This game has come along so well, it's truly amazing. I'm playing through again now after several months break, and the balance is feeling just right. A party at 3rd/4th level really has to struggle to get through the fight without loosing heroes, and the zero AP start condition makes the first moves much more meaningful without giving the ability to blitz through the missions. Very, very nicely done, and I'm looking forward to a day 1 purchase of the sequel.
Thanks. I'm really glad to hear that. The past 6 months have seen a lot of changes to balance and gameplay through the patch updates. Do you use the Divine Blessings at all? They can have a big impact on the game and the last patch made gaining them come from doing impressive kill streaks. This adds another tactical layer to think about. The game balance is razor sharp in Demon's Rise 2 because I incorporated all of the tweaks that we've done in the past 9 months and I restricted the roster to 10 characters. This allowed me to test those 10 characters a lot more heavily. The next update to Demon's Rise 1 is going to be pretty significant. It won't include too many game balance tweaks but it will add a huge improvement in both audio and graphics. It will also include some big bug fixes. I found an issue recently where if you load from a mid-battle save and you had an ally or a friendly summoned unit in play, then the XP stat bonuses don't get applied correctly to your units upon load. So that will be fixed in the next patch. Also, put in a bug fix for the errors that can sometimes occur with "line" and "cone" targeting abilities. It'll be a big update.
Here's a short clip of game play in Demon's Rise 2. I was doing some testing and recorded from my iPad Air. This is at medium graphics settings. video
Here's another, longer video that shows menus, character selection and one of the early levels. This level is a bit unique as it involves you fighting some of the heroes from the first game. I thought it would be a bit of fun. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzT3MM-U3n0
Actually i was going to make a comment about the divine blessing. Speaking for myself, i don't use it, and i think it's not needed in the game... you as the game designer have too many things to balance and to worry about already.
Another suggestion i wanted to make. Can you make it, that if pets grabs a potion, it benefits the summoner too? Or how about if your pets die, the summoner takes a penalty for the reminder of the battle?
You're right in the case of the first game. However, for the second game the difficulty is quite a bit higher in later levels and so it can be very helpful. Also, the theme of divine intervention fits the second game's back story a lot more closely. Lastly, I've found that it has me thinking "how can I move to kill the most enemies in a single turn in hopes of receiving divine favour?", which is a good tactical element. The divine favour really has saved me in the later levels of Demon's Rise 2.
I could definitely have it so that if pets / summoned creatures die, they affect the summoner. However, regarding potions, sometimes you want to heal the pet and not the summoner, so it's hard to say if it makes sense to do that.
Not yet ... just doing final checks. Should be good to do the final release build overnight. Then tomorrow I need to take screen shots and fill out the game description. So most likely tomorrow by end of day. Release date will be November 10th. Once submitted, I need to try and get some attention and do some publicity ... which is something I'm awful at. As an aside, would you guys be interested in a Mobcrush session where I show the game and discuss some of the new elements and characters and such? I've never tried Mobcrush, it seems like it would be a good way to explain the game and some of the more complex tactical bits and things.
I submitted Demon's Rise 2 just now! Scheduled release date is Thursday, November 10th (assuming no issues with Apple's review). Here's a random pic of the lightning golem (a later stage enemy): IMG_0130 by Rajpreet Dhillon, on Flickr
I know ... but I really need the time to try and drum up some awareness. Good news is that Apple just approved the game, which is way faster than I was expecting. At least there will be no unexpected delays from the approval process. On the plus side, now that I've submitted Demon's Rise 2, I can prepare and submit the update for Demon's Rise 1. This updates has a bunch of stuff: - New world map showing the locations and history of the various factions. - Lots of new magic items added to the item database. Roughly doubled the total number of magic items available in the dungeon and shop. - Enhanced lighting graphics that make characters pop out a lot more from the background. - Audio Mixer added to the audio that prioritizes character voices over SFX and background music. When a character says something, any SFX and background music is lowered subtly to make it clear what he's saying. Similarly, background music will be lowered whenever SFX start playing. Huge improvement in audio, overall. - Completely revamped divine favour list to effects that are much more balanced. - Optimizations in memory to reduce RAM usage and thus lower frequency of crashes on 1GB devices. That has resulted in a change to some player abilities and a general reduction in the number of summoned units. Some summoning spells have been replaced with new abilities. - Enhancement to touch controls to prevent weird behaviour when "line" and "cone" targeting abilities are selected but not received correctly. - Improvement to graphics settings so the high polygon versions of characters are shown more intelligently. Now when zooming in, the game will show high polygon characters at more appropriate camera distances. Also, the "High Poly Option" in the settings will now affect this so the high poly version show more often. - Lots of balance tweaks and some new abilities for existing units. - Lots of bug fixes. It'll be a really big update and I should have it ready to submit early next week.
i'm optimistic about the date. Apple sometimes surprises everyone with short-nonexistant review times. Fingers crossed
Made some updates to the website: http://www.wavelightgames.com It has information about the new game, more screenshots and some articles on the new units and factions. Will add more on a regular basis in the News section. I'll also make a similar page for the original game over the next few days.
I have the next patch done and ready. Will be submitting it on monday. Also, I finally fixed the bug where inventory items sometimes went missing! It's taken me about 6 months but finally found it with help from a customer who figured out that it always happens on a particular patrol level.
