next »

[PDF]

Hello everyone!
Cursebound was my first design concept for Assemblee Part 2: It never got finished due to my love for roguelikes. Later, I decided to wrap it up and finish it; this is the result. A shooter game with two different endings and dynamic difficulty, filled with allusions.

Download:

Main Mirror- Gamejolt

Alternate Mirror

Controls:

WASD- Move
Mouse- Aim and shoot
M- Mute/Enable sound

Story:

A man finds his son infected by a mysterious plague
upon his return from a war. He must go to an island
to seek an idol with unbelievable powers, currently
thought to be in the possession of manipulative and
monstrous spirits called quarks.


Screenshot:
http://paranoidprotocol.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/scgameplay.png

Hope you will have fun playing it!

[Eraser]

(More in depth review of the first build here: http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=11430.msg349340#msg349340 a few posts down)

[PDF]

(old answer message, removed)

[Eraser]

[Summation of my thoughts and suggestions on version 1.0]

To sum it all up:
 - Storyline somewhat confusing
 - There were only two (general: close combat, ranged) types of enemies (aside from the bosses) which made it bland.
 - Gold is useless
 - It felt as if I was never doing anything, as all the gameplay consisted of was walking through a forest and attacking the same groups of enemies.

I think I'll write up what I thought was good now.
- Enemies had pathfinding
- A storyline
- Sign system
- Drop system spreading items
- Mages with the bouncing fireballs
- Placement choice for said mages (they would often be shooting at me when I was in a tight spot, limiting my movement and making me go crazy to avoid them)
- The bosses

[starsrift]

I wasn't sure what to expect with this game, and I think I liked it. It seemed to be very solid, very finished. I didn't finish it, but I'll get there in a moment.

On review, my suggestions mirror a lot of Eraser's.

The sentence fragments followed by something as linguistically complex as a semi-colon threw me off a bit. 'Course, that would take almost zero time to tighten up.

I realize your graphics were self-limited to the ones in Assemblee, but a target cursor would've been nicer instead of the OS default.

I wasn't sure what the gold was for. Was that just points? Except for that one part to use it to pass a locked door? Unimplemented design thoughts?

I think my biggest suggestion would be to smooth out the difficulty curve. I couldn't get past the first boss, Rok, and everything up until that point was laughably easy and forgiving, with tons of health and gold dropped even if I did handle it badly. There may have been a health powerup (?) I missed that could've made it easier, I'm not sure. But it was basically, difficulty none, then difficulty mild with the archer enemies (can't just stay in one place now) and then suddenly bullet hell.

[PDF]

Many thanks for your comments and constructive feedback! They were just what I needed; you see, I am more of a programmer than a designer, so I need ideas to be efficient. I have added everything you have suggested, and fixed the bugs I have found, rewriting most of the text in the game. There is a completely new soundtrack now, and a lot of new features. There are multiple guns (mines, rockets, shotgun), traders, barrels, a new boss, redesigned enemies and a new difficulty curve. The game is almost completely changed. You can enter the city buildings and the temple. Most of the grammar errors should be fixed too; you may PM me to report any other mistakes. However, I still need feedback on the difficulty; it is possible that people will find the game too hard in its current state; especially the endgame.

As the game has changed substantially, would you change your comment so that it looks smaller and less distracting, Eraser? Of course, I think there are still many things you would like to suggest. I hope you will enjoy the new build.

@starsrift: The boss battles aren't that hard; they require you to change the way you are playing the game in some way, which is their purpose. You see, to defeat the boss you are talking about, you shouldn't look at him; instead, look at your character, dodge the bullets easily and use the bullet pattern to approximate the position of the boss. Just spraying bullets should be enough to kill him. You will see that bosses aren't too hard to kill, even if you are not a professional player you should just repeat them for a few times to master their pattern.

Link for Cursebound 1.1

Download Cursebound 1.1

[Eraser]

I'm sure some will find it too difficult, but I didn't (being a fan of bullet hell shmups).

Nitpicks

• There were still plenty of areas where it felt like I was just destroying hoards of enemies repeatedly
• If you're firing your gun when you exit/enter a building, the bullets will appear on the inside/outside
• I found it slightly annoying that you couldn't backtrack. What that does is takes away from the feeling of being able to freely roam and explore, and means that I cannot be rewarded for remembering where the NPC that sells me a health upgrade for 200 coins is. It would be quite a waste of time for me to backtrack from halfway through the game to the NPC, so I don't see that as a problem.
• I find it odd that there were lots of random people in the forest just waiting to sell passing adventurers items. Why aren't the enemies attacking them either? (1 random NPC in the forest selling items would be would be fine, and another (or a few more) in some sort of mini settlement, campsite, etc.)
• Still cannot fire bullets over lava
• Having the storyline explained 90% by the quarks was a bit annoying, but I suppose that a) it had to be and b) it's fitting for this type of game. If you make future games, I'd invest some time into intertwining the story with the actual gameplay, so it's more of a discovery and choice rather than "as you walk through the forest, let me tell you how it is." How am I supposed to know the quarks are lying to me? At this point, there's really no other entity telling me not to believe them.

On the plus side, the added weapons were quite fun to play with, but I chose effectiveness over fun, because I knew using the shotgun was going to be a lot more effective at fighting bosses and large groups of enemies than single shots.

However, I had immense fun sitting around a corner, firing off the little buddy that followed my mouse and blasting that into unsuspecting enemies. As fun as this was, it would be even more hilarious if they saw the incoming missile and tried to scatter [but the range of this weapon would probably have to be slightly extended to compensate].

I'm not entirely sure what tweaks you made to all of the enemies (as you seemed to have implied), and only noticed that one of the dwarf types now reflects bullets. All I can say was the dwarf boss was crazy interesting with the shotgun, as I would end up killing 5 or so within 1-2 seconds, sending a flurry of bullets into my face. (Of course, all this means is you have to develop a strategy)

I'm glad you added more songs, but even switching out the second song and making that the only one in the entire game would have been good enough as well (as it is in the background, slower tempo, etc.)

All of the other updates you added also made it much more enjoyable.

I could try to get a screenshot of an apparent shadow following around the player (is this perhaps the hit circle that you forgot to hide?) if you'd like.

All in all, I'd rate this at least a 400% improvement over the last version 

[PDF]

There were still plenty of areas where it felt like I was just destroying hoards of enemies repeatedly

I am afraid I can't do much about this to fix it completely. I can, however, reduce the number of enemies in the first half of Rangers' Retreat. Maybe I will do that.

If you're firing your gun when you exit/enter a building, the bullets will appear on the inside/outside

Oh, a minor problem but should be distracting. I will fix this.

I found it slightly annoying that you couldn't backtrack. What that does is takes away from the feeling of being able to freely roam and explore, and means that I cannot be rewarded for remembering where the NPC that sells me a health upgrade for 200 coins is. It would be quite a waste of time for me to backtrack from halfway through the game to the NPC, so I don't see that as a problem.

Yes, it was my original intention to add the ability to backtrack. However, the game would have used too much memory if I had done that, so I wasn't able to add it. Instead, I have changed the prices of health enchantments, increasing the amount you have to pay as you progress, to compensate for the increasing amount of coins you find. Basically, what you see is a consequence of technical problems.

I agree with your points on the story, but you should realize I was trying to differ from the usual storytelling you find in games with text messages to explain the story, striving to reward memory. I think there are lots of clues to reveal the true intentions of the characters.

Thanks for replying!

[PDF]

Slightly updated the game - nothing new for those who have played, I've fixed some small bugs that wouldn't actually bother anyone. Also polished some mechanics- nothing noticable though.

I wonder if that's all people can tell about the game: what does it lack, how it can be enhanced: That's what I want to know.