Right, I played up until I got an "out of memory" type error, which happened shortly after retrieving the fourth key, then I played a full run after that which I completed. I enjoyed it! The game's selling points are very clear; the destructible terrain all works well, the combat was generally smooth, the graphics work nicely. The theme and cutscenes have a lot that is good, the graphics in them are lovely, and there's some good character grounding there.
The combat and physics engine is really impressive, occasionally eg burning walls just feel like they're going all over the place regardless of physics, but generally it feels very well worked out and makes for very well constructed carnage all over the place. It took me some time to work out what gave me cover and what didn't in combat - I definitely expected boulders to when I started out and it confused me that they didn't, for example.
I liked the cutscenes, and indeed I'd be happy to see more of them - I also really loved the puzzle areas. I certainly felt like implanting more bits of backstory/world building would be a good idea, you've got the systems for "interact with thing" built already so it can be very streamlined with the rest of the game. Having some more of those around, even if it's just looking at a tapestry here or a sword there, would add a lot. I assume that each of the wizards corresponds to one of the castle zones, but I think that might have been better fleshed out beforehand; even outside plot relevant bits like that, having occasional things to look at, even if it's just some made up backstory about the vegetation or weaponry or something, would be fun.
Dying felt like it had weirdly little penalty; going back to the start of a scene is usually no big deal, so I often felt I was being more reckless than seemed to fit the spirit of the game; rather than try and find optimal solutions to take out guards, I'd just go in, aim for max damage and start throwing carts around, if it didn't work out, try again.
Definitely enjoyed though, will playtest again, look forward to seeing more :)
(Also, if you decide you want voiceovers on the cutscenes, I'm a traditional storyteller as a hobby and have an English-accented baritone that I'm happy to lend and hire out!)
Some more notes:
- Took time to work out that the mouse changed my facing; that needed to be clearer in the instructions, I got very confused as to why I was walking backwards initially
- The word is "labyrinthine" rather than "labyrinthian", in scn 1 where he looks at his own notes
- "Press to cast" and "hold to cast" need to be with which button you click/hold as a combined instruction I think, it's a tad confusing having the button in small at the bottom
- Make it clear how to access the help later in game! I did this entire run mostly unable to use my more powerful spells as I couldn't remember how to use them from the initial flick-through of stuff
- A proper intro on how combat works might be helpful; things that were unclear for example were whether I actually needed to clear each level of enemies, and whether the number of enemies is fixed per zone. It seemed to be the case that once one guard had seen me, they all had, hivemind-style, but if I killed a guard before they saw me then it didn't count for that.
Glad to be useful :) I don't think you need more combat areas in the woods, maybe just more information through them in a more staggered manner - the length feels right as it is now.
As for the error: I'd just got the key from the area where one has to blow the gold into a magical path. I think I'd tried to head back into the main area rather than going straight down to the area with the glass-zombies and then it crashed with an "out of memory" error message.
Other thoughts: Please make a fullscreen mode if possible, my most common cause of death now is "accidentally deselected the window when attempting to throw tables north/up". Also, it's not sufficiently clear from the graphics that the "afterburn" of the fire throwers won't kill you; that may be intentionally unclear so you have to discover it yourself, but it felt odd that there wasn't a more different graphical effect for it. A sound mute option would be useful too.
As for the demo secrets:
I've noticed that there are glowy things you can switch the colour of in the garden-maze rooms. I've tried fiddling with these to see if that unlocks anything (including turning every single one in the centre room green) but no joy... is this sort of thing on the right lines?
EDIT: I also discovered a secret room with a mana potion in the pink zone, and a secret room with a mana potion in the gold zone, from which I could see a bloke sitting on some gold. He disappeared when I fired a bolt at him by accident.
My first run I only used the bolt, which does get increasingly tricky. I almost always have the telekinesis as my other selected option: fire occasionally but that's shorter range and if I'm being chased by close combat troops it seems more efficient to just chuck a large furniture item at all of them. Wind I think I only ever seem to break out for the bit where I have to blow the gold out the bowl.
Further in easter eggs etc:
Found the glass-place easter egg with the little platform from which I could see a forested area, nobody there though. (Then, unrelatedly to the game, my computer crashed, bleh).
In the alchemy/gold area, the white/blue shooting domes in the final hall - are they just there as a trap in case you randomly decide to fire a bolt off, or is there any more to them than that? I tried to see if I could light them all up to see if that would do anything, but after a few tries gave up as they killed me too quickly.
My first run I only used the bolt, which does get increasingly tricky. I almost always have the telekinesis as my other selected option: fire occasionally but that's shorter range and if I'm being chased by close combat troops it seems more efficient to just chuck a large furniture item at all of them. Wind I think I only ever seem to break out for the bit where I have to blow the gold out the bowl.
Yeah I struggled to make the wind useful, and it turned into more of a tool than a weapon. You can use it in the fire maze to make your run through it significantly easier.
Further in easter eggs etc:
Found the glass-place easter egg with the little platform from which I could see a forested area, nobody there though. (Then, unrelatedly to the game, my computer crashed, bleh).
In keeping with the theme of Illusion in that area, there's a secret passage hidden within that secret. I think I've been playing too much Dark Souls.
In the alchemy/gold area, the white/blue shooting domes in the final hall - are they just there as a trap in case you randomly decide to fire a bolt off, or is there any more to them than that? I tried to see if I could light them all up to see if that would do anything, but after a few tries gave up as they killed me too quickly.
Those are intended as a joke; the area is totally safe unless curiosity gets the better of you, in which case they use your own power against you. It seemed in character with the wizard of that area, the Alchemist.
OK, did another complete run-through! I died I think 3-4 times overall.
Major thought - one thing that makes the game a lot easier is that often when one leaves an area then returns, the troops have all gone back to their original positions. This makes it fairly easy to walk in, snipe, walk out, walk in again, snipe the next one, rinse & repeat. I tended not to do that much because it's a tad slow, but had I been more worried about dying I might have done it more.
I have now found:
- Snowy area in the pyromancer section with potions; didn't see anything much more exciting from it, maybe I should've looked harder.
- 2 special rooms in the garden (keromancer/druid/?) labyrinth, one of where I disturbed a meditating knight and had to kill him
- Room in the portal (telemancer?) area, where I saw myself walking through a passage briefly
- Alchemist's room as discussed yesterday
- Extra passage in the illusionist's area, where I could just about see an empty chair surrounded by potions
There doesn't seem to be a special extra room for the necromancer that I can find?
OK, did another complete run-through! I died I think 3-4 times overall.
Major thought - one thing that makes the game a lot easier is that often when one leaves an area then returns, the troops have all gone back to their original positions. This makes it fairly easy to walk in, snipe, walk out, walk in again, snipe the next one, rinse & repeat. I tended not to do that much because it's a tad slow, but had I been more worried about dying I might have done it more.
I have now found:
- Snowy area in the pyromancer section with potions; didn't see anything much more exciting from it, maybe I should've looked harder.
- 2 special rooms in the garden (keromancer/druid/?) labyrinth, one of where I disturbed a meditating knight and had to kill him
- Room in the portal (telemancer?) area, where I saw myself walking through a passage briefly
- Alchemist's room as discussed yesterday
- Extra passage in the illusionist's area, where I could just about see an empty chair surrounded by potions
There doesn't seem to be a special extra room for the necromancer that I can find?
You're quite right about the troops resetting, it was included as a precaution so that you don't leave a room and then return to find yourself immediately surrounded, or respawning and getting killed over and over. Do you have any suggestions that might make this work better?
Yup, you've found all the secrets. They started out as a fun little diversion and I've been slipping more in as we've been updating. You can catch a glimpse of the Illusionist sitting on the chair, but he'll start to fade away if the camera goes near him.
I think it's about time I put one in for the necromancer, I kept forgetting since I always think of it as a boss area first and foremost.
I'm also going to make something happen if you turn all the lights green in the Animancer's area, that was a cool idea.
Hm... It's difficult - I think there are a few interlinked things with that and death penalties and combat pacing that all boil down to a question on how you want the player to play. You've got some mechanics in there (shouting for help, line of sight for guards) that point to a fairly tactical, fairly sneaky gameplay style. On the other hand, the fact that literally every guard in the zone gets summoned very fast by one shout then means the combat pacing after that point is extremely fast and mostly involves a lot of running backwards and dodging and maybe maneuvering to a point where you can throw a table if you're lucky. It currently feels like the sneak-related mechanics are underused. So it depends - if you want a lot of continuous explosions, gore, and carnage, which the system is well built for, then you probably want to keep death with a fairly low penalty, and it consequently doesn't matter too much if you run into a room and go straight into combat.
If on the other hand (and this would be my inclination, but it's not my call to make) you want to try and work out a slightly more sneaky play style (which to me would fit the theme better, it doesn't feel light hearted enough a game for the player to want to shrug off getting murdered to death repeatedly), then you want a significant hike to the penalty for dying and some combat tweaks might help. For example making the "cry for help" (or people running from hearing an explosion or whatever) radius-limited rather than affecting the whole level, and making it a more obvious action for the soldier to do (maybe difficulty-balanced by making eg the spear and crossbow troops a little tougher). That would greatly decrease the likelihood of retreating through a door with ten guys in front of you. I guess there could also be some sort of warning in place if there are lots of enemies the other side of a door so the player knows to go in shield-up, but that might be tricky to implement. Or, perhaps more easily, put it on a timer after you leave a room (say 30s) that the guard positions reset. That would make the "sniping" tactic so painfully slow as to seriously discourage it.
That's a bit of a ramble and I've no idea if it's at all helpful (I'm always terrified about giving people advice on such things, as a hobbyist I have very bad but-I'm-not-a-real-game-designer syndrome :P ), but it's some thoughts anyway!
V happy to hear about the animancer's area! :)
(What's the other one in the pink zone referred to as? I just made keromancer and telemancer up from relevant Greek words in the last post as I couldn't think of better descriptions!)
I think different enemy behaviours & returning to posts would be a great idea. I agree on the large scale power - it's definitely a feature - but I currently feel that the combat is often a little too fast/crowded for me to think on the hop about how to maximise damage rather than plugging away fast with the base attack. It's a really, really difficult thing to balance though. My guess would be that people who find it very tough may be people who are running around less? It's super easy to end up getting a bajillion arrows in you on the camp zone if you're not moving and sidling around constantly. A really radical suggestion could be to make the shield a one-tap feature that lasts for X amount of time, which could give the player time to work out tactics without getting shot to death, but that's just off the top of my head and there are probably a lot of downsides I haven't thought of.
As to the door - if you had position reset after 30s OR on player death?
The player always feels quite walking-pace to me as is - I think if the player was going to get any slower, they'd need to be able to take quite a bit more punishment to balance it out. I do end up catching a fair number of arrows with my face as it is...
It's a good wizard set, and the theming all works well :) Am I right in thinking that the Ontologist is not represented in the castle, whereas the others are?
Also (this is probably too much of a spoiler but the question is bugging me):
Will all the wizards be faced/defeated in similar ways and boss battles as a sort of order of bad guys, or is there going to be more complex plot regarding each one eg some are driving tyrants, some are acquiescing/forced to, and some are just too wrapped up in magicing stuff to notice?
I think different enemy behaviours & returning to posts would be a great idea. I agree on the large scale power - it's definitely a feature - but I currently feel that the combat is often a little too fast/crowded for me to think on the hop about how to maximise damage rather than plugging away fast with the base attack. It's a really, really difficult thing to balance though. My guess would be that people who find it very tough may be people who are running around less? It's super easy to end up getting a bajillion arrows in you on the camp zone if you're not moving and sidling around constantly. A really radical suggestion could be to make the shield a one-tap feature that lasts for X amount of time, which could give the player time to work out tactics without getting shot to death, but that's just off the top of my head and there are probably a lot of downsides I haven't thought of.
I'll test out that idea then, and make some enemies stay in position unless directly threatened.
The main thing I noticed with some players was their overreliance on the projectile, especially firing off all their mana too fast when enemies are still at dodging range. That and not using walls for cover.
It took awhile to figure out how to balance the shield, but I think what we came up with works alright. It uses mana, so keeping some in reserve is encouraged, but using it won't affect the cooldown for the other spells. It means if you get surrounded you can use your last bit of mana to safely push through, and you're rewarded by being able to cast again sooner than if you'd used an offensive spell.
As to the door - if you had position reset after 30s OR on player death?
Since dying just puts you back to the start of the room, there wouldn't really be any penalty to dying that first time and then resetting. I think the 30s thing might work well, you can either wait around for it be safer, or push through all the enemies you fled from.
The player always feels quite walking-pace to me as is - I think if the player was going to get any slower, they'd need to be able to take quite a bit more punishment to balance it out. I do end up catching a fair number of arrows with my face as it is...
That's a good point, what if it was just knights? They're the slower, sturdy class so it might make more sense for them to be harder to run past.
It's a good wizard set, and the theming all works well :) Am I right in thinking that the Ontologist is not represented in the castle, whereas the others are?
He doesn't have his own area, but the snowy secret is vaguely tied to him. He's intended to be the final wizard faced, and his area will be a sanctum on a snowy mountain. The snow area was created to test an environment like that, and I snuck it in as a secret.
Also (this is probably too much of a spoiler but the question is bugging me):
Will all the wizards be faced/defeated in similar ways and boss battles as a sort of order of bad guys, or is there going to be more complex plot regarding each one eg some are driving tyrants, some are acquiescing/forced to, and some are just too wrapped up in magicing stuff to notice?
The premise is that Arik will confront all of them one by one, facing them on their home turf, but there will be an overarching plot and they will all have their own motivations and attitudes towards the player. The plan is to begin each chapter with a flashback showing Arik's prior relationship with them.
Ah, OK, that all makes sense :) You could give knights a bit of a blocking radius? I'm usually running backwards away from them rather than running forward past them anyhow...
Look forward to seeing/hearing how the tweaks work!
And ah...
I'd assumed that the snow was for the fire wizard, and was hinting that he'd come from somewhere very very cold (which is the sort of thing that would persuade me to take up pyromancy!)
But yes, that's neat!