Yeah, balance/pacing is always a tricky beast.  Thanks for playing it enough to get through the first level!  I do think the strategy is relatively simple at first (by design), to help communicate to players how to play.  Over time, the game grows 'horizontally'; as you encounter new heroes, the pool of heroes to draw from becomes larger, and you get more interesting and complicated combinations of heroes.

You're right; I do think the depth isn't immediately apparent, but while it is a light game overall, I think there is more depth as people play.  I'll have to think of some ways possibly to increase the perception of depth in the early levels, as the first impression is so important.

I put together a trailer for this on YouTube this past weekend.  After Effects isnt' really my thing, but I'm (mostly) satisfied with how it turned out:




Planning to launch on Windows Phone ~May 22nd and on iOS/Android by June 5th.  Shouldn't be long now

Didn't know there was going to be an overworld, but for some reason that's really exciting!  Seems like that'll add a lot of depth/sense of progression.

Can't say enough how much I like the art direction you've taken

New version now available!  Among other things, it adds two new episodes (desert and slimed themed), and a host of polish/bug fixes.  Check it out!

http://gamejolt.com/games/rpg/tales-of-the-adventure-company/23973/

Thanks for trying it out!

This episode is actually meant to be fairly straight forward; there will be additional episodes (soon) which add a lot more classes/enemy types, which should hopefully increase the 'horizontal' depth, if that make sense.  More classes, more possible permutations, more interesting and unpredictable interactions.

I do think if I had to do this over, I may have added unique exploration/battles for each class, instead of one or the other.  That way, there'd always be an interesting choice about which hero to use in which situation.  I was trying to optimize for simplicity.

Things are coming along quite nicely, and I hope to have an updated version to the web version of the game by this weekend/next week.  It will add two new themed episodes to the existing 'Undead' episode; the themes are 'Egyptian' and 'Slime/Ooze' respectively.  Once I get that out, I'll be hard at work on the platform specific stuff -- Game Center leaderboards, achievements, things like that.  I hope to round it out with a couple more episodes for the final release.

Starting playing with some cool particle effects to give unique visual flair to each episode/level.  Rain in the undead episode, dust/sand storm in the Egyptian episode, and bubbling ooze in the Slime/Ooze episode.  It's just a visual thing, but it helps to further differentiate the look & feel of each area.

Lastly, another screenshot preview!

[Try it now (browser, Unity)]

Hi!

For the 7DRL (building a roguelike in 7 days) competition recently, I submitted Tales of the Adventuring Company. It's a complete redo of another game I released, Adventuring Company, which I released previously on web/Android. Since the competition a month a go, I've been working on an updated version. I finally uploaded that version to Game Jolt and you can try it out in your browser:

Try it now (browser, Unity)
http://gamejolt.com/games/rpg/tales-...company/23973/

It's still in development, so you might see bugs, balance issues, etc... but I'd love to start getting feedback from you guys. Once I'm totally satisfied with this first episode, I intend to add additional episodes with more heroes/monsters/etc...

I frequently update twitter with the latest development news/new builds, so feel free to follow me there if you're interested https://twitter.com/slothwerks

If you have a few minutes, give it a try and let me know what you think!

Preview of upcoming episodes:

thanks for all the great feedback! glad you are enjoying this.

so yeah, the ai. right now there are three classes that have randomness in their ai:

- pure random wander
- random wander until distance (5?)
- random wander until cardinal LOS.

the first two of those are definitely bad, and I need to get rid of them. I put them in the early levels so there would be some on boarding. I kinda just want to get rid of those early levels, and difficulty ramp faster.

I was kinda at a loss for how to do non-random ai, it feels like there are only a few solutions, but I will explore that more for sure.

I am going to shelve this for a while, I have a few other projects I want to take care of, but will be getting back to it the week after gdc I think.

Totally understand the need to get something up and running.

Since I'm pretty sure you've played both, 868-Hack and Ending both do a good job, and are vaguely similar to your game.  Ending's AI works better I think with a set-piece puzzle game, but there are some interesting ideas for a random game nonetheless, like taking turns to rotate to face a direction.  Something like 868-Hack might work better for your game, where the AIs are really pretty similar (hunter AI), but have other properties which make them interesting (fast movement, move through barriers, more HP, invisible)

IMO, the more predictable, the better for this type of game.  I did like the blaster enemies in Nightmare Collective, because I could exploit position to make good use of my abilities.

Incredible trailer.  The pixel art speaks for itself, but the story, voiceover, music and glitchy nature of the trailer is the icing on the cake.  Fantastic work.

Had a bit more time to play, and was able to beat it.  A observations/comments:

Minor spoilers, I guess, but these are the powers (as I understand them):
Warrior: Deal damage to adjacent enemy
Archer: Attacks ranged on row/column (like a rook)
Wizard: Attacks diagonal (like a bishop)
Priest: Heals all allies
Miner: Breaks blocks, exposing gold

The weakest part right now IMO is the AI.  I'm sort of conflicted what would work better: a random, truly rogue-like experience or a set piece scenario like what @st33d did with Ending.  In any case, I think the game would work a bit better with more predictable AI (like in Ending) Just my 2 cents.

I found all the classes useful, including the miner surprisingly.  He was pretty useful for busting a more optimal path through the level.  A couple levels I was able to run by all the enemies. 

Great work

Really neat concept, just saw it over on RPS and IndieGames.  Subscribed and definitely excited to see where you go with this.

My only recommendation after playing for 10 minutes is to explain or introduce the powers.  I wasn't totally sure how they worked.  The priest is fairly obvious; I think I understand the archer/mage, but I'm not sure if they're limited to certain axes (like chess).  Didn't ever get the Knight.

Monster AI is a little unpredictable, which makes it a bit harder as a 'puzzle' game, but it may become more obvious if I play more.

I really like this though.  The positioning aspect is a really unique and refreshing take on games like this.

I've also gotta say that I'd really like to have this on my phone, and I think that swipe controls would be perfect for it.

[Heroes]

OK, yeah, point taken   I'll have to revisit the Healer for the next build.  And thanks for the tip on the Vampire -- that one is known, but I haven't addressed it yet. 

Here's a tile list of some of the things planned for Episode 2 (the one with dragons!)  Subject to change of course.  My current plan is to have each episode have a 'theme' and interesting synergy between the different tiles, and then (in my opinion) the "real mode", Endless, will pick a random subset from all available tiles, forcing you to adapt on the fly, and explore different unit/weapon/item combos.

Without further ado:

Heroes
Hoplite: Power +3 when at full health
Mercenary: Reduces your gold when collected and raises power by the same amount (up to 3)
Archer: When rallied, adds 4 to the Power of the current chain (instead of 1)
Rogue: 8 Power if the only ally in the chain and 1 otherwise

Weapons
Elm Bow: Rallied allies are Power +3 (instead of +1)
Midas Dagger: When you kill an enemy, also gain 1 gold
Frost Axe: While equipped, if the current hero’s power exceeds 10, that hero takes no damage from attacks
Dragontooth Blade: The power of this weapon equal to the amount of gold you currently have (max

Items
Tome of Blinding Light: Damage from all enemies reduced to 1 this turn
Winged Sandals: Current hero gains +1 Power and 2 additional moves this turn
Potion of Mighty Fortitude: Full restores health and adds +2 power until end of turn

Thanks all for trying it out!

I'll agree, very fun, and definitely solid.  I did figure out a strategy, though, and did well enough that the level just dragged on forever.  Is there a win state atm?  A smaller life bar might be called for, since it takes so long to let that many enemies through.

There should be -- provided you were playing the first 'episode' and not endless.  At the beginning of each day, it says "Day X, 50-X days remaining".  If you're playing endless, it just goes on forever.  I'm still trying to tune this; yeah, it does take awhile for the enemies to get up there.  I'm trying to decide if it might be better to allow the enemies to spawn a little higher up, because they always spawn in the rear ranks.

My one major complaint is that the used-items-go-back-inventory mechanic could be clearer.  Once I figured that out, it changed my buying priorities entirely.

Yeah, this is really one of the hardest aspects of the game for me to communicate.  I added the 'bag' icon (which is clickable) that shows you the current make-up of your 'deck'.  I also tried to add animation to show the tiles flying in/out of the deck to reinforce "hey, your tiles are being pulled from this bag!".  I've considered being more explicit (eg: putting the word "deck" and "discard" next to the bag) but I haven't decided yet.  If anyone has ideas about how to communicate this more clearly, I'd love to hear them

Also, I'm very fond of the healer-knight combo, though the healer's effect seems a bit OP for the price.  Healing in general does seem largely more useful than attack, since it helps less attack go farther.

I'll have to take a look.  It's funny, because I actually thought the opposite.  It was hard for me to strike a good balance with the healer, because with only 8 moves, you can't really go TOO far out of your way to pick up allies.  It's possible I went a bit overboard with the 'reduce 2 damage' thing.  It used to be 1.

Any plans for items/heroes that affect the number of steps you can take?  Seems like a good potential addition.

I do   The original concept for the game include boots you could collect that would increase movement.  I've also considered having guys that reduce moves, but are really powerful, or maybe a beserker type that gets more moves for each guy he kills.  I agree, I think there's a lot of cool things you can do with movement.

Really cool game, though after I picked up some bell item (I don't even remember what it was supposed to do) this happened

Doh yeah, I think the root cause of that is probably the same as the original bug which made the game unplayable, but now with the bell item specifically.  Thanks for the heads up; I'll disable that until I can fix it.

Prefer 15, but with dark hair.

Stupidly uploaded a broken build this weekend   Apparently, Unity DOES have some differences between the web and desktop/mobile versions.  Since I do most of my testing on Android/Desktop, I failed to notice that the build I uploaded to the web is completely broken.

If you did try Dungeon Rally this weekend and were horribly confused, give it another try, and it should make more sense now that the critical issue has been fixed.

http://gamejolt.com/games/rpg/dungeon-rally/21400/

[Dev Blog]

Dev Blog
http://slothwerks.tumblr.com

Twitter
https://twitter.com/slothwerks

Try Dungeon Rally in your browser (pre-release version)
http://gamejolt.com/games/rpg/dungeon-rally/21400/

I've finally gotten my current project, Dungeon Rally, to the point where I'm ready to share it with you guys.  I'm calling it a 'deck-building puzzle rpg'.  It's a puzzle RPG in the vein of 10000000, Dungeon Rally, and Puzzle Quest, but with a 'deck building' twist.  

At the end of each turn in Dungeon Rally, you're given the opportunity to buy new tiles (heroes/weapons/items) to your 'deck'.  As you complete chains and tiles are removed from the board, instead of populating them with completely random tiles, they're populated with tiles from your deck.  This adds a new layer of strategy: customizing your deck and finding powerful synergies between different types of tiles is a key part of the strategy.

If you've played popular deck-building games like Ascension (also on iOS), Thunderstone, or Dominion, you'll know what I'm talking about.

I've been pretty active posting new info and news over at Game Jolt; in fact, I just uploaded the new 0.4 build today (Feb 8, 2014).  The game is playable in your browser today if you want to give it a try.

http://gamejolt.com/games/rpg/dungeon-rally/21400/

You can also follow the development in this thread, on Twitter, or my dev blog (links above).

I'd love to answer any questions you have, and if you do try the version over @ Game Jolt, I'd love to get your thoughts.  The first episode is pretty much 'done', and future dev work will mostly be on additional episodes.  I'd love to tweak/refine the first episode based on any feedback you guys have.

Hope you enjoy!  Would love to answer any questions you guys have.  Before anyone says "hmmm, those sprites look really familiar!" I'm using Oryx's VERY popular 16-bit Fantasy sprites http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=34987.0