Hey Bakar, I checked the tutorial and the keyboard controls and finished the public demo content (speed run he he). I hope you have a good time watching it.
DD53 feedback videos:
Demo Day 53 videos of games starting with letters from A – J:
I can also fail spectacularly. I do not see myself as someone who is good at video games in general.
I was thinking the other game about your game and thought it would be cool it there were maybe status effects being influenced by which direction characters are moving e.g. taking a hit while moving back could deal more dmg, but I guess it could be scope creep. You are probably close to finishing the game.
I'm still a few months away, and I could totally do that. I already implemented backstab damage a long time ago but only 2 enemies use it so far. Also, pushback sort of, since if a unit is walking back then the pushback actually helps them. The greatest hurdle is tutorializing, really.
I should really add a taste of late game mechanics to the demo so it works better as a vertical slice. The game is becoming too easy ever since I made items more relevant and I'm thinking of adding even more so a bit of rebalancing to early game encounters is probably in order some time in the future. I'll keep your advice in mind when that time comes.
I am sure adding mechanics like that would not be hard, but rebalancing the whole game around interactions like that could take a long time. Dmg could be modified by characters distance from the middle line, and if they face towards the attackers or not. It would make it trickier to calculate damage in advance, but maybe it would make it even more interesting. By the way, it would be cool if when players select an attack and hover over different enemies a pop up by them would appear showing their current hp and hp after the attack if they decide to target them. Something like 22 hp -> 12 hp
After working on an RPG for this long I've realized why almost every RPG ever made is only difficult at the beginning and end; balancing the middle is next to impossible.
I'll add your suggestion to my notes. Instead of printing "damage: X", it could be "target HP: Y -> Z (-X)" or something like that. The issue, as usual, is AoE damage, but I'll figure out something.
this type of combat is not my cup of tea, but as other anons have complimented the game in the bread, i decided to give it a try and the game is indeed good.
what kept me wanting to play was the story and characters. the art is charming and the game has an interesting premise and enough mystery from the start that kept me wanting to see more, so i played the extra levels too.
played the linux version
in the very begining, i think there is a comma missing -> in order to get through( , ) a team must ...
the flow of the UI is a bit strange, a `back` button will sometimes be in the middle of the available options. i would often look for a way to `go back a screen` by looking elsewhere instinctively, then looking at the last button. at some point i was even looking for an `X` on the top right or something.
speccing- hovering over the attribute icons need to show me what they are and what they do. the way `mana` was explained in the begining was a bit strange, i didnt realise until much latter that speccing the yellow attribute increase my mana
balancing- lost a few times early probably to wrong speccing and then the game just got easyer and easyer(too easy), specially after the characters got their third abilities. heal finn for the additional speed + his third ability turns him into a machine gun
ai- tank that was about to die protected tank with full health. Seemingly attack at random, sometimes sparing units that could be easyly killed
bugs-
at the 6th or 7th stage(before encountering the bee boss that messes with the UI, sannoval i think) the game froze to me whenever i attempted to start the first battle, so i had to skip the stage entirely,
using mosca`s aoe attack on a protected unit seems to double the damage. by protected i mean a unit that got the red shield status, protected by another tanky unit. i was able to kill protected units this way
the third skill of every character had the same description as the second skill. so i had to go in the `bestiary` to look up what they do
other-
clicking next should probably show the entire text instead of skipping- the text animation is distracting to me, so i attempted to click next again in the hope it would just show me the entire string
sannoval looks a bit like the crying laughing emoji, it`s hard to unsee
combat speed settings should not reset, or i should be able to overwrite it in the settings menu
would be nice to hover any character of any team and get their statuses displayed at the bottom left
real time elements with the bugs crawling the screen was a nice touch, but i did not see how i could influence it in any way
-sfx
some are a bit too loud and some don`t seem to fit. the death sound seems particularly odd, but i think there could be a lore reason for it
-puzzle(pentagram)
idk if i got it right, if i did, it was entirely because of what mosca said, and i have no idea what the hint is suposed to mean
i think i missed one puzzle as i said above when the game freezes on stage 6 or 7
Thank you for playing the game. A lot of people who leave feedback tend to play beyond the intended demo it seems, I want to believe that means I'm doing something right because the game is quite long.
On that note, that's a lot of useful feedback so thanks for that too.
The AI is deliberately a little bit dumb, not to mention there's a small amount of RNG involved. Only some classes will try to finish off weakened players consistently while others will prioritize other things.
AoE skills damaging defended units is intended. The idea in my mind is that you can't block something that's all around you with a shield.
Balancing has been brought up often. I'd rather have the game be too easy than too hard, but I'll think of something up.
Finally, I can't stop laughing at the Sannoval emoji comparison. At least he doesn't look like the loudly crying emoji.
I tried to stream this, but failed, due to internet connection issues. I played the rest of it offline.
I experienced a few (software) bugs, but not anything that would matter for this genre of game.
I first thought that the combat might be intricate, and was bothered by the lack of UI information on enemies, status effects, and all that. But, the combat is honestly trivial, once the player gets what kind of game it is. The combat will not be the main draw of the game, the story is, though having combat in this genre and type of game is probably necessary - combat mixed in with story sections. You can respec as much as you want, and the obvious solution is to go for some combination of "hit all enemies". The combat gets boring, and in the password-locked content, I did not have to understand what the enemies did and did not do. If I failed a combat, just restart it, and try again, and if that does not work, respec and try some other combination. And there are few real combinations, from what I see. The total state space of perks and unlocks feel much smaller than might be apparent at first glance. But combat being interesting and challenging might not be that important.
If this is a game meant to earn a profit, or at least some sales, then the story telling will be the main driving factor. I disliked the story personally, but I can see parts of the market liking it. Please do not take my criticism of the combat the wrong way, for relative to other similar games, the combat is decent.
Played for about 30 minutes. I failed hard at the Rebel Angel.
Thought it was more useful (and interesting) to wait for skills than to simply attack. Attacking seems like hitting with wet noodles. I guess it makes more sense to attack tho.
I hate the combat music. Doesn't fit the rest of the game. The non-combat music is fantastic. Also love the armor design of Finnegan. And the story is cute.
The best way to defeat Ermine is to defeat her before she can use her AoE attack. The strategy aspect of the game is not complex at all for the most part. Choosing what enemy to target at what point is usually the most important decision.
beat the demo and to not spoil anything, i chose option 2. curious to see what option 1 has in store, but that'll be for next time
this time around i've experienced no bugs, that is unless you don't count Sannoval's insect trap. it was an interesting challenge, but i fail to see how the hint had anything to do with it. puzzles and riddles were never my strength, however. it also wasn't a big deal (3 poison damage every now and then?)
i wont write about the story but i like it. it's also nice to see how all characters had grown throughout the plot. Mosca's upgraded spinning animation is very silly
minor thoughts:
>covenant seal (Hayden 3rd spell) has no description, if you mouse over motivate beforehand it'll just use that description instead.
>music sometimes stops while fight is ongoing (tracks not looping?). happened on the 2nd round of left hand fight
>hard to gauge difficulty but the last 2 levels were all beaten in one sitting with no loading required. aoe build on mosca + haydn, with carving surge 1-shot made everything feel pretty simple.
>goons are now medusoids. i liked goon as a name more.
>can roll a party name twice in a row. just save the last name and compare it to the current one and reroll if it's the same
Thanks for playing, I'll add the notes to my ever growing collection of stuff to fix.
I got really worried about the puzzle actually but I ended up doing the same that I did for stage 8 which is to make the penalty not that big a deal. I also don't have too much confidence in the bugs because they are real time elements in a turn based game and that rubs me the wrong way. Then again, pausing them would make them even less threatening. Perhaps more bugs are required? Who knows.
As for the clue, here's another one:
Also, balance is really hard. Now I understand why in most RPGs the beginning and end are the hardest parts.
Comments
Hey Bakar, I checked the tutorial and the keyboard controls and finished the public demo content (speed run he he). I hope you have a good time watching it.
DD53 feedback videos:
Demo Day 53 videos of games starting with letters from A – J:
https://mega.nz/folder/DdVwTYAK#ZsxVSpsd5L2yvgaqtcvBsA
Demo Day 53 videos of games starting with letters from K – Z:
https://mega.nz/folder/zBIi2A5T#DE3_eooG3HE-K3XTmpnR0g
Thanks again, I'm always in need for stuff to watch while working on assets.
Also, considering how many obscure demos you record I think you might be the speedrun world record holder for most of them by default.
I can also fail spectacularly. I do not see myself as someone who is good at video games in general.
I was thinking the other game about your game and thought it would be cool it there were maybe status effects being influenced by which direction characters are moving e.g. taking a hit while moving back could deal more dmg, but I guess it could be scope creep. You are probably close to finishing the game.
I'm still a few months away, and I could totally do that. I already implemented backstab damage a long time ago but only 2 enemies use it so far. Also, pushback sort of, since if a unit is walking back then the pushback actually helps them. The greatest hurdle is tutorializing, really.
I should really add a taste of late game mechanics to the demo so it works better as a vertical slice. The game is becoming too easy ever since I made items more relevant and I'm thinking of adding even more so a bit of rebalancing to early game encounters is probably in order some time in the future. I'll keep your advice in mind when that time comes.
I am sure adding mechanics like that would not be hard, but rebalancing the whole game around interactions like that could take a long time. Dmg could be modified by characters distance from the middle line, and if they face towards the attackers or not. It would make it trickier to calculate damage in advance, but maybe it would make it even more interesting. By the way, it would be cool if when players select an attack and hover over different enemies a pop up by them would appear showing their current hp and hp after the attack if they decide to target them. Something like 22 hp -> 12 hp
After working on an RPG for this long I've realized why almost every RPG ever made is only difficult at the beginning and end; balancing the middle is next to impossible.
I'll add your suggestion to my notes. Instead of printing "damage: X", it could be "target HP: Y -> Z (-X)" or something like that. The issue, as usual, is AoE damage, but I'll figure out something.
your game does not have grinding so balancing should still be easier... in theory. Keep up the good work
contains minor spoilers
this type of combat is not my cup of tea, but as other anons have complimented the game in the bread, i decided to give it a try and the game is indeed good.
what kept me wanting to play was the story and characters. the art is charming and the game has an interesting premise and enough mystery from the start that kept me wanting to see more, so i played the extra levels too.
played the linux version
in the very begining, i think there is a comma missing -> in order to get through( , ) a team must ...
the flow of the UI is a bit strange, a `back` button will sometimes be in the middle of the available options. i would often look for a way to `go back a screen` by looking elsewhere instinctively, then looking at the last button. at some point i was even looking for an `X` on the top right or something.
speccing- hovering over the attribute icons need to show me what they are and what they do. the way `mana` was explained in the begining was a bit strange, i didnt realise until much latter that speccing the yellow attribute increase my mana
balancing- lost a few times early probably to wrong speccing and then the game just got easyer and easyer(too easy), specially after the characters got their third abilities. heal finn for the additional speed + his third ability turns him into a machine gun
ai- tank that was about to die protected tank with full health. Seemingly attack at random, sometimes sparing units that could be easyly killed
bugs-
at the 6th or 7th stage(before encountering the bee boss that messes with the UI, sannoval i think) the game froze to me whenever i attempted to start the first battle, so i had to skip the stage entirely,
using mosca`s aoe attack on a protected unit seems to double the damage. by protected i mean a unit that got the red shield status, protected by another tanky unit. i was able to kill protected units this way
the third skill of every character had the same description as the second skill. so i had to go in the `bestiary` to look up what they do
other-
clicking next should probably show the entire text instead of skipping- the text animation is distracting to me, so i attempted to click next again in the hope it would just show me the entire string
sannoval looks a bit like the crying laughing emoji, it`s hard to unsee
combat speed settings should not reset, or i should be able to overwrite it in the settings menu
would be nice to hover any character of any team and get their statuses displayed at the bottom left
real time elements with the bugs crawling the screen was a nice touch, but i did not see how i could influence it in any way
-sfx
some are a bit too loud and some don`t seem to fit. the death sound seems particularly odd, but i think there could be a lore reason for it
-puzzle(pentagram)
idk if i got it right, if i did, it was entirely because of what mosca said, and i have no idea what the hint is suposed to mean
i think i missed one puzzle as i said above when the game freezes on stage 6 or 7
will play future builds
Thank you for playing the game. A lot of people who leave feedback tend to play beyond the intended demo it seems, I want to believe that means I'm doing something right because the game is quite long.
On that note, that's a lot of useful feedback so thanks for that too.
The AI is deliberately a little bit dumb, not to mention there's a small amount of RNG involved. Only some classes will try to finish off weakened players consistently while others will prioritize other things.
AoE skills damaging defended units is intended. The idea in my mind is that you can't block something that's all around you with a shield.
Balancing has been brought up often. I'd rather have the game be too easy than too hard, but I'll think of something up.
Finally, I can't stop laughing at the Sannoval emoji comparison. At least he doesn't look like the loudly crying emoji.
Beat first white moth girl then stopped, encounter 1 bug.
-Main menu, after I click start then back to the main menu I can't select setting option.
I like Mosca design, more moth ladies in the future?
It's normal to encounter a bug at the end of the first level. Her name is Ermine.
There shall be more bugs, yes.
Thank you for playing!
I tried to stream this, but failed, due to internet connection issues. I played the rest of it offline.
I experienced a few (software) bugs, but not anything that would matter for this genre of game.
I first thought that the combat might be intricate, and was bothered by the lack of UI information on enemies, status effects, and all that. But, the combat is honestly trivial, once the player gets what kind of game it is. The combat will not be the main draw of the game, the story is, though having combat in this genre and type of game is probably necessary - combat mixed in with story sections. You can respec as much as you want, and the obvious solution is to go for some combination of "hit all enemies". The combat gets boring, and in the password-locked content, I did not have to understand what the enemies did and did not do. If I failed a combat, just restart it, and try again, and if that does not work, respec and try some other combination. And there are few real combinations, from what I see. The total state space of perks and unlocks feel much smaller than might be apparent at first glance. But combat being interesting and challenging might not be that important.
If this is a game meant to earn a profit, or at least some sales, then the story telling will be the main driving factor. I disliked the story personally, but I can see parts of the market liking it. Please do not take my criticism of the combat the wrong way, for relative to other similar games, the combat is decent.
No problems, I've been told that the story is a bigger selling point that the gameplay before. Thank you for trying the game.
Played for about 30 minutes. I failed hard at the Rebel Angel.
Thought it was more useful (and interesting) to wait for skills than to simply attack. Attacking seems like hitting with wet noodles. I guess it makes more sense to attack tho.
I hate the combat music. Doesn't fit the rest of the game. The non-combat music is fantastic. Also love the armor design of Finnegan. And the story is cute.
It's not my genre, but it's fun.
No commentary video.
Thanks for trying the game anyway.
The best way to defeat Ermine is to defeat her before she can use her AoE attack. The strategy aspect of the game is not complex at all for the most part. Choosing what enemy to target at what point is usually the most important decision.
I see. I thought I'll deal with the minions first to reduce the overall dps.
you know how this goes by now
beat the demo and to not spoil anything, i chose option 2. curious to see what option 1 has in store, but that'll be for next time
this time around i've experienced no bugs, that is unless you don't count Sannoval's insect trap. it was an interesting challenge, but i fail to see how the hint had anything to do with it. puzzles and riddles were never my strength, however. it also wasn't a big deal (3 poison damage every now and then?)
i wont write about the story but i like it. it's also nice to see how all characters had grown throughout the plot. Mosca's upgraded spinning animation is very silly
minor thoughts:
>covenant seal (Hayden 3rd spell) has no description, if you mouse over motivate beforehand it'll just use that description instead.
>music sometimes stops while fight is ongoing (tracks not looping?). happened on the 2nd round of left hand fight
>hard to gauge difficulty but the last 2 levels were all beaten in one sitting with no loading required. aoe build on mosca + haydn, with carving surge 1-shot made everything feel pretty simple.
>goons are now medusoids. i liked goon as a name more.
>can roll a party name twice in a row. just save the last name and compare it to the current one and reroll if it's the same
>typo in Messenger of Hope name (Meesenger)
>Tower Adventurer :^)
as always, excellent work. i am eager for more.
Thanks for playing, I'll add the notes to my ever growing collection of stuff to fix.
I got really worried about the puzzle actually but I ended up doing the same that I did for stage 8 which is to make the penalty not that big a deal. I also don't have too much confidence in the bugs because they are real time elements in a turn based game and that rubs me the wrong way. Then again, pausing them would make them even less threatening. Perhaps more bugs are required? Who knows.
As for the clue, here's another one:
Also, balance is really hard. Now I understand why in most RPGs the beginning and end are the hardest parts.
New stuff since last DD:
Fixed a bunch of issues from last DD thanks to feedback from players like (you). Also, prettier UI.
https://bakar.itch.io/afterlife-gladiator/devlog/590993/post-dd52-progress-repor...
Even more improvements, both graphical and functional, to the UI. Also, combat is now fully playable with the keyboard.
https://bakar.itch.io/afterlife-gladiator/devlog/614766/new-controls-ui-changes-...
New combat tutorial for newbies and somehow more UI related changes. Items now have their own animations for a little bit of added juice.
https://bakar.itch.io/afterlife-gladiator/devlog/622432/new-combat-tutorial-item...
And last, but not least, AI streamlining, level selection and 2 brand new levels for a total of 15. At this rate I might actually finish this game.
https://bakar.itch.io/afterlife-gladiator/devlog/622432/new-combat-tutorial-item...