Roaming the land of Death (isometric)

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Jethro Neckbeard

Guest
Looking for any feedback on this project. This is my first game and it is nowhere near finished.

Roaming the land of death is an isometric game with questing, shooting off spells, looting, and other fun mechanics. I started this project almost 3 years ago but finding the motivation to work on it is hard and I completely stopped working on it for more than a year. I have had to rewrite a lot of my old code because I realised how bad it was. More info about history and update notes on my blog.

platform - windows
genre/tags - action/adventure/rpg
file size - 6MB (v1.30) - download
resolution - 1024x768
fullscreen - no

Features currently available...

Controls - WASD to move (8-way), mouse to aim, space key to use abilities, E R and arrow keys to interact with NPCs, mouse wheel or numbers to select spell
Environments - 2 "main rooms" (the second one is mostly empty), 2 "proto-dungeons", weather system and changing seasons in main rooms
Characters - 4 mage classes (ice, light, fire, shadow), 3 human classes (scientist, hunter, brute - still work in progress), 3-5 unique spells per class
Enemies - a few ranged/magic monsters, generic bosses with a buch of hp
NPCs - Trainers for mage classes and a guy that sells health and mana
Pets - Basic ranged follower pet
Options - 6 difficulties (scaling work in progress), 3 cheats (I use them for testing), some testing options

Current screenshots

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BxH5DCtYEDGsT1dEVHdNMWh0OVU
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BxH5DCtYEDGsUDR4YVQ2ZkhwTHM


Features coming eventually...

more classes
upgradable weapons and armour
save/load system
more levels and quests
better interfaces
skill system
 

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Pelican

Guest
I've been waiting to get home to a stable internet connection to try this out, and I finally have. :)

Aesthetically, I looked at the screenshots and immediately expected to not be able to tell the background from the foreground due to the level of detail. I was absolutely wrong with this, it was very easy to distinguish the enemies, player, NPCs and quest things from trees and background textures. The depth perception is also done really well - I was walking around trees trying to find flaws in this, and couldn't find any. And the particle effects and lighting were great also, and the footprints were a really nice touch. :D
That said I thought the screen was very busy at times. Each of your enemies has both a health bar and text stating their health; personally I don't believe the latter is required, the HP bar is both easier/quicker to read than the text and it stops looking really cluttered when enemies are near each other.

Now for gameplay. Movement was good, though there was a point in the second quest where I got caught on the trees at the top and couldn't move, though this seemed to only happen in this location.

There were far too many enemies in this game, particularly as it's the start of the game. I was expecting to be eased into the game, instead when I started there were immediately about 10 enemies on my screen, and the next few minutes was a mad scramble to try to work out my controls, or to try to read what the guides were saying before the onslaught of bullets killed me and made me respawn away from them again. By the second quest this has gotten ridiculous, and instead of being fun it just became incredibly frustrating trying to move remotely near a gravestone with dozens of bullets headed my way at once. Over and over. Even after I destroyed all 10 gravestones the number of enemies made simple things like walking to the next quest area practically impossible. However, you did a really good job of this in some area - the group of dark mages in the bottom right corner was really enjoyable to fight - so I'm going to just assume you were getting a bit overzealous with the skeletons.

The bullet recharge is a god idea, particularly for having multiple abilities with varying power, but the recharge times are very high for a bullet hell style game like this one. Add the fact that the bullets are surprisingly slow, in fact slower than many of the enemies I encountered, it was a bit frustrating feeling a lot of the time like I could do nothing about the rain of bullets coming my way while I was waiting the full two seconds for my projectiles to recharge. In a bullet hell game, you want to be shooting or dodging all the time... and between the recharge time, running out of mana and the slow walking speed, I felt like a lot of the time I could do neither of these things. I'd recommend either scrapping the recharge time or the mana bar, since both of these will make you have to wait to shoot and therefore I think having both is unnecessary. The having multiple spells and being able to switch between them was a really nice idea though, one I haven't really seen before, which helped switch up the gameplay and make it interesting.

Finally, the quest system and the NPCs were really good to have in there, and having objectives was great for keeping me with something to do, whilst still allowing me to explore. My only gripe with this was it would be nice to have an action button which activated the teleporters, rather than accidentally walking into it and appearing somewhere else. But that didn't really detract much, and overall those aspects of the game were good, and interesting. :)

For an example of a bullet hell/exploration game, I'd recommend giving Realm of the Mad God a look at (http://www.realmofthemadgod.com/), just because the fighting style seems very similar to what you're trying to achieve, and has classes too. :)
 
J

Jethro Neckbeard

Guest
Thank you for your thorough feedback. I will be making a few changes to the next version based on your recommendations.
I agree that there are too many enemies in the first part of the game, but I have them there for testing purposes I just need to remember to delete them or activate my movement cheat when testing. Yes, I will nerf the skeleton spawns.
With the ability cooldowns its notable that there is always a low cost fast ability (1), and with no global cooldown it should be available when others aren't.
Some other issues like running out of mana will be solved in time with potions and various temporary buffs.
I tried playing RotMG as you suggested, and it made for an interesting comparison of mechanics.
Cheers again for trying my game! :)
 
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FROGANUS

Guest
Tried it briefly. Might be able to give it a proper try later but i'll say, it definitely seems WAY BUSY..
Don't get me wrong, the content looks cool, I like the stylistic direction, but you know how they say, for your first game, if you scale way back and narrow way down in scope, you can focus on the fundamental experience of completing something cohesive.
Perhaps consider do a side-version of the game that is just a clean lite version, maybe focusing on just one of the characters for now?
Let me get back to you tho. I'll investigate further. It does look cool.
 
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Pelican

Guest
The enemy count is definitely better. I could get through it without doing the frustrating grinding from the last time. And the reduced cooldown made a whole lot of difference, even if it was just a tenth of a second for some moves. :)
The locations are looking better too, which was a nice touch.
Tried it briefly. Might be able to give it a proper try later but i'll say, it definitely seems WAY BUSY..
Don't get me wrong, the content looks cool, I like the stylistic direction, but you know how they say, for your first game, if you scale way back and narrow way down in scope, you can focus on the fundamental experience of completing something cohesive.
Perhaps consider do a side-version of the game that is just a clean lite version, maybe focusing on just one of the characters for now?
Let me get back to you tho. I'll investigate further. It does look cool.
I'd agree to some extent, particularly with the different characters to choose from, it seems you're being very ambitious with those. It's probably worth just limiting the game to the mages for now, making sure everything is functioning okay and works well with them, and then perhaps when the game is all working how you want it, then putting in other characters. Right now it's probably most important to make sure everything else if functioning as it should, in a clean and simple version, before adding additional content.

But this game is definitely promising, and I'm looking forward to further developments. :)
 
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FROGANUS

Guest
okay so i played a little more. it works on my super dinky laptop.. its slow, but that's mostly just the first area, which like I commented upon at first glance, we're kinda plopped down straight into a busy area. understandable to have much of what you're working on right at the beginning as its a work in progress, but i might recommend making some introduction/lower-traffic starting area so we can figure out how to move before having to strafe monsters. that said, once i learned to strafe monsters and found the dungeon and strafed and blasted all those monsters it was cool. more about the dungeon experience for whatever its worth- it may have been my pc but the darkness was a bit disorienting.. felt the player should at least have a glow in his immediate area? it was like 4 orbs around me but I was standing in darkness? i guess what they say is that it's darkest directly beneath the lamp? but again my pc is tiny and wooden..
 
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Jethro Neckbeard

Guest
Updated to version 1.30. Thanks for your feedback! I will change the rate of fire on the small guys in the next one, I just forgot this time. Here's a preview of the water while I was testing it, it is a bit different now.
roaming death v1.3.jpg
 

YanBG

Member
- I like the health/mana bars

Negatives
- Font is a bit hard to read
- Slow movement speed
- With inventory opened the names of NPCs were showing on top of the stats text
- I can't move the equiped staff
- No info on the spell bar if i hover over them
- Merchant interaction is a very limited, do i have to progress to talk or see some items?
- Didn't see anything more in tutorial mode than usual
- I couldn't figure how to attack the big eye with the mage
- Esc closes the game, but i wanted to try another character
 
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