Universal Tallowmere 2 (by Chris McFarland)

Yeah, the limitations past Room 10...

The desktop premium version, and the Core Supporter Pack version for mobile – you're supposed to be able to warp to the home room and get healing. Either from Lady Tallowmere, or buying potions. It lets you stay alive by taking a bit of time to backtrack through a portal.

One game design aspect I dislike about a lot of roguelikes is the inabilty to heal. Like, you get stuck, and the game punishes you, putting you into a corner that seems unescapable because your health is too low.

The ability to warp home and heal up is a core design decision in the Tallowmere games.

But throw in this IAP-demo dungeon-gimping restriction – I decided to make the game harder, rather than completely blocking the player from carrying on. "Room 10? Pay up or uninstall, you can't go further!" Nah. I'll let the player continue on, but imposing the healing and kitten blessing restrictions. It's a cruel dungeon

 

Yes, this is adhering to the traditional roguelike mantra – death is permanent, and the game restarts after death. The aim is to get a high score, to see how far into the dungeon you can make it.

In 0.3 at the moment, there is some light meta roguelite progression with the home room's Weapon Rack and Magic Mirror: the ability to unlock weapons and characters that you can choose from on your next run.

In upcoming 0.4, I plan to add additional game modes and difficulty options (including a Cuddly option for respawning), as dying and restarting is not everyone's cup of tea. There are some design challenges with adjusting such runs, imposing room number caps, restricting certain achievements, etc, but I plan to add it as an option. Keen to flesh things out more.

 

@macplash Do you have any games in mind that I could look at for inspiration for UI customisation?

Off the top of my head, some games I'll probably look at for button configuration setup flow:

• GTA: San Andreas
• T3 Arena
• Diablo: Immortal

I'll probably allow every button to have options for:

• Shape (circle, square, or rectangular)
• Icon and/or text
• Opacity
• Outlines / colours / gradients
• Size for shape, icon, and text

Further thoughts:

• Special buttons for specific weapons
• Expand the potion button (either always visible, or greyed out when health is above a threshold)
  • Likewise for the Interaction button – always visible, or hidden when not available
• Quick Swap Prev and Quick Swap Next (such actions are available for gamepads and keyboard... but only Quick Swap Next is currently available in 0.3.6)
• Allow the top-left character info (portrait, health, souls, gold, etc) UI be resizable

I've tried to have the default layout feel "arcadey" without overwhelming the player... Movement on the left, core actions on the right, and minor actions on the bottom. But everyone has different playstyles! Keen to let everything be customisable from the feedback here, but will take some time.

 

I am enjoying the game so far, even though some features are not implemented yet.

This game plays quite differently with/without a game pad, mainly the easiness to use a shield.

Maybe having a shield always up without the speed penalty and disabling it only when attacking would be better for touch control mode.

I am a bit sad that the head/body armor slot is gone. I thought having multiple equipment slots make looting more interesting.

And finally, what happened to modern firearms? I was hoping such arsenal gets expanded, not removed.

 

It feels so much more comfortable to just exit the game via an option on the main menu rather than having to minimize the game and clearing it out from the recents menu each time.
Though i have also purchased the game on my ipad and there i always minimize it, and i have no issues, but on android i always prefer my games to have an exit button idk why.
Thank you so much for considering my request!

 

yeah man i really miss the rocket launcher from the 1st game

 

@ChrisNZL I was just wondering is it a deliberate move to stop us changing weapon while blocking? Personally I’d love to be able to change weapon while blocking since playing with touch controls isn’t very intuitive in that regard. Although I did see your explanation as to why it’s out of the way.

Also for me personally I’d like the ability to set maybe 3 weapons that instead of cycling through you can just tap, you set them then there’s 3 weapon icons at the bottom or wherever if you make them moveable and you can just tap between your 3 favourite weapons to quickly swap.

As at the minute I try to keep a ranged, melee and something that bounces like the poison/fire balls that I can drop down on enemies. I do already junk everything so I guess it wouldn’t have me that much time not cycling through, where even the doing it while blocking would be a help.

 

@ChrisNZL what I mean by UI is what exactly it stands for: overall user interface. I have no problem with buttons you’re referring to although a full customization options including transparency, shapes and whatnot is always appreciated. It’s the interface in the menus I really dislike. It has that obvious “not designed specifically for a mobile platform” look. Those weird arrows on the left to navigate in the menus, buttons to increase/decrease values instead of e.g. sliders, spacing issues, icons running out of the screen, textures and colors in general. I’m playing on iPad so some of these might be related to its screen ratio, but most of them are just design issues. To put it mildly, it looks and feels like it’s “designed” by a programmer instead of a graphic artist, not to mention an UI designer. Anyway, as I stated previously, it’s not a dealbreaker and most importantly it doesn’t affect gameplay at all, so any changes would be a QoL improvements only. Yet, those would be still more than welcoming.

 

@metalcasket you're absolutely right. These are definitely my personal nitpicks only. I gave the game a 5 star review as it's well deserved. Of course it could've been worse. As I said twice already, the game's fantastic and my personal "issues" with UI are not a dealbreaker. I just had a need to mention it here once I saw a dev active in this thread.

 

I can feel what you're trying to say. I felt this thing while playing with the Katana in the 2nd part. It's way more balanaced and not super punishing like in the 1st game. And that holds true for most of the weapons as well as enemies. The stages have a lot of variety compared to the prequel along with the enemies as well. You have to plan out your moves most of the times later on in the dungeon and that plays in your favor. Still on my 3rd run in the 30th room, so it's too early to say but one thing is for sure that it's much more accessible this time around

 

Is there a log anywhere that tells me what weapon affixes mean? Like I just got a demonic weapon that’s nearly double the damage of my others and got an achievement for a level 2 demonic weapon or something but no idea what it actually means. The same with some other affixes although some are self explanatory.

 

@ChrisNZL I think it would be really cool if there was a way to level up your weapons, instead of a Level being pre-determined and unchangeable. It would make money so much more useful

 

I think you haven't yet spoken to the lady in the lower left part of the starting area. Go and talk to her you'll know the rest

 

I hadn’t. That’s awesome!

 

So apparently you can kill the kittens as I just unfortunately learnt.

Also for anyone else that didn’t check like me you can disable weapons you loot being auto equipped.

 

Hahaha
Yeah my first kitty death was somewhat sad…
I was like. Huh, no powerups??

 

OMG, call PETA!