I picked up the game a few days ago and just got time to play it. Congrats on a super original idea, and great execution. I was a little confused on the gameplay mechanics at first, but admittedly didn't read the thread yet, but now everything makes sense. I love the animations, the amount of spells, and the feel. I do think the class system is absolutely meaningless considering the randomness of the skill acquisition. I'm gonna read through this thread, cause I have some residuals questions, and see if they're discussed. All in all very happy with the purchase. EDIT: very buggy. Directional controls frequently crash and become unusable after using town portal or other menus, and I've had 3 games not saved because I exited the application. Don't understand when the game saves and when it doesn't. Lost a few good runs because of that.
Hello. Glad you liked the initial looks, and sorry bout the defects hampering good runs. Just to adress some of your issues, now with a new version is out: 1) Classes play a huge part in determening your starting skills and spells. They are 'random' selection, but only random within a subset. For example, only battlemage can start with wall of fire. So even if your battlemage don't start the same every time, it is impossible to have a starting char the same with other class. That said, I am in early stages of considering a rewamp of spell and skill, where you have a bit more controll of what you attempt to do in combat. A slow process though, and (if at all) will take a while. 2) Town portal. Yes, I saw this myself just recently, unfortunatly after I submitted the now current patch. I will look into it, but with appstore 'turning off' submissions for the season, I don't think a fix will be released before next year. 3) Saving: Game saves each time you enter a new level, and deletes each time you load up from a save. Not optimal, but being aware of that, hope it helps. So: after you have reloaded from a save, you need to enter a new level before you do a memory wipe. Other comments feel free. I try to put in some hours on enhancing the game every now and then, and will do best to fix any game-breaking issues like potential controll loss after TP
Sounds great. My only criticism remaining is the monsters who destroy gold. I've been playing RPGs for 20 years now, and I've never seen a game where a monster can knock out 80% of your gold just by using standard attacks. Last game I just played I had 103 gold, needed to TP back to buy more mana, and then got into two fights that drained 70 gold (sewers). This makes the game hard. I like it, and I don't. Things like the multiple depleting bars (food mana eng) are great rogue like elements. The traps and monsters that destroy gold are very frustrating, given the low gold yields in general. I'd strongly recommend changing this. That or add some kind of free healing in town, maybe 30% mana and 30% health. A TP scroll is basically useless unless the player can warp back with 75+ gold, so another TP scroll and a mana potion can be bought. The game constantly places the player at a disadvantage. Edit: the fact that the TP scrolls increase in cost is ridiculous. If the mana potions ever go up from 30 , I give up.
e Hi, I will have another look at it. Gold destroying will probably not go away, but be capped. Sewers are mostly an 'easy' dungeon, and now with capped poison damage at later levels, it got more easy. The entire idea is to have to select what and who to fight. At launch, player could choose what dungeon to enter out of the 6, but it got too eay to do a repeat pattern. Then more skills and spells where introduced, it is a good thing, but also have its bad sides, as it is much harder to get the skillset you 'want'. So all in all, dungeondesign and combat setup might need another round of tweaking. It is not intended that you loose almos all your gold in a single level, just as it was not intended that if poisoned enough you could drop 16 hp's a tick. That said, I personaly don't play that much with TP, I gamble on using the money on songs and extra spells (the items/scrolls and spells you buy at dagger have higher power potential for the level than what you find), so it takes longer to both find imbalances and bugs on players who rely on TP. Perhaps having to 'lock' one item slot is punishment enough, even at later dungeons, and should not raise price also. As I said, I will have another look while I try to track down the TP bug. My best guess is that the game somhow lost track what room you are in in some cirtumstances. EDIT: I think the issue with TP is tracked down, need to test a bit more during the day and resubmit.
So, ok, I disliked the idea of random starting dungeons at first, cause it was obvious that the map UI was built to have the dungeons selected, so what, you're saying about the release state of the game makes so much sense now. I love the random starting dungeons now, cause it removes the choice from the player adding replayability, making diff runs actually be diff. I've only played battlemage and the other main magic user, which might be why I'm finding the game difficult in the beginning. I don't think rebalancing the dungeons or spells needs to happen at all, I love the game difficulty as it is. I always warp back to town with enough money for a TP scroll, meaning that when the TP cost goes up, the game becomes exponentially harder. I'm going to try a play through with the ka-zabarist, and do what you're saying, and bank on the songs more than on the TP. It might be im just playing the game not the way it's meant to be played, which isn't neccessarily a design fault. I think your game's intended for a specific audience, which is why I bought it. I'm don't work in software, and don't know about coding too much. Would it be difficult to add an Inn feature to the town, where you could heal HP/MP/Eng at a proportional or fixed cost? For instance, given the gold drop rate, I think healing 80% of everything for 40 gold (throughout the game) would encourage less TP buying, if I knew that for 40 gold, I could go back to town and come out with an almost full mana reserve. My biggest problem with the mana oriented classes is that mana's used for too many things: create food, meditate, and attack. Or, was that the intention, that some classes were meant to be more difficult than others? I'd love to see the Inn idea implemented, however I'd also be ok with knowing I'm just playing with "harder" classes before I'm good at the game. I'd also like to thank you for taking the time to answer all this stuff, and have a dialogue instead of just telling me "no, it's my game and I'm not changing anything". I've had several negative experiences like that with developers on here, and I always appreciate when someone goes above and beyond what they have to. Like I said before, I've playing RPGs for a very long time, and the way you handled the game mechanics here is incredibly well done and original. EDIT: I completely forgot to say that your gold/poison explanation makes sense. Capping gold destruction would be awesome, considering sewers is one of the first dungeons a player can go through, and gold is essentially exp.
Hi again. First off, I love constructive feedback, particulary on the 'issues' I am unsure of myself. It is what keeps the motivation to enhance the game. The game is not created to make millions (but I used to have hope once to get back a bit more of the cost with all original art, sprites and music. But ohwell.). It is too late now to have the new fix out (for TP and capping gold) for christmas, so I will test a bit more to ensure my fix indeed was the complete fix -) I have used 40 TP's in various situations without being 'stuck', so if there is another issue it is a bit hard to find. The 'problem' is that there are so many 'game states' to indicate if player can move or don't move. For your comment about 'how to play', there is no rule how to play. Using TP's was one possible way of playing, at the cost of having to 'tie up' one of the limited inventory spaces, and also have a toll on gold coins. What troubles me the most now is that there are too many skills and spells, and as you cannot choose them besides try an initial startup having one of the skills, it is a bit too hard to get the build you want. So: (this is just an idea stage, and being unpayed work will be low on the priority list on how to spend my time) -on the main area (dungeon map), a 'skill tree' will show up when in combat, with tabs for kazabar (martial arts/staff), Magic and Thievery skills. You still use only the same two buttons (melee or magic) to perform, but 'what you do' is based on your selection on the skill tree. For example, you go to thievery, and opt for a dagger strike (cost say 1 engergy). You add a dagger frenzy skill (option to hit 3 more times), adds another 2 energy to cost, and lowers the probability to pull it off. You also select the 'riposte', costing another 1 energy, but have ability to counter strike should the enemy hit you after). For good measure you add the 'poison blades', costing 2 more energy. Now you press that 'melee button', and you have a certain % to pull it all off. Some skills will then have a cooldown period so you cant just leave it at max all the time. If you hit (based on your own skill, and opponents block/deflection), you pull off the selected string of events. Now it is the opponents turn. He does a simple sword strike, but as you had 'riposte', you get a shot at counter that attack. -The skills are more direct trainable. When you are in town, you get to choose the skills to upgrade (perhaps in some sort of mixing with the bard song boost), wither by selecting one out of 5, or the entire, unlockable skilltree. -You can find scrolls/skills in dungeon to boost already learned skills, so you don't discard one to pick up a new. -Spells and skills are locked, and you need to progress trough the game in many games to unlock them. For example, kill 100 magic users to unlock the spell 'mental attack' (for all future games). Kill Zirkhel the Ka Zabar master to unlock the spinning jumpkick. -Possible addition to add even more variaty. Sword and archery. This might need some tradeoff though, there is no way I can have seperate animations on everything for holding the varied weapons. A sword in hand adds some varied attack routines with sword, but other animations are the same (drinking potion, throwing stuff, being hit etc etc). Opeing up for a shitload more skills -Monsters get a wider set of 'strenght and weakness'. As it is now, it is limited to a handfull. So different spells/skills are more (or less) important vs certain creatures, creature types and bosses Mind you, just ideas so far. Requires more money on artist and a lot of time rewriting and balancing out everything. Won't be ready long after you are done playing this game Just writing it up in case you or someone else have any thoughts about it, I myself can talk all day about how certain aspects of the game is or is not a certain way. Most of the 'shortcommings' in the game as it stands is a matter of resources, not a matter of will.
Just a quick note (hope you are still active)to say how much I am enjoying this game. I only found it by accident one day when looking through my AppShopper app for Xmas specials. I have loved rpgs and rogue games ever since I started playing computer games some 25 years ago. Your game is quite tough and I feel every step I take in the game needs to be taken carefully. I absolutly love that. The save feature took me some time to figure out but this thread made things clear and I actually like the way it is implemented and doesnt make the game any easier, just more convienent to play. It is a real shame that you have not been able to get more exposure for the game as I am sure that there are many gamers like myself that would love a good hard rogue game to play on their iPad (btw, the game plays and looks great on an iPad Pro). The fact you supported the game for so long at a financial loss shows how dedicated you were to the game and that dedication clearly shows in how well the game now plays. Any way, thanks for a fantastic game! I hope my short review I am about to post on the Aussie App store will give you a couple of new sales at least. #
