Looking forward to this. I’ve enjoyed the tabletop version and this implementation looks spectacular. I will purchase as soon as I have the time to dig into the game.
I spent some time with this last night and I’m really, really impressed. My wife hates games that use dice for any reason (HATES THEM) so aside from the odd game of Talisman or Elder Sign with our friends, I have to play dice games on the iPad. This one has some fairly complex mechanics but I picked it up faster than I expected — by the second floor, nothing was really catching me off guard. It’s a good balance of strategy and luck I think, and it’s interesting to see how precious re-rolls are. Perhaps I’m just missing something, but with the Archer I had to find a spell that let me re-roll two yellow dice once per encounter; it caught me off guard compared to Arkham, Tiny Epic Galaxies, or Talisman, where you have an entire stat dedicated to re-rolling. The app’s production values are quite high. There’s a lot on the screen but I figured out where to look pretty quickly. I’m glad that you can disable animations because a) I find complex animations pretty distracting and b) IMO 3D animations always look kind of cheap in a mostly-2D app. Personal preference, and I appreciate the option. All in all, highly recommended.
I found this tutorial on YouTube to be very concise and helpful: The game afterwards is very straightforward and easy to understand. Overall the game is quite fun. The presentation is a bit bland, they went with the original physical version art but everything around it is quite uninspiring (for example: the simplistic animation for torches, the dungeon and character select screen, etc). I do have to mention the background music which is really annoying, I switched it off after 5 minutes and kept the very minimal ambient sound effects. Still, the game is enjoyable so I can recommend it. A few niggles for the devs: - When you roll the special dice using a skill, I wish it could just be added to the regular dice you roll, and that you wouldn't have to roll them separately and only afterwards the regular ones. Just add them to the pool. It makes gameplay slower than it should be. - When you need to cover the shielded boxes in an encounter first - if you want to remove these dice, you have to remove all other dice first. I understand why you did this, so the encounter is always legal, but at least add the ability in the Options menu, for players who already understand this, to move dice freely and disable the "End encounter" button when the move isn't legal. - I think character progression is a bit on the slow side and requires a lot of grinding. - Background music, yeah, it's painful.
A story mode is in the works for the tabletop game and you can see the first bits here: http://www.onedeckdungeon.com/story/ When that is completed we hope to bring it to the digital version as well. The digital version does have a Gauntlet campaign mode where you play a series of games with the goal of defeating each boss in as few total games as possible.
It's a nice game for sure but a story/campaign would have added a lot. As is, it gets kind of repetitive. I think devs should look at board game implementation like Galaxy Trucker which wasn't afraid to take a chance and add a completely new story single player campaign. That added tons to the digital version. You don't have to stick 100% to the source material!
Galaxy Trucker App Developer: Czech Games Edition Galaxy Trucker Board Game Developer: Czech Games Edition In this case (ODD) the app implementation wasn‘t done by the same company which developed the board game. I wouldn‘t expect that they can add/change what they would like.
It's not about being "afraid to take a chance." Software development takes a lot of time and money, and there are a lot of factors in play. In this case, the story campaign wasn't even written yet, it would be a bunch of work (time and money) to implement, and we didn't want to delay the launch of the game for that. As mentioned above, it's something we'll consider for future updates.
I didn’t want to sound too negative, the game is definitely fun and there is a solid foundation here. All I’m saying is that Galaxy Trucker, as a product, came with a fun full on campaign (and at launch). I’m not getting into rights etc to implement this, or costs, I’m just speaking as a consumer and what I’d like to see. In any case, hopefully this sells well enough that it encourages further time and money from the devs.
As already noted, single-player campaign is already in development for the physical version. While I’d like to have a campaign, it makes sense to w@it for that, rather than invent something new.
Bought the game, it's great fun. Main issue on my end Unlocking heroes progression requires a lot of grinding... which makes gameplay a bit repetitive.
I'm enjoying this game. I agree there is some grinding to improve your heroes. This does make the boss battles easier. After the first few losses against the dragon, I've one most every other game (lost a few to the Lich). I've mainly been playing 2 heroes instead of single heroes, I think it is easier or at least hero progression is faster. The only hero with more losses than wins is the archer.
Actually, if you run dungeons with two different classes (rather than solo characters) both benefit from progression. It’s not as bad as I thought
I think I’ve spent over a hundred hours playing and I’ve got to say, even without a campaign, there is a TON of replayability. Here are some further thoughts for the devs: The game is balanced well for both single-character and two-character runs. With two characters, you generally have more options but it can be a bit tricky to remember which dice belongs to which character after they've been placed. I think that it would be helpful to have a small coloured halo around dice in two-character mode so that you know at a glance which dice you can use with which spells. This is mitigated by the fact that available spells glow when you pick up the dice, but it’s still a bit cumbersome. While the game’s difficulty is balanced for either mode, you get the same amount of experience points PER CHARACTER regardless of whether you play with one or two. This means that you essentially et double the rewards for playing two characters, and in an already-grindy character tree, that makes it hard to justify spending time in the single-character mode. It might be nice if you get, say, 1.5x the experience points when you play with a single character? That would also go some way to addressing complaints of the game being too grindy.
Apparently there were some comments on a board game geek thread that had a quote from the devs that it’s in the works like with Sentinels. It’ll take some time which is a bummer because it’s a game I’d much more enjoy on my phone, but I know they take their time with this stuff and would rather have it perfect over rushed.
