The lesson I've learned from our first game Sw&Ear was to be very careful with radical changes after a game has been released. However superior a change might look at first glance, there will be always players who won't like it, and in the worst case say 'that's not any longer what I would have paid for'. That said, there is a good chance that we will try to improve the graphics quality for Kingturn in the long run. But mainly by replacing the existing images with higher resolution / quality ones.
I prefer the right side pair. I agree the female knight could use some refinement to look less motherly and more knight-like but the body structure on the right looks more spot on. The left knight must be wearing paper thin armor or be twig skinny (which itself isn't very knight-like either) so looks a bit too childlike in my opinion. The bulkiness of the right figure strikes me as more weighted down by heavy combat worn armor. Also the right images would also likely show better on my 3.5 inch iPod screen. The slightly large size also show details better so seems to offer more opportunity subtle artistic design. Thank you, I think it's a good thing that the successive Mangobile game have a unique graphic style instead of them all matching. As promising as the new designs look, I like the current Kingturn ones are they are for those games. Someone commented earlier about how cool but traditional the Kingturn wizard looks and as much as I agree I think it'd be nicer to see new artwork to make the game stand out as fresh and unique reflecting the design advancements made from the Kingturn trilogy.
This. But that's basically my only gripe with the left version now. Maybe a slightly different scaling would already do the trick, I don't know. Besides that, I think that the characters to the left look out of the box nice, while the ones to the right need a lot of refinement. The refinements might accomplish a result that is superior to the left one, but there is also a chance that they won't. I might be totally wrong about this, but my gut tells me that the general perception of the left style (I'm talking about the previous image now) would be more positive than the one on the right side.
I actually really like the existing characters in Kingturn and Kingturn Plus. Showing just their eyes allow the players to imagine their facial expressions. It's very Waldorf and works very well for me. Of the images posted, I like the wizard with his cloak open so you can see his shirt and pants. He looks stronger and looks like he can fight too. The robe alone makes him look too thin and weak. From a girl's POV, the female knight's hair needs to be either tied back like the archers and bandit archer's or layered and cropped like Belayne and Blanche's. The style here will have the hair swung in her face whenever she fights. A longer hair style or tied up style would be more realistic in real life for a fighter and also hides or distracts from the high shoulder pads. As for the eyes I prefer the original round eyes for the males and the eyelashed eyes for the females. The square eyes in the mockup look very hard when shrunk and cartoony. Changing the proportions to the design on the left will make them look too skinny and shrink their faces as they will be fitting in square grids on the game so the current Kingturn and Kingturn Plus proportions are better. I feel that showing their faces is important because it humanizes them to the player rather than just a faceless figure. They make us invested in their story. Too stretched out a proportion makes it hard to see their faces. My vote is to keep the existing images, particularly if they are to be part of the Kingturn series and for continuity's sake. They look amazing already and are a signature of your game. Please don't change them. I'm looking at the characters on my iPhone and they look very tiny. I can hardly see their eyes as it is, so altering the body's proportion will make their eyes even harder to see. Perhaps another way to test is to mock them up on the actual game board? When we open the image on the iPhone or iPad we can see how they will look like exactly. A brunette or redhead paladin and knight with brown or green eyes this time? Blanche had copper colored hair and Belayne is blonde. Loved Nicolette's pink hair and blue eyes too and that she was a powerful caster. Shila the Witch had a really awesome look too. I liked her and Nicolette best in Kingturn. A storyline for her in Underworld? Do you have any graphics of Juliet yet to share? Very excited about her story! Thank you for asking for our feedback niebau! It's great to have a dev include us in the game decisions.
Thanks a lot for your detailed elaboration, Mephala. Very much appreciated! Just to avoid any confusion: We don't plan on changing the Kingturn characters. The discussed samples are meant for our next game, and I merely wanted to get some feedback from you guys. But since this is indeed not about Kingturn but about Kingturn's successor, I should really move this discussion to another thread now.
For what it's worth, the in her face hair also seemed distracting and unusual to me in both knight pictures.
I'm not sure exactly how to direct this question, but I think I may have stumbled upon an issue in the game. Those of you who have finished the game may be able to chime in and help me. I was playing through the campaign and it seemed to end pretty suddenly. I don't know if I stumbled upon a bug, or if that's the actual ending for the game. Spoilers ahead! Spoiler Does the game end after the scenario where King Constantin and his entourage come in? After I beat it, Gregory and Nicolette offer to house him at their castle, but there seems to be no "next scenario". The game seems to come to an end really suddenly, am I missing anything else?
@Silloh - What you describe does occur near the end, I'm a little fuzzy if it's the actual end but Spoiler there should be a plot only end scenario if I recall correctly, no gameplay just a "cutscene" epilogue bit. I think the final screnarios are rated level 15 or 16. I hope that helps, vague as it is. I recall feeling satisfied with the ending.
thats the end alright. I think its kinda sudden though, just at the beggining of a new war. But to be fair, everyone got happy ending Spoiler except the king lol well lets move on to kingturn plus then
You are not the only one who found the sudden ending somewhat confusing, so I guess we have to come up with a 'smart' solution to make that more clear. It's kind of tricky with the current scenario mechanics, though, since we want to enable the player to further play repeatable scenarios, and keep the possibility open to add more scenarios in the future. Basically the game ends with the 'Epilogue', and everything that comes afterwards is additional content we have added with game updates. What might do the trick is adding a kind of 'dummy scenario' that basically just states that there is no further game content for the time being. But this scenario would have to be dynamically removed (from the game progress) somehow, once new scenarios are added. And this is a little bit tricky. But we will think about it again.
Thanks for your prompt reply! I really appreciate the clarification. I really enjoyed the game, but the sudden end to the Epilogue did throw me off. I guess I got so involved with the extra scenarios I forgot it was an Epilogue!
Kingturn successor - Tactics Maiden For those interested in Kingturn's successor Tactics Maiden ... On Mangobile's website you can find the first screen shots and a brief summary of already implemented new features: http://www.mangobile.com/blog/?p=187 I know I've promised a dedicated Tactics Maiden thread on toucharcade, and I'm going to keep that promise sooner or later (latest once the closed beta tests start with some of you guys). Right now I'll have to work with the smallest possible team, unfortunately (just me and a few contract artists). So I'm quite busy at the moment with pushing myself and my artists beyond their limits .
Nice... sounds and looks very good. Don't push yourself too hard, burnout is no fun (I speak from experience). Don't mind waiting a few months longer. Anyways, really looking forward to betatest and release. Less equipment slots than in the Kingturns, do I see that right? Well, the new skill model should more than make up for that.
At the moment the number of item slots is the same as in Kingturn (I've merely replaced the rings with boots so far). But I haven't done much item design, yet, so this is not necessarily the final state. During the next weeks I will mainly focus on building a first version of the scenarios (including the story based dialogues). Then I'll have everything I need to concentrate on the core game design: battle & loot concept, character stats & skills, items. I still have to experiment with a few possible modifications, but basically I'm aiming for something like this: - The player has a slightly smaller but stronger team available - The player gets more options to protect his own units and has to use them in order to succeed (e.g. there is no automatic regeneration of defeated units at all, or alternatively a limit of how often / how many units can be revived during a scenario) - Adapting the enemy spawn system accordingly. Now that's obviously the tricky part .
Now that sounds great. With a smaller team, it works much better to get attached to them, and make a connection. Idea: Would be interesting if Team members left you, too. E.g. the "Faeresal the Giant Hunter": "I will join you to slay the giant Gorglbauz. But then my task is done, and I will return to my village, which is then safe again." That could open up a lot of extra storytelling: a core team (your classical party), and people joining and leaving for parts of the storyline. Spawning: Fixed number for enemies to spawn? Would that work? Equally difficult to balance I guess. Reviving: Limit sounds good, changes the gameplay a lot, though. Could work only once Refresha the Priestess joined your party. Or an Alchemist, a Medic, an Igor...
Precisely so. And while I don't want to make any promises which I might not be able to keep in the end ... I'm also thinking about taking this even one step further: Introducing player decisions. E.g. ransoming the noble you've just defeated will grant you some extra silver but prevents a Paladin from offering his services to you. At the same time, a witch might be rather attracted by your recent decisions and offers her services instead. Right now there are 3 different concepts I want to experiment with: 1) Your suggestion: Fixed number of enemies to spawn. 2) Kingturns spawn probability concept without (re-)raising the spawn probability at the end of each turn. In other words, the spawn probability goes down for each defeated opponent but never goes up again. In the end this approach is similar to 1), but the number of spawned enemies varies depending on your luck and how fast you defeat opponents. Another possible tweak would be to stop further decreasing the enemy spawn probability at let's say 10%. Main problem is that right now this concept would result in higher difficulty during early scenarios and lower difficulty in later scenarios (higher damage and AOE skills mean faster killing speed and less spawns). Unless I can manage to rebalance stats and skills in a way that killing speed is basically the same on lvl 1 and lvl 18. Not sure whether this is desirable, though. Another and (probably) better option to address this problem is to adapt the spawn decrease rate for each defeated opponent in later scenarios. Let's see . 3) Keeping Kingturns current spawn probability concept but adjusting the parameters. For example, right now the refresh rate is much too high for a perma-knockout system (there are just too many enemy spawns). Guess you've figured as much already while trying Kingturn's perma-knockout mode on anything but the lowest difficulty setting .
Wow! Tactics Maiden looks really promising. The skill point system seems interesting. I think the interior battle screen and the art design is good. So mercenary availability will be randomized with a set of unique characteristics? Combat statistics and friendly fire will add a lot. Boo to disabling my cheesy stealth tactics and grab/restart treasure chest mills! That might help make it easier to track information.
This is my most anticipated game of 2014. The Kingturn series are up there with the greats of SRPG. Amazing story and awesome gameplay make them unputdownable !
