is also heavily Saxon / Viking themed so imagine a fantasy version of The Last Kingdom as a theme. - Strike Team - The Sci-Fi variant of Demon's Rise that is kind of hybrid of Space Hulk and XCOM but with its own flavour. Space marines against aliens in tense, close-quarters firefights in claustrophobic corridors of a spaceship and zero gravity of space. I'm hoping both games will launch in late Q1 of 2017 since we're working on them simultaneously. Temple of Shadows is about 35% complete and Strike Team is about 25% complete so still a long way to go for both of them. What I'm thinking after that would be a space fleet strategy game set in the same universe as Strike Team. However, instead of squad-level firefights, the player will command an armada of battleships and play through the invasion of a heavily-defended alien solar system. Players will have a heavily customized flagship and crew that can be upgraded and gain experience from battles. The commander will also get fleet command skills over time. I'm also planning to have a perms-death system in place where ships destroyed in battle are permanently removed from the player's fleet and the game ending if the player's flagship is destroyed. Capital ships will be very tough though with shields and tons of hit points so it'll be a very different kind of game. I'm also sketching out the basic plot line for Demon's Rise 3. Tentatively calling it "Demon's Rise 3: Swords of the North". The basic premise will be that it will continue from the end of Demon's Rise 2. The player characters from DR2 have escaped and returned to the north and are reforging Monrkarn's broken army. The player will take the role of members of Tallaren's Swords, a secretive group of warriors that are pledged to fight against demons. They will fight through various battles / campaigns to try and kill the characters from DR2 and prevent them from uniting the tribes of demons and beastmen. So the theme will be assassination / guerrilla warfare with possibly stealth elements. Character classes will return to more "good" races and warriors but will obviously include new and unusual character classes, as is the Demon's Rise tradition. So that's pretty much the next 12 months sketched out. I might also like to release a twin stick shooter in there somewhere. My first ever game was a silly twin-stick shooter called Gun Frenzy where players controlled one of two scantily clad women and fought against hordes of monsters. It was a fun game and I keep debating whether to update it and re-release it.
Always, as long as she's being exposed to quality content. My son still loves Octonauts, which is mind-numbing, but we also watch Muppets and Iron Chef together. The sister thing was more Maya / Mira from KI, as Maya has paired throwable blades and I wasn't sure whether the 50% chance of extra attacks was meant to represent Maya's dagger pips. Might be a bit of a stretch, though, just funny that the Vamp was based on Mira and the other character you added at the same time was an Amazon with dual daggers. This will date me, but there was a 90's PC game called Dark Legions that had Vampires that could reanimate killed enemies as thralls, and it only worked on non-undead and non-elemental enemies. It returned a greyscale copy of whatever the creature in question was, rather than a generic vampire thrall from all sources. Pie in the sky would be this + the thrall gaining Blood Feast skill so it could continue to spread the infection. It might be too cludgy, but maybe a generic disease resistance trait could be added to the game, which would also be useful for preventing (say) Mind Controlled ghasts from infecting golems or skeletons. Some significant portion of the enemies you wouldn't want returning as thrall would be disease immune anyway. But that adds a whole tree of potential resistances to juggle, so I think I'm digging you in deeper with each iteration.
wow ... you know, that was a total coincidence. Elsen's gameplay style and look were heavily influenced by Mira from KI but the blade dancer being a dagger wielding amazon similar to Maya was not intentional at all. I love Maya ... probably my favourite character in KI. I wonder if there was some kind of subconscious thing going on during the design process? The Blade Dancer is interesting. She's not just a berserker but a kind of like a cleric that gets divine powers through her fighting style. I think she might be a little too easy to kill though so she'll get a little stat buff in the next update. yeah, I'm always trying to figure out how to have mind control / poison / magic resistance. I might put in some kind of magical resistance stat or use the courage stat in some way. It's something I'm always thinking about. Let me know if you have any ideas.
I'm trying to stick with northern European style mythological creatures for Temple of Shadows. Werewolves and Vampires will feature heavily. Here's a preview of the werewolf that will spend a good chunk of time in the campaign hunting your party: Temple of Shadow Werewolf WIP 2 by Rajpreet Dhillon, on Flickr
I'm new to the series and am having trouble with some of the early battles. I'm currently stuck on battle 6, which has enemies from the W, NW, and NE (many of the northern ones are behind cover), and I've tried a variety of tactics, including fleeing E to draw everyone out of cover towards me, or charging W directly into that group but out of the initial range of the northern group, or charging directly into one of the groups up top (this was suicide). Should I be grinding out gear with Quick Battles? My guys are wearing basically nothing, but I don't know how important gear is at this point. The number of enemies seems overwhelming, and there is nowhere to camp out in cover.
Yeah, I would play some quick battles. Equipment is fairly important and can have a significant impact on character stats. You can also use the Divine favour if you have accumulated some. They can make a big impact on character ability as well. If you're using favour on a tough battle, it's best to use it early since it only affects your core team members and won't do much if some of those team members are dead.
Okay, I think I fixed the bug with the mid-game load issue on the UI. I'm going to check a few other things and will submit an update tonight hopefully. I'm hoping the hotel wi fi will be good enough to do the upload to Apple.
Early game, I used 2 Void Walkers and a Huntress to create a "Death Star", which should be even easier now that you can move more than once a turn. 1. Keep your Void Walkers non-adjacent but within 3 of your team. Double Mutation Wave for a serious damage boost and near-perfect Crit chance. 2. Pull everyone in around your Huntress, hit Hunting Provisions, removing all Mutation damage and giving 2 more turns of regen. 3. Profit! Later you can use x2 Demonic Form & Vampiric Gift to similar effect on a ranged character to get something on the high teens of attacks with huge damage and crit boosts. Also - front liners get melee damage, movement boost, and damage reduction. Mages get +AP and +min or max AP regen. Hybrids, play it by ear based on their specific role.
Me too! I've been itching to play the game again. Will it fix the problematic battle or do I need to start the battle all over?
Woah! Awesome tactic. This kind of tactic makes me wish for a way to customise two similar character; even rudimentary colour change will be fine.
Is it just me, or is moving & selecting units a little more cumbersome than the first game? i keep having to wrestle with the controls. Zooming in and changing the default view to a more birds eye view helps, but i still find it a little not responsive. Love the new changes, it's like a completely new game now.
