Review of the demo

[Herborist]

If you're just stacking fireballs with Sorceror you're...also not using them optimally (you should be attacking first, casting spells once you've taken damage--probably HALPMEH or CYDSTEPP because your high attack makes them more mana-efficient, but fireballs are fine if you don't have something better).

General wizard strategy: build up max mana and abuse the fireball spell
General sorcerer strategy: build up max mana and abuse the fireball spell... after auto-attacking a few times

Oh wow, such a big difference! They sound different on paper, but when you're actually playing, it's basically the game class.

[metroid composite]

Hm...Side note, I'm not sure how I feel about potions and mana potions taking up inventory space. I end up leaving them all on the ground until I actually start using them (typically against the boss). And there's no real strategy to it, just "oh yeah, want to use potion now; fetch!"

As for the whole convert from ground thing...am I the only one who found DD more fun when I didn't know about converting from ground? It meant that if I lucked out and found the three best glyphs right at the start, it still wasn't the best move to pick them all up right away, because I might be preventing myself from getting two glyph conversions later. Or there would be interesting situations like "I'd rather have CYDSTEPP over fireballs...but if I converted CYDSTEPP I could get two extra glyph conversions, and fireballs are a decent substitute. Is that worth it?" It added an extra layer of interesting decisions for me. (Don't get me wrong--I convert from ground all the time these days; powerful trick is powerful. I just think it makes for easier decisions).

[TigerKnee]

General wizard strategy: build up max mana and abuse the fireball spell
General sorcerer strategy: build up max mana and abuse the fireball spell... after auto-attacking a few times

Oh wow, such a big difference! They sound different on paper, but when you're actually playing, it's basically the game class.

If you want to put it that way, "auto-attack and shoot fireballs if you have it" is the strategy for just about every class.

[metroid composite]

Beat me to the punch, TigerKnee

Interesting note: I've seen multiple copies of a glyph in a dungeon; especially the easy dungeon seems to have two copies of each of the glyphs it spawns. But I'm pretty sure I've seen some duplication in normal dungeons too (with two copies of BURNDAYRAZ). Seems like it must be intentional because it's so consistent, but it's just...weird; I guess it's there to train newbies "YOU SHOULD CONVERT EXTRA GLYPHS".

(Granted, glyph duplication was possible in the freeware through some super-rare store purchases, but I seem to recall that acted weird there, so I'm wary of it. It was something like if you have BLUDTOPOWA active and you pick up another BLUDTOPOWA, suddenly you're not active anymore. Or maybe it was converting the second BLUDTOPOWA that turned off the first one...? Something like that).

[metroid composite]

Totally unrelated note that is more just silly and fun than anything but...

I am amused by the fact that you can get higher level than the bosses in the Easy dungeon by picking Fighter. You can get first strike on the boss due to level gap, it's great!

[Herborist]

Hm...Side note, I'm not sure how I feel about potions and mana potions taking up inventory space. I end up leaving them all on the ground until I actually start using them (typically against the boss). And there's no real strategy to it, just "oh yeah, want to use potion now; fetch!"

As for the whole convert from ground thing...am I the only one who found DD more fun when I didn't know about converting from ground? It meant that if I lucked out and found the three best glyphs right at the start, it still wasn't the best move to pick them all up right away, because I might be preventing myself from getting two glyph conversions later. Or there would be interesting situations like "I'd rather have CYDSTEPP over fireballs...but if I converted CYDSTEPP I could get two extra glyph conversions, and fireballs are a decent substitute. Is that worth it?" It added an extra layer of interesting decisions for me. (Don't get me wrong--I convert from ground all the time these days; powerful trick is powerful. I just think it makes for easier decisions).

I've known about it since I started playing the freeware version, and it made things MUCH easier. You either left them behind and waited until the boss, or you tried to use them either way. I never found the mana bonus to be that good until the boss when I really needed to spam skills.

As for potions, I like that system, but that's just me.

General wizard strategy: build up max mana and abuse the fireball spell
General sorcerer strategy: build up max mana and abuse the fireball spell... after auto-attacking a few times

Oh wow, such a big difference! They sound different on paper, but when you're actually playing, it's basically the game class.

If you want to put it that way, "auto-attack and shoot fireballs if you have it" is the strategy for just about every class.

Not every class uses fireballs, not every class uses potions the same way, not ever class has the same auto-attack modifiers (fire strike, +initial damage, +damage after 1/2 hp, etc.).

I don't believe that the difference between sorcerer and wizard is large enough. They're basically the same class with small differences that result in a play experience that's far too similar.

[Nandrew]

Little question. Mouseovers. I didn't know what the potions did until I saw the little i at the bottom right corner giving the tooltip with information.

SUGGESTION: use a tooltip when you hover over the skill or potion box, not just over the little i in the corner.

We'll try clarify that, good point.

- How 'bout prayers and gods?

Haha, don't worry people -- gods are making it in, and we want them to be better than the freeware ones. We just hadn't refined them enough for the demo.

- Do the potions ever backfire? If a potion heals for 40%, don't just say it does mostly. Just say it does 40%.

I get what you're saying. I think the Aliens reference was rather strained and weak anyway, so it could do with a good humour scrubbing.

- The conversion icon has a hover effect, so it looks like it is clickable, like a button. Yet it doesn't do anything. Other icons don't have hover effects, so there is no reasoning that they are clickable. I know it does something when you drag a glyph to it, but it looks like it can also do something when you just click on it without dragging something to it.
SUGGESTION: Remove the mouse hover effect when not dragging items to the icon.

Several conversion-related visual/information effects will be revised including this one. For example ...

EDIT: Perhaps one of the devs can answer this - will we be able to convert glyphs without picking them up in the new version? We're not able to do so in the demo.

... you actually can, it's just a little confuzzling at the moment -- if you click on the conversion "?" when you're inside the item pickup pane, it'll convert off the ground.

We'll fix that up soon.

- Boss drop items. The high value items.

Boss drops take up inventory space because technically everything in your inventory will have market value when the Kingdom goes into full swing: starting kits like your initial health/mana potions will be zeroed out, but everything else has value, no matter how small. So occasionally (and this will tend to happen late-game with a more developed Kingdom), you'll have to make a choice to convert one of the less valuable items in your inventory to make room for the much more lucrative boss head. We'll be putting an item's market value into its info pane for ease of reference.

We also want to keep room open for boss items having particular uses in special situations. Bonuses and stuff. Blah blah spoiler risk.

I actually beat all three of the hard dungeons first try. It's the Normal Swamp that took three or four tries. (On one of the tries, Ssseth's physical defence somehow got set to 100%. Is this intentional, like "if you try to fireball Ssseth her defence goes up" or is this a bug?)

There's one or two ways that could currently happen, but I don't recall any of those methods being available in the Swamp. I'll try recreate your error and see what I come up with.

ENDISWALL is...useable but not that great--

Glad you like the glyphs, will consider tweaking the wallbreaker (though its side effects as a level-clearance utility tend to become more important later ).

And...Elf going from 2 mana per conversion to 1 mana per conversion? I...don't think I like that, to be honest. Math time!

Still thinking about that. It's quite possible that it will be moving back to 2, and I'll be using elf characters for the next while to test that.

And...one final note--I'm...not actually that fond of the new art. Now, I'm a mathematician not an artist, so don't take me as an art critic worth listening to but...I think what's bugging me is that in the freeware I could at least pretend that several of the classes were female. Classes like Sorceror and Assassin and Tinker and Crusader had no obvious gender hints, and only a few classes were explicit in their gender (Gorgon female, Transmuter, Wizard, and Bloodmage male). The class portraits in the demo are of...well...ugly males. Don't take this the wrong way: they're very well-drawn ugly males. But...they're just not as appealing to me.

We actually want to get male and female versions of the characters into the final version, resources permitting.

Interesting note: I've seen multiple copies of a glyph in a dungeon; especially the easy dungeon seems to have two copies of each of the glyphs it spawns. But I'm pretty sure I've seen some duplication in normal dungeons too (with two copies of BURNDAYRAZ). Seems like it must be intentional because it's so consistent, but it's just...weird; I guess it's there to train newbies "YOU SHOULD CONVERT EXTRA GLYPHS".

Easy dungeons all have glyph copies for the reason you mentioned (though it's also because introducing fewer glyphs at a time may be less overwhelming for newbies, we hope).

The wizard's +1 glyph is currently always a fireball to increase the chances of him finding it early (unless you're willing to fork out for the Glyph Magnet). Still trying to decide if players would value the increased fireball find chance or the overall "glyph spread" more, especially now that you've discovered the PISORF's extreme usefulness.



Whew, these are a lot of comments. I'm reading them all carefully, sorry if I can't respond to everything directly.

[Herborist]

Are kingdom preparations (like fireball magnet) one-time uses, or will we always have access to them?

[Nandrew]

Are kingdom preparations (like fireball magnet) one-time uses, or will we always have access to them?

If you choose the upgrade, you'll always have it (unless you demolish/swap out the prep slot).

There's two main choice points, however:
1) one preparation per building, which you guys have already experienced. I'm sure that glyph magnet is popular, but it forbids you from selecting other preps like the mana and health boost swapouts -- to be honest, I rarely pick the magnet nowadays unless I know I'm entering a particularly restrictive dungeon, and even then I find I get by nicely on the Blacksmith weapons to carry me past level 1 and 2.

2) only limited preparation slots per building, but a lot of preps to put in those slots. A fully-upgraded building in the main game has an average of 6 preparations on offer, only 4 of which it can hold at a time. You'll need to choose which ones you want quite carefully, since even though you're allowed to "respec" later, the gold cost is quite high (you'll notice an early draft of an "unload preparation" function if you click on a preparation before dungeon selection).

[TigerKnee]

I've only just realized how to use Preparation, which makes me feel kind of dumb. My impressions:

Megasmith: All of them are pretty good.

Religion: Boss scout seems okay. I find the player one iffy.

Magic: Fireball magnet is good. The 2 swappers will probably see some use (like for health swaps for Rogues I suppose)

Thief: I don't like these ones.

The double gold one seems to only pay off 4-5 gold overall while preventing me from buying early Fine Swords or something. I suppose there might be dungeons where the gold supply is richer overall but I didn't find it useful for the current ones.

The random chest one took away my gold and then I proceeded to get percentage increases from my base 2 gold or so. Eww. I guess it would be better if I took it alone without any other preparation but it's too luck-based for me.

Smuggler's Den would probably be better in a teleport-heavy dungeon I suppose. Actually I liked the concept of this one anyway.