Universal Demon's Rise (by Wave Light Games)

Cool ... I'll check it out on my side with each mercenary. I'm pretty sure it was working earlier but I may have made a more recent change that screwed it up.

 

Mercenaries seem to be working from what I can tell. I'll try each of the 3 with various length contracts to be sure.

Otherwise, any feedback on the changes? What do you guys think about the persistent corpses and ability scale by level changes?

I'm working on the Android version, which seems to be going well. Some bugs that were holding me up earlier from the game engine seem to be fixed. Testing on my LG G4 and it's running very well. Going to test on some older devices to see how it goes.

 

You can always try one of the pre-built teams. Those are fairly well-balanced and have a little bit of everything. Still, it seems like you chose a good team from what you describe. Can you describe which characters you chose exactly?

There are several healers ... or I should say there are lots of characters with heal abilities. In the early game, the best healer is probably the Storm Seer as she has a heal spell that heals all units within a 3 tile radius. The Halfling, Elven Ranger and Dwarf Ironguard also have good heal spells but those only affect a single target that is adjacent to them. However, in the later game, the Tree Giant is probably the best healer. Once he levels up, he gains some really powerful healing spells and buffs.

 

Thanks ... appreciate it. Let me and others know how you get along as you play. I'm always eager to hear feedback.

 

Hey gents,

Just a quick update. The Android port continues ... the game seems to work flawlessly on LG L4 but doesn't load the character selection screen on my older test devices (galasy S4 and LG G3). Investigating the issue. It really ought to work on these devices but who knows.

On more interesting things, I've been experimenting with a new gameplay element for the sequel related to melee attacks. I've allowed certain fighters to make retaliation strikes after they are attacked if the attacker is within their melee attack range. This makes melee combat more brutal and bloody, which is a huge plus. Also, it makes archers and mages attacking melee fighters with melee attacks really dangerous since the melee fighter gets a free attack back.

Each dedicated melee fighter will have a certain number of reaction strikes they can make in response to being attacked. Most fighters will have just 1 reaction strike a turn. However, those that are more skilled like the Duelist or those armed with sword / shield combinations will have perhaps 2 or more. I can see the Samurai, Duelist and Elven Paladin have 2 reaction strikes to begin with while the big fighters would have 1 and perhaps the Undead might have 0 to represent their slower reaction speed.

Then there can be abilities that modify reaction strikes and magic items that add extra reaction strikes. So lots of room for extra tactical fun in abilities and items.

It seems to work really nicely in my beta of Demon's Rise 2 so far so unless I find a really compelling reason not to, I'm going to add it back into this game as well in the next update.

 

Hey guys,

I'm working on the next update to Demon's Rise, which will be a content update. It'll add 2 new characters, a couple of new gameplay elements, some spit & polish for a few levels and some new levels. I'll likely extend the campaign as well.

Here is the first new character. This is the Void Dragon, which is kind of a magical familiar that takes on the aspect of a dragon:

Dragon Character Pic by Rajpreet Dhillon, on Flickr

I still need to add 3 more abilities to it but it will have typical dragon abilities like breathing fire and will be a quick and nimble fighter / mage hybrid. Very quick and hard to hit but not physically tough at all. Here's a picture of one of its fireball-type abilities:

Dragon Flame Pic by Rajpreet Dhillon, on Flickr

The next character is the Shadow Ghoul, which is a preview of one of the characters in Demon's Rise 2. I though it would be cool to let players try out one of the new characters now. He is kind of like a zombie sorcerer that can feed / infect his enemies, summon more of his own kind, teleport and feed on the dead.

Shadow Ghoul Pic by Rajpreet Dhillon, on Flickr

Here is in battle. A bit of gloomy character but really fun to use. Very different from other characters and certainly not your typical wizard.

Shadow Ghoul in Battle 2 by Rajpreet Dhillon, on Flickr

The 2 characters are basically done. I just need to add 3 more abilities to the Void Dragon and test them out a bit to make sure each character is neither too strong to too weak.

After that, I'm going to look at adding some further UI enhancements that people have asked for and will try to add some bonus quests that can be picked up by talking to either the Blacksmith or the Temple Priestess. Will keep you guys posted.

Also, any feed back on the last change. I haven't gotten any complaints of bugs and such so I'm thinking it must be fairly stable. Definitely seems to be working well on my iPad Air. Let me know if you run into anything.

 

Thanks ... I've spent several days trying to figure out an Android issue. The game works beautifully on my LG G4 but crashes on my LG G4 and Galaxy S4. I'm hoping it's just that it runs on the newer phones and not the older ones but I haven't got many newer Android phones to test yet.

Still, I've done some more work on the next patch. I wanted to add a few more bits of polish that I just never had time for earlier. The first are some new dialog screens that appear at the start of each major quest (so 6 in total). These are just simple dialogs with some of the characters shown from a first person view. They help to set the tone and allow for greater immersion. Here are a few pics:

Story 1 by Rajpreet Dhillon, on Flickr

Story 2 by Rajpreet Dhillon, on Flickr

The other enhancement is the addition of a barracks room that will allow players to manage their inventory in between battles:

room by Rajpreet Dhillon, on Flickr

 

Thanks ... hope you enjoy. Let me know how you get along.

 

Not planning to make too many changes in the UI. Recent updates have improved the ability button usage and I can't think of what else to change here. But if I get a good idea, I'll add it.

The last update improved hit chances so fewer misses. The next update and the next game will feature a counter attack mechanism that will allow skilled fighters to make retaliation strikes in melee. This makes melee combat far quicker and more brutal and really gives a big advantage to melee fighters that get stuck into combat with shooters and mages.

Animations were improved a few version updates ago. The new game will obviously continue to use the new animation system.

I'm re-thinking camera controls a bit. I may remove the pinch to zoom and 2-finger rotate in favour of on-screen camera controls only. Not really sure.

Regarding action cam shots where the camera zooms in, I'm probably going to remove this entirely because I've gotten complaints of it causing motion sickness. Never had the problem myself but I am starting to find the novelty wearing off on them personally.

The code base for the next game is the same as the current version of Demon's Rise, so it will have all the tweaks and updates from the onset.

 

thanks for the feedback. So far, I've only heard bad things about the zoom in effect so I figured I'd remove it entirely. However, if you like it ... I'll just keep it as an option (like it currently is). I may just switch the default from ON to OFF.

I'm also going to tweak it slightly because with larger creatures that are in the sequal, the camera goes straight to the creatures rear-end, which is not the desired effect at all. Still, that should be an easy fix.

Next update is almost ready, I've just got to do another end-to-end play through with the 2 new characters to make sure that they and the new storyline scenes don't break anything. Also, Android port is almost done too.