next »

[EvergreenLimabean]

When you do before and after pictures, make sure to set them up as an IMG and not a link. Also put them together and point out the difference.

Will do in the future! Thanks!

[EvergreenLimabean]

Check out our latest build!

We completely changed the game mode from last time to get into the action faster and also added signature skills and such. Lots of changes!

Web (Unity Web Player)
Win
Mac

Give it a try and leave us some feedback! Many thanks!

[karlozalb]

tested! this is really looking good, keep up the good work 

[contingent99]

tested! this is really looking good, keep up the good work 

Thanks for the encouraging words! We changed a ton in the past week with how the game is structured, so it's good to hear back from people who tried it

[contingent99]

A lot of changes this week to the game's structure as well as some visual improvements. An example of this - enemies now have a portal effect when they spawn! It really punches up the tension in certain rooms and also acts as a visual cue.

Enemy Spawn Portal | gfycat

One of the most exciting things we recently added to the game are Overdrives! Each wizard has a signature ability that they are able to perform Overdrive versions of! You can think of it as the equivalent of Super moves from fighting games like Street Fighter. We hope that these set different wizards that we have available apart from one another. Here are a few examples that we want to show off:

Homing Missiles | gfycat
Blizzard | gfycat
Fireball | gfycat

We updated some visuals on a few of our regular spells as well:

Summon Turret | gfycat


If you like what you see, we released a new build last night that you can try out (link on first post). Any feedback would be greatly appreciated!

[StoryOfMyRightHand]

Very interesting, love the animations. I saw you guys on reddit and I thought I should say hi.

How many people are on the development team?

[contingent99]

Very interesting, love the animations. I saw you guys on reddit and I thought I should say hi.

How many people are on the development team?

Thanks, it's just me and one other person (Evergreenlimabean) for now. We might look to bring on more people in the future, but we're just two indie devs working on this!

[EvergreenLimabean]

Very interesting, love the animations. I saw you guys on reddit and I thought I should say hi.

How many people are on the development team?

Hi hi! Like void said, just us two. There's so very much to do with only two people !

[contingent99]

We spent some time this week punching up the effects for a lot of our Overdrive spells as well as re-balancing them to be in tune with one another. One of the things we added was an activation effect and sound, which really helps add a punch to them. Here's an example using our new spell Fire Breath:

Fire Breath Overdrive | gfycat
Updated Ball Lightning Overdrive |  gfycat

Some engineering time was dedicated this week to implement damage over time effects. First one we got done was burn:

Burn Status Effect | gfycat

It was a lot of fun experimenting with different particle effects in Unity to achieve an effect we liked. I'm sure we'll be tweaking it here and there as time goes by. We also added some other miscellaneous visual updates as well:

Charge Skill |  gfycat
Player Spawn Effect |  gfycat

See you all next week for another update!

[Christian]

Really enjoying this. Great animations and spell effects

My main gripe is that it feels like you really can't go on the offensive. Your standard melee attacks is kind of weak, so the game tends to become evasive-focused while waiting for your skills to become available again.

Is that the kind of gameplay flow you're going for?

[contingent99]

Really enjoying this. Great animations and spell effects

My main gripe is that it feels like you really can't go on the offensive. Your standard melee attacks is kind of weak, so the game tends to become evasive-focused while waiting for your skills to become available again.

Is that the kind of gameplay flow you're going for?

Thanks for trying out the game Christian! We're going for something with a good ebb and flow that's dictated by enemy layout, level design, and skill rotations. It's true that the sword does feel a bit weaker comparatively and we'll definitely look into any possible ways to get around the more evasion focused gameplay that you're talking about. We found that the player sometimes has too many offensive options and that it gets harder to balance all the cooldowns once you have a full bar of skills. At the same time, the random nature of when and how you pick skills up does make things a bit harder to get just right. Maybe we'll experiment with more regular spell drops but limit skill slots per tier? Not sure, but thanks for the feedback! It's greatly appreciated and we'll see if we can address what you've brought up.

[crusty]

Hey I tested this and I like it.  Just between us wizards, wizards only:

I felt that the weight of motion is really well done (collisions, recoil, and conserving the momentum when stopping to attack).

I think the screen shake is annoying.

I kind of want the dash to be aimed by the player's movement axis rather than the aiming axis (I played on Windows w/ keyboard and mouse but I'm guessing that on controller one stick is movement and one stick is aiming).  Cuz how else can I give the skeletons a fade-away ice blasting?

Anyways it looks really cool.  Art and mechanics very well done so far.

[contingent99]

Hey I tested this and I like it.  Just between us wizards, wizards only:

I felt that the weight of motion is really well done (collisions, recoil, and conserving the momentum when stopping to attack).

I think the screen shake is annoying.

I kind of want the dash to be aimed by the player's movement axis rather than the aiming axis (I played on Windows w/ keyboard and mouse but I'm guessing that on controller one stick is movement and one stick is aiming).  Cuz how else can I give the skeletons a fade-away ice blasting?

Anyways it looks really cool.  Art and mechanics very well done so far.

Thanks! We spent a lot of time on the mechanics and feel so it means a lot to us hearing that. Just between us Wizards, we got a lot of complaints about the dash movement and have made it go towards the WASD vector instead Screen shake is something we've gone back and forth on and will most likely provide a option to tone it down or to turn it off outright!

[contingent99]

We spent a lot of time this week doing a lot of auxiliary work that didn't necessarily affect the gameplay, but was sorely needed. Of the most notable additions was a title screen:

Dynamic Title Screen

It's still a WIP, but we hope that it highlights the action of the game! We also launched a new website! A lot of people were asking about where they can find out more, and we hope to provide more news and updates through it down the line.

We also made a quick video to show off our A* pathing:

A* Pathing (Playing Hide and Seek)

As always, we're constantly updating placeholder art and improving the visuals of the game:

Dust Particles
New Skeleton Mage

See you all next week for another update!

[farginnoob]

The game looks great so far. Love the mood you guys have going on and I can see that with more iteration you'll continue to improve that look and feel through the whole level. Animations and characters look good as well, so keep up the good work there.

I played through the alpha a bit and I have some feedback:

• The basic attack feels good except for the fact that you don't really move. So you run into this situation where you are pushing the enemy back and they get out of your combo range but you don't move to meet them. If this is your intent, then it works as intended . Otherwise, you could use a little more forward movement during the attacks. Similarly, you're pretty locked into direction when attacking, which feels a bit restrictive.
• The dash feels really good, I don't know what your plans are, but adding an upgrade path for it to deal some damage would be cool.
• The difficulty of the other contestants seems a bit high for the first level. Same with the challenges. But not egregiously so.
• Really like the ability drops. I think you could even make the primary attack have drops throughout the levels that improve the damage, range, etc.
• End level stats were sometimes all in the same position.
• There are some really long hallways sometimes with nothing in them. Might just be the random level generation needs tuning?

I know it's still early in development, just some other thoughts:

• Having a map would be nice to have. Especially if the levels get much bigger than they are.
• More set dressing in the rooms. Particularly some more stuff to break.
• Secret rooms!

You've got a really good base here. Really like what I see!

[EvergreenLimabean]

Thanks for the feedback!

Our basic attack was more intended to be a filler skill for stringing together other spells or to simply begin a skill combo as players could cancel it very quickly into a dash or another skill. However, we will try experimenting with increasing the movement while slashing to see how it feels :D

We have an upgraded dash already created (teleport) but not yet in the game, as we're not quite sure yet if we're going to have spell progression or not. It's on our ToDo list!

Contestant difficulty is something we're always tuning, so we will keep that in mind. Might have to do a dynamic one that learns based on how well the player does, etc.

We already have the skill level progression in place to allow for spells to be upgraded to level 2, 3 etc. But again, still not sure if we want spell progression or not. If we do decide to have it, that is probably one of the ways they'll be upgraded.

Level summary is still giving us issues but we're working on it!

The hallways were meant to be peaceful transitions between combat / trials / challenges like the loading between rooms in other games. But we might spice them up with some hazards. Level generation is always going to be a work in progress we feel ._.


We're debating on enabling the minimap but not sure on that. We're hoping to keep each level small instead and possibly having more of them.

Definitely going to be adding more doodads to the scene to spice up the character.

Secret rooms... maybe. :D It's a secret.

Thanks again for the feedback + suggestions!

[Insurgent]

  This game is amazing. Hoping to see more of it in action in the future.

[contingent99]

This game is amazing. Hoping to see more of it in action in the future.

Thanks! We've been hard at work on improving the game and adding features, so hopefully we'll have more to show soon!

[DanielSnd]

This is one of the best games I have played in a while D: I had lots of fun and can't wait to see more!

[EvergreenLimabean]

This is one of the best games I have played in a while D: I had lots of fun and can't wait to see more!

Thanks for playing and giving feedback! It really motivates us to work harder and get more stuff complete!