Okay. I played through the tutorial and the first two levels of Heldric. I decided to record some video of me playing so that you can get a clear idea of what I did. Youtube is currently processing it so I'll post again once it's online.
Some general thoughts. Graphically this game is really nice. The map menu especially, it looks like something out of a AAA game. I also really love the buttons you use in the menus. The music is okay, fits with the overall style quite well.
Thanks for the great feedback! I've had around 800+ downloads since I started and about five people who were not already a friend who took the time to give me feedback. So thank you very much.
I'm glad you enjoyed the graphics and style.
Your tutorial level floods you with a lot of text at the start. It's a bit hard to process everything at once. It may be better to break the text up and feed it to the player as they need it.
I was aware of this, and did try to break it up with those tip windows that pop up. It still could use a bit more work to break it into smaller chunks.
Some of the graphical elements in the game could better describe what they are meant to represent. For example in the bottom left corner you could have a heart or red plus sign to represent health and in the bottom right corner you could have a persons head to represent population. When I'm attack a number pops over my head representing the health points lost but the health itself is represented as a percentage. This makes it hard to judge when to run from an encounter and when to stick it out.
The icons are a good suggestion, I'll play around with some different concepts for it. Currently you can see the total HP by hovering over the health orb, player's health is 250 at the moment. Villagers are 100 and enemies all vary. If you think it's more useful, I could allow you to click the orb and see 187/250 instead of 75%.
- Allow the player to defend attacks from enemies by pressing a certain button at the right time
- Allow for the player to dive out of the way
These are some good possible ways improve interaction, thanks.
- Have a system where the position of your attacks influences its effectiveness. Thereby putting pressure on the player to move to the right position.
This is kind of in place already as spiked barriers can be shot through with arrows but protect against movement. So standing behind a spiked wall is great way to snipe enemies. Also pulling an enemy to a shrine of damage to boost your melee attacks. Or do you mean something else here?
- Let the player command the towns folks and influence their play style
I'm not so sure about this one. It makes it more of an RTS game and makes the player feel like he is in charge of the town/villagers instead of part of them. I have been going for the feeling that he is indeed a humble shoemaker and not a king or epic hero.
Using the bow and arrow was quite fiddly. It wasn't clear what the range of the arrow was and sometimes it just seemed as though it wasn't working. Arrows attacks received from the enemies where really over powering.
I'm sorry you didn't enjoy the bow. Most people seem to love it and I'd be happy to know where you felt it wasn't working. It's true that if you get a large group of archers they can be deadly. AI damage per arrow is 35, player/villager damage is 50. How else would you recommend changing the balance?
I wasn't a big fan of how you could only place your buildings in arbitrary positions. This kind of takes control away from the player and removes a possible layer of strategy to the game. There didn't seem to be much strategy behind where I placed the buildings. I also didn't understand the benefit of rotating the buildings. The barriers didn't really seem to influence the position of the enemies all that much. I also couldn't really see the result of the slow, health or death towers.
I spent a good deal of time during the design phase to research and plan for this issue. Initially I wanted freebuild in the game. But during my prototype phase I came up with these pros and cons:
1) Freebuild system
+ Freedom of the player
+ More strategies
- Player will naturally try to block AI's paths
- Player will spam towers and overpower an areas
- Pathfinding issues for AI (villagers and enemies)
2) Plot system
+ Requires more player planning on what they need and the limited spots available
+ No pathfinding issues
+ No balance issues with tower spam/etc
- Less freedom and feeling of player control
- Less strategies than freebuild
One possible way to allow freebuild but prevent area spam and pathfinding is to make “road” areas where the player cannot build. Then make towers have a large exclusion area to prevent spam. However, at that point you're not much different the a plot system. In the end I went with plots and I realize that many people were not going to be happy with that choice. If you have some suggestions on improving the system then please let me know.
When I died the body floated around for a bit. This seemed a bit strange. The player also can't do anything while they are dead. So you're just sitting there waiting. Maybe giving them some more control here would be good. For example, letting them have free reign on the camera so they can plot strategies for when they regenerate.
This is a bug.
The camera should have centered on the rebirth shrine when killed. You do have the ability to use F2 with your cursor over any target to follow that target. But I'll look into a free-roam mode.
That's all for me. Let me know if you have any questions. I can clarify anything that is unclear.
If I get a chance I'll try to play the other levels too.
The first few levels are more of an introduction to the game. Mudvane is more complicated, has many more plots to choose and a larger area to protect.
Thanks again for the feedback and video.
Developer
