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A jam submission

Tower of KalemonvoView game page

Hack and slash ARPG inspired by Diablo 1
Submitted by osur (@kalemonvo) — 2 days, 23 hours before the deadline
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Tower of Kalemonvo's itch.io page

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Viewing comments 26 to 7 of 26 · Next page · Last page
Submitted(+1)

I learned a bit more about the game playing it this time, and while I still wouldn't call these sorts of games fun for me, I did get sucked in for a little while.

Developer

thanks for the stream!

Submitted(+1)

Gave it a shot, looks good. Works fine on Manjaro, didn't see any bugs or glitches.

  • Minor thing, the files with ToK all have a space following the 'K'. Can get a bit annoying having to escape it on the command line.
  • I like the little ticks when hovering over stuff in the menus, should also have some sort of clunky SFX when selecting and pressing back. Entering Options menu doesn't play a sound.
  • Scrolling through the control menu with the mouse wheel is really slow
  • I dig the story setup, it got me hooked. Being a tower, do the levels eventually brighten up with windows and such? Or is this "tower" more like the donjon in the Tower of London?
  • There's very little feedback on misses (at least I think they're misses), I thought hit registration was broken at first. I say this as a diehard Morrowind fanboy so I should be used to misses based on dice rolls, but I don't really like these diablo-clone-type games.
  • It's not very clear that the doors are interactible, I thought they opened on contact at first. Should have a highlight on hover and a sound playing for them opening.
  • The art style is off to good start though it feels a bit plain. It needs either more color, more depth, or more contrast. The HUD elements in particular just don't pop like I think they should.
  • Adding ice damage to your weapon makes the damage font way too dark on the character stats page, it would read a bit better with a light blue instead of this dark navy color.
  • It's annoying having to retype the name of your save when overwriting, the textbox should start off with whatever it was already named.

I'm not really a fan of these kinds of games, the pseudo-RTS perspective and control scheme have never clicked for me. I dig dungeon-crawling grinding games but blobbers and first-person games do it much better for me. So yeah, keep that in mind with some of the feedback.

Developer(+1)

Thanks for giving it a go! I'm glad it was able to run smoothly.

To address your points (feel free to skip this)

>Minor thing, the files with ToK all have a space following the 'K'.
Will change this

>I like the little ticks when hovering over stuff in the menus, should also have some sort of clunky SFX when selecting and pressing back. Entering Options menu doesn't play a sound.
Currently doing so

>I dig the story setup, it got me hooked. Being a tower, do the levels eventually brighten up with windows and such? Or is this "tower" more like the donjon in the Tower of London
Yeah, one of the levels has a skybox and weather effects! There's some screenshots of it on the game's page

>There's very little feedback on misses (at least I think they're misses), I thought hit registration was broken at first. I say this as a diehard Morrowind fanboy so I should be used to misses based on dice rolls, but I don't really like these diablo-clone-type games
Noted. The face that it's too much for Morrowind fans tells me something needs to change

>It's not very clear that the doors are interactible, I thought they opened on contact at first. Should have a highlight on hover and a sound playing for them opening.
Did both, will be available in future releases

>The art style is off to good start though it feels a bit plain. It needs either more color, more depth, or more contrast. The HUD elements in particular just don't pop like I think they should
I'll mess around with colors and see what I can come up with

>Adding ice damage to your weapon makes the damage font way too dark on the character stats page, it would read a bit better with a light blue instead of this dark navy color.
Got it. Will change

>It's annoying having to retype the name of your save when overwriting, the textbox should start off with whatever it was already named
Will change this.

Thanks again for your detailed feedback!

Submitted(+1)

Here's a video with commentary:

https://mega.nz/file/qQEXiDrL#Q6bjwkpY5LlpK7qeU3lVbl7aLIfcDAKz7sh73aor-iE

I hope the audio levels are fine, and the game is going to be helpful in seeing the game through the eyes of someone pretty new to orblikes.

Submitted

Putting this here, so you definetly read this.

I don't know what happened this morning, but nothing good came of it. 

Enemies, especially the big burly ones in lvl 1 can walk through closed doors without opening them.

Sometimes Barrels you aim at but don't shoot, then aim away can retain their highlight.

The half invisible Enemies on floor 2 are pretty much unhitable, is this intended due to them being phased out a bit? Didn't feel like this before tho.

I don't know what I did, but at some Point all my Potions just disappeared from my Inventory. After that the Inventory in that run and all subsequent once was completely broken. Found a Ring, immediately locked both ring-slots to it, and afterwards in every run, all Rings I found converted to that ring, and stayed forcefully equipped on those Slots. Potions randomly kept disappearing. Magic Books didn't get consumed anymore, so if I found one, I immediately could learn up to whatever level I wanted, provided I had the Int for it. That last one led me to think, wouldn't it be better to swap int/mind around? so mind allows you to have more spellslots as needed, but int increases mana. Since you're maxing int anyway to get the spells to a higher level, and it also increases wand damage. as it is currently, I was running around with a ton of spellslots and wand damage ( but no wand) and only base mana, as I had to put every Point into int to keep up with spells. Obviously I wouldn't have the option to keep up as closely, since spellbooks are ment to be consumed, but still.

Other Items randomly duplicated or changed aswell upon moving them through the Inventory.

I'll do a clean redownload later and see if I can replicate any of this, but my current version apparently is broken beyond repair. 

Developer

good morning,

I didn’t upload any new version, this is the same one as DD! Interesting.

The mauler and barrel thing I’m aware of and I don’t think it’s a big deal, I’ll fix that by DD.

The faceless have evasion, meaning they dodge arrows a lot (30% I think of all arrows just phase through).

The inventory is what I’m most concerned about. When did this happen first? When you do another run, do you mean you hit “Try Again”, or you go back to the main menu, or you restart the game? Once you restart the game all inventory data is of course wiped, especially if you don’t save, so the fact that an issue exists is very unexpected. If that’s the case, do me a favor and send me a debug log of a fresh start. Just start the game, play until you experience the issue, then send me a text file that’ll be made in your AppData -> Local Low folder. 

I’m curious to see what’s breaking! 

Thanks for playing again and breaking the game, this is a very interesting start to my day- and sorry about the bad format, I’m phone posting from bed!

Submitted(+1)

It happened on try again and going through the menu, I have been unable to reproduce it after closing and reopening tho. If I recall correctly it happened while dragging a Potion around, probably over another Potion. 

The only TextFiles created are Player and Player-Prev, do you mean those? I'll do a couple of Runs over the Day, trying to reproduce the Issue.

Sorry I can't help more on that, I don't fully know what I did when it happened, or why, or how to reliably reproduce it at this Point.

Developer

that’s fine! If it happened on Try Again then I have a general idea of the issue, it’s just something I thought I fixed before!
Yeah, “Player” is the file in question, but it gets overwritten on every run.

At this point I’m more concerned about the basically guaranteed crash. What level does it start on? 

Regardless, you’ve done more than enough. Take a break and do other things. DD is over, solider, you did your duty. 

Submitted

>What Level does it start on?

Usually I crash once in the Level after the first Boss, then just randomly. I still think its just my GPU being broken tho.

I don't know anymore. Maybe its the saving thats breakiing my GPU? Anyway, this Time it didn't, so here's a finished Run. Finally. Don't you think that Crossbow is a little broken maybe Kalemonvo-dev? Found it after everything was dead tho, so I couldn't try it properly.
Wanted to go down melee, but that just doesn't work out at the End, or I was getting horrible luck, so I had to do most of it with a 1 damage Wand. Got carried by 5% Lifesteal and 5%Manasteal. On that note, your Values don't really make a lot of Sense on the 5% steal I think, highest I ever got was ~10%, and highest damage was ~20 on a really good hit, so at most I'd be getting 2 health. But since minimum is 1, as soon as you get 1% Lifesteal, you don't need more to get basically maximized returns. Also Lifesteal doesn't stack it seems, so if I equip 2 Items with % Lifesteal on them it sometimes stops working until I re-equip one of them completely.
Your shooty Bugs break when you break LoS, they stop moving and firing as soon as you do, trivializing them. At one Point I notice my Armor had disappeared, but no Idea why. Also was unable to reproduce the Potion Bug I mentioned on Itch. You can equip a +Int thing, learn a spell and unequip it to just keep them learned. And when you have Manabarrier, Enemies can hit you into negative Mana. The Blue blob above your Head also never disappears as soon as you activate the Barrier, even if it runs out. Theres a big difference in loot quality and variety after the Titan, it really ramps up better there. How many Levels are planned after that? Because it seems like its just starting at that Point.
The Rockthingy with the Skeleton in it on the Floor before this one in one of the CornerRooms floats a bit above the Ground.
Loot-Goblin gave me a regular Bracer for 3 regular Bracers, kind of rude. Legendary Chests gave me either nothing or Potions, I really think Chests should give you something, and legendaries at least something decent.

(1 edit) (+1)

did a blind playthrough without reading any of the other comments on your itch, so please pardon me if any of this is repetitive!

  • intro lore dump needs a lot of work. hard to read font and it would be much nicer if it scrolled, also, it seems like a lot of fairly meaningless exposition that would be better handled in-game.
  • get into first dungeon. immediately appreciate the atmosphere and pace. 2560 resolution is way too crisp and sharp, almost eye-burningly crisp, so i scale it down to 1280, which looks a million times better and appropriate for a diablo clone.
  • get cracking. Level layouts spawn nicely. You’ll have to comment more on how you wrote this level spawner since it seems to produce great results. 
  • slow repetitive pace is quite hypnotic and satisfying. Sometimes i feel i’m playing remastered D1. I miss having a comfy hub area to return to. I miss being able to sell items for gold. then i realize that isn’t how you intended this game to be and i settle into the premise. 
  • find books of healing, bloodlust, and fireball. try to make a spellsword build which is usually how i try to play these sorts of things. I find a big bonk mace with some mana steal and damage buffs, and some rings that give damage increases… now we’re cooking with gas. easy to bait enemies into walking around the corner and whacking them one at a time just like in diablo. it’s easy to heal-spam myself with the healing spell, which appears to take no mana. it’s more fun to blast away with fireball and then finish off the mob with the mace. big giants clip through walls. 
  • the seemingly random colored magic/rare items that your RNG generates look pretty silly. I’m wielding a bright green mace and wearing a purple hat. It looks funny, but we’ll go with it. I’m really disappointed the other equipment meshes don’t change, like the shirt being a shirt model, and differences in leather and metal armor.
  • not as easy to switch and equip items, sometimes it seems they aren’t responding to my inputs, sometimes they get stuck, disappear or do other weird behaviors.
  • been playing over an hour now. I enjoy meeting the NPC and finding his unique shield. enjoy finding Tomo’s models on floor 4 (i think?) and tearing through their ranks using my combination of bloodlust-fireball-healing and the mana stealing mace. The reaction sounds of the goatmen, the zombies, and the sun cultists all kind of sound similar, can you make them more distinctive? 



the colors and more opulent feeling on the upper halls level are nice but i think transparency looks kind of strange. 


  • I make it to the upper halls. I’m having a grand old time, love the loading screens. see big fat golden idol. (check how it looks in 1280 vs. 2560. 1280 looks great, 2560 looks awful, with all the triangle edges visible.) click on him and my inventory pops up. I think oh, this may be one of the crafting stations you mentioned in the thread. drag and drop some items and it spits out a sweet rare ring with many affixes. 
  • attempt to equip ring. doesn’t equip. attempt to switch some other inventory items. now nothing in the inventory is working. try to load my last save. it doesn’t open, stuck on loading save screen. Game is frozen and I have to ctrl-alt-del to exit.



overall a super enjoyable experience and i will give it another go from scratch once i’ve gotten over the grief of losing my character to this weird bug. 

Developer(+1)

Oh man, sorry to hear the golden gobbo griefed you! I was able to cause a bug myself before DD, but I didn't think anyone would be able to replicate it since it required a very specific and rare combination of item -affixes. I'll eventually need to correct this, but I think the % of people that reach him is about 10-15 of all players (even less who figure out the goblin, and even less those who feed it the required affixes), so it'll wait for the full update which'll pop up sometime next month.

The level spawner is simple in design, just ties prefabs, but I gave it a giant list of clauses, edgecases, special circumstances and so on in order to try and get a good feeling dungeon!

The saves are also very clumsy after the Halls of Pain, so much so they are confirmed to work less than 1/3rd of the time! That's also getting fixed... I hope.

I'm glad you had fun and enjoyed what time you spent playing! The goal now is to iron things out so that not everything starts breaking apart after level 3!

Submitted(+1)

Hello, finally got around to playing this for a few hours. It's basically just Diablo, so I had a blast.

Ranged does seem pretty OP, like everyone else is saying. I ended up with a lifestealing bow and two rings that added poison damage, so I rarely needed to heal, and anything that wasn't immune to poison died really quick. 

Stuff I noticed and wrote down during the playthrough:

Can see Cult apprentice's magic hand and other particle effects through walls.

The way enemies can hide behind walls is a little annoying as a ranged character. Could we get an outline for them? Maybe toggleable with alt, like items on the ground?

Or maybe a second circle of transparent wall around the cursor, so you can see stuff near walls without having to walk there.

I can't believe there's no town in a game that draws so heavily on Diablo 1. That's really ballsy, and I had to fight really hard to get rid of my "pick everything up" habit from every other ARPG.

Footsteps get pretty monotonous - multiply the pitch by a random amount between .9f and 1.1f for each footstep? 

The pathfinding seems able to handle long distances easily, so maybe let the player choose a destination on the map to walk to? Would make it easy to take a sip of water or whatever when you're going back from a dead end in the dungeon.

Shame that the skeletons don't have blood to show off the damage effect. Maybe they could get visual damage of a different sort?

Skeletons' glowing red eyes really should go out when they die.

Had an item land behind the stairs up on level 1, meaning I couldn't interact with it?

2nd-floor boss was quite the damage sponge. I assume he was healing? Don't think I could've killed him with the bow, so I just facetanked him and drowned myself in healing potions. Is he beatable with the bow? (In hindsight, probably should've used archery skills for burst DPS and he'd be manageable)

IHATETHEFACELESSIHATETHEFACELESSIHATETHEFACELESS

But they're the only enemy that really challenged me, so maybe they're not so bad.

I just noticed I got some spells with drawbacks, presumably from the menacing cauldron? That's great, I hope you expand on stuff like that.

5th floor seems way easier than the 3rd. Maybe because the Faceless are the only things that don't get wrecked by kiting, or maybe because I finally found a better bow.

I kinda miss some proper choke points; all the doors are three player-widths wide, but it was a lot of fun back in Diablo 1 to use the narrow doorways to manage how many enemies you had to fight.

Sun cultists don't seem to get bloody on their back as they take damage? 

I really like how varied the skeletons look. It's nice!

I feel like a lot of the later melee weapons would be better as early-game weapons - something like a cleaver or sickle shouldn't be stronger than a sword, surely. It would also help with the lack of variety in the early dungeon.

Had two cases of a temptress in the Upper Halls whose death animation didn't trigger. Clearly dead - collission was off - but she was still standing up. Both were poisoned - perhaps that had something to do with it?

Regarding the Burrows and Breeding Grounds, I noticed the phasmids(?) and parasite spreaders were doing something to the character, but I couldn't tell what effect it was having.

Had a behemoth in the Breeding Grounds that didn't lose collission on death - I could push it around by walking into it. Again, poisoned when it died.

Found a "maneuvrable padded coat" that claimed to increase defense at the cost of armor, but both its armor(8) and defense(13) were lower than the regular padded coat I was already wearing(17 and 18, IIRC).

I didn't make it past the Breeding Grounds because I couldn't find an exit to a higher level after killing everything. I thought there was supposed to be a level past that - am I mistaken? Did I miss something?


Anyway, great promise, rough around the edges; especially the player model's walk animation gets grating over time. Lots of fun though! 

Developer

Thanks for playing and congrats on reaching the end! As far as I can tell you're the 2nd person to make it that far, well done!

There is no exit in the Breeding Grounds, that's the final level as of now. It seems you missed the secret level you can access in the Burrows, which leads you to the Skeleton Pit dungeon. No exit there, just a Golden Goblin as a reward at the end.

Everything after the Halls of Pain I consider to be super unpolished - my goal is to now start on Lower Dungeons 2 and make my way up slowly. I'm glad you like the Faceless! I had a lot of fun making those.

As for choke points, I think in general I made a mistake by having some large enemies early on which then necessitated large doors. I think I'll fix this as the game progresses, at which point choke points will be a bit more important anyway.

The Phasmids spam a -Defense debuff on you, that's why the Bugmen tend to land hits so often!

Thanks again for the detailed feedback and for playing the game all the way through. It makes me glad people are enjoying their adventures

Submitted(+1)

Died at halls of pain (because almost no one dropped a potion for the entirety of the level).

- I'm not a fan of the genre (I just played diablo1 and dark stone on psx) and I liked the rpg progression ala diablo1. But everyone wants "heroes" this days, so having a no one as a character could cut the legs of your game in the long run.

- I confirm the starting bow is busted (because it has infinite range). I can play lame, and just strafe/atk for the whole dungeon (ever saw how you play marines in stracraft1?) and kill everything. This needs to be resolved asap, don't let the player play lame.

- I dunno how but I got two spells from nothing, regen hp and regen mana (for a cost). I survived till almost the end of the halls of pain thanks to the hp spell.

- Levels feels on the long side, and I dunno if this is a one way travel or you can find a town portal to save/sell etc

-  npc/diary text srcoll is on the slow side, but I admit I didn't check if you can speed it in the options.

Beside this, everything is great. Nothing but good stuff from atmosphere, music & effects, enemy roster and waves etc (but again I don't play this kind of games much, so refer to a fan). 

Developer(+1)

Thanks for the feedback! Just to clarify, you get the spells from the red cauldron after killing the Bloodguard.

Congrats on making it as far as the Halls of Pain! Most people die on the guard

Submitted(+1)

I killed the guard because I played lame :P (and slow magic)

after that, I dropped the bow  XD

Submitted (3 edits) (+1)

I still like the TitleScreen Image, but I think it might clash a bit with the Look of the Game itself. Its very yellow/beige-y, while the Game is more Grey/Blueish. The Loading Screens torch-flickering hitches a bit when the Level is actually loaded. And why am I waking up from the Floor, with a rather floaty animation at that? I didn't re-read the Introduction, but wasn't I venturing into the Tower itself to defeat Kalemonvo or something? Am I some kind of failed Experiment or Prisoner or something now?

Needs a Level Entrance. If I'm a Prisoner, a Cell. If I'm venturing in from the outside, a Door, a hole in the Floor to climb through or something like that. So I' not spawning in unescapeable nothingness.

I like the new Crates and other Doodads tho. Would be nice if regular Barrels would be also improved in their Placement tho, they still pretty often just stand seperated in the middle of the Room. Speaking of Rooms, it feels better, together with Enemy Placement. I don't know if you actually changed anything on that, but it feels more handcrafted, like a Room with a bunch of Alchemical Tables and Witches in it, rather then before where it was more random Monsters in Random Empty Rooms.

Bow feels a bit more useless then before, but maybe I'm just not in the mood for it today. Not that its a bad thing if it does, the Game seems to be intended for melee anyway. Would be nice to have a Quickswap button between 2 Sets of Weapons tho, so I could swap to Bow in the few Cases where it is needed. Or to a healing Weapon or something if I have one.

No broken Doors so far, but also no Healing Well, shame, I was kind of banking on one. Had one of the big Golems seemingly jump down from a Wall, but I think that may just have been me seeing something wrong in a glance.

Onto Floor 2.

Intelligence is said to increase spells lots by 1 each point, but doesn't. Could've sworn Boss was on FLoor 3 not 2. Oh well, with Bloodlust and Manarestore sword theres nothing to worry about. I could've sworn you said something about Quickslot for Pots auto-refilling aswell.

Crashed after a bit in Floor 3, due to GPU Failure. This usually only happens on Games my GPU isn't powerfull enough for, I know its an old GTX980, but your Game doesn't feel/look like it should need more. Luckily I saved, and loading works aswell. I'll beat this, and if it breaks my GPU. 

I'll have to edit this Comment tho, to have intermediate Saves of it, in case my whole PC Crashes, so please bear with me on that. Sorry.

My Fetish(?) looks like a Carrot. I have 2 Books of Fireball with different Images, also requiring 16 Int. I already know Fireball from a 12 Int Book tho. And I get Potions out of Bookstands. Fine, random Loot I suppose. Teleport to Exit works fine, forgot I had the Fireball thanks to the Books, and kept messing around with equipping/unequipping my trash Bow to deal with a ton of Skulls. Finally remembered and breezed through them.

Paladin is nice, really nice. I wasn't suspecting any Lore or NPCs, but seeing it made me smile. Dialogue feels a little packed tho. Maybe multiple seperate Windows on repeated interaction?

Nice Visual change in the Halls of Pain. Also nice Music. Nice Levers, something different.

I had to find a Staff to figure out multiple Books increase cost and Damage of the Spell. But is it really worth it investing hard into Int for that? Level 1 Fireball does 3 Mana-4 Damage, Level 3 9 Mana-12 Damage, its the same Ratio. Sure, you're casting basically 3 Times as fast at that Point, but for 4 Extra Int Points and a Staff? And without Staff it'd be 9 Extra Points in Int.

Rare chest had trash Loot inside it. Random Loot I suppose.  Goats sometimes slide along the FLoor and/or try to Pathfind into another Room to shoot you through the Walls.  But the Level Layout was nice, with the 4 Towers on the SIdes. Don't know if intended or lucky on my End.

Entering Upper Halls now.

Finally found the Loot Goblin. Also realized I had an Amazing Shield in my Inventory, don't recall picking that up. Titan can attack through Doors. And its a Shame that the Level reverted back to the bottom Catacomb like Design and Audio. I liked the other one more. Just now also realized the cool Shield was the Paladin's one. Nice. You can click on Doors that are open while you're inside the Doorframe, which doesn't close them but plays a sound. Does nothing else. This can make combat in Doorframes very hard tho, as you're constantly clicking the Door instead of attacking. Also your targetting seems to be on the Enemy model under your Cursor, not their Ground-shape, so you always attack the Enemy that stands the most south of you if multiples overlap, even if you want to target one further north.

Entering the Burrows now. The Question is a nice Way to seperate Demo from Testers I think.

Weird but potentially cute small critter welcomes me. Nice. Slides along the Floor a bit tho. Not nice. Very creepy Spiders. Not really for me.

Died, tried to load, doesn't load anymore tho, save seems to be corrupted. I don't know if thats on my End, or if your Save System is messed up, but I guess I deserve it for trying to load a save instead of restarting the Run completely. Don't think I'll try again right now, its been 3 hours or so to get up to here. Maybe in a few Days, when I've finished the other Submissions I still have to do. Sorry, I've failed you.

Developer (1 edit)

Good morning! Thank you for giving it a play and for the feedback. To address your thoughts:

>Intro
Will completely changed. Just wanted something to happen on game start, since people complained it started too suddenly. It doesn't make a lot of sense story-wise, but I just wanted to have something instead of nothing for DD

>new stuff

Barrels are randomly placed - a lot of the time they try to place a copy of themselves nearby, but can't for whatever reason, so you get a lonely one or two barrels in the middle of the room. It looks a bit awkward, but I wont look into it too much for now

>room visuals

Thanks! This is all thanks from your thread feedback about props and empty rooms. Glad it is better now

>bad bow

The feedback is mixed as always - either the bow is busted (anon under you basically beat the game with a starter bow and claimed it was easy) or it's useless. Balancing is tricky, I'll try and address this slowly over several patches.

>Quickswapping 

it's coming! I think almost every single feedback mentioned wanting to quick swap - i'll do it i swear!!

>intelligence description, "Intelligence is said to increase spells lots by 1 each point, but doesn't. "

i'll need to check since I didn't boot the editor up yet, but the phrasing is "leads to increases", which i guess is super awkward if you're not aware of it. the idea is that a spell slot is unlocked after X points, and the amount of points increases after every slot (so first you need like +5, then another 7, then another 10, etc). I will need to fix that.

>crash!

I'd be interested to hear more details about performance. What's your rig like? Average fps (can guesstimate - is the gameplay always choppy)? Where does it begin to lag, if anywhere? Do you just play without any issues until a sudden crash? The more details the better. I'm asking since Floor 3 (Lower Dungeons 2) should be exactly the same performance as Lower Dungeons 1. There's nothing there except different enemy meshcounts, but LD2 has lower poly enemies: the skulls are very lowpoly, same with the transparent boys and archers. Only the flies are a bit complex, but that's a store asset and I have a model ready to swap to, I just havent gotten around to it yet.

Thanks for giving it another shot. I'll reimburse you should you GPU detonate

Submitted(+1)

Its issueless until my GPU Decided to drop. I wouldn't read too much into that, I get that on a few Games, its pretty likely its on my Side.

Developer

Replying here so you get a notification that i've read your edits

I didn't expect anyone to make it past the password checker, to be honest. As i mentioned to another commenter, everything after the Golden Goblin is absolutely flimsy and (in my mind) not worth suffering through. The fact that you've seen all your models in action is good enough for me - you've done your part and can rest easy until my next submission! 

I'm very glad you liked the lore bits. There's another similar NPC in Lower Dungeons 2 (well, they're dead so not really an NPC, but they have a textbox with things to read)

>Save system

It's 100% on me. Saving is an absolute pain in the ass for these types of games, since I need to save all the levels, all the interactables (and whether you used them or not), all the enemies and their named variant/stats, barrels, props, etc. If something breaks, it can easily cascade and lead to a corrupted save file. Where specifically did you save at? I assume it was in that level and you didn't reach any of the bonus ones (or the secret one!)

Most of the effort for this DD went into the first floor and the Halls of Pain level. Since both of those were enjoyable for you, I consider this to be a great success.

Thanks for playing and for the detailed feedback and of course for the excellent models, I appreciate it all a lot! 

Submitted(+1)

I must've missed that Corpse. Shame.

I can't give you a specific where I saved at, usually at every Level end, every Level beginning, and a few Times in between, whenever I cleared a nasty Room or something. I saved a lot.

(+1)

I've played a lot of these types of games before, and this is another great one! I finished all the content there was, it took ~3hs. Pretty much only used a bow into crossbows, swapped to sword and shield to kill faceless enemies at the start though because they seem really hard to hit with ranged (intended?). Only really used bloodlust, freezing strikes, and mana shield for magic. I didn't get stuck in any doors or see any tiny skellies this time though! Although I never reloaded so maybe they were waiting...

  • I think if the first two or so level ups came a lot faster it would feel nicer.
  • Would be nice if doors were highlighted as you hovered them, maybe a muted grey color.
  • Please let me click the spell icon in the bottom right to bring up the spell book, with that spell selected.
  • Spell wheel is really tiny. And what about having the spells in the wheel be selectable by using the  mouse scroll wheel?
  • The airshield FX stayed forever for me after using the spell once, but it didn't seem to have any effect after the normal duration ran out.
  • Unique enemies should have gold text in the UI! Would be nice if they looked a bit more different from regular enemies in some way too.
  • Some unique enemies seem to have way too much health, especially in the very beginning (brought back memories of fighting The Butcher in D1 with a crappy short bow). Many didn't pose any threat at all because you could just kite them to death; would be really cool if they had more and varied effects (though I've only played through the game once so I could have missed a lot) like a damaging aura, slowly pulling you towards it, summoning enemies behind you when you encounter it, projectile blocking bubble around it, AoE attacks, and so on. I'm sure you have stuff planned already.
  • Returning to a previous area will respawn barrels. Also destroy all items on the floor? I tried to go back for some books once and they were nuked, oops.
  • Sometimes enemy outlines, or barrels, get stuck. Don't know why.
  • In some cases clicking close to an enemy will attack it but it doesn't show up as highlighted (no outline nor text in the UI)
  • I wish there was some FX when an enemy gets pierced when using piercing shot.
  • Particles around rare chests should disappear after opened.
  • No way to give the paladin his shield back for a reward? :(
  • Would dynamic lights around fire projectiles murder performance?
  • Spitters/acid dudes get stuck in place doing their running animation. Also their attack animations are out of sync with their projectiles coming out.
  • The walking animations for the goatmen don't seem synced to their move speed. Their turning looked off too, starts to glide before completing a turn.
  • I'm guessing you haven't made flinching animations for all enemies yet, or is there a condition for them to start flinching? More hit feedback on enemies in general would be great; twitching when hit (not necessarily stop moving), I think only some have blood splatter when hit (?), I wanna see that calcium flying when you hit skellies! etc
  • Would be nice if the goatmen had a more unique attack, the fireballs are so similar to the floating skelly heads (love their firebreath though).
  • More weapon arts please! You probably have stuff planned, but it would be cool if weapons had at least one high skill req. weapon art. Maybe crossbows and bows should have one exclusive one each too.
  • Melee enemies seem way too slow in their reactions in general, especially as they run up to you and just stand there staring. I don't think I ever saw a temptress even begin an attack.
  • Kiting felt way too powerful, I found the game pretty easy and I think it has a lot to do with kiting being so incredibly strong. As I said I only played with ranged weapons so maybe its a lot different with melee. Or maybe I was just carried by this ring I got really early, mana steal as early as I got it was incredibly strong and cold damage slowing enemies makes kiting even crazier. Having enemies with abilities/behaviors to discourage and make kiting less effective might be a good idea.


  • I didn't really "get" the first boss, he didn't really seem to do anything. Just run at you really fast and stare you down. I read later that he heals himself, I didn't get that at all haha and kiting him worked just fine anyway. Maybe having + particles spawn around him as he casts the heal would get the message across better, but maybe that would just look tacky. Making him very noticeably bloody as he starts to get injured and then cleans up when he heals himself could work too.
  • If you have cold damage from an item (maybe its the same thing with other elements too) and cast Freezing Strikes, when that skill runs out you will lose the cold effect from the item too until you un-equip and re-equip the item.
  • If you use a weapon art (only tried with bow and xbow) and immediately move before the shoot animation finished mana will be taken as normal and the next regular attack will instead be the weapon art.
  • At one point I had two savegames and as I saved I accidentally named it the same thing as the other save. It seemed to have broken saving completely afterwards and when I exited the menu and reopened it I couldn't get into the save menu again. There were no saved games when looking in the load game menu either.  I kept playing though and luckily didn't die.
  • Please don't make me retype the savegame name every time I save.
  • Trying to pickup a potion when the inventory is full and the inventory screen is open doesn't pick it up to the cursor. Works with other items than potions.
  • Monster spawning can be improved, a bit too often there will spawn groups of just a single monster type, encounters can be a lot more interesting with different ones close together. Had to fight a few too many groups of only ~6 floating skulls.
  • I kind of miss a Fallen One/goblin enemy analogue, but maybe you don't want to be too close to Diablo...
  • I want to see more enemies and with different behaviors! More, different weapons and items! Just like make more content!

I had a great time playing through it, can't wait for more.

Developer

Thanks for going through and beating the game, you glorious madman!

While I agree with all of your points and suggestions, the two spell wheel ones were really clever and I'll look into implementing them for the next patch or as soon as possible after I fix everything else that's pressing. I can't believe I didn't think of that, nice job.

>I didn't really "get" the first boss, he didn't really seem to do anything. Just run at you really fast and stare you down. 

that's weird - he usually has a pretty fast attack, and will try to drain your mana every few seconds, then switch to healing himself. If you decide to flee, he taunts you then heals himself more. Perhaps I missed something when testing, since quite a few people told me their encounters with him aren't matching up to what i'm experiencing. I'll need to test this a bit more.

I also didn't really expect anyone would be brave enough to defeat the Halls of Pain and go beyond - everything after the first Golden Goblin room is entirely placeholder-tier. Temptresses will hopefully be fully replaced (but their skillset will live on), Spitters will be cleaned up, and so on. Same with the spells - I didn't really bother testing airshield/freezing strikes for that same reason.

>Kiting and enemy strength

It's still something that changes heavily every patch. It's a tricky thing to balance, since fighting an enemy 1on1 always feels like the enemy stands still and waits to be executed. Then I (playing like a beginner to make sure things are balanced enough) walk into a room with 6 skeletons on level 1, get surrounded and hacked to death in 2 seconds.

For kiting specifically, the Faceless boys have the evasion modifier, where there's a high chance shots will just go through them or otherwise not connect. They're much weaker to melee to balance out, but I think that's an interesting way to tackle kiting instead of just hardnerfing bows more, so I'm slowly making more changes to kiting by adding things instead of nerfing them. I think there's still a lot to do in that aspect, but hopefully I'm moving in the right direction.

>More stuff!

it's coming! I don't like how much jank there is that people discovered, so that'll be the priority for a bit. Afterwards, weapons (especially 2Handers) will be getting lots of love. The bare minimum would be 6 per type, then we go from there.

Really, thanks again for the playthrough! Pride yourself in knowing you are the first person to reach the end of this version! It means a lot to know that things worked enough that a completion was feasible.

Be sure to submit TGIG next DD so I can blast some boys as well

Submitted(+1)

Need more feedback on hits and misses

I would love to destroy every piece of clutter and furniture, the fact I can only break a few barrels makes me really sad.

I would also like to see some interactable objects like shrines, levers, breakable walls and teleporters For the teleporters you can make several types: 2-way teleporter that is reliable, 1-way teleporter that is still reliable but offers no way back and a random teleporter that tends to put you in the same room as monsters and has no return glyph, make it so each teleporter glyph is slightly different, so the player can learn which does what.

And one more thing, maybe the two-hander I found was just shitty (even though was rare), but I feel like the starter sword was a lot better DPS wise and still let me use a shield, maybe buff Twohanders?

Developer(+1)

Thanks for the feedback! Teleporters are a very good idea that I'll look into. Destroyable furniture was mentioned, I'll see if I can make the boxes and tables destroyable, that'd be pretty swell. Things like levers and shrines exist right now, but are quite rare.

Two handers are a bit weaker, but they also have a much bigger quality range and you can easily get either a really shitty 2H or a beast. It's something I need to tone down.

Thanks again for the playthrough and detailed feedback!

Submitted(+1)

Just had a devious idea for a fourth type of teleporter: Trap Teleporter -> has the same glyph of the 2-way teleporter, but it is actually a 1-way teleporter that sends you to the position of a random teleporter, the random teleporter won't activate yet, but once you leave and return wanting to go back to the original teleporter you get the random teleporter treatment instead, to avoid it the player would have to notice that the glyph on the entry teleport is different from the glyph in the destination 

Developer

I do love me some stage hazards, I just might use this (as soon as I go through the absolutely massive list of bugs people pointed out)

Submitted(+1)

I know your game is big, and it's been a while since I played it as a noob orblike player who only used bow and arrow multiple DDs befre, so I am going to pley it extensively over the next week.

For now, please accept this humble fanart of the cute bug I saw posted in the thread:

I really hope that is going to become an enemy in future.

Developer

Thank you Webcough, he is a lovely tiny boy! I'll be sure to repost him in the thread!

I'm also saving the best for last and I'm expecting a several hour long playthrough of Goblin Resort once I cover all other smaller games

(+1)

I’m on linux. Melee build.

  • I really appreciate that enemies get bloodier as their health is lowered.
  • I wish that dead skeletons’ eyes would stop glowing.
  • Noticed some weirdness with selecting resolutions: game defaults for me at 2560x1440, which is higher than my 1920x1200 monitor supports. (btw, would appreciate 16:10 options). Going down to 1080p and then back up to 1440p disables all menu buttons, though i can still hover over them and hear their sound effects, but navigating the menu in any case becomes impossible and I have to kill and restart the game.
  • Personally, I find the HUD to be too large. I’d rather have more of the game area visible.
  • The slow scrolling text of NPCs is rather frustrating.
  • It’d be nice of the cauldron spells which give you a penalty for every third use had an indicator to show how many times you’ve used it.
  • I didn’t notice the delays or performance issues that Qwott is talking about.
Developer

Thanks for the feedback and I'm glad the linux build works. I've been told before that for Linux, the game's loading screens (there's a video playing above the 'Entering Location' text wouldn't show, but the text would. Has this happened to you as well?

As for the rest of your comments, I find it hilarious that the DD playerbase all mention how frustratingly slow the text scrolls - I had it slowed down considerably due to player feedback. I'll look into finding a sweet spot.

Everything else you mentioned was valid and I'll look into improving it all before my next submission.

Thanks again for playing and writing feedback!

(+1)

Yeah, I didn’t see any videos on the loading screens, just text. Are you attached to having the text auto-scroll? Somehow allowing the user to control when it advances might solve this problem.

Developer

Thanks for replying about the videos! I'll look into it

As for the next, not really. It's just much easier to have it autoscroll instead of having a scrollbar or some other kind of user input. I'll change this for next DD if speeding up isn't enough.

Thanks again for taking the time to reply back!

Submitted (2 edits) (+1)
  • There's a noticeable delay before menu buttons are highlighted when hovering over them.
  • Going between menus also has a short delay.
  • Add a borderless fullscreen option.
  • No 16:10 options; 1920x1080 letterboxes properly while 2560x1440 is stretched. Does Unity not have a function that automatically gets all supported resolutions?
  • Right clicking should go back in menus.
  • Why can't you access the full options menu in-game?
  • The performance is atrocious. My PC may be ancient, but there's nothing to justify it running this poorly apart from something stupid like each wall segment being 10k triangles and drawing the entire level at once. Neither CPU nor RAM usage are abnormally high and the GPU isn't spinning up.
  • Doors are hard to tell apart from walls when they're transparent.
  • The particle effect for the skeletons' eye should be disabled when they die.
  • A mauler spawned inside some furniture and was stuck there.
  • Stat tooltips aren't very helpful.
  • There's no cursor for typing a save name until you've started typing, so the file button just goes blank after clicking it.
  • Why would you ever want to use melee weapons when there's no way to dodge attacks and you can just kite enemies forever with a bow?
  • Having to rename your save file every time you save is annoying. You should be able to double click to save with the same name. There should also be a default save name for people who don't care about naming their saves.
  • It needs to show item names while holding Alt like in Diablo 2 so you don't have to hover over every item.
  • Pressing Shift while moving should stop movement.
  • The Bloodsoaked Guard needs to have his health reduced by 90%. I was starting to think he was unkillable or that there was some bug preventing him from dying. He can't even hurt you. He just drained my mana (which I wasn't using anyway) and kept stopping to cast some spell that didn't do anything to give me more time to shoot him.
  • The difficulty spike on the 3rd floor is ridiculous.
  • Hits don't register on the faceless half the time.
  • Why can't you use potions directly from your inventory?
  • There needs to be an opacity slider for the map.
  • Why is there no XP bar?
  • The text scrolls way too slowly when inspecting the dead cultist leader, and is it supposed to start all the way from the bottom? I'm not reading anything if I have to wait 8 seconds for each line.
  • Aiming the bow combat arts is awkward; it'd be better if holding down the key made an ability icon appear somewhere to show which one you're using, and clicking then actually used the ability. Also, you should highlight the combat arts button when you unlock a new one.
  • You don't even get a fountain in the Short Respite?
  • Didn't bother listening to the paladin due to the aforementioned text issue.
  • Why do the normal-looking torches in the next level have a blue glow?
  • Dragging an item onto another of the same size should swap the items.
  • If I hadn't had my map open and noticed the wall disappearing, I'd never have found the secret door at the end of the long corridor. The first secret door had the blood on the floor, but I don't the second had any hints.
  • There's no error message when trying to make a save with the same name as another. Nothing just happens when pressing Enter.
  • Don't disable pausing during the death animation.
  • Loading without dying doesn't work properly.
  • That ice zombie is bullshit. He keeps hitting and slowing me down when his attacks are clearly not connecting, and he doesn't die even after spamming the triple shot at point blank while chugging a whole hotbar of mana potions. You can't even abuse the aggro animation by going down and up the stairs because it plays during the loading screen. I ran out of potions and had to use the spell that sacrifices max health until it was down to 52 to kill him. He didn't even drop anything useful.
  • It took me until the third corner of Halls of Pain to find another bow, and it was worse than the starting one.
  • There needs to be some kind of renewable healing source. Otherwise, what are you supposed to do after running out of potions other than sacrificing all your max health? In Diablo you could teleport out to buy more potions, but here the game just becomes unbeatable at some point.

Couldn't stomach the 10 fps anymore after beating the Halls of Pain.

I can't understand why you'd go with a control scheme like this in this day and age. It's so simplistic there's no room for any kind of nuance or skill in the combat.

Developer

Thanks for your detailed feedback, it is much appreciated! 

I'm surprised you were able to beat the Halls of Pain while having 10fps, that really must've been painful. To address your balance concerns, only a few enemies are preset (like the Bloodsoaked guard and one of the Skinless Cultists who drops the green shield). Every other named enemy with buffs is randomly created and placed, with their stats determined at runtime - the ice zombie is one of those. The overall balance is still a bit too hard for many players (even if they have OK performance), so that's subject to change.

For me, the fun in these games is making the best build out of what resources you are given and trying to beat the game that way. Something you get unlucky and lose - for me that's part of the appeal. Things like a resupply hub are planned (although not a town, and not with limitless supplies)

You also provided a ton of technical bug reports, which will help me out immensely! I'll get all of these fixed up once DD ends.

Thanks again for the feedback, and I'm sorry you didn't have a particularly enjoyable experience. I hope the next time I submit it will be more enjoyable, should you decide to give it a go

Submitted(+1)

Nothing I can say will be different than what others have already said. It feels like a full-fledged game. Combat feels wonkey at first but you can used to it very quickly. The feedback from combat such as the sounds, the blood, and the animations makes combat rewarding.

My only suggestion is maybe work on the ui a tiny bit more. the main HUD is already great but the pages for the pause menu, and some of the other ui (not the spellbook, the spellbook is already perfect 10/10) could use some more coherensy; Such as maybe not having them so bright and vibrant. and maybe match each other a little more.

Other than that it feels like an already complete game.

Developer

Thanks for the feedback! Yeah, most of the UI is still not done - so far only the spellbook and bottom bar have had their placeholder art changed into actual hopefully-final designs. 
I appreciate your compliments!

Submitted(+1)

I had some framerate issues which might be caused by winewrapper thing, but my complaints would be that game needs some sort of better mana regeneration management other than potions and +1 on kill rings, and you don't get the easein/out movement when you pick up items which gets your character to a dead stop and jarring camera movement.

Developer

Thanks for the feedback tlomdev! I'll look into improving camera movements- but I'm glad the game was able to run at all on non-windows machines. 

Submitted(+1)

Most I tried so far doesn't really work with playonmac thingy, my windows laptop is extremely slow for everything else though so this is the only way I can test demos until I get a new one.

Submitted(+1)

First things first I actually really love this game, I was legit having a ton of fun building my character and figuring out how I like to play (axe + ice spike, bow for cheesing). I played for about an hour

There's a huge wall of miscellaneous thoughts I had while playing the game, feel free to take them or leave them

  • - Immediately feels nice and moody in the main menu. Nice and polished menu
  • After loading in it was surprising how much it felt like a legit ass game that I'd buy on steam today
  • Item pickup sounds would be really nice, maybe like a separate sound for each item class (glug for potion, clink for metal/sword)
  • Would also be nice to have some slight variation to the footstep sound
  •  killed an ogre through a door
  • The main characters armor needs some shinyness/roughness
  • On the same note, the ogres shinyness could probably be turned down to better match the rest of the environment/creatures
  • It can be hard to tell where the current room ends with the walls being so invisible. Maybe a fresnel effect in a shader would work well here
  • The map is awesome, really useful and well implemented
  • Tutorial popups would go far for teaching people how to equip stuff and do the basic things
  • The leather helmet is the brightest thing in the whole dungeon lol
  • Need a solid like 80db quick thud sound when anything is hit to sell the impact. It was hard to tell when I got hit
  • I really like the walls being made up of individual bricks, but the scale of the gritty texture feels off and like its too big
  • Walking around the dungeon its not really clear what I'm trying to find. Intuitively I can guess it's a staircase because we're going up a tower, but hard to tell
  • Balance is a bit tough, I think the first level needs a slightly easier ramp up (can be a short level) to get your bearings. Opening a door to 10 enemies is a little terrifying
  • Some barrels are breakable, some are not
  • On the map once you've explored a lot its hard to find the areas that you haven't explored. It would also be cool to click on the map to auto walk so it does that while I do inventory stuff
  • Items on the ground need a little glow
  • That guard fucker on level 2 has way too much health. It took like 10 mins of cheesing to finally beat him. Maybe he needs a healthbar too?
  • Also he is easy to cheese with bow or even just go hit him once and walk away. It just takes forever
  • All that aside, it was exciting to fight a boss and I really felt the tension of not wanting to die since ive come so far
  • There needs to be a shop for all this miscellaneous gear I'm finding, let me buy some potions or spells
  • It would be really nice if the inventory button was closer to WASD
  • On the same note being able to quickswap weapons would make encounters a lot more dynamic (the process of opening inventory, swapping a weapon, and having to replace my old weapon in the inventory is super tough)
  • Garlathan magicfeast got me good in the end on level 3

Overall really great game. I think the main critiques are all geared towards polish and quality of life features. Great job!

Developer

Thanks for the detailed feedback, most of these are already on the to-do list, it's just a matter of time to get to them

To address some specifics:

The Guard on level 2 heals himself (even more if you try to kite him!), but is a massive pushover if you stand still and click him down. It's something like 60 max health, but +15 health on heal (doesnt go over 60, though)

Quickswapping is planned - it's the most requested feature by far

Garlathan Magicfeast is (like all other non guard named enemies) randomly generated, but the name makes me think its the invisible faceless guys on Lower Dungeon 2. Those are my favorite type of random boss types, since they really don't mess around! 

Thanks again for your feedback,  and I'm very glad you enjoyed yourself!

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

This feels like a proper orblike game already. I have only tried a range/mage build so far and got killed but I'll definitely try again. 

I have experienced a little bit of stuttering while playing in my toaster, but the game works fine otherwise. I didn't notice any bugs.    

Developer

Good to hear the game runs smoothly enough, and I'm glad you're enjoying yourself!

Submitted(+1)

nice orbs bro

i’ve never played a game like this. the closest i’ve come is league of legends and dungeon crawl stone soup. I’m kiting everything with a bow all the way back to spawn to preserve potions and its making my fingies hurt. if attack move is common in games like this you should add it.

Developer

Thanks for playing Pogo! I'll look into making kiting better and more enjoyable (with less fingie pain)

Submitted(+1)

Fantastic game! Feels very high-quality and polished. I never played something like Diablo before (except the new one on the phone for like 30 minutes) so I have nothing to compare it to. Great enemy design and UI. I quickly found my way around even without knowing the genre. Eventually I died to the first boss in the red room, but I'll try a new run later.

No door bugs so far but I think it's a bit too dark and I had problems spotting doors and running in circles.

Probably my favorite DD entry so far. Keep it up!

Developer

Thanks for the wonderful compliment! I am very glad the game was enjoyable for you

Submitted(+1)

First thing I wanna say is that I love the loading screens/transition screen art. Really nails that 90s CGI aesthetic and made me feel nostalgic despite this being my first time playing this game. The graphics, animations, UI, etc... all of the visuals are really clean and well-done. It looks and feels like classic Diablo, which is a treat for me, as Diablo 1 remains one of my favourite games of all time. The music is also really reminiscent of Diablo 1 without being too samey, so I'd say it's safe to say you've really nailed the Diablo feel.

The UI is nice and simple, not at all overwhelming, very easy to read and understand even without in-your-face tutorials. I'm still playing through, but so far here are a couple nitpicks I've had:

  • When I move between floors, sometimes I'll click to move on from the loading screen and will accidentally click on the entrance to the previous floor, and the character will go straight back down to the previous floor.
  • Minimap opacity option would be nice.

If I run into anything else I'll edit this post. The game's genuinely really fun, great work!

Developer(+1)

Thank you very much for the feedback my level-loving friend!

Your suggestions are noted and I'll try and implement both ideas before my next submission

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