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Just an indie game developer out of Alberta, Canada, building games for fun, never for profit, and always giving full effort to every project.
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The Featured Game Thread
What makes a good puzzle?
I would refer you to the channel GMTK. There's a great video on this exact subject.
Essentially this video says anything I would say, but in my opinion a good puzzle is one that keeps things simple, has a clear objective, subverts player assumptions, and has a solution that gives the player a sort of "aha" moment
Essentially this video says anything I would say, but in my opinion a good puzzle is one that keeps things simple, has a clear objective, subverts player assumptions, and has a solution that gives the player a sort of "aha" moment
What makes a good Crafting system?
That's a decent thought. I may be misinterpreting your reply, but I do want to steer away from "upgrading" equipment, since the idea with the game is ultimately to replace your old outdated equipment. The idea behind the crafting isn't necessarily to be a focal point of the game, but rather a way to control the odds somewhat. With a rarity based loot system, it's all too possible that you could go hours between finding a good drop, or you could find three in a row. This way, if you go too long without a good drop, you have the ability to make one yourself, but the material costs will be high enough that it can't be done all the time. As well, it gives more purpose to discarding equipment, rather than simply abiding by inventory limitations.
Actually, thinking about it from that perspective, as a safeguard instead of a main gameplay aspect makes me think that simplicity is just fine. No need to be too complex with something that you won't be using too often, but is still a decent safety net.
Actually, thinking about it from that perspective, as a safeguard instead of a main gameplay aspect makes me think that simplicity is just fine. No need to be too complex with something that you won't be using too often, but is still a decent safety net.
What makes a good Crafting system?
So in Bloodstained Hands, there were two types of crafting, alchemy and smithing. With alchemy, you used a kit to combine the herbs you'd find along the way into potions. The herbs themselves had a minor healing effect, but had a chance to inflict poison, so they could be used on their own but were much more valuable as crafting ingredients. You'd find them from just about any monster you fought. Smithing required metals that you could find in various dungeons that you'd take to a blacksmith who'd forge them into new weapons and armors, but would also cost a small amount of gold. That was fine, but it was basically just a shop with a slight hurdle.
In my newest game, I'm trying to put together a crafting system, but I'm not sure how well it's working. Equipment is randomly generated, and every monster drops a few items. You can take them to use or sell, but you'll quickly run out of room in your inventory and end up needing to discard what's left. I'm working on a system where instead of discarding, you Salvage any loot left behind into a universal crafting material that doesn't take up inventory space, sort of like an alternate currency. Different quality equipment provides different amounts of materials. When you have enough, you can convert the materials into a new piece of equipment, and you can determine the rarity by increasing the amount of materials used.
There's two main problems I'm seeing, however. One is that this is basically just a shop. The difference is that you don't get to see what you're "buying" or crafting, it's a random drop, but you do get to determine the quality and the resource used isn't money. Cool, that's workable I guess, but I don't know if it really feels like "crafting." Second issue is that it's SUPER simple. Like, to the point where I'm wondering if it's even necessary. I'm wondering if there's any way I can spice it up a bit, maybe add some more player agency or something.
In my newest game, I'm trying to put together a crafting system, but I'm not sure how well it's working. Equipment is randomly generated, and every monster drops a few items. You can take them to use or sell, but you'll quickly run out of room in your inventory and end up needing to discard what's left. I'm working on a system where instead of discarding, you Salvage any loot left behind into a universal crafting material that doesn't take up inventory space, sort of like an alternate currency. Different quality equipment provides different amounts of materials. When you have enough, you can convert the materials into a new piece of equipment, and you can determine the rarity by increasing the amount of materials used.
There's two main problems I'm seeing, however. One is that this is basically just a shop. The difference is that you don't get to see what you're "buying" or crafting, it's a random drop, but you do get to determine the quality and the resource used isn't money. Cool, that's workable I guess, but I don't know if it really feels like "crafting." Second issue is that it's SUPER simple. Like, to the point where I'm wondering if it's even necessary. I'm wondering if there's any way I can spice it up a bit, maybe add some more player agency or something.
What makes a good Crafting system?
Question to the community. What in your opinion makes a good crafting system? Be it for weapons, armor, potions, other items, whatever you want, what are some of the elements that you look for? What makes crafting tedious, and what makes it fun?
For me, I can't stand crafting systems where you don't know what an ingredient does, or it's not clear what could potentially be an ingredient for crafting. That kind of system creates a terrible case of item hoarding, and can be extremely complicated. I like when things are simple and clearly communicated.
The crafting in Diablo 3 was pretty good, in that you could break down old equipment into crafting materials which you could then turn into new items, and they were clearly labeled. If you wanted to make a new legendary weapon, you'd first need to find a plan for it, and the materials needed would typically be much rarer.
What about you? What are some of your favorite crafting systems and why?
For me, I can't stand crafting systems where you don't know what an ingredient does, or it's not clear what could potentially be an ingredient for crafting. That kind of system creates a terrible case of item hoarding, and can be extremely complicated. I like when things are simple and clearly communicated.
The crafting in Diablo 3 was pretty good, in that you could break down old equipment into crafting materials which you could then turn into new items, and they were clearly labeled. If you wanted to make a new legendary weapon, you'd first need to find a plan for it, and the materials needed would typically be much rarer.
What about you? What are some of your favorite crafting systems and why?
Thoughts on High-Level Enemies & Balancing... What do you think?
Honestly, I've always struggled with creating engaging bosses, simply because turn based RPG's typically have a lot more restrictions than real time battles or FPS games where you can have specific target spots. As a result, a lot of my bosses turn into damage sponges.
My favorite boss in Bloodstained Hands was one that has three phases. As he hit HP requirements he'd change attack patterns, but also demoralize the party. As a result, the entire party would tag out except the party leader, and you'd continue the fight with the new party until the next phase, where the first party would switch back in.
Another one was inspired by Yunalesca, which was a boss that had an attack that changed how your allies would resist elements. Damaging Light and Dark moves would suddenly heal you, but your healing spells would now damage you. You could reset the status any time by using Defend, but every now and then the boss would use a massive area damage spell of either light or dark element, encouraging you to keep the status on at least one ally.
In my newest demo for Thrall, the main boss changes elements every time it drops 20% HP, causing you to reprioritize attacks and be wary of different elements to defend against. Another boss I have planned is one that actually has a specific weakness that needs to be targeted to actually kill the boss, but it can't be hit unless it enters a state where its damage is significantly buffed as well, so you have to play both offensively and defensively.
There's a great channel on YouTube called DesignDoc as well, and he's got phenomenal videos on boss fights and how to make them engaging. However, I will quote one thing in particular from his videos that I think is often overlooked.
"Once you've figured out how to beat them, a good boss with do one of two things. Throw additional hooks, or...
END."
Too many devs (myself included) seem to think that long boss fights are good boss fights. But if you find yourself repeating the same turn patterns over and over and not getting much variety or challenge, it's not really a test of strength at that point. It's a test of patience and endurance. How long can you last before you A) run out of resources, B) run out of time, C) run out of patience or D) run out of fun. Eventually you'll kill the boss, but there gets to be a point where it's not fun anymore, just boring. Short, engaging boss fights are exponentially better than long drawn out slug fests. There's nothing wrong with having a boss fight that is challenging and keeps you on your toes, but maybe only lasts a couple minutes.
I will say, one of my favorite bosses from a AAA game was against Ganondorf in Zelda Twilight Princess. Final form, his Gerudo form. He was not challenging. The fight lasted maybe 5 minutes. There weren't really a huge number of gimmicks that made the fight interesting. But the idea of two swordsmen dueling it out, one on one to see who the superior fighter is, was an incredible set piece. It was a beautiful and solemn climax to a great story.
From a mechanical side, however, I would say my favorite boss fight was against Metroid Prime. From uh... Metroid Prime. In the first form, you have to constantly switch between different weapon types, dodging a variety of attacks, using morph ball to escape in some situations. In the final form, he's invulnerable until he deposits pools of phazon that you need to immerse yourself in to enter hyper mode and deal ridiculous damage, keeping in mind that he'll phase out of visibility and you'll need to use your various visors to target him. As a mechanical challenge and test of skill, it was a great boss fight.
Anyway, that's just my take. I'll see if I can get the links to the videos from DesignDoc about boss fights. He's got like four of them.
EDIT: Actually, he's got a lot more than four. He's got a whole playlist.
My favorite boss in Bloodstained Hands was one that has three phases. As he hit HP requirements he'd change attack patterns, but also demoralize the party. As a result, the entire party would tag out except the party leader, and you'd continue the fight with the new party until the next phase, where the first party would switch back in.
Another one was inspired by Yunalesca, which was a boss that had an attack that changed how your allies would resist elements. Damaging Light and Dark moves would suddenly heal you, but your healing spells would now damage you. You could reset the status any time by using Defend, but every now and then the boss would use a massive area damage spell of either light or dark element, encouraging you to keep the status on at least one ally.
In my newest demo for Thrall, the main boss changes elements every time it drops 20% HP, causing you to reprioritize attacks and be wary of different elements to defend against. Another boss I have planned is one that actually has a specific weakness that needs to be targeted to actually kill the boss, but it can't be hit unless it enters a state where its damage is significantly buffed as well, so you have to play both offensively and defensively.
There's a great channel on YouTube called DesignDoc as well, and he's got phenomenal videos on boss fights and how to make them engaging. However, I will quote one thing in particular from his videos that I think is often overlooked.
"Once you've figured out how to beat them, a good boss with do one of two things. Throw additional hooks, or...
END."
Too many devs (myself included) seem to think that long boss fights are good boss fights. But if you find yourself repeating the same turn patterns over and over and not getting much variety or challenge, it's not really a test of strength at that point. It's a test of patience and endurance. How long can you last before you A) run out of resources, B) run out of time, C) run out of patience or D) run out of fun. Eventually you'll kill the boss, but there gets to be a point where it's not fun anymore, just boring. Short, engaging boss fights are exponentially better than long drawn out slug fests. There's nothing wrong with having a boss fight that is challenging and keeps you on your toes, but maybe only lasts a couple minutes.
I will say, one of my favorite bosses from a AAA game was against Ganondorf in Zelda Twilight Princess. Final form, his Gerudo form. He was not challenging. The fight lasted maybe 5 minutes. There weren't really a huge number of gimmicks that made the fight interesting. But the idea of two swordsmen dueling it out, one on one to see who the superior fighter is, was an incredible set piece. It was a beautiful and solemn climax to a great story.
From a mechanical side, however, I would say my favorite boss fight was against Metroid Prime. From uh... Metroid Prime. In the first form, you have to constantly switch between different weapon types, dodging a variety of attacks, using morph ball to escape in some situations. In the final form, he's invulnerable until he deposits pools of phazon that you need to immerse yourself in to enter hyper mode and deal ridiculous damage, keeping in mind that he'll phase out of visibility and you'll need to use your various visors to target him. As a mechanical challenge and test of skill, it was a great boss fight.
Anyway, that's just my take. I'll see if I can get the links to the videos from DesignDoc about boss fights. He's got like four of them.
EDIT: Actually, he's got a lot more than four. He's got a whole playlist.
Thrall
Great questions, let me see if I can answer them for you.
Not necessarily. Have you ever played the "Borderlands" games? This loot system is very similar to the system seen in those games. Level requirements and all. One thing that I noticed in your stream of the game is that I don't think you quite experienced the full potential of the loot system in your particular run, most likely just due to bad RNG, honestly. I didn't see any gold chests in the dungeons that you went through, and I think the highest rarity item you found was blue. So basically, there are three more rarity tiers above what you found that are much harder to find, and are much higher quality. Purple rarity is even better than blue, and orange rarity is better still. Even better, orange rarity items have special effects that are unique to them, that don't generate on any other piece of equipment.
An example is the orange sword you found in the first chest in the Keep, the "Aremen." While it's listed as having 0 DMG, it has a unique effect that actually sets its DMG stat based on the level of the player equipping it, so it grows with you. There are dozens of other Legendary weapons and armors that can randomly generate as well, and so being able to transfer those between save files is a good way to re-use items that you've found on other saves, but are no longer useful.
In addition, the stats scale pretty dramatically as you get to higher levels. Some of the highest damaging weapons will literally break the engines pre-set stat caps with over 1000 DMG and around 300 DEX. Needless to say, equipping that to a level 1 character would pretty much break the game.
Now, you can still abuse the locker by transferring over high selling items, so that you have an abundance of gold and can afford whatever you want, but it still encourages you to play each playthrough using what you find, unless you happen to have something EXTRA useful on another file at your current level.
Kind of addressed this in the first answer, but I'll also say that a big part of subsequent playthroughs is (hopefully) not just for story purposes, but also to try out new character builds, and see how the character you left behind works in unison with the others and their skill trees.
Actually, yeah this is accommodated. The HP bar doesn't change, but the cursors change. For your action skills, the cursor changes shape when the action skill is ready to use. As for boss HP bars, the cursor will change when targeting an enemy with an icon denoting their weakness. Fireball when weak to fire, lightning bolt when weak to lightning, and so on. In addition, if you enable colorblind mode before the tutorials, the tutorials will also change to reflect this.
I did have an oversight in that mode though, which is in regards to comparing stat increases or decreases. I've already fixed this for the full release, but basically now when a stat is increased, it will display with an "O" next to it, and for decreases it will display a "X". That isn't available in the demo, unfortunately, but I appreciate you mentioning it in your stream. Problem with testing a colorblind mode when you yourself are not colorblind: You can test to see if a script does what you want, but not to see whether or not it's effective.
Fair, although I personally think a playthrough with no kill skills is going to be fairly unlikely, especially given how powerful a lot of them can be. As a matter of fact, Lionel has a specific kill called "Mercy" that's designed to set others up to trigger their skills. I did remove the slimes from the Spider boss, since it's not really necessary that early in the game, but I personally think those kill skills would be almost useless unless SOME of the bosses in the game have minions, and there are a lot of really ridiculous builds that can be done when those skills synergize. I'll work on finding a happy medium.
That's a darn good solution, right there.
And so is this. That's actually a great idea, just gotta rebalance the skill trees to make sure the skill point allocations are still appropriate. The way it's set up right now, unlocking every single skill is possible at exactly level 99. Kind of want to keep it that way if I can.
author=Red_Nova
1) If there is a level requirement for equipment, then isn't the idea of transferring equipment between save files already negated since anything I put in that chest will have to wait until my next party is already leveled up enough to use it? By the time I level up enough to use that gear, I likely would have found something just as good (or even better) for my party in my next playthrough since I can get lucky and get a high rarity item early on.
Not necessarily. Have you ever played the "Borderlands" games? This loot system is very similar to the system seen in those games. Level requirements and all. One thing that I noticed in your stream of the game is that I don't think you quite experienced the full potential of the loot system in your particular run, most likely just due to bad RNG, honestly. I didn't see any gold chests in the dungeons that you went through, and I think the highest rarity item you found was blue. So basically, there are three more rarity tiers above what you found that are much harder to find, and are much higher quality. Purple rarity is even better than blue, and orange rarity is better still. Even better, orange rarity items have special effects that are unique to them, that don't generate on any other piece of equipment.
An example is the orange sword you found in the first chest in the Keep, the "Aremen." While it's listed as having 0 DMG, it has a unique effect that actually sets its DMG stat based on the level of the player equipping it, so it grows with you. There are dozens of other Legendary weapons and armors that can randomly generate as well, and so being able to transfer those between save files is a good way to re-use items that you've found on other saves, but are no longer useful.
In addition, the stats scale pretty dramatically as you get to higher levels. Some of the highest damaging weapons will literally break the engines pre-set stat caps with over 1000 DMG and around 300 DEX. Needless to say, equipping that to a level 1 character would pretty much break the game.
Now, you can still abuse the locker by transferring over high selling items, so that you have an abundance of gold and can afford whatever you want, but it still encourages you to play each playthrough using what you find, unless you happen to have something EXTRA useful on another file at your current level.
2) What exactly is the harm in letting players transfer high level gear in a subsequent playthrough? The chest can only store ONE piece of gear, after all, so it's not like you can completely deck out your party in OP gear in your second playthrough. Even if you could, I feel like anyone who would make use of this mechanic is to see the routes that that didn't take the first playthrough, and letting them use high level gear just makes it easier for them. If they wanted a subsequent playthrough to be fair and challenging, they would not make use of this item transfer mechanic at all.
Kind of addressed this in the first answer, but I'll also say that a big part of subsequent playthroughs is (hopefully) not just for story purposes, but also to try out new character builds, and see how the character you left behind works in unison with the others and their skill trees.
I feel like the underlined statement goes against your stated intention of accommodating colorblindness. I haven't checked, but what changes about the HP bar if you enable colorblind mode?
Actually, yeah this is accommodated. The HP bar doesn't change, but the cursors change. For your action skills, the cursor changes shape when the action skill is ready to use. As for boss HP bars, the cursor will change when targeting an enemy with an icon denoting their weakness. Fireball when weak to fire, lightning bolt when weak to lightning, and so on. In addition, if you enable colorblind mode before the tutorials, the tutorials will also change to reflect this.
I did have an oversight in that mode though, which is in regards to comparing stat increases or decreases. I've already fixed this for the full release, but basically now when a stat is increased, it will display with an "O" next to it, and for decreases it will display a "X". That isn't available in the demo, unfortunately, but I appreciate you mentioning it in your stream. Problem with testing a colorblind mode when you yourself are not colorblind: You can test to see if a script does what you want, but not to see whether or not it's effective.
That's a dangerous reason considering each character has 3 different skill trees and so the possibility of a party with no kill skills is fairly high.
Fair, although I personally think a playthrough with no kill skills is going to be fairly unlikely, especially given how powerful a lot of them can be. As a matter of fact, Lionel has a specific kill called "Mercy" that's designed to set others up to trigger their skills. I did remove the slimes from the Spider boss, since it's not really necessary that early in the game, but I personally think those kill skills would be almost useless unless SOME of the bosses in the game have minions, and there are a lot of really ridiculous builds that can be done when those skills synergize. I'll work on finding a happy medium.
1) Punch up the dialogue that is already there.
That's a darn good solution, right there.
2) Give the characters their Action Skill right away.
And so is this. That's actually a great idea, just gotta rebalance the skill trees to make sure the skill point allocations are still appropriate. The way it's set up right now, unlocking every single skill is possible at exactly level 99. Kind of want to keep it that way if I can.
Thrall
Thank you so much for doing a stream! It really is true that you can learn more about your game from watching others play it than you can from the verbal feedback they provide. That said, your verbal feedback was also excellent, and I took a ton of notes. Couple takeaways:
Difficulty: I should probably tone it down quite a bit, considering the number of deaths in the first dungeon. It's the first dungeon. It's not meant to be quite that difficult. Granted, dying isn't TERRIBLY costly, and it does encourage optimizing your equipment, but still. I'll be doing a LOT more balancing before the full release.
Level Requirements: So, there was a reason that equipping weapons was locked behind a level requirement. It has to do with the locker in the Keep. The one that allows you to move items between save files and playthroughs. Essentially, with that locker, you could put a level 99 weapon onto a level 1 character without the requirement. That said, I will admit it can be very frustrating to find an obviously better weapon only to find you can't use it yet.
On the one hand, I wanted the player to have equipment that they can use as soon as they level up, rather than leveling up and basically needing to wait before getting better stuff. On the other hand, then you've got an inventory full of stuff you can't use. I'll definitely do some modifications, maybe adjust the drop rates to set the equipment to your level, and only RARELY provide equipment above your level, but I'll have to think it through.
Oh, and as a side note, DEX determines how fast your ATB gauge fills. The idea being that if you use an underleveled weapon just for its special effect, eventually you'll be too slow to really make good use of it. Really should have described that better in game. My bad.
Consistent Visual Language: This is a two parter. One, the tutorials. Yep, that's bad consistency. I'll fix that. I wanted to give the characters some dialogue to represent their personality a bit more, but that... doesn't really come through in a tutorial about mechanics. Also, yes, I will add tutorials for each of the stats and what they actually do in one of those tutorials. Maybe the one where it describes item comparisons?
Second, I noticed that you immediately went for the red item bags in the dungeon, but occasionally missed a chest or two. Granted, the only chests you missed were tier 1 chests that typically don't contain great loot, but frankly it should be obvious what can be interacted with and what can't. I'll work on that.
Boss Fight: Ironically, I was trying to add additional gimmicks that fix the "damage sponge" boss that most RPG's seem to fall in to. Changing elements was the gimmick I went for with this boss. The HP bar changes color based on the bosses elemental weakness. Unfortunately, the only way to do that was to essentially spawn in a new enemy, which heals it. I can work on an alternative solution that maybe spawns it in at the HP of the enemy that was despawned. Shouldn't be too tough to figure out.
As for the slimes, those were included because of one specific feature: Kill skills. Certain characters (Damien especially, but everyone has them) have skills in their skill trees that proc extra abilities when they kill an enemy. It could be additional HP regen, stacking Overkill damage, damage resistance, etc. Adding minions to boss fights essentially means you can proc those abilities during longer encounters. That's great later on, but I guess it's not really necessary if you literally don't have any of those skills available to you yet. Maybe a later boss fight would have them make more sense, but not the first boss.
Narrative: I agree that you don't really get to spend enough time with any of the characters to develop any sort of emotional attachment to them, but I'm not entirely sure how to fix that, to be honest. Something tells me that making the prologue an hour long isn't the solution. I'm open to feedback, and I'll do some thinking about that myself, but I don't exactly have a solution right away.
As for the differences between playthroughs, yes, you will see cutscenes play out quite differently depending on who you leave behind. The actual progression of the storyline and which dungeons and enemies you face will actually change as well, but this isn't reflected terribly well in the demo. The first five dungeons roughly will be basically the same in each playthrough, albeit with different dialogue and interactions, but after that point there will be a split in the story path based on who you leave behind, which will branch out even further on each path. There will be a converging of those paths closer to the end of the story, but still with some VERY distinct differences based on your initial decision.
Game Page Presentation: Honestly, didn't even really think about this, but I'm glad you brought it up. Yes, I will spend some time clarifying the trigger warning. It's mostly due to the language present in the game, and some of the animated violence in cutscenes. I think the worst of it in the demo is the first boss getting decapitated, but I mean... it's a pixelated sprite. There's going to be a fair bit more gory cutscenes later on, but nothing much worse than what was seen here. There will also be scenes including depictions of torture. I will clarify all of that so that it's not just a generic content warning. I will also spend some time modifying the tagline and synopsis to be more words better. To make better word mouth. To... uh... make sense? Yeah, let's go with that.
Anyway, thank you again, this was incredibly helpful. I intend to make a lot of adjustments in the final release, and absolutely am open to feedback, so this was great. That said, I want to avoid falling into the trap of constantly updating a demo, so what you see here is what you get for now.
Difficulty: I should probably tone it down quite a bit, considering the number of deaths in the first dungeon. It's the first dungeon. It's not meant to be quite that difficult. Granted, dying isn't TERRIBLY costly, and it does encourage optimizing your equipment, but still. I'll be doing a LOT more balancing before the full release.
Level Requirements: So, there was a reason that equipping weapons was locked behind a level requirement. It has to do with the locker in the Keep. The one that allows you to move items between save files and playthroughs. Essentially, with that locker, you could put a level 99 weapon onto a level 1 character without the requirement. That said, I will admit it can be very frustrating to find an obviously better weapon only to find you can't use it yet.
On the one hand, I wanted the player to have equipment that they can use as soon as they level up, rather than leveling up and basically needing to wait before getting better stuff. On the other hand, then you've got an inventory full of stuff you can't use. I'll definitely do some modifications, maybe adjust the drop rates to set the equipment to your level, and only RARELY provide equipment above your level, but I'll have to think it through.
Oh, and as a side note, DEX determines how fast your ATB gauge fills. The idea being that if you use an underleveled weapon just for its special effect, eventually you'll be too slow to really make good use of it. Really should have described that better in game. My bad.
Consistent Visual Language: This is a two parter. One, the tutorials. Yep, that's bad consistency. I'll fix that. I wanted to give the characters some dialogue to represent their personality a bit more, but that... doesn't really come through in a tutorial about mechanics. Also, yes, I will add tutorials for each of the stats and what they actually do in one of those tutorials. Maybe the one where it describes item comparisons?
Second, I noticed that you immediately went for the red item bags in the dungeon, but occasionally missed a chest or two. Granted, the only chests you missed were tier 1 chests that typically don't contain great loot, but frankly it should be obvious what can be interacted with and what can't. I'll work on that.
Boss Fight: Ironically, I was trying to add additional gimmicks that fix the "damage sponge" boss that most RPG's seem to fall in to. Changing elements was the gimmick I went for with this boss. The HP bar changes color based on the bosses elemental weakness. Unfortunately, the only way to do that was to essentially spawn in a new enemy, which heals it. I can work on an alternative solution that maybe spawns it in at the HP of the enemy that was despawned. Shouldn't be too tough to figure out.
As for the slimes, those were included because of one specific feature: Kill skills. Certain characters (Damien especially, but everyone has them) have skills in their skill trees that proc extra abilities when they kill an enemy. It could be additional HP regen, stacking Overkill damage, damage resistance, etc. Adding minions to boss fights essentially means you can proc those abilities during longer encounters. That's great later on, but I guess it's not really necessary if you literally don't have any of those skills available to you yet. Maybe a later boss fight would have them make more sense, but not the first boss.
Narrative: I agree that you don't really get to spend enough time with any of the characters to develop any sort of emotional attachment to them, but I'm not entirely sure how to fix that, to be honest. Something tells me that making the prologue an hour long isn't the solution. I'm open to feedback, and I'll do some thinking about that myself, but I don't exactly have a solution right away.
As for the differences between playthroughs, yes, you will see cutscenes play out quite differently depending on who you leave behind. The actual progression of the storyline and which dungeons and enemies you face will actually change as well, but this isn't reflected terribly well in the demo. The first five dungeons roughly will be basically the same in each playthrough, albeit with different dialogue and interactions, but after that point there will be a split in the story path based on who you leave behind, which will branch out even further on each path. There will be a converging of those paths closer to the end of the story, but still with some VERY distinct differences based on your initial decision.
Game Page Presentation: Honestly, didn't even really think about this, but I'm glad you brought it up. Yes, I will spend some time clarifying the trigger warning. It's mostly due to the language present in the game, and some of the animated violence in cutscenes. I think the worst of it in the demo is the first boss getting decapitated, but I mean... it's a pixelated sprite. There's going to be a fair bit more gory cutscenes later on, but nothing much worse than what was seen here. There will also be scenes including depictions of torture. I will clarify all of that so that it's not just a generic content warning. I will also spend some time modifying the tagline and synopsis to be more words better. To make better word mouth. To... uh... make sense? Yeah, let's go with that.
Anyway, thank you again, this was incredibly helpful. I intend to make a lot of adjustments in the final release, and absolutely am open to feedback, so this was great. That said, I want to avoid falling into the trap of constantly updating a demo, so what you see here is what you get for now.
Thrall Review
author=TheRpgmakerAddict
Maybe made a pre-made setup? With heroes already decently equipped and levelled, with the warning that you can actually "do better" playing the prologue?
Ooh, I like that idea. Removes the tedium of doing it all over again, but still encourages playing the game.
author=TheRpgmakerAddict
Well first one is not too bad, its the second that has many phases but its ok. A LOT depends on the equipment you possess.
Very true, I actually just recently got some feedback regarding the difficulty, which is to test the game without using the best gear I find, and instead use kind of mediocre gear and see how I do. I'll be doing a lot of that when balancing the final product. But essentially yes, this game does focus heavily on the equipment you find, although as you find good gear the idea is that you should be able to use that equipment for several levels. Ultimately it's just the initial part of finding your first good set of drops that can cause some major challenges.
Thrall Review
Wow, thanks so much for the review! I really appreciate the detailed look at a lot of the mechanics, and the feedback you've given.
I'll definitely consider adding an option to discard equipment from the menu, although once shops become available it probably won't be used as much. Still, could be a handy feature to have.
As for the prologue, yeah I should include an option to skip it, but the problem then is both jumping player levels up to level 3, as well as providing equipment for them so they can jump right into the first boss fight and dungeon. Haven't figured out how I want to do that yet. Unfortunately, saving isn't a great option right now, due to the unusual nature of this particular save system. I may be able to find a way around that, however.
And aww, I was really hoping I'd avoided the "damage sponge" boss with some unique gimmicks, but I guess it wouldn't hurt to reduce its HP bit.
Anyway, thanks for the review! I'll definitely take your feedback into consideration!
I'll definitely consider adding an option to discard equipment from the menu, although once shops become available it probably won't be used as much. Still, could be a handy feature to have.
As for the prologue, yeah I should include an option to skip it, but the problem then is both jumping player levels up to level 3, as well as providing equipment for them so they can jump right into the first boss fight and dungeon. Haven't figured out how I want to do that yet. Unfortunately, saving isn't a great option right now, due to the unusual nature of this particular save system. I may be able to find a way around that, however.
And aww, I was really hoping I'd avoided the "damage sponge" boss with some unique gimmicks, but I guess it wouldn't hurt to reduce its HP bit.
Anyway, thanks for the review! I'll definitely take your feedback into consideration!
Games - Tester
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