next »

[Eclipse]

http://aztaka.citeremis.com/

looks spiffy! And it's already out!

I'm so going to try the demo and maybe i'll buy it, i love the art style 

PS: the demo is here but it looks it's like a release candidate for another demo that will be avaiable soon-ish

[ChevyRay]

Whoa, it's like Prince of Persia + Diablo. Doesn't look like my kind of game, but I agree that the artwork is very pretty.

Also, worst opening line to a trailer?

[Eclipse]

yeah, they don't seems very able in... marketing, This release feels a bit like invisible to all the media and the trailer shows only the main character rolling around a lot 
But maybe they deserve a bit of indie love! I'll try the demo and post if it's any good

[ChevyRay]

I wonder how much the mouse comes into play? Using the mouse in a sidescroller seems weird (less so in one like Aquaria where you have free movement), but I'd like to know how much you actually do with the mouse. I'd try the demo, but I can't do so on this computer right now

[Bremze]

Just sunday I complaned about the lack of side scrolling action rpg's! If this can rival the fun of Ragnarok battle and has more depth, they have my money.

[Eclipse]

tried it, the graphic is really good, awesome artworks and the characters moves quite smoothly (they looks like prerendered models but quite detailed and not fugly)

The music is not bad at all too, the game plays a bit like dunno, Odin Sphere or another sidescrolling rpg, it has interesting skills, like the first you obtain permits you to make trees grow branches that you can use as platforms (unluckly only in predetermined spots)

The demo anyway looks a bit buggy, it's a well polished game so it's a pity dying because stuck inside an enemy or that sort of things... but as they said it's only a "RC" demo, so i'm waiting for the real one.

@ChevyRay: on the first "level" you use the right click to melee combat but i feel you will soon gain an ability to shoot something, you also use the mouse to drag strange glowing "forces" around the screen, usually dropped by defeated enemies.
For example you usually slash an enemy, grab that glowing stuff with the mouse and move it into a spot on a tree to use your skill and make a platform where to jump on... I'll try more later, I was a bit pissed off by the fact that you need to restart everything when you do game over (or at least i wasn't able to find a save o.o)

[Eclipse]

tried a bit more, this game is not bad at all! maybe a bit slow paced but it looks beautiful

[Syrion]

I'm not sure. I'd like to like this more than I do, but so far I nearly don't have the motivation to keep playing the demo.
I'm still at the Underground Passage now, but it's starting to get annoying. I've had to restart the temple level about 4 or 5 times now. 2 or 3 times because of a bug that made the game practically freeze during a cutscene, twice because I touched a bat more than once. Now I have to restart the Underground Passage for the third time. Once because I touched a spider I didn't see in the darkness, twice because the boss killed me. I did notice that improving your Endurance is very much worth it, as it basically multiplies your base health with each point you invest in it, so that really helps not getting killed every time you are hit.

I guess I'm still in the very beginning of the game, but this part hasn't been very enjoyable at all. Even if it does get much better later on, the beginning of a game can also be fun, I guess. I suppose you get interesting skills later on, but so far fighting wasn't interesting. There are plants you just stand in front of and hit multiple times and there are the spiders you have to get close to, hit multiple times, walk away a few steps and repeat two or three more times. Now the boss fight wasn't too bad, basically a typical first adventure game boss. But even once you figure out the weak point, pretty much at first glance, you still have to repeat hitting it several times. I think in adventure games having to hit the boss's weak point 3 times is very common, as 2 times might not be enough, whereas it might already get monotonous if there's fourth time. This boss I had already hit about 6 to 8 times without getting injured much, only to have him hit me once and then without being able to get away another time, killing me, so that I have to replay the whole level just once more.


My main problem with the repetition of the levels is that it goes very much against the whole concept of an adventure game in my opinion. Here I am in an interesting new level, I'm carefully advancing, defeating some enemies, exploring the area, finding some interesting things - and bang, I made a mistake, I have to repeat it. Now there is nothing new interesting to find, I already know where the enemies are, I already know how to defeat them easily, up until the point where I died. There is absolutely no use of having to repeat that again, it only hurts the game without any slight advantage to balance it.



Now, even if I have to repeat it another five times, I will go on playing it, anyway, as I don't want to judge the whole game on this alone. I want to see what I will still be shown in the demo, in case there is more.

[edit]
The demo actually ends with the Undergrounds Passage.

Obviously this post is tinted with the frustration about the repetition, but other than that, I guess this is unfortunately pretty much my opinion about the Aztaka demo.

[edit²]
I've also encountered a few bugs, but apart from the freeze-bug mentioned earlier on, which didn't happen again after I restarted the game, nothing major. I was once displaced by a branch that was still growing. It practically teleported me a meter away. The same thing happened once on one of the floating stones in the Underground Passage, which also teleported me, but unfortunately made me fall down. At least it didn't kill me. And when I fought the Passage's boss one of the vital energy in the container suddenly started glowing extremely, so that the whole part of the screen was basically white. Absorbing it helped, though. Lastly, you can absorb vital energy to replenish health and still use it on an object in the environment by standing next to it. For example in the temple level, when you stand next to a dead guard and use the vital energy on him, he will be resurrected, but you will also absorb that energy yourself, so it's used twice at the same time.

[Eclipse]

yes stupid deaths are truly common in this game, the horrible death animation (or better the totally lack of a real death animation) makes the game over also ugly to see :\ and then you have to repeat the entire level....

too bad because the game looks good and all that mayan stuff is interesting, but i dubt i'll add it to my indie collection... i still invite everyone to try the demo anyway, it's not a bad game after all, it has flaws but maybe someone will like it!

[citeremis]

Any suggestion for the dying part ?
Do you think respawning the player at the last door/entry with a loss in XP and POA ($) could be a good thing ?

[Eclipse]

Any suggestion for the dying part ?
Do you think respawning the player at the last door/entry with a loss in XP and POA ($) could be a good thing ?

Are you a developer of this game?
Yes i think spawning in a near place instead of having to redo all the level is way better in the long run, even the xp loss is ok for me because it's easy to reobtain it, the best thing should be having "checkpoints" on the level, like glowing stuff that saves your XP\POA and let you restart from that exact point when you die, but maybe it's something too hard to implement as the game is already out, dunno!
Anyway having the players respawn at the last entry will be surely better than that, it will make the game shorter to play but repetition is not good, expecially when you have to replay the same thing because you died (it lead frustration) also making the dying part faster to "skip" and return in the game will help a bit too. (for example using a fade-to-black a relaxing but sad jingle and then respawn the player somewhere without leading him back to the "map" menu and so on, it kinda breaks the flow)

I'd ask Derek to frontpage the game, because it's really a quite polished indie game and stuff like that doesn't happen so often

[Syrion]

I agree about respawns at the last door. Maybe if at some points in the game single rooms are too small you could mark only some doors as "respawn points", so that there is still a little bit of repetition involved, but you don't restart basically exactly where you started. That might actually be rather close to the idea of checkpoints. For example in each level a fair amount of doors, depending on the length of the level, are marked as checkpoints (and tell the player that as he passes them). But if the length isn't an issue I'd say just every door would work as well and certainly much better than having to replay the whole level again

I think a loss of XP and those POA is a good idea, as long as it isn't too much. I wouldn't want to die several times at one part and basically lose an hour worth of experience points or so. And I guess it would have to be limited somehow, at least so that you can't lose a character level.

As I've read on the official forums the difficulty isn't so much of an issue in later levels, anyway, as you get more skills and higher attributes, so I'd suppose that the difficulty otherwise doesn't need to be changed.


Even though I didn't enjoy the demo as much as I thought I would, I agree that this should definitely be frontpaged. I don't doubt that I would like it better in later parts of the game and understand that the demo doesn't show more, as it's just the beginning of the game and that works best for a demo. Also, the quality of the game is obviously really good and I guess non-casual 2D Action-Adventures aren't too common, either So, Aztaka does indeed deserve a lot more publicity.

[Syrion]

If Aztaka is going to be featured on TIGSource, I think now would be a good time, as the official demo is out since three days

[Eclipse]

oh cool, i have to try it!

[skaldicpoet9]

Looks interesting but man, that demo download is a killer, 894mb? wtf? Well, hopefully it is good enough for me to squander my bandwidth for a couple of hours.

[Bood_war]

Shit, almost 900mb  ? Anyway, still looks cool.

[suiraclaw]

My PC can't run the demo. Too bad :x .