my thoughts are: "i love it, where's the sequel". it was a lot of fun seeing this game through the DDs. it kinda fits with the story a bit- except instead of purgatory it's escaping agdg. maybe i'm reaching but it feels like the DD were part of the adventure.
anyway, here's a bunch of feedback to burden you with
SFX imbalance. a lot, like the waiting SFX, are grating and loud. would be fine if lowered but on their own as-is they're a pain. same with the default selection SFX, but the "back" sfx is fine.
fight speed resets every fight - leave it to what i set in the last fight please
fishing isn't explained to the player, you just sorta kinda do it. i caught every type of fish throughout the game, but just for the fun of it. apparently i got trinkets, but i have no idea what those are or where to get them.
mosca's RPS effect should have a soundbite to know the result - different pitch based on result?
killing the final enemy in a fight and having a party member have a turn immediately after leaves the menu open and interactable (until the text prompt shows up anyway)
xanadu soldier can guard two units at the same time? kinda weird
reloading save on the 4th round breaks things. game things i'm on an incorrect tile (away from where the screen is pointing), cant click anything. had to restart level. the exp also wasn't loaded, because i kept the old exp after reset, so doing the first fight gave me a level up
not gonna bother trying cards due to the bad presentation - a giant wall of text? bad impression. i'd rather just continue fighting. unsure what the reasoning for that and fishing are - i think the strength of your game was wanting to go and read the next story slide. doing the fishing and cards just delays that.
are bug when haydn attacked gazia, who used defend on haydn. haydn hits himself, lifesteals, and then his health bar above his head was full but his actual health was less than half
game crashed on a fight when haydn died in the thick forest level on the first fight. that level in general felt like a difficulty spike.
in the teleporter level w/ angels, after winning a fight in any biome, the path in that biome doesn't become white, so its a bit disorienting
medusoid hybrid d jelly sfx which sounds like a "radar ping" is obnoxious to listen to.
medusoid hybrid doesn't have a box around his animation when he casts his AAH spell
why do some portraits have AFTERLIFE GLADIATOR text in the background? feels like a temporary background element.
getting eliminated on the desert gaz level crashes game. the enemies that get hasted there (before the rotating tiles) are a bit too hard to deal with if you get unlucky and roll a difficult combo
gaz slaps mosca almost every fight. its great.
consider improving the artwork for when gaz gives finn the mantle and circlet. his reaction is kind of wonky
N E S S E N E E was what i took from the clues for the second sannoval trap, but having two options for a lot of paths (south left or south right?) made for i presume an incorrect answer since i followed what i thought was correct, but still got the "bug filled" u result. doesn't seem to do anything except be annoying a bit?
going underground with mosca, Enkidu and sasha, you reach the hallowed ground. i am prompted that finn has unspent points, but i cant select him - this happens for every ground that has an original party member and one that is not in the current party but has a unspent points.
i don;t remember if you could pick your party in the last build i played with brunner in the audience fight. very nice. in menus like these, 'RETURN' button is misleading - maybe replace it with PROCEED?
the haste sound from the carnivore dinosaur sounds like a banjo, pretty unusual.
looking back, most of the feedback is tied to just a few SFX sounds that can be quickly replaced if you see it. that and some crashes, but otherwise all is solid. the game did not feel particularly easy as it did before - although the final fight(s) are a bit on the easier side. the only mechanic i really dislike is when enemies need to be the last ones standing before you are allowed to slay them - the big issue is no indication. you expend resources to kill them, and you frustratingly find out "oops, you cant kill them yet!".
that's it. i wish you good luck with the release of the game. it's been a pleasure playing it every DD.
Thank you for playing, you have been a lot of help.
The crashes on stage 7 are a little worrying because I haven't been able to recreate them and you are not the first one to encounter them. I was already aware of a lot of the issues you have pointed out and simply didn't have enough time to fix them in time but I hope to correct that later. The fact that others notice these imperfections as well is useful to know regardless. Adding a sound to the little RPS animation in particular has been on my to do list since forever.
As for the rest, I just haven't been able to come up with a good design for the special characters background. It used to a checkerboard pattern before but that didn't look good either.
Gazia's AI is lore friendly.
Defenders can guard multiple units, but a unit can't be guarded by more than a single defender. I honestly didn't think this one through, I just copied Medabots.
The minigames are there to break up the fighting a little bit but they are completely optional and unavailable during the third act as to not kill the pacing. Also, with a the ability to pet an animal and a fishing minigame I'm only missing a metaphor for depression to be a real indie game developer.
I can probably think of some kind of indication that enemies are immortal while others remain, but I don't know what yet.
That's all I had to say that was even remotely interesting. Thank you again for playing and for the feedback. The document I use to record issues is sitting at 992 items and you posted more than 8 suggestions so congratulations on getting the 1000th note! I have no rewards at the moment, but I'll think of something.
My save was gone, so I had to play from the start. I speedrun the game to try to get back to where I was as fast as I could. Some notes:
The game crashed 3 times on the last map I played. The crash is very consistent, so I will wait for an update to try completing this area again.
The cactus enemy that has a second life is very annoying to deal with. I haven't found a way to handle it, if I try to rush damage from turn 1, it does it's special move turn 2 and just outright kills someone. And if I wait until I can kill it in a single turn it still dishes out absurd amounts of damage. And it is very tricky to decide when to kill it since it's egg state is so short so I might kill it but I don't have anyone nearby to destroy the egg.
The mana rain battle field feels like a coin toss. I have lost battles just because the enemy team manages to use an ability all their turns thanks to luck.
I found a bug when using a respec. I put some perk points and want to change something, so I pressed discard changes and the game put the perks back on how it was before using the respec. As a result the perks ended up how they were before and the respec point was gone.
About the respec, I'm not entirely convinced about it. Thanks to the nature of the skill tree a lot of time you end up with perk point that you cannot really use that stay in the inventory until you level up again. With the old system, you could adapt a different build so the point had a temporary home. Now that is much harder
Thanks for playing. Could you describe the crash in more detail? I can't pinpoint when it happens in the video and I can beat the level during testing just fine.
The respec bug is a good catch, since that's a recent change I haven't had that much time to test everything. The issue with the old respec system is that it removed all commitment from the equation which is a cardinal sin of RPG design. With the new mechanic the player should get 8 per character over the course of the game which I think is fair. I also believe that having trade-offs is good too and it's another way to indirectly balance strong 3 cost perks like Sword of Michael or Supreme Fighting Spirit. Maybe I could award more respecs some way for people who really need them.
The pariah has low maximum health and their damage is largely determined by how much health they are missing. The trick to dealing with them is to burst them down in a single turn. They are also rogues so they are more likely to attack weakened party members and will actively try to score kills whenever possible. Their offensive skills costs half their MP so they can be bullied with MP drain skills or items such as mage leather.
The bulb they leave upon death turns into a fresh pariah in 3 seconds if not killed. The bulb has 10 health so it can be killed by a basic attack from anyone except Mosca who starts with 3 STR.
I really like these guys and I deploy them quite often. I hope you find this information useful and thank you for playing again.
Thanks for playing. Could you describe the crash in more detail? I can't pinpoint when it happens in the video and I can beat the level during testing just fine.
It happens when you lose a battle. You can see it at 1:20:48 and at the end of the video. I did say it happened three times, but maybe it was that I restarted the game 3 times (once for going before the respect bug). Maybe it has something to do with the swamp battlefield.
Thanks for the info about the pariah. It's like I imagined about bursting them down, I don't know much about MP drain since I must not have reached that part of the game yet. I don't think I have ever beaten a team with 2 of them, they just kill someone in the first 2 turns if I don't use an item.
About respecs, your game is more similar to a puzzle game than an rpg. In an rpg there is always the option to grind for items and levels to beat any encounter while in AG you have no way of gaining such an advante. The only thing you truly can do is adjust your skill points to find a better strategy. Giving it a hard limit to that is taking away options from the player. What if the player tried different builds, none of them work and they run out of respecs? Im currently stuck on level 7 and if none of the strategies work and if I run out of respecs, I would have to restart the game (I can just edit the savefile, but still).
Talking about that, the difficulty in stage 7 is brutal.
A way to forfeit a battle would we welcome since many times I know I have no chance and just want to restart.
Also one thing that I forgot to mention, if you look at 1:28:14 I do damage to an enemy but it is redirected to Finnegan!
More feedback is always welcome. In my last playthrough I only lost twice and neither were at stage 7 so that explains how I missed it.
There is a way to grind by resigning the stage, that lets you restart the level and roll new encounters but keep the experience sorta like in Shining Force. That's probably why they give the player a dedicated "leave battle" spell now that I think about it.
I know that limiting respecs makes the game harder but they need to have some cost for reasons I've outlined before. I'd rather think of a way to give players extra respecs instead.
Gazia redirecting hits to Finnegan is normal, she can force enemies to defend her when she is below 50% health and has a bias for picking Finnegan for this purpose. A mechanic that all Desert Guardians share is that their skills change depending on their total health. As an example, pariahs gain more damage and their skills carry an additional HP cost, but you already noticed that one.
Also, you can mouse over an enemy with the little shield icon at any time to see who is defending them.
downloaded for later consumption. been listening to jesse welles lately and this song reminded me of the aggy dev who likes bugs https://youtu.be/6cbrmyg1UTg
Finally implemented Spanish localization, but it hasn't been proofread so try at your own risk. Next game will be on Esperanto because this was a huge pain.
Also, respec system has been re-balanced. No more free min-maxing.
What else? I have yet to write the corresponding devlog but here's the short version:
Implemented sound effects for UI elements, almost done with the art, journal messages now dynamically change just like tooltips, several balance changes, many bugs squashed and story-related bowl of soup is no longer invisible.
Comments
i have beaten it for the second time
my thoughts are: "i love it, where's the sequel". it was a lot of fun seeing this game through the DDs. it kinda fits with the story a bit- except instead of purgatory it's escaping agdg. maybe i'm reaching but it feels like the DD were part of the adventure.
anyway, here's a bunch of feedback to burden you with
SFX imbalance. a lot, like the waiting SFX, are grating and loud. would be fine if lowered but on their own as-is they're a pain. same with the default selection SFX, but the "back" sfx is fine.
fight speed resets every fight - leave it to what i set in the last fight please
fishing isn't explained to the player, you just sorta kinda do it. i caught every type of fish throughout the game, but just for the fun of it. apparently i got trinkets, but i have no idea what those are or where to get them.
mosca's RPS effect should have a soundbite to know the result - different pitch based on result?
killing the final enemy in a fight and having a party member have a turn immediately after leaves the menu open and interactable (until the text prompt shows up anyway)
xanadu soldier can guard two units at the same time? kinda weird
reloading save on the 4th round breaks things. game things i'm on an incorrect tile (away from where the screen is pointing), cant click anything. had to restart level. the exp also wasn't loaded, because i kept the old exp after reset, so doing the first fight gave me a level up
not gonna bother trying cards due to the bad presentation - a giant wall of text? bad impression. i'd rather just continue fighting. unsure what the reasoning for that and fishing are - i think the strength of your game was wanting to go and read the next story slide. doing the fishing and cards just delays that.
are bug when haydn attacked gazia, who used defend on haydn. haydn hits himself, lifesteals, and then his health bar above his head was full but his actual health was less than half
game crashed on a fight when haydn died in the thick forest level on the first fight. that level in general felt like a difficulty spike.
in the teleporter level w/ angels, after winning a fight in any biome, the path in that biome doesn't become white, so its a bit disorienting
medusoid hybrid d jelly sfx which sounds like a "radar ping" is obnoxious to listen to.
medusoid hybrid doesn't have a box around his animation when he casts his AAH spell
why do some portraits have AFTERLIFE GLADIATOR text in the background? feels like a temporary background element.
getting eliminated on the desert gaz level crashes game. the enemies that get hasted there (before the rotating tiles) are a bit too hard to deal with if you get unlucky and roll a difficult combo
gaz slaps mosca almost every fight. its great.
consider improving the artwork for when gaz gives finn the mantle and circlet. his reaction is kind of wonky
N E S S E N E E was what i took from the clues for the second sannoval trap, but having two options for a lot of paths (south left or south right?) made for i presume an incorrect answer since i followed what i thought was correct, but still got the "bug filled" u result. doesn't seem to do anything except be annoying a bit?
going underground with mosca, Enkidu and sasha, you reach the hallowed ground. i am prompted that finn has unspent points, but i cant select him - this happens for every ground that has an original party member and one that is not in the current party but has a unspent points.
i don;t remember if you could pick your party in the last build i played with brunner in the audience fight. very nice. in menus like these, 'RETURN' button is misleading - maybe replace it with PROCEED?
the haste sound from the carnivore dinosaur sounds like a banjo, pretty unusual.
looking back, most of the feedback is tied to just a few SFX sounds that can be quickly replaced if you see it. that and some crashes, but otherwise all is solid. the game did not feel particularly easy as it did before - although the final fight(s) are a bit on the easier side. the only mechanic i really dislike is when enemies need to be the last ones standing before you are allowed to slay them - the big issue is no indication. you expend resources to kill them, and you frustratingly find out "oops, you cant kill them yet!".
that's it. i wish you good luck with the release of the game. it's been a pleasure playing it every DD.
Thank you for playing, you have been a lot of help.
The crashes on stage 7 are a little worrying because I haven't been able to recreate them and you are not the first one to encounter them. I was already aware of a lot of the issues you have pointed out and simply didn't have enough time to fix them in time but I hope to correct that later. The fact that others notice these imperfections as well is useful to know regardless. Adding a sound to the little RPS animation in particular has been on my to do list since forever.
As for the rest, I just haven't been able to come up with a good design for the special characters background. It used to a checkerboard pattern before but that didn't look good either.
Gazia's AI is lore friendly.
Defenders can guard multiple units, but a unit can't be guarded by more than a single defender. I honestly didn't think this one through, I just copied Medabots.
The minigames are there to break up the fighting a little bit but they are completely optional and unavailable during the third act as to not kill the pacing. Also, with a the ability to pet an animal and a fishing minigame I'm only missing a metaphor for depression to be a real indie game developer.
I can probably think of some kind of indication that enemies are immortal while others remain, but I don't know what yet.
That's all I had to say that was even remotely interesting. Thank you again for playing and for the feedback. The document I use to record issues is sitting at 992 items and you posted more than 8 suggestions so congratulations on getting the 1000th note! I have no rewards at the moment, but I'll think of something.
Played for a bit. Video:
My save was gone, so I had to play from the start. I speedrun the game to try to get back to where I was as fast as I could. Some notes:
The game crashed 3 times on the last map I played. The crash is very consistent, so I will wait for an update to try completing this area again.
The cactus enemy that has a second life is very annoying to deal with. I haven't found a way to handle it, if I try to rush damage from turn 1, it does it's special move turn 2 and just outright kills someone. And if I wait until I can kill it in a single turn it still dishes out absurd amounts of damage. And it is very tricky to decide when to kill it since it's egg state is so short so I might kill it but I don't have anyone nearby to destroy the egg.
The mana rain battle field feels like a coin toss. I have lost battles just because the enemy team manages to use an ability all their turns thanks to luck.
I found a bug when using a respec. I put some perk points and want to change something, so I pressed discard changes and the game put the perks back on how it was before using the respec. As a result the perks ended up how they were before and the respec point was gone.
About the respec, I'm not entirely convinced about it. Thanks to the nature of the skill tree a lot of time you end up with perk point that you cannot really use that stay in the inventory until you level up again. With the old system, you could adapt a different build so the point had a temporary home. Now that is much harder
Thanks for playing. Could you describe the crash in more detail? I can't pinpoint when it happens in the video and I can beat the level during testing just fine.
The respec bug is a good catch, since that's a recent change I haven't had that much time to test everything. The issue with the old respec system is that it removed all commitment from the equation which is a cardinal sin of RPG design. With the new mechanic the player should get 8 per character over the course of the game which I think is fair. I also believe that having trade-offs is good too and it's another way to indirectly balance strong 3 cost perks like Sword of Michael or Supreme Fighting Spirit. Maybe I could award more respecs some way for people who really need them.
The pariah has low maximum health and their damage is largely determined by how much health they are missing. The trick to dealing with them is to burst them down in a single turn. They are also rogues so they are more likely to attack weakened party members and will actively try to score kills whenever possible. Their offensive skills costs half their MP so they can be bullied with MP drain skills or items such as mage leather.
The bulb they leave upon death turns into a fresh pariah in 3 seconds if not killed. The bulb has 10 health so it can be killed by a basic attack from anyone except Mosca who starts with 3 STR.
I really like these guys and I deploy them quite often. I hope you find this information useful and thank you for playing again.
Sorry for the late response
It happens when you lose a battle. You can see it at 1:20:48 and at the end of the video. I did say it happened three times, but maybe it was that I restarted the game 3 times (once for going before the respect bug). Maybe it has something to do with the swamp battlefield.
Thanks for the info about the pariah. It's like I imagined about bursting them down, I don't know much about MP drain since I must not have reached that part of the game yet. I don't think I have ever beaten a team with 2 of them, they just kill someone in the first 2 turns if I don't use an item.
About respecs, your game is more similar to a puzzle game than an rpg. In an rpg there is always the option to grind for items and levels to beat any encounter while in AG you have no way of gaining such an advante. The only thing you truly can do is adjust your skill points to find a better strategy. Giving it a hard limit to that is taking away options from the player. What if the player tried different builds, none of them work and they run out of respecs? Im currently stuck on level 7 and if none of the strategies work and if I run out of respecs, I would have to restart the game (I can just edit the savefile, but still).
Talking about that, the difficulty in stage 7 is brutal.
A way to forfeit a battle would we welcome since many times I know I have no chance and just want to restart.
Also one thing that I forgot to mention, if you look at 1:28:14 I do damage to an enemy but it is redirected to Finnegan!
More feedback is always welcome. In my last playthrough I only lost twice and neither were at stage 7 so that explains how I missed it.
There is a way to grind by resigning the stage, that lets you restart the level and roll new encounters but keep the experience sorta like in Shining Force. That's probably why they give the player a dedicated "leave battle" spell now that I think about it.
I know that limiting respecs makes the game harder but they need to have some cost for reasons I've outlined before. I'd rather think of a way to give players extra respecs instead.
Gazia redirecting hits to Finnegan is normal, she can force enemies to defend her when she is below 50% health and has a bias for picking Finnegan for this purpose. A mechanic that all Desert Guardians share is that their skills change depending on their total health. As an example, pariahs gain more damage and their skills carry an additional HP cost, but you already noticed that one.
Also, you can mouse over an enemy with the little shield icon at any time to see who is defending them.
Thanks a lot for playing the game.
i might have found a potential exploit.
if you are losing a battle, you can just close the game, and you go back to right before starting the battle
you essentially get unlimited retries without having to start from the beginning
Thanks for playing.
Everyone gets unlimited retries, that is intended.
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bz bz bz bz bz bz bzzzz
buzz ondownloaded for later consumption. been listening to jesse welles lately and this song reminded me of the aggy dev who likes bugs https://youtu.be/6cbrmyg1UTg
Nice song, reminds me of bugs.
This is most likely the Last Demo Day for Afterlife Gladiator for a grand total of 11. Anyway, what's new since the last time?
Finally redid the worst slide in the game. Also, fixed a major bug introduced by the trinket system.
https://bakar.itch.io/afterlife-gladiator/devlog/769048/devlog-32-watching-over-me
Finally implemented Spanish localization, but it hasn't been proofread so try at your own risk. Next game will be on Esperanto because this was a huge pain.
Also, respec system has been re-balanced. No more free min-maxing.
https://bakar.itch.io/afterlife-gladiator/devlog/780018/devlog-33-viva-la-actualizacin
Even more new art, redid the second worst slide in the game. New portrait for Finnegan and a lot of minor fixes. You never run out of these.
https://bakar.itch.io/afterlife-gladiator/devlog/787450/devlog-34-good-news-i-had-a-nightmare
What else? I have yet to write the corresponding devlog but here's the short version:
Implemented sound effects for UI elements, almost done with the art, journal messages now dynamically change just like tooltips, several balance changes, many bugs squashed and story-related bowl of soup is no longer invisible.