Don’t have much to say, the game is too large to give a real opinion yet. I think the visuals are a bit boring, at least in the first few levels. The gameplay is kinda nice. I appreciate how simple it is. My main point of reference is Jupiter Hell which I like a lot.
thank you for playing! i'll look through the vods, i watched the last one live. i wonder what caused the sound issues? as far as i can tell, you're the only one who had it.
i'll work on the visuals, they are a bit plain at the start - it's missing more thematic rooms.
It was fun, it went much smoother than last time. I found a game breaking bug with weapon swapping and had a funny death with pathfinding. I need to continue the run another, to see if I reach more advanced monsters.
Great work as always. I spent all weekend sick, but I had to play Kalemonvo.
I briefly soflocked my game because I became unable to drop items on the floor and my inventory was full and so I was rendered unable to interact with objects in the environment. I'm not sure but I think the golden idol may be to blame because I was using the second one at the Treasure Vault when this happened. Reloading did nothing, but restarting the game fixed it.
There were also a couple of incidents of mouse inputs not picking up after loading a save, but a restart fixed it too.
On a different note, I got kind of screwed by the lack of item permanence a few times. In Diablo you just throw your stuff anywhere in town and it stays there forever so I guess I'm a little spoiled.
I was actually running out of space for once, probably thanks to the potion buff. However, I'm sad to say that stacking AGI kinda blows.
are you saying that you have (or at least come close to have ) beaten the game? if so, i am thrilled to hear it! you're 2nd to do so after TGIG dev, well done!
as for the bugs:
>I briefly soflocked my game[...] golden idol
did you, by any chance, feed it a fetish idol? TGIG had the same issue, which has since been resolved.
>There were also a couple of incidents of mouse inputs not picking up after loading a save,
this is new to me. i'll mess with saves and see if anything is amiss.
>On a different note, I got kind of screwed by the lack of item permanence a few times
yeah, it's something i spent this morning thinking about. for the steam demo and previous versions, it didn't matter as the game wasn't long enough for this to have any consequence. now (and especially since there exists a hub area), it's something that is required. it wont take much effort, and i will have it by my next major update in february.
>However, I'm sad to say that stacking AGI kinda blows.
did you play with a bow? i'm thinking about having it also increase melee attack speed. it might make for interesting builds....
the fanart is incredible, and i am blessed to have received it. thank you. i will treasure it forever.
I did beat the demo up to the latest level. However, I ended up doing a melee build because of the aforementioned AGI related disappointment. I've done ranged builds before but not this time.
First time playing this and is really fun, I played a lot Diablo 2 and this game feels very well, at the beginning I try an archer but the dmg was too low and I died, later I try a sword and shield and it was better but I died due to lack of life potions, so I tried again but this time I found a two handed axe and made my way with it. I was able to clean the floors with the axe throwing skill that cost 10 mana because I use an alchemy table to turn many life potion in mana potions, beat the first boss easy. I played like two hours.
Something I didn't like is the spells the boss gave me, lowering health, mana or any stat in general permanently is something as I player will always avoid, specially if I will invest many hours in a character. I think a better approach is a temporal penalty so the player cannot abuse the skillt, for example:
"Heal 80 life points but reduce your max life by 10% during 5 minutes, this penalty can stack."
That way, the spell become something which cannot be abuse without consequences, but at least the consequences aren't permanently running a character, like those zombies from Diablo 1.
In conclusion, good demo, I'm looking forward to see how this project grow, because it have a very good potential.
thank you for playing! the goal was to make the cauldron spells be a last resort - you're out of potions and youre about to die, that kind of thing. otherwise i fear that any timed debuff will lead to "heal to maximum -> go somewhere safe -> be afk for X minutes -> return full with no debuff".
i'm also glad to see you managed the alchemy table with no issues, and that you figured out combat arts (hurl weapon is my favorite!)
i'm glad to see you had fun! thank you again for playing and for the feedback.
Please add a tiny amount of natural mana regen, or add mana regen on hit to wands. If you play as a mage there is no reason to use wands because you either cast proper spells from distance, or you got rushed and need to use a melee weapon, making wands support spellcasting by regenerating mana would be great.
Also upgrading your spells makes them too expensive, I couldn't figure out how to go back to fireball lv1 so I wouldn't empty all my mana in a few casts.
Also the movement is a bit clunky, i think you should let the player cancel animations to move a bit earlier.
thank you for the feedback! i'm set not giving the player passive regen of any kind - but that just means i need to find another way to approach balance parity.
This felt like a very well progressed game and all the systems it implements do exactly what they need to. Having to manage health and mana with only the luck of potion drops makes the game a lot harder. Also only being able to pick shield is kind of a weird start. ADD THE CAPE SPRITE PLEASE.
i get where you're going with it, but i think i want to leave it as is. it allows for more options (safe sword and shield vs aggressive sword + bow or sword + wand). shields also dont drop that often (you had good rng!) so bow + shield makes sense, since weapons drop 40% of the time, so this would be the fastest way to get sword + shield + bow loadout.
I played the first level twice, got swarmed by a hoard of skellys.
First impressions, feedback and suggestions:
I couldn't use the spell wheel at all, my keyboard doesn't have function keys and trying to click on the icon with the mouse while something's rushing towards you felt clunky.
It's kind of annoying that the projectiles you fire are so slow, as enemies can walk out of the way, and you can't lead them because you have to click the enemy to fire at them.
Items that you can pick up could always have the outline effect applied, they're easy to miss and walls can obscure things easily.
Enemies that you have line of sight to could have their outline on if they're obscured by a wall, currently they only have it if your mouse is over them. You can be in the same room as an enemy and not see them because you're not close enough to a wall to make it fade out.
Moving, interacting with objects and attacking an enemy are all left mouse actions, so if there are enemies clustered in a doorway and you're trying to shoot at them, if you click on the open door your character will start walking towards it to interact instead of shooting at the enemies. I'd suggest either having another interact control or not making the player walk to a distant object to activate it, only activate if they're in range.
Walls fading out can make it hard to distinguish where the boundaries of rooms are because the floor texture continues uninterrupted underneath. I'd suggest having a shadeless black object at the bottom of each wall piece which isn't affected by the transparency shader, then where the player can walk should be much clearer.
It'd be nice to access the keybind menu during a game session. I wanted to check the controls again after starting and I couldn't. Also rebinding would be good to have.
>I couldn't use the spell wheel at all, my keyboard doesn't have function keys and trying to click on the icon with the mouse while something's rushing towards you felt clunky.
you can rebind spells in the options if needed. the spellwheel is a bit clunky, though.
>It's kind of annoying that the projectiles you fire are so slow, as enemies can walk out of the way, and you can't lead them because you have to click the enemy to fire at them.
sort of intentional, but anything that someone says is annoying is in my mind bad design, since nothing should make the player want to stop playing. i'll look into it.
>Items that you can pick up could always have the outline effect applied, they're easy to miss and walls can obscure things easily.
left alt! it toggles always-outline-items
>Enemies that you have line of sight to could have their outline on if they're obscured by a wall, currently they only have it if your mouse is over them. You can be in the same room as an enemy and not see them because you're not close enough to a wall to make it fade out.
press X to toggle enemy outlines. from "only on mouse over" to "only obscured parts of enemies" to "always highlight enemies"
i do need to make this obvious, though. it isn't intuitive nor does a player expect this to exist.
>I'd suggest either having another interact control or not making the player walk to a distant object to activate it, only activate if they're in range.
i never thought about this. i'll look into it.
>I'd suggest having a shadeless black object at the bottom of each wall piece which isn't affected by the transparency shader,
i tried doing this a long time ago but i remember something filtered me. i'll try again.
>It'd be nice to access the keybind menu during a game session. I wanted to check the controls again after starting and I couldn't. Also rebinding would be good to have.
you can! esc -> options -> keybinds
thank you for the detailed feedback. it is clear that while things worked ok, they were simply too unintuitive. i'll need to work on the legibility and clarity of what's available.
I was really looking forward to trying this! I've never played any of the Diablo games before, so there was a bit of a learning curve (I died to a skeleton mob with some green fog). I started with a sword and wand because I didn't know any better, and the wand ended up being useless to me. Two comments:
- Is it standard for the genre to be click heavy? When I click on an enemy, I at first expected to keep hitting the same enemy until it (or I) died
- I saw someone mentioned this below, but the dodge/hit could be clearer, at first I wasn't sure if I was misclicking
Overall it was fun and felt incredibly polished, great job
>Is it standard for the genre to be click heavy? sort of. in the literal sense - you can hold LMB instead of clicking, it works the same. in the gameplay sense - if you go in guns blazing and try to click things to death, you'll get surrounded and impaled by an eager skeleton. the standard "diablo" tactic is to lure mobs out into small entryways to even the odds, or use blocking/parrying projectiles to your advantage. the dungeons eventually become wider to give the enemy greater chances to surround you, but early game, corridors are your friend.
>the dodge/hit could be clearer some enemies (skeletons especially!) are bad at this, since they just emit some dust and do a small bob. i'll try and improve this further, but lacking blood to spray works against me on the matter.
thank you again for playing and writing feedback, it is greatly appreciated!
You already know some of the issues I had like the brazier graphical glitch. Thought I'd try out the despair, ironman mode this time. Also with a wand and spell character as I don't think I've done one before. There's a good amount of different spells although I pretty much only used damage spells. First Shocking Discharge and later Thunderdisk. Stacking a lot of armor usually works out well.
All the new enemies are great. The mauler model fits better for the start of the game. Will you reuse the old one for later levels? Love the mimic.
Seems to be more on hit effects on enemies, although I would probably want even more. At least for some enemies like skeletons and cult apprentices that don't animate much on hit. But I think you were taking out that apprentice model anyway.
Some enemies, like cult apprentice and faceless, have their movement animations not really in sync with their movespeed. Looks like they're gliding around a bit.
The stairs you came from go up now? I guess you went down into the dungeon and then go back up again.
The skull enemies should bob up and down a bit in the air.
Sometimes it takes a few seconds for the loading background animation to show up.
Not necessary maybe but alternate keybinds would be nice. You should definitely be able to remap things to mouse buttons though.
Could be fun if reading a book gave you a small amount of mana (like in Diablo).
Wands need some sound effects, attack, on hit, etc.
The music is cool and fits perfectly.
Very slow loading for the skeleton area but I think you fixed that already.
Really hard to see if some enemies are poisoned, some effect every time they take damage from poison would be nice too. I had no idea if my poison spells actually did anything.
Slow spell doesn't seem worth to use, costs too much mana for the very short duration it has. I used a cold wand most of the game which is just so much better in comparison for example.
Spitters (and versions) don't have any outlines, they got really annoying because of it hehe. Also had (two I think) cases of some bug enemies which had their outlines remain on death. Although this was while item drops were bugged so many it had something to do with it:
Mimics have stronger outlines for some reason, maybe its intended?
Venus demons' don't get any outline if they charge you from outside outline-range.
Would be some nice QoL to have a spellbook say exactly what it will change on level up. You might not want to level a spell at the moment if it'll cost too much mana for example.
Maybe this could be a setting but it got really annoying if you had a ranged weapon in hand, holding down the mouse button to run around and herd enemies into clumps so I could blast them with the shocking discharge and accidentally hovered over an enemy (or barrel) the character attacks instead and you get stuck. So a setting to turn off auto-attack while holding down the button after you've started moving or something would be really nice.
Would be nice if the tooltip while hovering over the selected spell with your mouse also said the spell's name.
Right-clicking a potion on your pot-bar also changes the bar's type (health-mana-neutral) as well as drink it, but not every time either.
Thunderdisk was extremely good (and fun to use) so I didn't feel any real need to spend my mana on any other spell. Is it too good? I don't know, didn't use other spells enough to really gauge it... But maybe have it's lifetime duration a bit lower on low levels, its just so very versatile.
The first shop I found was empty which was kinda disappointing. I'm pretty sure its not supposed to be, it could have something to do with me going back down to the previous level and coming back up:
I noticed that the second shop (the blacksmith) can be refreshed for free by going up and back down a level.
Mimics do not display kill count.
If you started to get some stats after killing X amount of an enemy on their tooltip it would be cool. And more accurate the more you kill, like HP, dmg, resistances, etc. I thought about some lore bit too but I guess you won't really have time to read it...
I'm really not sure about the rally point, having infinite health and mana regen like that invites a lot of trouble. I get why you added it but I feel like it should at least have charges or something. Idiots like me will just keep running back there because why waste a potion? It trivialized the level after for me because I'd just lure a pack of monsters back to the stairs and blast them with spells, going down the stairs and refilling mana and doing it all over again. I know from other times I've played I've had to use quite a lot of resources on that level but now I didn't use anything at all. I think it made the rest a lot easier. I had so many potions all the time after that point though that I didn't run all the way back down there through several levels to heal but if I had less I would have.
Some items stretch strangely in the inventory, example:
Some items have pretty bad "hitboxes":
I didn't use it for this run but you can get infinite mana by switching between items that you give you mana, I think this vid should explain it: https://files.catbox.moe/t67tql.webm
Skelegolems are some real bastards draining your mana. Wondering if it would be better if they did it as some sort of AoE effect on the floor instead that's pretty hard to dodge but still give you the chance to. It just feels kind of janky the way it is now I think.
Death animations are great, love em. The venus demons' have some sort of weird blood spray that follows the model though.
Sometimes it's hard to see if the snails have their shield up or not, not really sure why.
Alchemikal tables are neat, their spawn chances should probably be looked over a bit though (no real reason to have two be able to spawn on the same level for example). I got two to spawn on the first (or was it second?) level and then again on the level after. Then I'm not sure if I ever saw one again. Maybe they should have charges too? Its probably fine without. Maybe make the bottles on the table a bit easier to see so its obvious what you should put in there, filled with glowing liquid or something.
Level 12 requires SO MUCH XP, maybe its different on despair too but clearing the entire Lost Corridors and Treasure Hoard, bosses, and the last enemies was only enough for about 3/4ths.
Almost killed myself with the unstable pressure orb pretty early, whoops.
Some more feedback / dialogue on turning in the tome, felt pretty odd the way it happens now. Not sure what it did either, gave me some int I think?
The later areas are a bit too samey, I get they're not finished yet so I hope you will add more different enemies with different abilities too. Maybe some eggs or something that can hatch and have enemies come out in the breeding grounds.
I like the times enemies spawn around you and you get ambushed. More stuff like that would be great, like a secret wall opening when you walk past and monsters come pouring out of a closet. The "twist" was great. Didn't expect it. Almost died to the conqueror too, was a bitch to fight and I had to bring up the inventory and chug all those stranger pots while trying to remember which one does what.
I hope the lich boss will get a unique model. Enemies at the end looked great.
My only real complaint though is about item permanency. The issue got a lot clearer on ironman despair where you have to be really careful about your resources. It gets really annoying when you can't go back down a level to get an item or potion you left, especially when you need items for the goblins. Same with them disappearing from the ground on a reload. I know you've had a lot of struggles with saving already, but I really hope its something you will be able to change.
I really like the game though and it gets better every update. More enemies is what I would want the most I think, but I know its a lot of work.
there's a lot of stuff to unpack here, and i agree with all of them. weird that the shop was empty for you. the blacksmith shop also shouldn't refresh! strange all around. i'll mess with it
the item hitbox is something i'm trying to figure out. the hitboxes are fine - the issue is that if they're behind a wall, i need to do some voodoo magic to get them to work. the outline + information is triggered through a OnMouseOver call (ie: mouse is on top of a collider). but if the wall is in front, the wall prevents calling this. so what i do is raycast from the camera to the wall and show anything behind it. but due to the perspective, the line wont hit the item if the item is far away from the center of the screen. i have no idea how to approach this. the wall needs to keep colliders for it's own issues, so i can't get rid of them.
i've also been debating the "show more enemy info". on one hand, i like the mystery of having no text. on the other, it's just boring. i go back and forth on it all the time.
also, i will be undoing the mana change from the webm. it used to be fixed, but i didn't account for items that grant a ton of mana. oops. that's just one line of code, so it's already done.
item permanency isn't that hard to implement, but i never really saw the need for it. i guess you gave me a valid reason to do it.
i will have a lot of work ahead of me
thanks again for playing, beating and reviewing the game! it is much appreciated.
I caught a bit of the stream where he was playing bow and having trouble with the first boss and that got me to want to try myself. I had only planned to kill the boss and then stop but I kept playing instead, so I didn't take any notes. This was on normal difficulty, stopped on the Breeding Grounds. Felt a lot weaker than wands and spells. Boss was no problem because about half of my inventory was filled with health pots. Really the only thing that was troublesome were the faceless and I had to burn pretty much all potions fighting them. Which I guess is the point. I think it would be good though if you could encounter some of them or some similar monster earlier so you can try to account for them with your build. Now you can open a door and just suddenly get swarmed by like 6 of them and get beaten to death before a noob would process what just happened, I think. Are there few different bows? Pretty much just got a small crossbow and the rest were hunter bows. I did get a very good one in the first shop that I used until I quit though that made it a lot easier:
Also weren't you supposed to be able to refresh the second shop? I couldn't at least. I'm wondering if the game might benefit from more item drops in the first two levels or so, to give players more options. Just straight up increased drop chance, some more easily killed trash mobs, maybe a small level before the boss, I dunno something like that.
This, I'm pretty sure special skeleton, had a broken shader. Also no tooltip on hover: I've played the game pretty much by know, but I'm thinking it might be good to make it easier for noobs in the very first levels.
you maniac, you're not supposed to beat my game TWICE!
after your last comment, i disabled the second shopkeep's refresh on level switch . he also doesn't have the mana-to-refresh mechanic (why would he, he's just some guy!) so you only get that one roll. that kinda sucks, and i;m trying to figure out what he could do to allow more items. perhaps he can just have more to begin with? ill think on it..
i think the streamer had the misfortune of having the minimum possible room amount, coupled with low item drops, coupled with having a 1-2dmg, 2AR bow, while also being a newer player who didn't want to use melee, making that encounter with the bloodguard suck all around. the increased drop rate isnt a bad idea - i can control which units drop more/less, so it wont be a bad change. what i'm worried about is setting a precedent - players see a lot of loot on level 1, they'll expect that on level 2. perhaps i should just increase the room count of floor 1 a bit, or perhaps i can just increase the section before the boss. i'll mess with it all tomorrow
there's 2 bows, and 2 crossbows. 3rd bow is coming soon, the icon is being drawn as we speak.
for the difficulty - something i think about is who the game is advertised to and what my average player will be like. the catchphrases do say this is a "hardcore arpg for veterans of the genre" and a "d1 clone", so i sort of expect most of the playerbase to be familiar. if they're familiar, the first few floors are a cakewalk. i wouldnt want to ruin an experience for fans in order to cater to a market which isn't interested anyway.
either way, the stream was helpful and i'll for sure be looking into balance a bit harder. will start with bows and two handers and go from there. thanks again for playing! i'm glad to see that you're able to knock out more than half of the levels again, it tells me the game isn't boring you yet, and that's very motivating to see.
i disabled the second shopkeep's refresh on level switch . he also doesn't have the mana-to-refresh mechanic (why would he, he's just some guy!) so you only get that one roll. that kinda sucks, and i;m trying to figure out what he could do to allow more items. perhaps he can just have more to begin with? ill think on it..
I thought I had seen a screenshot of him having a refresh cost silver skulls, I guess I must've imagined it... Well that's one idea I guess.
I suppose I am pretty much right in your target audience so its no wonder I don't get bored hehe, could definitely have finished it again. Its a game I could've seen myself make. Feels like the difficulty is a bit off though with it not really getting harder, at least in the mid game. So if you do make it a bit easier the rest should be tweaked too of course.
Also it would be really nice to have the alchemikal tables on the minimap, fountains could disappear from it after using them.
that's a good starting point for sure, if i don't come up with anything else i'll try that.
> not really getting harder, at least in the mid game.
yeah, i really do need to buff up the enemies in the midgame - mostly just the bug levels really. i'm going to redo that entire section since i don't particularly like how it turned out, so i'll use that opportunity to buff up the enemies. i think the upper halls and the skele pit are fine, mostly due to the priests' projectiles
replying again for the item hitbox bug. i had no idea unity had an out-of-the-box solution for this. i just ticked off walls from the camera event masker and now it works. who knew. feel free to ignore that chunk of text in the other reply.
This is really impressive. It feels basically finished, save for a couple of minor odds and ends. The enemies were creepy, and intimidating. Though, sometimes I did get a bit swarmed. Could just be a skill issue on my end. I think the sword and the shield is the best combination. The bow seems a bit limited, though again could just be a skill issue. Great work, excited to see where this goes
Thank you for playing! I’m glad bows feel weak because they’ve been “the meta build” all of 2023, means I’m finally getting them to a balanced position
Long has it been since i entered the ToK for the first time!
Still great, still hard as nails. I love the new way you start a game and choose your weapons. However its not perfect imho:
First of all, if you die you get the option for a new game, but you cannot select a different set of weapons. Thats a bit annoying, because thats exactly what i wanted at that point (i started with a shield and a bow, which sucked).
Secondly, the ranged nerf is real. This makes the rng drops even more brutal if unlucky. After being ripped to shreds by head-in-a-cage gorillas because my bow was slow, and my fist too weak, i switched to a melee build. Took sword and board like a man and ventured forth. Hit level 3, put some points in constitution, dex and str, but what do i get? Cloaks and wands lol. "Get rekt", says the Bloodsoaked Chad. (Btw im looking forward to cloaks being visible on the character)
Guess the game is mostly the same, its not reinventing itself after a year (why should it, orblikes are king) and most people already shared the common thoughts on it. For me, there is just two things that would make it a lot better and i think i wrote it down last time too.
1. The foot step sound is very repetitive and monotone
2. Some animations are weirdly fast. The creatures and the player move appropriately. Loot dropping seems like its on 3x the speed though. Same with some death animations.
Overall the graphics evolve very nicely. The item icons are waaaay better than they once were. I even got a warm fuzzy feeling putting on a cloak for the first time, as i noticed the subtle fade in it does. The color variations are nice, but i found a blue cloak which was pretty dark and made the texture hardly visible. Ironing out those edge cases is probably on your list anyways.
Keep it up Orbbro, and thanks for playing my game as well ;)
blessed be the orb-bro feedback. the colors are weird since i tried doing hue-based color mods instead of flat color based mods. it looked great for most items, but for many it just looked awful, so i reverted and forgot to turn on the item specific edge cases. oops.
the balance is still a bit off, but i think i'm inching closer to what i want. we'll see how it goes.
the death and item drop animations are a bit too fast on purpose, since i don't want them taking valuable screenspace during a hectic battle - a slow animation might cover an enemy ready to strike. they can surely use more tweaking, though.
Right off the bat, the game is incredibly fluid. I really enjoyed the atmosphere. The game’s really difficult but there’s a charm to it as well! Can’t say I got too far, albeit I do love these kinds of games and I’ve been playing them since one of my childhood friends introduced me to Diablo 2. I enjoyed it thoroughly. Died more than a few times but even that was fun because I got to try again, largest kill count was 40. Not that many enemies killed because I suck at managing resources. But love the game. I'll admit, I was meaning to play this for a long while, but I kept postponing for a long while until now. I was not disappointed!
Better than before but could you add a red overlay option for enemy? I have hard time seeing in the dark. Also more feedback to show if attack miss, I wonder some time if the projectile was badly targeted or if it just disappear. Also a tip or a mini tuto for shrine like enchanter blood or alchemist table.
On balance side:
Melee is high risk low reward, wand is clearly the most efficient tool, you're safe thank to distance and having good damage. You can even break barrel at distance, saving you from trap.
Comments
First time: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2025770585?t=0h30m11s
Second: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2030274423
Don’t have much to say, the game is too large to give a real opinion yet. I think the visuals are a bit boring, at least in the first few levels. The gameplay is kinda nice. I appreciate how simple it is. My main point of reference is Jupiter Hell which I like a lot.
thank you for playing! i'll look through the vods, i watched the last one live. i wonder what caused the sound issues? as far as i can tell, you're the only one who had it.
i'll work on the visuals, they are a bit plain at the start - it's missing more thematic rooms.
Idk, people keep asking me about sound issues but I never notice any. I think just my streaming setup is borked.
Played a run with mage/melee. Video:
It was fun, it went much smoother than last time. I found a game breaking bug with weapon swapping and had a funny death with pathfinding. I need to continue the run another, to see if I reach more advanced monsters.Great work as always. I spent all weekend sick, but I had to play Kalemonvo.
I briefly soflocked my game because I became unable to drop items on the floor and my inventory was full and so I was rendered unable to interact with objects in the environment. I'm not sure but I think the golden idol may be to blame because I was using the second one at the Treasure Vault when this happened. Reloading did nothing, but restarting the game fixed it.
There were also a couple of incidents of mouse inputs not picking up after loading a save, but a restart fixed it too.
On a different note, I got kind of screwed by the lack of item permanence a few times. In Diablo you just throw your stuff anywhere in town and it stays there forever so I guess I'm a little spoiled.
I was actually running out of space for once, probably thanks to the potion buff. However, I'm sad to say that stacking AGI kinda blows.
thank you for playing!
>Treasure Hoard
are you saying that you have (or at least come close to have ) beaten the game? if so, i am thrilled to hear it! you're 2nd to do so after TGIG dev, well done!
as for the bugs:
>I briefly soflocked my game[...] golden idol
did you, by any chance, feed it a fetish idol? TGIG had the same issue, which has since been resolved.
>There were also a couple of incidents of mouse inputs not picking up after loading a save,
this is new to me. i'll mess with saves and see if anything is amiss.
>On a different note, I got kind of screwed by the lack of item permanence a few times
yeah, it's something i spent this morning thinking about. for the steam demo and previous versions, it didn't matter as the game wasn't long enough for this to have any consequence. now (and especially since there exists a hub area), it's something that is required. it wont take much effort, and i will have it by my next major update in february.
>However, I'm sad to say that stacking AGI kinda blows.
did you play with a bow? i'm thinking about having it also increase melee attack speed. it might make for interesting builds....
the fanart is incredible, and i am blessed to have received it. thank you. i will treasure it forever.
I did beat the demo up to the latest level. However, I ended up doing a melee build because of the aforementioned AGI related disappointment. I've done ranged builds before but not this time.
First time playing this and is really fun, I played a lot Diablo 2 and this game feels very well, at the beginning I try an archer but the dmg was too low and I died, later I try a sword and shield and it was better but I died due to lack of life potions, so I tried again but this time I found a two handed axe and made my way with it. I was able to clean the floors with the axe throwing skill that cost 10 mana because I use an alchemy table to turn many life potion in mana potions, beat the first boss easy. I played like two hours.
Something I didn't like is the spells the boss gave me, lowering health, mana or any stat in general permanently is something as I player will always avoid, specially if I will invest many hours in a character. I think a better approach is a temporal penalty so the player cannot abuse the skillt, for example:
"Heal 80 life points but reduce your max life by 10% during 5 minutes, this penalty can stack."
That way, the spell become something which cannot be abuse without consequences, but at least the consequences aren't permanently running a character, like those zombies from Diablo 1.
In conclusion, good demo, I'm looking forward to see how this project grow, because it have a very good potential.
thank you for playing! the goal was to make the cauldron spells be a last resort - you're out of potions and youre about to die, that kind of thing. otherwise i fear that any timed debuff will lead to "heal to maximum -> go somewhere safe -> be afk for X minutes -> return full with no debuff".
i'm also glad to see you managed the alchemy table with no issues, and that you figured out combat arts (hurl weapon is my favorite!)
i'm glad to see you had fun! thank you again for playing and for the feedback.
Please add a tiny amount of natural mana regen, or add mana regen on hit to wands. If you play as a mage there is no reason to use wands because you either cast proper spells from distance, or you got rushed and need to use a melee weapon, making wands support spellcasting by regenerating mana would be great.
Also upgrading your spells makes them too expensive, I couldn't figure out how to go back to fireball lv1 so I wouldn't empty all my mana in a few casts.
Also the movement is a bit clunky, i think you should let the player cancel animations to move a bit earlier.
thank you for the feedback! i'm set not giving the player passive regen of any kind - but that just means i need to find another way to approach balance parity.
this game looks really polished now. I played it for quite a while. good job.
This felt like a very well progressed game and all the systems it implements do exactly what they need to. Having to manage health and mana with only the luck of potion drops makes the game a lot harder. Also only being able to pick shield is kind of a weird start. ADD THE CAPE SPRITE PLEASE.
thank you for playing! i watched the stream VOD, i'm glad you had fun!
capes will be in the game in february. you'll be able to equip a cape and have it be visible by next DD.
SS tier confirmed. I still stand by my comment on letting the player choose only a shield. Maybe it can be bundled with a sword ?
i get where you're going with it, but i think i want to leave it as is. it allows for more options (safe sword and shield vs aggressive sword + bow or sword + wand). shields also dont drop that often (you had good rng!) so bow + shield makes sense, since weapons drop 40% of the time, so this would be the fastest way to get sword + shield + bow loadout.
thank you for the kind words and feedback!
So I had a good weapon choice then haha. Do what feels right its your game after all!
I played the first level twice, got swarmed by a hoard of skellys.
First impressions, feedback and suggestions:
I couldn't use the spell wheel at all, my keyboard doesn't have function keys and trying to click on the icon with the mouse while something's rushing towards you felt clunky.
It's kind of annoying that the projectiles you fire are so slow, as enemies can walk out of the way, and you can't lead them because you have to click the enemy to fire at them.
Items that you can pick up could always have the outline effect applied, they're easy to miss and walls can obscure things easily.
Enemies that you have line of sight to could have their outline on if they're obscured by a wall, currently they only have it if your mouse is over them. You can be in the same room as an enemy and not see them because you're not close enough to a wall to make it fade out.
Moving, interacting with objects and attacking an enemy are all left mouse actions, so if there are enemies clustered in a doorway and you're trying to shoot at them, if you click on the open door your character will start walking towards it to interact instead of shooting at the enemies. I'd suggest either having another interact control or not making the player walk to a distant object to activate it, only activate if they're in range.
Walls fading out can make it hard to distinguish where the boundaries of rooms are because the floor texture continues uninterrupted underneath. I'd suggest having a shadeless black object at the bottom of each wall piece which isn't affected by the transparency shader, then where the player can walk should be much clearer.
It'd be nice to access the keybind menu during a game session. I wanted to check the controls again after starting and I couldn't. Also rebinding would be good to have.
All in all, impressive, very nice.
thank you for playing and for the feedback!
>I couldn't use the spell wheel at all, my keyboard doesn't have function keys and trying to click on the icon with the mouse while something's rushing towards you felt clunky.
you can rebind spells in the options if needed. the spellwheel is a bit clunky, though.
>It's kind of annoying that the projectiles you fire are so slow, as enemies can walk out of the way, and you can't lead them because you have to click the enemy to fire at them.
sort of intentional, but anything that someone says is annoying is in my mind bad design, since nothing should make the player want to stop playing. i'll look into it.
>Items that you can pick up could always have the outline effect applied, they're easy to miss and walls can obscure things easily.
left alt! it toggles always-outline-items
>Enemies that you have line of sight to could have their outline on if they're obscured by a wall, currently they only have it if your mouse is over them. You can be in the same room as an enemy and not see them because you're not close enough to a wall to make it fade out.
press X to toggle enemy outlines. from "only on mouse over" to "only obscured parts of enemies" to "always highlight enemies"
i do need to make this obvious, though. it isn't intuitive nor does a player expect this to exist.
>I'd suggest either having another interact control or not making the player walk to a distant object to activate it, only activate if they're in range.
i never thought about this. i'll look into it.
>I'd suggest having a shadeless black object at the bottom of each wall piece which isn't affected by the transparency shader,
i tried doing this a long time ago but i remember something filtered me. i'll try again.
>It'd be nice to access the keybind menu during a game session. I wanted to check the controls again after starting and I couldn't. Also rebinding would be good to have.
you can! esc -> options -> keybinds
thank you for the detailed feedback. it is clear that while things worked ok, they were simply too unintuitive. i'll need to work on the legibility and clarity of what's available.
I was really looking forward to trying this! I've never played any of the Diablo games before, so there was a bit of a learning curve (I died to a skeleton mob with some green fog). I started with a sword and wand because I didn't know any better, and the wand ended up being useless to me. Two comments:
- Is it standard for the genre to be click heavy? When I click on an enemy, I at first expected to keep hitting the same enemy until it (or I) died
- I saw someone mentioned this below, but the dodge/hit could be clearer, at first I wasn't sure if I was misclicking
Overall it was fun and felt incredibly polished, great job
thanks for playing!
>Is it standard for the genre to be click heavy?
sort of. in the literal sense - you can hold LMB instead of clicking, it works the same.
in the gameplay sense - if you go in guns blazing and try to click things to death, you'll get surrounded and impaled by an eager skeleton. the standard "diablo" tactic is to lure mobs out into small entryways to even the odds, or use blocking/parrying projectiles to your advantage. the dungeons eventually become wider to give the enemy greater chances to surround you, but early game, corridors are your friend.
>the dodge/hit could be clearer
some enemies (skeletons especially!) are bad at this, since they just emit some dust and do a small bob. i'll try and improve this further, but lacking blood to spray works against me on the matter.
thank you again for playing and writing feedback, it is greatly appreciated!
You already know some of the issues I had like the brazier graphical glitch. Thought I'd try out the despair, ironman mode this time. Also with a wand and spell character as I don't think I've done one before. There's a good amount of different spells although I pretty much only used damage spells. First Shocking Discharge and later Thunderdisk. Stacking a lot of armor usually works out well.
I really like the game though and it gets better every update. More enemies is what I would want the most I think, but I know its a lot of work.
congrats once again!
there's a lot of stuff to unpack here, and i agree with all of them. weird that the shop was empty for you. the blacksmith shop also shouldn't refresh! strange all around. i'll mess with it
the item hitbox is something i'm trying to figure out. the hitboxes are fine - the issue is that if they're behind a wall, i need to do some voodoo magic to get them to work. the outline + information is triggered through a OnMouseOver call (ie: mouse is on top of a collider). but if the wall is in front, the wall prevents calling this. so what i do is raycast from the camera to the wall and show anything behind it. but due to the perspective, the line wont hit the item if the item is far away from the center of the screen. i have no idea how to approach this. the wall needs to keep colliders for it's own issues, so i can't get rid of them.
i've also been debating the "show more enemy info". on one hand, i like the mystery of having no text. on the other, it's just boring. i go back and forth on it all the time.
also, i will be undoing the mana change from the webm. it used to be fixed, but i didn't account for items that grant a ton of mana. oops. that's just one line of code, so it's already done.
item permanency isn't that hard to implement, but i never really saw the need for it. i guess you gave me a valid reason to do it.
i will have a lot of work ahead of me
thanks again for playing, beating and reviewing the game! it is much appreciated.
I caught a bit of the stream where he was playing bow and having trouble with the first boss and that got me to want to try myself. I had only planned to kill the boss and then stop but I kept playing instead, so I didn't take any notes. This was on normal difficulty, stopped on the Breeding Grounds. Felt a lot weaker than wands and spells. Boss was no problem because about half of my inventory was filled with health pots. Really the only thing that was troublesome were the faceless and I had to burn pretty much all potions fighting them. Which I guess is the point. I think it would be good though if you could encounter some of them or some similar monster earlier so you can try to account for them with your build. Now you can open a door and just suddenly get swarmed by like 6 of them and get beaten to death before a noob would process what just happened, I think. Are there few different bows? Pretty much just got a small crossbow and the rest were hunter bows. I did get a very good one in the first shop that I used until I quit though that made it a lot easier:
Also weren't you supposed to be able to refresh the second shop? I couldn't at least. I'm wondering if the game might benefit from more item drops in the first two levels or so, to give players more options. Just straight up increased drop chance, some more easily killed trash mobs, maybe a small level before the boss, I dunno something like that.
This, I'm pretty sure special skeleton, had a broken shader. Also no tooltip on hover:
I've played the game pretty much by know, but I'm thinking it might be good to make it easier for noobs in the very first levels.
you maniac, you're not supposed to beat my game TWICE!
after your last comment, i disabled the second shopkeep's refresh on level switch . he also doesn't have the mana-to-refresh mechanic (why would he, he's just some guy!) so you only get that one roll. that kinda sucks, and i;m trying to figure out what he could do to allow more items. perhaps he can just have more to begin with? ill think on it..
i think the streamer had the misfortune of having the minimum possible room amount, coupled with low item drops, coupled with having a 1-2dmg, 2AR bow, while also being a newer player who didn't want to use melee, making that encounter with the bloodguard suck all around. the increased drop rate isnt a bad idea - i can control which units drop more/less, so it wont be a bad change. what i'm worried about is setting a precedent - players see a lot of loot on level 1, they'll expect that on level 2. perhaps i should just increase the room count of floor 1 a bit, or perhaps i can just increase the section before the boss. i'll mess with it all tomorrow
there's 2 bows, and 2 crossbows. 3rd bow is coming soon, the icon is being drawn as we speak.
for the difficulty - something i think about is who the game is advertised to and what my average player will be like. the catchphrases do say this is a "hardcore arpg for veterans of the genre" and a "d1 clone", so i sort of expect most of the playerbase to be familiar. if they're familiar, the first few floors are a cakewalk. i wouldnt want to ruin an experience for fans in order to cater to a market which isn't interested anyway.
either way, the stream was helpful and i'll for sure be looking into balance a bit harder. will start with bows and two handers and go from there.
thanks again for playing! i'm glad to see that you're able to knock out more than half of the levels again, it tells me the game isn't boring you yet, and that's very motivating to see.
I thought I had seen a screenshot of him having a refresh cost silver skulls, I guess I must've imagined it... Well that's one idea I guess.
I suppose I am pretty much right in your target audience so its no wonder I don't get bored hehe, could definitely have finished it again. Its a game I could've seen myself make. Feels like the difficulty is a bit off though with it not really getting harder, at least in the mid game. So if you do make it a bit easier the rest should be tweaked too of course.
Also it would be really nice to have the alchemikal tables on the minimap, fountains could disappear from it after using them.
>refresh cost silver skulls
that's a good starting point for sure, if i don't come up with anything else i'll try that.
> not really getting harder, at least in the mid game.
yeah, i really do need to buff up the enemies in the midgame - mostly just the bug levels really. i'm going to redo that entire section since i don't particularly like how it turned out, so i'll use that opportunity to buff up the enemies. i think the upper halls and the skele pit are fine, mostly due to the priests' projectiles
>alchemikal tables on the minimap
will do this
replying again for the item hitbox bug. i had no idea unity had an out-of-the-box solution for this. i just ticked off walls from the camera event masker and now it works. who knew. feel free to ignore that chunk of text in the other reply.
Nicely done! Unity does have some neat stuff buried sometimes if you dig far enough.
Skimmed through some other comments and I'll agree that some of the increase in mana costs for higher spell levels are a bit too steep.
This is really impressive. It feels basically finished, save for a couple of minor odds and ends.
The enemies were creepy, and intimidating. Though, sometimes I did get a bit swarmed. Could just be a skill issue on my end.
I think the sword and the shield is the best combination. The bow seems a bit limited, though again could just be a skill issue.
Great work, excited to see where this goes
Thank you for playing! I’m glad bows feel weak because they’ve been “the meta build” all of 2023, means I’m finally getting them to a balanced position
This is a big standout. Nailed the setting, great enemy design. Love the maulers. Got obliterated by one of the glowing ghouls and his buddies
thank you for playing! i am glad you had fun
The atmosphere is impeccable. This is a commergial grade game, not something made by an amateur.
Sadly it's not exactly my genre so i didn't really play it for long, but i was very impressed with everything about it, including the main menu.
The mimic was a nice touch, fucker almost got me lol
thank you for playing! i hope you had some fun in the brief time that you played.
worry not, more mimics are coming! chests, doors, items, who knows what else might turn into a mimic.
Int + wand of wanking too powerfull.
How to I use alchemy table?
the alchemy table works if you click it with a potion - it'll turn the potion into the opposite type
same with the enchanter's table, it'll make a non-magic item (weapon, hat, armor) into a magic item.
big brain gamer with the wand! i nerfed the wand builds to hell and back this patch, hehe
Long has it been since i entered the ToK for the first time!
Still great, still hard as nails. I love the new way you start a game and choose your weapons. However its not perfect imho:
First of all, if you die you get the option for a new game, but you cannot select a different set of weapons. Thats a bit annoying, because thats exactly what i wanted at that point (i started with a shield and a bow, which sucked).
Secondly, the ranged nerf is real. This makes the rng drops even more brutal if unlucky. After being ripped to shreds by head-in-a-cage gorillas because my bow was slow, and my fist too weak, i switched to a melee build. Took sword and board like a man and ventured forth. Hit level 3, put some points in constitution, dex and str, but what do i get? Cloaks and wands lol. "Get rekt", says the Bloodsoaked Chad. (Btw im looking forward to cloaks being visible on the character)
Guess the game is mostly the same, its not reinventing itself after a year (why should it, orblikes are king) and most people already shared the common thoughts on it. For me, there is just two things that would make it a lot better and i think i wrote it down last time too.
1. The foot step sound is very repetitive and monotone
2. Some animations are weirdly fast. The creatures and the player move appropriately. Loot dropping seems like its on 3x the speed though. Same with some death animations.
Overall the graphics evolve very nicely. The item icons are waaaay better than they once were. I even got a warm fuzzy feeling putting on a cloak for the first time, as i noticed the subtle fade in it does. The color variations are nice, but i found a blue cloak which was pretty dark and made the texture hardly visible. Ironing out those edge cases is probably on your list anyways.
Keep it up Orbbro, and thanks for playing my game as well ;)
blessed be the orb-bro feedback. the colors are weird since i tried doing hue-based color mods instead of flat color based mods. it looked great for most items, but for many it just looked awful, so i reverted and forgot to turn on the item specific edge cases. oops.
the balance is still a bit off, but i think i'm inching closer to what i want. we'll see how it goes.
the death and item drop animations are a bit too fast on purpose, since i don't want them taking valuable screenspace during a hectic battle - a slow animation might cover an enemy ready to strike. they can surely use more tweaking, though.
thank you for playing!
Right off the bat, the game is incredibly fluid. I really enjoyed the atmosphere. The game’s really difficult but there’s a charm to it as well! Can’t say I got too far, albeit I do love these kinds of games and I’ve been playing them since one of my childhood friends introduced me to Diablo 2. I enjoyed it thoroughly. Died more than a few times but even that was fun because I got to try again, largest kill count was 40. Not that many enemies killed because I suck at managing resources. But love the game. I'll admit, I was meaning to play this for a long while, but I kept postponing for a long while until now. I was not disappointed!
thank you for playing, i'm glad you had fun! there's still a lot of work that needs to be done.
Mongol is on my to-play list for this DD as well, you can expect feedback for it soon
Better than before but could you add a red overlay option for enemy? I have hard time seeing in the dark. Also more feedback to show if attack miss, I wonder some time if the projectile was badly targeted or if it just disappear. Also a tip or a mini tuto for shrine like enchanter blood or alchemist table.
On balance side:
Melee is high risk low reward, wand is clearly the most efficient tool, you're safe thank to distance and having good damage. You can even break barrel at distance, saving you from trap.
Keep the good work.
merci!
> could you add a red overlay option for enemy?
yes, press X to toggle enemy outlines
>tutorials
one day.... i dread the day already
thank you for playing!
the "right click to equip" option in the menu is broken and will softlock your game, please don't toggle it on.
here's two savefiles if you don't want to play from the start: https://files.catbox.moe/3y4jrl.zip