sure thing. I see a lot of similarities in how you developed you game. Mine was iPad only in 2014 and really just for hardcore retro fans, then I got lots of feedback to make a cross platform one and ventured into Unity. I use 5.1.4f because everything after does not seem to be stable enough. You can install older versions of Unity but if you use post 5.1 features of course that is not an option. Porting to Android with Unity in parallel to iOS is really fast, but a few things work differently (code signing, having to manually remove phone permissions in Android Studio because Unity just forces them in...). Their app submission review times are <30min so that was a huge positive surprise. iOS app store review times used to be 10 days back in 2014, can you imagine releasing something and then hearing that it broke someones savegame, and watching while the fix is in review for 10 days with more and more issues being reported? was a nightmare. Apple luckily has reduced that to 24h in the last months, good job on their part. Anyway, could go on forever! What I found funny is how a fan just said he is at level 40 when you only tested/played to level 8 yourself. In my game you can finish the game at level 30, and will be 40-45 if you ALL the side-quests and clear all dungeons. But I soon found some people enjoy grinding and had level 400 players with full resistances, insane health, mana and evasion... it actually means people can enjoy the game the way they want to. Which works if there is no multiplayer, leaderboard etc, in single player that is perfectly fine (even cheating or exploiting things is).
I find this very interesting as well. It made me think of my unexamined expectation that developers should play their own games for a substantial amount of time (I am the biggest fan of my work kind of schtick); yet, at the same time I realised that their times are limited and they will have to put in more time in developing their games. Hence, the need for beta testers and the likes. Anyhow, does anyone think that the Storm Seer's normal attack sounds are quite loud?
Truthfully, I just don't get enough playtest time as I would like. That being said, I've tested Demon's Rise 2 much more than I did Demon's Rise 1 at launch. I actually feel it's very well balanced and the progression is good (though the first couple levels are a little harder than I'd like). You can get to the last level with a party of characters ranging from 7 - 9 so that's why I was suprised by level 40 characters. It's really amazing and I'm really happy that the game is enjoyable enough to warrant that kind of commitment. Yeah, agreed ... I'll take a look. Not sure why her audio clips are louder than most others. I'm still learning about the nuances of the underlying game engine (Unity).
Speaking of Demon's Rise 2 ... just want to remind everyone it will be launching in about 2 hours and 15 minutes. It'll be on a 30% discount for the first 10 days and if you pick it up, please spread the word on social media and leave a review. It really does help a lot.
Hopefully you don't think I'm criticising you in my previous remark; it's only an intriguing observation on my part lamenting about my ignorance and that's all. Great to hear that you have more time to test Demon's Rise 2. True, I'm not great at assessing the balance of a game but the progression is exciting. I can understand why you're surprised though. From what I see, the bulk of a hero's power comes from his equipments and an increase in level, despite how enhancing it can be, takes time to increase. That player must have done tons (hundreds?) of patrol levels to achieve that high of a level. Her AOE lightning spells are deafening as well. It's just a minute annoyance so it's okay to not prioritise it if you have other more pressing issues to look into. Anyhow, I'm going to pick up Demon's Rise 2 right away. And I haven't finished DR1 yet so I'm not sure which I should play. Quite the dilemma.
Not to worry ... I didn't take as criticism. Actually, I would be the first to say that I didn't test Demon's Rise 1 nearly enough before launching it. It honestly launched 6 months too early in hindsight. However, it was much cheaper at launch for those 6 months and I raised the price to the real price only after I felt the game was polished enough to warrant it. For Demon's Rise 2, though, it is much more heavily playtested and the balance is much more finely tuned. Now that doesn't mean I won't keep improving it because that's just what I love to do. Cool. The two games are pretty different. Demon's Rise 1 is more traditional dungeon crawler in tight corridors whereas Demon's Rise 2 is more open battle. The maps are larger and the first half of the game is in the open ground. It's more a tactical battle simulator with more units and large terrain. However, the second half of Demon's Rise 2 goes back to a more traditional dungeon crawler setting so it's got both. If you have space on your device, I'd play both simultaneously and see which you prefer.
Elastic pricing that reflects the increasing value of a growing product - I admire your pragmatic approach I've tried DR 2 for a bit. My initial impression is I find myself focusing on the animation. It looks to me like it's better than DR 1 but some of the characters' animations are exaggerated. For example, when the Were bear is attacked it appears as if he is being pushed by someone and clumsily falls down. With that said, I really like the models for the void Mage and the doom(?) knight. Note that I don't have a clue about 3D modelling and indie game development, nor do I know whether you can improve the animation/models: my above opinions are more likely to be useless than useful. On gameplay, I like that thegame starts with having combats outside of the dungeons of DR1. The setting is still dark but at least not as claustrophobic inducing as the ruins. In line with the characters being affiliated with the dark force, there are more punishments from the use of skills (e.g miscast of void Mage or divine punishment of knight) and also more skills that take away the HP of the casters; overall, due to the shift in the skill types, DR2 requires different strategies than DR1. Okay, I'll probably get back to DR1 and complete my current play through, and then have a go at DR2. And yeah, my recent frustrations about DR1 are: 1. I clicked on the end turn button prematurely a lot of the time. It would be great if I can change the position of the button. 2. When there are too many corpses, I can't see where my characters can move. Having a way to clean up the map would be awesome. 3. I've AOE killed my own characters quite frequently. It could be because I am a klutz and having a warning that I am friendly firing would be helpful. 4. A way to see the exact health of a monster, without the need to have an attack move or to click the monster info button.
Yeah, I see what you mean about the werebear. The 3d modeller that made it didn't give it a lot of animations so I have added animations from another character and they don't gel perfectly. I think I'll change it to just use the original animations. He'll have less variety but will look much better. I'll probably try some new animations that I got recently too that might work. Okay ... could be done easily. I'll add an option to reposition it in the options menu. Understandable. I think I'll make it so that the tactical view button will also hide corpses. By the way, you can hide all corpses in the Options Menu. okay ... I'll put that on the to do list. Should be possible. Will look into it. That might be hard ... there is the life bar but some creatures have lots of hit points and I wouldn't want the screen to be full of numbers.
I see; I understand that having too much numbers on the screen can clutter the screen. What I mean is when I touch a monster, I would love if I can see its health similar to when I touch the monster when I want to attack it; maybe, having a box similar to the ones during attack moves except you would remove the hit chance and critical chance. For example, I am trying to decide on which two monsters with full healths I would like to kill, one on the far right and the other the far left left. I am currently out of range and I have to move closer to them in order to attack. The current option is when I touch one of the monsters, I would need to click on another button to look at its exact health. But if I can know the health of the monsters quickly just by tapping them, despite them being out of my attack range, I can make the decision quicker. Another thing is the life bar can be misleading because a monster's life bar can be full but its exact health is 50 hp while another monster might have half life bar but its exact health is 100 hp; hence, the need to know the exact health when virtual lives are at stake. It is probable that the above is what you already have in mind and if that is true, I will respect your decision no matter your reasonings. I am just making sure that I explain my points adequately.
Now I understand. That's a good idea, actually ... I can see the need for it. Let me give it some thought and see what can be done.
Haha take all the time you need; it's only a minor suggestion from myself. I've just completed the game and I am still traumatised by the amount of big bosses you put in the last stage. I decided to use my reserve 20+ favours and the battle became a whole lot easier.
I'm sure this has been mentioned, but is there a reason why you can't go back to a character to continue movement after you've moved another character? I like to move characters one hex to clear space, then come back to that character to move them some more, but I can't.
Yeah, that's a good point. The game is currently coded just to give you one chance to move. I made a change to this in the upcoming sci-fi game, Strike Team, where units use action points for moves and can move, shoot, and then move again if they wanted. It's a lot more flexible. I wonder if I should change it so that in this game, a unit could move multiple times provided they don't move beyond their max movement distance that turn. It probably wouldn't be too hard to do but might mess up the AI. I'll look into it and see if it could be done.
