very high effort game. i enjoyed the tension of the first person mode, and the 2d and 3d style mesh pretty well
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Archtower's itch.io pageComments
Awesome game, lots of fun. The jumping and combat are so crisp, you really nailed it. Impressive to find a headshot system here. The maps pretend to be RNG, but must be hand-crafted, they have such a good flow of teaching and adding strategies. And there’s even side areas! Game really feels like "Diablo (1) but 3D" in a way, really gave the "wow, why did nobody do this game yet" vibe when I did the first jumps and shoots in the tower.
I suppose you know already that your game owns, so I collected some points that I didn’t like:
- Some enemies have an "auto-dodge" behaviour that I already hated in Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands. It’s stupid because unlike a human, they cannot be juked into dodging i.e. when intentionally missing the shot they will NOT dodge into it, even though the dodge otherwise comes out so fast a human could only do it by predictively dodging. I would prefer more one-dimensional enemy behaviour where maybe they just side-step every 3 seconds regardless of what is happening.
- Small bug, "New level: 2" text says "New level: 1" for half a second at first
- The menus are weird in some ways, I understand I can equip two special abilities (crystal??) at the same time, yet the slots are not next to each other, and different sizes. Same with weapons, I believe. The abilities menu (U) is weirdly small, you don’t immediately figure how/where to upgrade. I was also confused about the character level. I looked for it in the menu but my eyes kept falling on the Clan Level, which was always at 1, was confusing. Both level numbers should probably be right next to each other, to make it clear from the start that there are 2 different kinds of level.
- Feels like game should be paused when ability menu is open.
- Not being able to open Lost Loot in combat may be needed for balance, but sucks to discover. I thought you would have fun situations scrambling for the lost loot bag to beat the enemies on your heels, but I guess that can’t happen.
- The engine has some issues. Not sure if you can do too much about it or it’s GameMaker’s fault. At start of the game I felt like FPS were surely below 60, but I fix it by changing the settings back and forth a few times? So FPS get up to 80 which is still low considering the game has 90’s tier resolution and view distance is only about 2 rooms long. I wish the view distance was naturally capped by the candlelight and all, instead of just fading to black… would be awesome to be able to faintly see the end of long corridors, for the flair. I had some more lighting edge case issues, you can see in the video at some points. I also tried the Low Rez option, but it did not help FPS and had some weird jumpy behaviour on character movement, you probably know that issue.
All right, that’s it. The game has been strongly hinting at me that a lot more complexity is to be unlocked, so I will be going back… I think this works very well, at the beginning you can see these hints of complexity, but you do not feel compelled to care about it all, because you know that to advance you only have to dodge and land abilities. But you already start to hunt for 1-2 specific items that you feel good to play with. You can see that I ended up kiting a lot… which all the traps surprisingly spice up a lot…
Submitted
HypercovenHey, thanks for playing, glad you liked it!
>Some enemies have an "auto-dodge"
It is random, they don't react on your attacks.
>Small bug, "New level: 2" text says "New level: 1" for half a second at first
It is not a bug, it was done on purpose.
>Not being able to open Lost Loot in combat
In general, this was not done as a matter of principle, it just seemed logical at the time. Perhaps I could allow it outside of combat, but the lag when opening large bags can be unpleasant during combat.
>I wish the view distance was naturally capped by the candlelight
Unfortunately it has some real problems with light sources limit.
>Low Rez option
It just imitates pixelization
Thank you for your feedback!
It is random, they don't react on your attacks.
OK. Classic paranoid perception.
but the lag when opening large bags can be unpleasant during combat.
Idk what causes the lag, but if the items were being extracted slowly one by one, the gameplay of opening in combat would be even more exciting (dank).
Remembered one more thing - I tried to bind thumb buttons (Mouse4 / Mouse5), but it did not work.
Remembered one more thing - I tried to bind thumb buttons (Mouse4 / Mouse5), but it did not work.
Apart from that, by the way, the whole keybinding system is very cool. Only I already find myself rebinding keys depending on which class I play. It would be extremely cool if the system worked like an MMO/PoE, just giving you 1-2 action bars with configurable bindings and then letting you freely drag items or abilities into the action slots. And then saving your slot assignments per class! I realise this is a pain to implement, but it would be damned next level cool.
Started playing this yesterday, took a break will continue today. I really enjoy it, and I suspect I will even more as put more hours in, I will be jotting down my thoughts as I play.
This is not actually important input but I am not a fan of the splash-art, this is just a personal opinion, but the style seems like it might not reflect what this is. It almost makes it seem more generic, but these things are vague and you probably have tons of input related to this already.
Goblin sfx is so good.
Firewave, also known as goblin-clearer.
I have one suggestion, maybe do not use stamina for breaking pots, weird, yes, but it might make it slightly more enjoyable. It already is enjoyable though, don't get me wrong
Got to the Grand Ritualist for now, he made me salty, but I will play this more.
Submitted
Dreams of Joy DepartedThanks for playing!
As for pots, you can also open those by pressing E (controls by default).
It is unclear, don't know how to tell it to players more straight, without making those Press E popups that I dislike. Now it only mentions as random tip of Adviser in the camp, but you also can find it out on your own as you go.
Same goes for "you can interact with weaponracks", by the way.
Most important changes since last demoday (DD 52):
- Added Spanish localization
- New consumables: food (meat, fruits & vegetables, fish)
- New status effect Satiation (exp in combat +15%)
- 2 new traits
- New containers with food
- Better drop chances of green loot from chests on first floors
- Better chest loot for Story difficulty
- "Subtlety" trait now works only out of combat
- More convinient quick use of lockpicks and flints (don't have to use it, just interact with a chest/hearth)
- Added act separation
- Rogue, Main Skill, 2nd upgrade of 1st tier - in addition to slowdown, allows you to throw a knife while in a combat state
- The damage of bows and slings for active skills has been significantly increased
- More prominent shop and stash tabs
- Difficulty "Story", boss battles, if you lose, a bag of dropped loot appears at the entrance before the battle
- Ranged weapons can no longer be used without suitable ammunition
- The available Tower Upgrades are more visible
- Redrawn low-level light armor (when worn by a character)
- Bugfix, quick retirements sometimes gave miniscule amount of Fame instead of 0
- Optimized excessive amounts of shards/decals/stains on walls and floors
- Some code optimizations
- Some bugfixes
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