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Alvora Tactics

Explore the remains of the serpent Alvora in TRPG combat! · By Rad Codex

Potential improvements for the next game

A topic by Muspel created May 24, 2017 Views: 709 Replies: 3
Viewing posts 1 to 4

First off, I'd like to say that I enjoyed Alvora Tactics a lot. This isn't a "this game is bad and this is how to make it not bad", it's "this game is good and here's what might be worth trying to see if it can be better".


  • Passives seem to vary wildly in power, and a lot of them are so weak and situational that they just aren't really worth using-- take Gate Hand, for instance. I think it might make sense to have two different kinds of passives, Major and Minor, with a few slots for each. This way, even the weaker ones have a use.
  • Warpblade seems extremely overpowered, particularly Gate Onslaught. Simply bringing two or three Warpblades allows you to end nearly every single fight in one turn without every being in any danger-- just cast it, then use your move action to run away, and when the casts go off, every enemy will die. It's not like that's the only useful skill, either-- Gate Cross, Gate Slam, and Gate Trick are all quite good, as opposed to most other classes, which don't usually have the same kind of versatility. Might be worth toning down the damage of some of the abilities. The fact that they can do so much AoE damage without really needing to care about targeting like normal casters means that classes like Sorcerer and Gatekeeper lose some of their relevance.
  • Crafting items need to make it clearer whether they are trigger stones or materials, because the tooltips use the same layout. Compare Goop Gland to Strange Parts, for instance-- the former is socketed into items, while the latter is used to make them, but you wouldn't know without trying.
  • Enemy turns tend to "sync up" a bit too much, which means that you'll often have a situation where your entire team takes their turns, then you have 4-6 enemies take their turns all in a row-- often resulting in one of your party members getting ganged up on and murdered before you can react. It's possible to play around this, but it would probably be better if enemies alternated with the player a little bit more, perhaps by randomizing their starting "clock" value somewhat.
  • The lack of light in later areas is just kind of annoying in general. All it ends up doing is making you waste a weapon or passive slot. It could be that there's a way to make the darkness more interesting, but if not, I think it makes more sense to just have most levels be better lit.
  • Some of the block puzzles in later areas are a bit irritating to deal with, because your other party members often end up standing in the way of the blocks that you need to move. Absent that problem, the puzzles themselves are fine, so maybe make it so that the blocks ignore unit collision somehow.
  • It would be nice if, when you opened up the store to sell things, the unit inventory screens arranged in two rows, instead of one. That way, the sixth unit's inventory wouldn't be on top of the fifth.
  • On a related note, it would be nice if opening up new bags/inventory screens while looting tried to move them so that they wouldn't be covering up other windows that are already open, so that we don't have to drag stuff around as much.
  • A few of the early game encounters seem to be out of line in terms of difficulty. For instance, I came across an room that had you fight something like fifteen lava worms at the same time, long before I had the AoE or the items to deal with them properly. It's one thing to have hard encounters that you can overcome, but these guys would kill my entire party before I got a second turn.


Developer(+1)

Thanks for the feedback! I agree with a lot of these. Some notes:

  • Passive system changes aren't likely to happen this game but this feedback is good so I can plan future games' system. I like the Major/Minor idea.
  • Agreed, I nerfed Warpblade a bit this patch. Gate: Onslaught is probably still too good. I'm considering making it take more than a single turn to cast.
  • Both can be socketed, so maybe I should add an icon that indicates the item is a material?
  • This is how it was in Voidspire, which did cause a small issue. However, I agree with your critique. I think this is a result of having such large parties. With a 6-character team, it's almost inevitable that you and/or the enemy will secure a KO in one turn because of the huge amount of damage you can put out. I may go down to a 5-man team next game.
  • I was hoping it would be an interesting trade-off and tactical consideration. But I should definitely offer more possibilities to solve lack of light at least (augments that provide light? material types that create brightly glowing weapons? etc).
  • Yep, agreed.
  • Also agreed, the Sell UI needs work.
  • As does the looting UI.
  • That particular encounter is one of the hardest, yeah. I should have added more bones and corpses in the path leading up to it. : P

Again, thanks for this post; good feedback like this helps me make decisions about future patches and games.

(1 edit)

For what it's worth, I think that the lack of light would have been okay if it was a lot more rare-- instead of having entire tilesets with very little light, maybe there would just be a room here and there, maybe lots of torches you can light, and a couple of enemy types that get much stronger while they're standing in darkness.

Adding stuff here to avoid multi-threads:

Lack of light: Would be nice to be able to set a lantern on the floor before/during a fight.

Recruitment Screen: Would like to be able to see Races' specific bonuses when hovering over Race names before buying a new member.