next »

[Haga]

Hey guys!

I've been a long time lurker  We've been working our asses off on a Tactics + Diablo smashup for a few months.  Having some trouble with UI and game flow.  Been looking at it for too long.  We need playtest feedback badly.  Is the game fun?  What didn't you like about it?  How can we make it better?  Takes about fifteen minutes.

Our intention is to keep prototyping/polishing the game until we have a great demo, and then us that to help raise funding, cause we're broke and the game has at least seven more months of development required.  Sadly we really only have until the end of August, maybe early September to get the demo awesome.  Thinking the final price point will be like five bux, if we can make it worthy enough to sell.

What we hope to add for the demo:
+ More maps, more rare monsters, more loot
+ Improve Leveling up UI since it sucks
+ Improve the inventory system since it's very difficult to understand
+ Character select screen
+ A "Thanks for playing" screen after you win/die
+ General art polish

If there's any interest I'll keep posting updates.  System requirements are very low, but a dedicated graphics card is a requirement.  If you're using a GeForce2 era card, some of the particle shaders might not work for you.

Unity Web Demo Here!

And here's some artwork/screenshots:

[Haga]

You might need to flush your cache and re-get the build.  We've had some issues with the server rolling back our website, so a lot of it is broken.  Fixing it now.

Fixed.

[Steve_Turner]

Hey guys! I am the programmer that is responsible for this. If you find any bugs or technical issues feel free to message me or email me at [email protected].

I have been squashing bugs as hard and fast as I can but with us continuously adding more features to get the demo polished its an unending battle! I hope it plays stable for you guys.

Thanks!

[theSoupSmith]

Hey guys,

I really like the level of polish on this.

It was pretty easy to jump in and start killing rats!

The best feedback I can give is:

*As per your initial post the inventory system is very confusing. I got a ton of spiked knuckles but I had no idea how to use or equip them.

*Some sort of audio warning that what I am trying to reach (by clicking) is out of range for that turn. I had this burning desire to open chests, and my spam clicking never did anything until I realized I have to move towards it in increments.

*Maybe add a more significant a visual cue that I cannot open/break/smash crates when I click on them (or any other object really). This was probably exacerbated by the previous point I made, that I kept thinking I was out of moves or just not close enough to be activating these objects.

*Lastly, the "battle" button on the map really looks grayed out to me (like its disabled). It took me a few seconds to realize that it was just normally dark. I think something to help players find it (make it brighter, or glow) would help people who are using the level map for the first time. It looks like as of now the "cant touch this" mouse icon is the same for inert objects as it is for out of range interactive objects.

*Perhaps a different icon for out of range movement as well. The boot icon doesn't seem to change over out of range tiles like it does when you mouse over out of range interactive objects.

Well, that is it. I enjoyed the time I spent playing it. Good luck, and be sure to post any more major updates - this looks like it will be a lot of fun!

[CowBoyDan]

Only played a couple minutes, but I like it.  Going to go for ios/android as targets?  Unity was giving out free basic licenses a little while back.

[Cellusious]

Woah, sign me up for betatest for all time in the future. You guys are truly geniuses.  

Looks good, feels good, smooth, runs great, the only thing that i might have missed or isn't implemented is the ability to see how long until a skill wears of cooldown.

Big thumb up.  


(ps, if you could bring out a endless mode with random maps for the next beta/alpha blink blink)

[Chris Pavia]

I only had time to play the first couple battles, but I could already tell this was going in a great direction. I think there are some usability snags here and there, when I have some more free time I'll list them out.

[Haga]

Thanks for all these comments guys, it's been a soul crushing couple of days :(.  One of the downsides to working outside of a large studio is lack of peer feedback, so we really appreciate this.  Our target platform is PC & Mac.

We're trying to get a build ready for Greenlight & Kickstarter.


Here's the stuff we're fixing now, with comments:

• Some sort of audio warning that what I am trying to reach (by clicking) is out of range for that turn. I had this burning desire to open chests, and my spam clicking never did anything until I realized I have to move towards it in increments.
  
  Good stuff.  Should have this in by Thursday or Friday.  Why didn't we think of this rrraaggghh.
  

• Maybe add a more significant a visual cue that I cannot open/break/smash crates when I click on them (or any other object really). This was probably exacerbated by the previous point I made, that I kept thinking I was out of moves or just not close enough to be activating these objects.
  
  In the latest build, we've updated the icon to change to a red X with a cancelled tile underneath.  Helps a bunch already.
  

• *Lastly, the "battle" button on the map really looks grayed out to me (like its disabled). It took me a few seconds to realize that it was just normally dark. I think something to help players find it (make it brighter, or glow) would help people who are using the level map for the first time. It looks like as of now the "cant touch this" mouse icon is the same for inert objects as it is for out of range interactive objects.
  
  Painted a new texture for the "Battle" button and it now pulses on a sin wave.  For objects that are out of range, we're going to try adding a range indicator (similar to walk/attack) under the player.  Should be in Thurs/Fri.
  

• Perhaps a different icon for out of range movement as well. The boot icon doesn't seem to change over out of range tiles like it does when you mouse over out of range interactive objects.
  
  Fixed in the latest build.  The boot used to desaturate, but no one could tell.  Replaced with a red-X and added a "nope" tile underneath.
  

Other feedback below, with comments:

• As per your initial post the inventory system is very confusing. I got a ton of spiked knuckles but I had no idea how to use or equip them.
  
  Not sure what to do about this yet.  Don't really have any slam dunks.  Did you ever figure the items out?  I like having equipped items on the bottom right, since we're going to have a lot of consumables, like a hammer that casts AOE knockback and soforth.  What do you wish it looked like?
  
  I could switch the knuckles to gun parts, but we eventually want to add other classes and would only transfer the confusion to them.
  
  

• ...endless mode with random maps for the next beta/alpha
  
  I do want to add more maps.  Been kicking around map components that can be assembled on the fly :D  Right now I have to hand paint the Terrain, and making it look nice takes time.  Not sure we'd get it in for the Alpha though, sorry :(  Here's an early look:
  
  
  
  

[iggynore]

Very nice game, looking forward to more! None of the aforementioned things really bothered me, although I agree with them that they're needed.

- Inventory worked fine here, but I had to click the bag icon to figure out that the bottom right window were my equipped items.

- In the beginning I had little trouble with the dragging and dropping of items (I didn't know if I had to drag them or only click them, but it seems to be something inbetween)

- Finally, I would like to know in-game how does the counter system work. I figure it's pretty random and the percentage evolves and the character levels up, but is it reall? Or is it there and I didn't see it?

Again, keep up the good work, this is looking very promising.

[Moczan]

Surprisingly good game, I'm a huge fan of all turn-based tactics and you mashed it up with dungeon crawling formula pretty great! Can't wait for more

[Gazillion]

I'd love to see a trailer of this!

[Haga]

GUTS Trailer!

It's not very good and it's been heavily trolled.  I'm going to update it with something flashier maybe, or something that showcases the gameplay better.

We got haste items working, which speed up your animations and grant an extra action point, this makes the game much faster.  We're working on making a tooltip system for the UI/Backpack.  Under the faulty assumption that people like reading tooltips, haha.  Here's a preview:

Had more than a few comments about possibly allowing the player to scroll the camera around the map, but we've experimented a bunch with that feature and couldn't get anything that felt "right".

[Steve_Turner]

- In the beginning I had little trouble with the dragging and dropping of items (I didn't know if I had to drag them or only click them, but it seems to be something inbetween)

The items use a sticky drag, where you click and hold to pick them up. We did this because we originally had a system where you could drag and drop both items and abilities.

We no longer need this, so we are going to switch to left click always drags.

- Finally, I would like to know in-game how does the counter system work. I figure it's pretty random and the percentage evolves and the character levels up, but is it reall? Or is it there and I didn't see it?

It sounds like you got the Flowing Silk Sash. It gives the player the counter-attack effect. Everyone hates reading tooltips! We are going to try making effect and on use text on the tooltip pulse or glimmer. We are also going to pulse the item on a sin wave when an effect is triggered to make the relation visual.

Thanks a lot for your feedback guys its immensely helpful!

[bartholomew]

Anyway, the game is really nice. As others already mentioned i didn't know that dropping an item in the equipment box would... equip it. One of those things where you as developers might go "but that's so obvious" but i didn't know. Now that i know i like that it is so easy, no fidddling with an extra inventory screen. (edit: didn't mean to pile on a known "issue". i just wanted to say that i like it besides that, maybe you could make the background of a item in the equipment bag brighter)

I like that the enemies have certain behaviours you can/must use.

Maybe one thing i would change is that there are still rounds after you defeat all monsters.
Will there be more than one character you control later?

[Haga]

We've been killing ourselves over streamlining the inventory and backpack systems, please give this a shot and highlight anything that still stands out as being egregious:

Tigsource Feedback Build!

We've also updated our trailer; could use some critique.  You'll have to download it for now since it's subject matter is... well bold:

New Trailer, Right click save-as!

Also, in response to bartholomew, I just talked to Steve and I think we can make it so that levels which are cleared of all monsters will let the player move at a much greater speed with no range limitations.  We might be able to get this done in a few days.

For multiple units of control, we were trying to stay away from that.  I want the player to feel a heroic connection to the world.  You will be able to acquire hirelings that fight along side you, but you wont directly control them.  (Unless you feel like your decisions weren't interesting enough with just one hero, hopefully we can address that through more skills/usable items)

Thanks for all the positive feedback!