+1 to this. I've finished 1-3, 3 times, but it keeps crashing, so I guess I'm going to call it a day. About some of the things I mentioned in my post: - It seems User Save... is the Auto Save for my game? At least, it's always more recent, and I'm not saving the game manually. - The annoyance of the "Enemies nearby" message happened in 1-1, mainly when I was leaving the rooms to avoid being hit by the enemies. Since then, most battles have been in closed rooms, so that doesn't happen anymore. - The "Defend" thing with Roy actually meant when we had "Pray for Healing" selected. This was together with the fact that the game will always remember the last action we took, so it was always there. That's especially annoying when Roy only has Defend and Heal. So far I'm liking it, it's good fun. A question, though: is it just me, or it doesn't have much in terms of tactical play? I mean, I've tried sometimes to hide behind some shelves, but the enemies would hit me. Also, I tried to use two of my party members to stand in front of the one who was more injured, but still the archers would be able to send arrows through my front men and hit the guy in the back. What are your thoughts on this? Cheers, have a good evening. Paulo
Not sure what gives, breezed through level one, started Lvl two and have gotten crushed 10 times in a row now on the very first battle with the banshees...any tips?
Chip - I promise you we thought we thought we squashed this before ship. We didn't knowingly ship it thinking it would crash devices like that. Just means i have to reduce the footprint some more and it should be good to go. Pjft - GUI looks crappy only on iPad1/3GS/iPod Touch 4 because of memory constraints, and we wanted the game to look good. Something had to give unfortunately. On the newer devices the GUI is quite crisp. Apologies.
Only tip i'm giving out today Bring Payter out to meet the first Banshee, and try to kill her using him and Aegon. Then put Aegon back in his starting place. If that doesn't work, bring Roy out to attack her as well and send him back. Killing the first banshee and leaving Payter to take the brunt of the damage is key to victory here. Also, there are other ways to win this scenario, that is one of them... man, i have GOT to get back to work and fix these crash bugs
Also playing on an iPod Touch 4 here, I have had crashes when the game is trying to load the next level (1-1 to 1-2). The only thing that could fix it is to quit, restart device and reload. I expect more crashes, if this is already happening at such a early stage of the game... :/ Great fun otherwise.
Ok, thanks for the reply. No biggie, to be honest - the crashes are the main issue, and you're looking into that; the second niggle would be improving the selection and interaction with the commands and characters - and do make us have to tap twice (like when we are attacking) to actually end the turn. Cheers, and congrats. I can't wait for the update to get back to this!
I believe you, hence the rant tags, this was just the straw for me today so venting was in order It's just been an all too common pattern lately, and after I've been looking out for the game for a while now, finding it unplayable was the sand in my crotch. I can't even imagine what sort of nightmare it must be to try and make a release even near universally stable for Android.
What. A. Bloody. Buggy. Game. Sheesh, you think they would have done more testing before release. Playing this on an iPhone 4. Crashed at 1-3. Restarted with the auto save and completed. Now I'm glitched at 2-1. Cleared the first group with the 2 Banshee, went to the smaller door and lost the battle. Restart from last Encounter, all my characters can't move. Press End Turn, enemy does nothing. Restart from Beginning, character is stuck at the start of the stage with no way of moving. No blue movement square appears. How the hell did this pass the beta testing blows my mind.
Dungeon Crawlers Summons an Ambitiously Humorous Strategy Game with Attitude What would you get if you somehow cloned a hybrid of Bill Murray and Conan the Barbarian? If you’re the mad scientists at Ayopa Games and Drowning Monkeys, your creation would aptly be named Dungeon Crawlers, a quirky 3D turn-based love child, um, adventure. Outdone only by its irreverent humor and a clunky, less-than-intuitive UI, Dungeon Crawlers is a smorgasbord of fun with slimy oozes, nasty goblins, weird science sorcery, testosterone-driven attitude and charming ineptitude. The adventure is told through a rather engaging storyline that will have you missing the days of ectoplasm and Sigourney Weaver. Inspired by the Ghostbusters movies, Dungeon Crawlers takes a line from that great franchise of yesteryear and puts a medieval spin on things. Presented through cut screens, it’s engaging enough that you actually pay attention at least through the first go-around. Visually, Dungeon Crawlers is a high-production package that pops off the screen. In some ways, it’s like watching a low-to-mid range production of a Disney animated film because there’s a dose of familiarity that flows throughout. Considering the game takes place in, well, a dark dungeon, the devs create an inviting environment that asking to be explored. From the dark textures of the brick walls and the treasures throughout to the ghoulishness of baddies and the evilness of bosses, Dungeon Crawlers instills a good sense of claustrophobia in a cartoon kind of way. And the sound effects from the clashing of weapons to the screams of agony make you feel at home. Your bumbling heroes include Payter the UFC-like barbarian, Aegon the Harry Potter wannabe, Roy the gluttonous healer and Failston the dwarf warrior, each presented gloriously in the latest dark ages fashion. Dungeon Crawlers has four multi-layer chapters with a total of 12 levels. The game consists of 3 modes of difficulty—easy, normal and hard. The game does feature an auto save function, but only one save slot, which is unfortunate. It’s relatively easy to rotate and tilt the screen using finger swipes, and a camera icon is also available for rotating the screen if you prefer. The battles themselves provide entertainment in their own sense since players will deal with a variety of different baddies including slime spitting oozes, arrow wielding goblins, hideous mummies and screaming banshees among others. Each chapter culminates with a boss fight with monsters such as the Goblin King, Banshee Queen and my favorite Death Knight Shyamalan. The gameplay is more or less what you would expect for a TBS with RPG elements which consists of fighting enemies, discovering/collecting treasure, acquiring skills and items and building up experience. In Dungeon Crawlers, each dungeon floor is made up of tiles that players can move protagonists to via turn-based play. Tapping a character indicates tiles that are available for movement which are highlighted in blue while attack tiles are highlighted in red. Green highlighted tiles show which allow for healing. Each hero and baddie has red bars to indicate the state of health. Actions are indicated in the bottom right corner of the screen. For example, an attack action button appears when an attack can occur, and by tapping, that action is then invoked. One interesting aspect in Dungeon Crawlers involves movement of the heroes. Unlike typical TBS games which locks a character’s movement after an action is invoked, players can move the DC heroes pre- and post-action. In other words, once a hero has positioned a hero and destroyed a baddie, players can move him to another spot afterwards. It’s a nuance specific to Dungeon Crawlers which in certain ways makes the game a little more forgiving. Of course, it adds another layer to a player’s strategic planning. It’s worth noting that the UI can be cumbersome requiring far too many clicks for things that otherwise should readily be accessible. For example, rather than just visually indicating that a hero has completed his turn, players need to individually tap him to discover this. In addition, TBS games inherently tend to be slow paced, and a typical way of cutting down some of that time is the ability to fast forward through the action during an enemy’s turn. Unfortunately, the fast forward button doesn’t work in Dungeon Crawlers. This is likely a bug that will be addressed in a future update. Again, these are minor frustrations, but they serve as distractions that take away from the polish of the game. As heroes dispatch the dungeon crawling scumbags, loot appears which are collected by tapping. As players clear dungeons and levels, treasure chests appear which can contain a variety of items including gear, weapons, magical powers, skills, and maps among other items. Also, items worth investigating will slowly blink until you actually wise up and maneuver heroes over. To change individual hero skills, powers and weapons, simply tap on the hero to see an overview of statistics and scroll through available weapons and powers. Considering how much I fumbled around initially to figure out the various parts of the game, adding a better tutorial or building out the Help section would be a worthy consideration for the devs. Running the game on the iPad, the game runs smoothly with some occasional lag. The AI in Dungeon Crawlers feels pretty balanced starting players off rather slowly and gradually ratcheting up the difficulty. The tactic of barreling through to destroy baddies in Chapter 1 won’t work well in later chapters. In fact, the later chapters will require planning ahead and using a balanced attack using the various heroes. In general, Dungeon Crawlers is a good introduction for those new to RPG/TBS games because it doesn’t rely on skill trees or other RPG details which can be overwhelming for some. For advanced players, the RPG elements in Dungeon Crawlers are satisfactory and even a little basic, but the cartoony characters and tongue-in-cheek humor should offset that. The game is on GameCenter and there are 15 achievements mostly for completely chapters and finding trophies. Dungeon Crawlers is certainly one of the best looking TBS games in the iTunes store with gameplay to match. It’s easily one of the more fun and highly enjoyable games in the genre. The cartoony characters and top-notch humor along with the familiarity that many players will have with the GhostBusters movie add to the appeal. The clunky UI makes for a few frustrating moments, but all in all, Dungeon Crawlers is worth checking out. Albie Meter: 4 Stars (slickly produced, fun TBS with an adequate dose of RPG elements; great visual presentation with humor throughout; UI could use some tweaks; slow paced gameplay so plan to spend some time; limited replay value)
I really can't figure out how to change abilities. I get to that wheel, I did what was instructed before, but it resets to the first ability. So how do I or where is the help page that explains it?
Nice review Albie. Always very detailed. I have not been able to play this game since I bought it (physics lab and microbial genetics write-ups, oh my!), but I do hope the crashing issues get fixed. I am not too worried personnally, but these kind of problems can lead to a heap of bad reviews on the AppStore. Also loved hearing the dev is planning more content for the game. Glad I put up two bucks for 'em.
Tapping on the little blue arrow on the button itself changes the ability without going to the confusing wheel screen.
I've played up to level 2-1 and it's been great, finding loot from a secret lever is always fun. Issues: - Remove ability for enemies to shoot through bookcases (example: level 2-1) - Display skill/spell information when you switch to another type in the info screen, it doesn't currently Recommendations: (sorted by priority) - Display character's health better - maybe within the name label (like a health bar bottom left) or above their heads during your turn - Change the starting character being the last character to act, to the first or configurable in the options. Having the priest act first each turn is not how I play, I have him act last, but every turn, he's selected first. Mildly annoying. =) - Give ability to cleave (attack) a blank space with an enemy on either side, you can't right now - Give ability to save without exiting - Give ability to read spell information even after it's used - Show attack range graphically in the skill information screen, like 3 blocks for cleave and a cross for shockwave - Move "End Turn" button location or ask for confirmation; it's too easy to hit it and skip your turn - Include a mini-map option - Change the corners of the loot dialogue since it looks like the close "X", hard to tell what to do - Add a way to see who has an action remaining, would be useful - Increase the size of the arrows beside character portraits a little bit - Lastly twice I've seen a mini-character model on the floor, cute but strange =) Here's a screencap of the Goblin King: http://i43.tinypic.com/6gzmkm.jpg That's all I have for now. =)
Another couple of things: - Terrain doesn't block missile attacks. - Controls could be context sensitive, for example if I have the drunk selected and click on a trap it should just disarm it rather than having to select the skill. - Roy is deadweight. It's very almost great it just needs a little polish.
With regards to the End Turn thing, especially if you have heroes that haven't performed any actions, there should be a confirmation to end the turn. How about automatically switching to the next character after a character finishes actions. Also, can you please add the ability to fast forward through all parts of enemy combat? Right now you can only fast forward through certain movements. The main menu is really weak. You can make it look better, even put the game title on it, not just "Main Menu". Everyone knows its the main menu, no need to write it. The buttons for "New Game", "Continue", and "Options" are way too thin. You have so much space to work with, so make them taller. It's too easy to hit the wrong button. Good looking game so far that just needs some tweaking. Although I'm a bit disappointed it's not a lootfest that I was expecting. Toucharcade's comment on this game being "Shining Force meets Diablo" made me expect Diablo style loot lol
Yep, can't play the game. Right after the chat with the goblin king game drops out to the dash. Tried 10 plus times. Patch soon please.
