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gambrinous
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« Reply #180 on: April 19, 2014, 11:32:49 AM » |
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* It would be great to see the stats of the monsters/items you place. I know the hope/dread cost is a relative indicator of how good an item is, but there are variations within that. You can't cancel out of a fight so a poorly chosen enemy can be devastating, and it would be good to know what I'm going up against before going in.
* I end up expanding the map far quicker than I can explore it. With three cards played per one square moved, I feel like I often have more cards than I know what to do with and end up just playing them on the outside borders of the map. I'm sure this will somewhat improve with better pathfinding AI so that he doesn't just end up blundering around in a corner for ten turns. (I wonder how it would feel if you *had* to play exactly two of five cards, and the other three were discarded. I could imagine all kinds of situations: "Damn, which two of these three awesome cards should I play?", or "Damn, which is the least of all evils when I get a hand of high level monsters?" Currently, it's a bit more of a "Meh, I guess play this ducky and discard a couple room tiles". )
* The text/sound starts to wear thin after playing it a bunch. It's cute at first but after seeing Embro make the same joke for the fifth time I wish I could press space or something to advance. (Or maybe just reduce the pause between UI animations? It feels a little slow paced.) (Or let the player start looking at/playing the next round's cards while Embro is taunting us?)
* There doesn't really seem to be any incentive to explore more of the dungeon until the final boss comes. I did just as well creating a closed loop of four elbow tiles off the starting tile as I did creating a giant maze. (Other than the fun of creating a giant maze!) Maybe some small one-time bonus for exploring new rooms? (eg. you could get dread only exploring new tiles... or maybe certain of the rooms would give a 1 HP or 1 Hope or 3-turn buff the first time you enter them? Something minor to encourage the explorer to not just swap back and forth.) The art is great so it would be good to see the art actually matter (eg. the tile with the big pit in the center gives +1 dread when entering.)
Hi bigalphillips, first of all thanks for the really in depth feedback! This is super helpful!! * I'm in two minds about this. I could show everything in a sort of tooltip when hovering over a card for more clarity, or I could leave it as it is now and it's more of a mystery til you battle something for the first time.. * That's really interesting. I'm going to try out your idea of draw 5 + play 2 each turn, it could well lead to some interesting decisions for the player. Also: it's fun drawing more new cards each turn (get to see more things!). On the player speed vs dungeon expansion I am going to give him a 2nd 'move' on turns where he moves onto an empty tile that he has already explored, which should get him out of dead ends etc a bit quicker. * The sounds are placeholder, I really do need to make them a little more bearable! Your idea to have EMBRO talk in the corner while you are able to start your turn is a great idea. That lets anyone who wants to skip by it able to do so with very little change. I'll also look into shortening some of the animations & pauses to keep things moving a little better. * I really like your idea to have something happen the first time the dungeoneer explores tiles; very much agree it could be a nice motivation to expand (which also looks much nicer!). Will try it out and see. I am already planning on making the rooms with neat art do something interesting - perhaps as special combos you can find by chance (like playing a monster in the throne room turns him into an elite version of that monster?) Thanks again for writing all that up! |
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gambrinous
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« Reply #181 on: April 19, 2014, 11:47:21 AM » |
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I've been playing it more and more, I must admit I am mildly addicted to the game although mostly because of how frustrating it is to actually complete. I think a few simple adjustments could make the game vastly more enjoyable. Rather than having him search out the entire dungeon and pick a route (which could make the game very sluggish)you could have him check 2-3 rooms away at max and move towards/ away from specific enemies based on his armor/strength levels. And the other issue I am running into quite often is the fire demon will appear on my screen but I haven't drawn any enemies that were weak enough to defeat to gain hope, or any hope cards that gave me equipment so I end up going against the fire demon with a club and leather helmet or worse. To fix that I think it could be relatively simple to modify your random card generator to actually pick up on what cards have been drawn/used/discarded in the previous turns or the strength of the character to decide which enemies/ equipment to send. (i.e. if I have a 1 strength and 2 armor I dont get a hand with 3 cyclops and a bandido). Again I have to say I thoroughly enjoy this game and would love to see it succeed.
Cheers for the suggestions. I also think something needs to be done at the very least for the first couple of turns, perhaps only giving you low level monsters at that stage. I'm seeing this a lot demoing it to first time players at a game festival this weekend. |
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gambrinous
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« Reply #182 on: April 19, 2014, 11:57:13 AM » |
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Here I am doing an interview at our stand in the Indie Zone at Insomnia Gaming Festival in the UK. Here again tomorrow if anyone from tigsource is going along, drop by!  |
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gambrinous
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« Reply #183 on: April 19, 2014, 01:22:01 PM » |
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gambrinous
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« Reply #184 on: April 23, 2014, 01:17:29 AM » |
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Nice video from TheDragonHat after he checked out the game at Insomnia:  |
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gambrinous
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« Reply #185 on: April 23, 2014, 03:47:05 AM » |
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Update: v0.6.17 Apr 23rdChanges since the last version - if you beat EMBRO you now get the satisfaction of a win screen- when you start the game you now get some handy instructions on how to play - tweaked stats on some monsters (including EMBRO) to make the alpha version winnable, though difficult Play this version: Browser (Flash)Installable (AIR)    Todo- Actual pathfinding for EMBRO so he doesn't get stuck in a dead end - Lots of ideas for improvement from showing the game at Insomnia!
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gambrinous
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« Reply #186 on: April 25, 2014, 02:08:52 AM » |
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I've been thinking of tweaking how dread for monster placement works. Right now there's no real incentive to spend your dread / place monsters you can't quite take on yet, which is a thing I'd like to see happen.
Right now if you don't have enough dread for a monster you can't place it either, which I think is unnecessary. It makes sense for the HOPE reward items, but not for the monsters. I watched a lot of people repeatedly click on monsters they couldn't afford yet over the weekend and it just doesn't flow.
I'm considering making the dread counter more of a graphical meter that fills up from 'safe' to 'danger' and onto a maxed out 'HORROR' level. At the higher levels there is a chance each turn of something bad happening such as a monster moving, a trap appearing, that kind of thing. It ticks upwards each turn and the only way to make it drop downwards is to place a monster - with the harder monsters making a really significant drop in it. So you don't have a dread cost for monster cards anymore (you can always play them) - instead you are rewarded with safety for placing them. But ignore monsters and Bad Things will start happening. I think it will feel a lot more fun this way.
What do you think?
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bigalphillips
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« Reply #187 on: April 27, 2014, 05:34:06 PM » |
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That makes a lot of sense -- even if you kept the dread requirement as is but bad things happen if your dread gets too high, I do like the idea of encouraging players to place monsters that they can't take on.
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gambrinous
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« Reply #188 on: April 29, 2014, 07:34:55 AM » |
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Update: v0.6.18 Apr 29thChanges since the last version - EMBRO now uses the powers of path finding to chase you down according to the actual shortest path through the dungeon. No more trapping him in a dead end! Play this version: Browser (Flash)Installable (AIR) Anyone here able to beat EMBRO?
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gambrinous
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« Reply #189 on: May 01, 2014, 01:36:55 PM » |
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I'm giving away 100 copies of the game in a Greenlight votes contest. All you have to do is join a Steam group. Details are here: http://wgn.uk.to/contest/god/ |
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gambrinous
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« Reply #190 on: May 06, 2014, 12:53:03 PM » |
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So Guild of Dungeoneering is now at #7 in the Steam Greenlight rankings. This means it is highly likely to get greenlit in the next batch (possibly next week).  |
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AD1337
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« Reply #191 on: May 06, 2014, 04:03:18 PM » |
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Congrats! You've earned it.  |
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bigalphillips
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« Reply #192 on: May 06, 2014, 06:12:45 PM » |
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Nice going on greenlight! Best of luck!
Anyone here able to beat EMBRO?
Short answer: no. Longer answer: no... but I think I'm close. I've played a few more games since the last update and most of them end with me having 40-50 hope, and losing by a bit to Embro. I often find myself getting way more hope than I have useful stuff to spend it on... higher cost and power items might help? Or items require more hope the longer you've been exploring? Another random tweak to add to my big list above: what if the character (and Embro) moved two squares per turn? As is, I can nearly always place one new dungeon tile, place one interesting monster/object to entice him there, discard one more card, and make an endless chain like that even with Embro following me. |
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RB
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« Reply #193 on: May 10, 2014, 01:32:40 AM » |
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Update: v0.6.18 Apr 29th
Anyone here able to beat EMBRO?
Have not been able to beat him, but currently my game is in a loop. EMBRO attacks my hero, hero beats him down to Health 5 without taking any damage himself, hero walks away, EMBRO catchs up again, repeat. They've been doing this for about 15 minutes now (My hero was nowhere near ready for EMBRO, but he happened to appear one room over from my hero, so he did not have a choice but to engage.)  |
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RB
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« Reply #194 on: May 11, 2014, 12:42:50 AM » |
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EMBRO attacks my hero, hero beats him down to Health 5 without taking any damage himself, hero walks away, EMBRO catchs up again, repeat. They've been doing this for about 15 minutes now Same thing happened today, with almost the same scores for my hero: health 4, strength 4, speed -2, armour 6. No clue if this helps in figuring out what might be going on. |
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gambrinous
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« Reply #195 on: May 11, 2014, 01:18:14 AM » |
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Have not been able to beat him, but currently my game is in a loop. EMBRO attacks my hero, hero beats him down to Health 5 without taking any damage himself, hero walks away, EMBRO catchs up again, repeat. They've been doing this for about 15 minutes now (My hero was nowhere near ready for EMBRO, but he happened to appear one room over from my hero, so he did not have a choice but to engage.) There's a couple of factors at play here. Firstly the combat is very simple, you each do damage according to your strength minus the opponent's armour. So if you are both highly armoured you can end up doing no damage (or only one per turn). Secondly to prevent never-ending combats where no one can damage the other (this used to happen!) I've made it so that after 5 rounds if you haven't won your hero runs away. Finally there is a bug where after you run from combat the monster's health is reset to full. All these in combination can lead to what you've seen! On the plus side, it did make for an entertaining 'demo loop' when it happened a few weeks ago at Insomnia.. So to fix it I have a few ideas. - make the combat have a little bit of chance to it. Eg rolls to hit, dmg, critical hits. Then you won't ever be in a 100% deadlocked state. This could also be more fun than the current super simple system. - fix the bug with monster health resetting of course - maybe make the hero run in a random direction (he goes back the way he came right now, which if it is a dead end...) |
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AD1337
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« Reply #198 on: May 14, 2014, 04:30:13 PM » |
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wow I thought you already had been, gratz!
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RhysD
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« Reply #199 on: May 14, 2014, 05:00:53 PM » |
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Great news, Guild of Dungeoneering is going to be on Steam! Just got greenlit tonight    Nice! Game is fun, mega congrats!  |
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