additionally should say that ALL versions will have the same features, so HD will be different only about art size, not features ; ) so if you have ipod 2nd gen as I have - don't worry, you'll not miss anything ; )
Hm, I am missing something : -A real game board with more than 5 locations, where I can move my investigators to locations where the evil ones appear by chance or whatever seems fit ^^ -Changing the weapons and other thing Trading/exchanging these things between the different investigators, putting them aside etc.... -there is some strategy you can follow, but the luck factor is too high in my opinion. You can imagine what I am looking for? Yes, correct, ARKHAM ASYLUM, the board game... Or something in this direction. Do not get me wrong, the Art is suberb, awesome, adds absolutely to the atmosphere, it is a great game, what goes for this, but what goes for the gameplay... It reminds me too much at Dungeon Solitaire... Which is quite boring and makes me angry, because of the great luck factor... More later, I have to play a game ...
Hi, we was porting the game from one engine to another, so it was hard to port all things at once from old version to the new one. So for now we leave only cards part, and working on implementations for others. Be sure we will have something even more great then it was about parts of the game besides cards playing ; ) and I'll give some hints from my experience for placing cards: Game has high level strategy, I can divide game playing into 3 cases: - someone plays just for fun, watching art and using intuition - someone plays just to get highest scores if you want to get highest score - you need to use at least all relic cards, they're adding str/san to monsters, so it will be MUCH harder to play then usual, anyway there are top highscores currently in game center's leaderboard, so I really believe its possible task, althought there is no yet "maximum highest score, that is possible to earn" : ) - someone trying to keep 1 very powerful hero to beat all monsters, but in this way you risk to go out of cards and "draw" the game, so you'll not gain extra-points, which you'll get (much increased (by players' request) in upcoming 1.2.1 update) only if win the session so from basic hints I can say next: - there are a lot of hazard cards, you're always in need to place them onto hero or empty slot of hero by the game, so you'll not be able to discard in most cases. There is a trick... as far you'll need to place them anyway - you can fill empty hero slots with most easy hazard cards like -1 str / 0 san or 0 san/ -1 str. But in this case you're not able to fill the slots with some luck cards - as far you have all hero slots empty and you're taking luck card one by one - why not to fill everything with luck cards? : ) and now the trick is that you'll not able later to use "stronger" luck card, because 1 hero can use only 1 luck card. So if you'll get +2 str/san luck card you will probably need to discard it for later use... but for sure there will be a hero that is "in need" of this card : )) - another trick is with discard lists. Try to discard "good" cards at left cell and "hazard" at right cell. Because in most cases you'll not be able to shuffle the discarded cards just because when you'll start to drag-and-drop hazard card from discarded - you'll see only hero's slots highlighted and you'll be in need to place this card somewhere or leave. If you'll leave - you'll be not able to get any card "under it" on the discard's cell. Thats why there are 2 cells for discards and you can shuffle them but as I said be careful with hazard cards. - if you're boosting 1 hero (which doesn't have hazard yet), and there are already most of heros presents on slots and they do have hazards already - try to use any "smallest" hazard onto the boosted hero asap, because soon there could be case when you will be "in need!" to place -2/-2 onto him and it will break your strategy... - if you've already placed hazard like -2/-2 and next card you took is a weak hero like str 1 and san 3 - just place the hero onto this hazard, he will die, but as far he probably has few lifes, he will back later. Try never place "strong" hero like 4/4 onto "strong hazard" like -2/-2. Strong investigators should be more stronger and weak investigators should take "meat" role to take away hazard cards. - remember that there is only 1 blue demon, and you shouldn't use it for some weak monster, only 5/5 or so, or if you're in bad situation and is in need to kill some monster right now. - watch for dice values of the cards. If monster has 1d20 it means that if there will be battle - he will get result of 0 to 20. And if you'll place a hero with 1d4 - you don't have much luck to win. But if you have +6 dice bonus (its displaying on large variant of a card at right bottom corner) and at least 1d6 hero - its a good chance of 0-6 result and guaranteed +6 to the result for you, so you'll not throw less then 6, and if monster at this moment has 1d6, so "6" is his maximum possible result. Its a good chance for you. - most important thing is to think every time you're placing a new card, think very hard and look for few steps into future. If you took a luck card, don't hurry up to place it... discard it... if next card is hazard - place prev luck card, and possible that this new hazard card will have no place so it will be discarded. Or maybe second card could have even better "luck" value, so better to use best cards before other. maybe I'll try to make a video when Im playing with comments, but I don't speak english well, so if someone will have a time and wish "to voice" text - I will ; ) sure, its only my strategy experience, I could be wrong, so when im testing the game and can't win 2 or 3 times - Im just making a cheat (as far Im programmer and can do this) and have each hero str/san 100/100 - so I just winning the game easly and with happy face going to get some coffee... the game is similar to DS, but its only about to get some mechanics basics (can be described in few words: you're placing cards like in solitaire game and they're fighting depends on properties - its possible to list few other solitaire games, which are using something like that) , there was no any cloning purposes, and if we will get Necronomicon 3D RPG game done some day for sure someone will compare it to another 3d rpg game, but it will be so probably only because we were also playing a lot of such games and while developing something comes out from deep deep brain's storage. For example you'll start now to make a film, and for sure you'll have "credits" text at start or end - just because everyone doing so, you'll not place them in some middle : ) If you'll ask me what game I like more from these 2 - I'll say Necronomicon for sure, not because I was doing this game, but because its more "live", its not yet(!) that "precise polished" as DS, but it has some natural feelings, more atmospheric etc. Thanks and have a nice day
According to ArkhamPI, there are 15 investigators and 24 monsters. Do you think it would be a good idea to level things out a bit? The game is not impossible to win, but does seem to be on the difficult side. On the other hand, I guess overcoming these nightmares is not supposed to be a stroll in the park.
Investigators have much more lifes then monsters like 2-3 each, I also did a video (without too much strategy, I'll make another later, its just 7 mins fast playing and winning)
its really not hard to win, check the video I've uploaded, as you can find I did a lot of mistakes by not placing melee cards, so I was leaving slots empty and then was placing hazard cards... We really trying to keep gameplay hardness level depends on strategy instead luck or no luck or not fair too powerful side. Maybe in the upcoming Halloween's update we will add posibility to select hardness level? btw 1.2.1 is already submitted and will come in few days, changes log is few posts back.
Picked this up to support you guys for future updates and bringing the HD version to market. Hope to get a chance to try it this evening!
@Tango: after playing please come with your thoughts how good or bad the game is ; ) btw ArkhamPI update is already "In Review", so can come online any minute.
ok, its there! ArkhamPI update 1.2 released: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/arkhampi/id412147999?mt=8 now works without issues on all iOS devices : ) I hope) Its free, so come and get one if you haven't done this before ; )
The ArkhamPI update is very nice; good job. I love the artwork and this is a great way to show it off. Just a couple of questions: - What's the Locked section all about? It duplicates Investigator and Ally cards that already appear under their respective categories. - Does ArkhamPI show EVERY card that is currently available in the game?
As you'll find in Necronomicon update 1.2.1 (already submitted and will be released soon) there are 12 achievements. Each achievement unlock a card. These cards are listed in ArkhamPI inside "Locked" category. Most cards are new, some are duplicates, but they have different str/san/dice values from original which are present in the game... what I can say is that we decided on achievements, and their amount is bigger then "new" cards we have currently. We wasn't wanting to decrease basic deck's cards amount and still was wanting to make more challenge for players - so more achievements. So, soon, when we will have more art for more cards, we will remove duplicates and locked category will contains only cards, which you'll not find in basic deck. I hope that make sense. Yes, ArkhamPI shows ALL cards, which are present in the game. As we talk early on this topic, we've removed str/san/dice values displayed on the card, so you can view more art then balance that often have small adjustments. Maybe some later there will be an option to display/hide balance labels.. I hope now Necronomicon and ArkhamPI works without any crashs on all iOS devices. I put almost year to make that happens
The thing here is that it isn't supposed to be level: in most card/board games involving the Cthulhu Mythos the idea is that, in order to be faithful to the source material, the player is set up to lose more often than not. You might look at creating multiple difficulty levels by leaving the current game as "medium", having "easy" replace some of the monsters/negative cards and "hard" replace some of the investigators/positive cards. You could also make short, normal and long games, by having normal as it is now, short with 50 cards, and long with 150/200. From there the player could combine difficulty and length (e.g. short hard games, long medium games, etc.).
.. First I'd just like to say Great Game, it's really fun and I'm enjoying it a lot. The difficulty is pretty good, i've won 3/5 games I've played. I'd almost want it harder just because I rather lose for some reason :S I've noticed one glitch though, and it's not game breaking at all. I got the modifyers on my Medium investigator to plus "+10" which showed on the card, but on the actual battle screen it only shows "+1". The effect is still "+10" so you basically just have to ignore what the screen says and it works out fine. Again just a minor glitch. Keep up the good work
I don't understand this update. On iPad at least, the arrow that let you see the back of the card is no longer displayed, so you can only see the front of the card. Tapping anywhere shrinks the card, taking you back to the group list.
Cromwell: What you're suggesting sounds a lot like "Arkham Horror" if I'm not mistaken (at least that's what they call it here in the USA). A game as big as Arkham Horror is a tall order for an iOS app; the game can take up to 2 hours just to SET UP, and a whole weekend to play with a group of friends. More than half that time can be spent just going through the core rules books and trying to explain to everyone how to play, if they're new to it. I'm not knocking it--it's just a REALLY elaborate game with a lot going on. Hang in there, with some of the stuff we're talking about for the future, I think you'll see Necronomicon evolve into something incomparable to anything else out there.
from what you guys have spoken about, I could see it developing into a modular sort of game like Talisman. The different modules could have cards that are entry points from the main game, then you'd have to decide whether to enter that module based on the current game circumstances. If you did, hilarity would ensue, and you would eventually return to the main game, but with investigators, enemies, etc. You couldn't have found otherwise.
Thanks, I'll look at that issue with ArkhamPI. After the next update, we're doing ArkhamPI in HD, with a new interface and everything. So it will also get a complete makeover, and be optimized for iPad display screen size. And it'll remain free as well. Right now we're putting all our resources into the HD version of the game, and some new DLC in time for Halloween. Funny, what you just mentioned I was thinking about in a general way this afternoon. That's not the update we're working on right now, but I can see something like that working...switching back and forth between two different modes of gameplay...
Regarding ArkhamPI and the current lack of card stats, I quite like the fact that it is just a showcase for the fantastic art. Sure, I won't be complaining if a future update implements stats, but it's not a major issue for me that it lacks it right now. I don't know what sales of Necronomicon are like and I appreciate the game appeals to a niche market, but if I was Lucidsphere I would be looking to capitalise on the seeming popularity of the game right now. That is, I would be pushing for a nice content update soon (free or IAP) with concurrent updates to ArkhamPI. Ride the crest of the wave, guys! I don't mean to tell you guys how to run your business, but Necronomicon is a good game. With the right update strategy, I believe it could be a great game. I've said it before and I'll say it again: frequent, minor updates are far preferable to infrequent, major updates. I firmly believe the former strategy is far better for the customer as well as the developer.
Thanks for the input, and btw, a new update just went online to fix a few minor issues with the game. There's always a ton of stuff that can be optimized with a game, so we'll do our best to keep updates coming along, and fix any issues that are identified. The next update should post before Halloween along with the HD version, and at that time we'll open up the shop to offer some new DLC content for the game. Thanks!
