I get that, but feel your implementation is still going to turn people off. I am no anti-freemium zealot in any way, but I really dislike the way you've implemented the pay structure for this game. A well designed freemium leaves me *wanting* to pay you my money because it's such a great product for no money down, that's not how this game's design leaves me feeling. It's quite the opposite, it leaves me actively *not* wanting to pay for such ham fisted constantly jingling of the tip jar. Good luck with that. I have exactly one game on my device that "holds a gun to my head" about playing it, and that's still a bit of a love-hate relationship at times. Much like my comments about freemium design, you want people to want to play your game, not create mechanics that, literally, take their money if they don't play. Fair enough, still sounds pretty damn Engrish even if it is Longfellow , the Ciardi one is much better known and more poetic. I appreciate the candor, and I wish you luck in spite of my critiques.
have you ever played "World of Tanks"? I love the game and honestly, we used quite some of the structures from this game (monetization structures). I play the game since it was released and put at least 100 in it. And I never felt I had to do it. It was my choosing. of course, higher tier tanks take forever if you play without premium, but hey, the guys want to earn money, it's a great game and I'm ok with that. I liked the system, so we implemented parts of it in Hell Quest. will check it out! I'm half italian, but I don't speak the language very well (although I understand a lot). plan is to learn italian within the next few years and of course I will try to read the original Dante (have read it fully in German and parts in English thus far) as soon as I feel fit enough! if you're interested in the divine comedy, check out this site I found! give our game a go once it's live worldwide. we will add lots of content over the next months (hopefully years)!
Yeah! people, best wait a little with the download! Patch 1.0.1 is "In Review" at the moment. besides a better tutorial, you will also get more premium currency at start - so I suggest you wait a little (or install 1.0.1 version anew once it passed the review process!)
1.0.1 just went live!!! we will upload 1.0.2 today, too. here's the feature/fix list: - new heal/resurrect system; time and cost is now dependent on the level of your character - you may now trade special dice back and forth between your characters - Plutus (Boss of the 3rd circel of hell) now has sfX and particle effects; - minor bugfixes 1.0.3 will be the first content patch, adding the 4th circle of hell: the wrathful!
I don`t know why but after the Tutorial the A.I is killing me over and over and over again: Subscribe to the TouchArcade YouTube channel I`m pretty sure it`s my own fault but the strange thing is that I kinda believe that I`m doing exactly what I did during the Tutorial.
The difficulty spikes radically as soon as you're in the real game. I've spent a good chunk of the starter souls on resurrects. I'm hoping by the time I grind my way past the initial Warden and burn off the starter allotment that I'll have enough edge to avoid dying as much.
Hey Sanuku! too bad you played the 1.0 version. we added more info with 1.0.1 (it's live now!) as to why you're dying: you had already won, but you continued rolling instead of ending your turn. look at the middle of the screen. if the number in the center is higher (and if the background behind that number is blue!) than your enemy's hitpoints you should probably stop rolling and end your turn. it's all about knowing when to take a risk and when not! hope that helps! remove 1.0 and give 1.0.1 a go. we explain more things in between battles!
tips: if you have many blue dice, but no three-of-a-kind (or higher), select only a single die, so taht you have more dice for your next roll. try to get as many doubles as you can. selecting a single skull/bone only yields ten points. a three of a kind already gives you 50. use heal with MoF only when you have at least three crosses rolled (at start). most times healing with on or two crosses is a waste! use enfeeblement after you've ended your turn. the skill works with percantages, meaning, the higher the enemy score, the more impact the skill has! don't forget to use "elicitation". it reduces your enemy's reserve dice! ask away, I'll try to help you guys get into the game!
This. Haven't seen the new tutorial, but the original one was rather misleading in this regard. I am not a fan of the ability to reroll if you use all dice. This is massively unbalanced, in my opinion. Tutorial thoughts: in addition to the above, should not go from rule 1, 2, 3, 2, 3, 4. State each rule once, in order. Tell the player what the powers do before the first fight. Talk about reserve dice much sooner. General: Why not automatically select all dice if all can be used? The multiple clicks required after every fight are really annoying. Why have a click before the soul cleanse attempt and before receiving rewards? Seems like you could easily cut the number of clicks needed. A waiting time on skill purchases? Really? This greatly contributed to the sense that this game is IAP heavy. Great I earned a level! I got a new skill! Now I have to wait to receive it? Why?
sry for that! mea culpa! the new tutorial is more precise. play some more. you will see that it's actually a factor that makes for more exciting games.
tutorial rules: I repeated the rules because I thought that repetitions help players remember the rules better. we decided not to focus on skills during the tutorial. but telling players nothing about them, wasn't wise either. we added a new popup explaining the skills during the introductory battles. automatic selection of dice: one of the things that makes the game is that you have to see and decide which dice to use. and these awareness things are time sensitive! if we do what you say, the game will lose much of its tension. you can go through the reward phase very fast. soul gathering, for instance, can be clicked away in no time. and yes, we implemented time sensitive pay options. that's how we hope to earn money. it took us 6 month to make the game and we plan to invest much more time in the future. but we can only do so, if some people don't mind paying us for getting ahead quicker. it's not that you won't have the skill, if you don't use souls. you can still play the character and enjoy the game.
I really think you're missing the point. Fast or not, it IS pointless the way it's been implemented. It serves NO purpose, none, nada, zip. It's a series of buttons that's there for no purpose at all other than wasting the player's time. You are victorious, now try your luck at cleansing the soul -> click That should be the last click before ALL results are given. Then a final click to move one. Instead it's click to cleanse soul, click to continue, click to receive rewards, get annoying advertisement for premium mode EVERY time, get results, finally final click to move on. You've added in two clicks for zero function. Why? Whether it's fast or not isn't relevant to whether they should be there at all in the first place. They clutter the experience. It's like the second premium results panel that's there EVERY time. We get it, pay you money, we get 50% more goodies for the same effort. We don't need to be reminded how not premium we are at the end of every single match.
ok, understood. I never thought that this would be so annoying to anyone. if more complains are coming our way, we will rethink the reward part!
I'm only talking about the situation when all remaining dice can be selected, when you play the special sound and the dice glow. There's no choice to be made there. *shrug* the clicking feels unnecessary and annoying to me. Why are the first and third clicks needed? (Edit: I don't mean to belabor the point, the exchange above this post occurred while I was typing, sorry) Good luck with it. I think it will appeal to the same crowd that likes Puzzle and Dragons and games of that ilk. I had been looking forward to this one for a while, but I can't escape the feeling that so much effort was spent trying to figure out how to monetize the game that some of the fun was misplaced along the way. (And I'm not against you making money at all, but my personal preference would have been for that to take a different format, that's all)
Exactly. I can think of so many other ways this game could have been monetized and still keeping it free to play that would have been more appealing. It's as if they were so hell bent (heh) on monetizing the game they weren't really thinking about it feels to play the game as they've presented it. Premium could (and should) have been a one time upgrade, not a subscription status. Dice packs could have been sold in random packs of 3 for $5. The health/healing system + resurrects with souls is about the only current aspect that fits the free to play well enough to not be jarring. It's a good game from what I've seen so far (about 70% through the Warden quest), but if I think about what paying would get me, there's just nothing I find appealing. I don't do game subscriptions, and if a game gives me a choice of waiting or paying, I wait because it's not like I don't have 100 other things to do right on the same device the game is on.
Thanks a lot for the Hint. Strangly 1.0 was the latest Version I was able to download on the NZ iTunes Store till a few Hours ago. Had to manually erase the old Binare File and then re-download the Game to get the newest Build since otherwise the iTunes Store was always pretending that I already had the newest Build 1.0.1 which wasn`t the case. Probably a flaw in Apple`s Update System. Reported the Bug to the Apple Support Team, hopefully they are able to pin down what went wrong this time.
