itch.io

cheers! new stuff from me soon. maybe next DD, who knows. gamedev never stops

>  is this worth continuing to invest time into?

well, are you having fun with it and do you see a future or potential with the game? all of your games very much carry an identity of their own and this one does it exceptionally well. if you think you've got something then go for it, but if you see it only as a roadblock for TGO / TSotP, then i think focus on those instead.

if anything, you can always keep it on the side for when you get a workload you don't want to tackle just yet - open this project instead and fiddle around with it or practice art/animations.

huzzah!

played it for about an hour or so

the art style is very very nice. the whole game has a very cohesive atmosphere. if you want some art feedback, some enemies feel very stiff when walking, and the eyes of the playable characters sometimes don't fit the style.

unlocked a few characters. donna the butterfly knife girl is the best so far, with the pale goth girl feeling the weakest due to the giant cooldown on her attack.

speaking of attack cooldowns, since you already show the attack icons at the top - how about some sort of fill shader/texture on top of the icon to indicate cooldown - helps with long forward facing attacks since i can glance at the icon and know when to face towards the enemy for a strike.

some weapon skills felt pretty weak, like the AOE stinkcloud one. i guess it might require a big investment before its strong?

nitpicks:

in the menu, have the skeletal hands follow you on MouseOver instead of mouse click

in the character select portraits, they sometimes don't update? it also seems a bit confusing since what i selected doesn't feel like what the game is telling me. something like a simple border around the icon of the character in the menu might be better instead of having a separate portrait off to the side.

sfx and music sliders are set at max at the game start - ideally set them at the low end since its always better for the game to begin too quiet instead of too loud

bit of a lag when switching radio stations ingame? 

every run ended when the whipladies came out. i assume that's the 'end' of the game at least on that first level? they seem like a brick wall in terms of difficulty spike. their SFX is also much louder than everything else (and a bit grating)

for a side-project to learn art, i think you accomplished your goals! well done!

for the effects, i did find an upgrade that read "phase removes elemental effect", which i assume that was the answer. i collected it but died to a wizard projectile

i still had lots of fun, there are more nitpicks than anything

great stuff

made it up to the plains three times, but the homing projectiles get me every time. i hate wizards

the new stuff is nice. some effects (slowing/burning) feel too impactful on the player. walking on dead burning enemies drops by HP by 50, and the slowing lasts for a solid 10 seconds if not more, both of which are run-enders. 

there was a survive for 60 seconds challenge map, it was the most fun level. was quickly surrounded but managed to teleport to safety and reap the rewards.

some nitpicks:

gun crafting offered me explosion radius on multiple weapons that had no explosion component, thus the crafting option was greyed out, leaving me only with one selectable option. sucks to be offered a mod i can't use.

crafting multiple of the same component on a gun (in my case Crafted Ice Damage 1 ) doesn't turn it into Crafted ice 2, but two copies of crafted ice 1. i expected to get an upgrade instead of two copies of 1.

in the main menu, when in the options screen, i can still interact with the main menu buttons (in my case Quit Game)

otherwise great stuff. fit for release, i'd say.

keep it up

played through the latest level, had a few issues

-crate platforming doesn't work well due to slidey movement. it took me a good few minutes just to get out of the first room (having that nasty drone just out of range didn't help!)

-killing mech has a high chance of crashing the game (especially the one that spawns by itself in the courtyard after the cyan card got collected)

-level design felt a bit directionless: feels like you are expected to do random jumps/platforms to continue (again, returning from cyan card - either make a jump to return to the previous room, or get to that section on the left side obscured by boxes to continue)

-splash damage on plasma from the mechs is huge! that kills me more than the projectiles impacting me

-unrelenting mech attack pattern. they remind me of serious sam 1 bio-mechanoid enemies- however those guys has a solid 1 second windup time. these big mechs start blasting asap, making them too difficult to engage fairly. i just end up cheesing them where their head sticks out behind cover, so i can shoot without being shot back

-drones are kinda meh.  they don't feel very fun to engage. a lot of them are also placed far away but in your field of view, making the optimal strategy to just snipe them with the SMG

-saves are alphabetically sorted instead of by date, which is a bit silly since my earliest save would be at the top

-the new gun is fun. felt good to blast mechs once i got it.

compared to the other levels, this one felt not as fun. maybe it picks up a bit later, but i'll wait for the crash bug to be resolved before continuing. 

the review comes off overly negative, but i think its due me getting annoyed on this level, especially considering how much i liked all the previous levels.  i think some 'yellow paint' to guide the player and some mech nerfs will help a ton.

i've heard of this before. this might sound silly, but try a different browser. for some reason, some browsers really don't like discord invites, and they somehow mess them up before actually redirecting you to them.

if that doesn't work, add me on discord (same username and avatar as here) and i'll directly invite you

sorry about the inconvenience! 

howdy!

that's weird, i just checked it now and it worked. try this one: 

https://discord.com/invite/TFeZ2NxK8n

post results

yessir, it's up now. no achievements though.

thank you! it very much still feels unreal.

i'm now patiently waiting for Sinathir to come out!

hi! the latest update was yesterday :^) the game will be releasing tomorrow at which point ill post it here as well

awooga

we played crab puncher on stream here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2346156621

starts at around the 30min mark, the game is CUTE. felt like my character was sliding a bit too much, though. the animations were unexpectedly good. nice work.

soon

played for a bit at : https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2344376135

started at 3:30:40 

looks like missions dont spawn if you fail a mission, leading to people being stuck. it took a bit of retries but the fun is there, you just have to work for it.

there needs to also be more details for things like the research page and mission failure states (just tell us the fail % so we can pick 'safe' contracts). despite the typos i'm interested in the story beats (like the choice popups, those are cool). bit by bit the game advances and the fun increases, just need to clean up all possible softlocks w/ missions when possible. maybe also some kind of passive research bonus so you don't get locked out of research..? or just always have research missions possible.

still fun. keep it up.

first game of the stream

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2344376135

the main takeaway was that the rideable companion wasn't very useful, and the bossfight (Which i cheesed) was a giant difficulty spike

the cutscenes are cute, but i'd say the gameplay was a bit basic with nothing particularly special that sets the game apart besides the visuals. despite that, i still had fun and managed to beat the game.

we all sort of jumped into it instead of reading controls so a lot of that is on us. we realized you submitted and decided to change plans and play an MP game, we basically booted it up and started streaming without any tutorialization. i'm sure normal humanoids would read controls a bit more indepth and all that. it was however still a good time and i think we might play once more since we're familiar with it.

i'm glad it was of use to you even though it was a impromptu thing!

the first game on the VOD was a multiplayer match of hypercoven
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2343509895
we had good fun

I am also horrible at texturing so I can't offer much help there. Perhaps try out Substance Painter

Left is me manually editing some cloth, right is Substance Painter just picking color values depending on the topology. It only took 3 seconds, I just dragged a cloth-texture-mask on the model and changed the colors around. Theres a good bunch of tutorials for it and it might even be less work than the other methods.

Something that might be worthwhile is to use another engine to make specific shaders for your blender models, then take screenshots of them with the lighting you want. You might be able to skip the engine thing and just do them in blender, but from what I can tell blender's shading graphs are weaker than ex. unity's.  Same with the shading, set up a scene in blender or wherever with very specific lighting  or different shaders (toon-style shaders maybe?) and just place your models there.  Perhaps the easiest thing would be making really strong normal maps for clothes so you simulate folds?

I like the non-AI Nika the most - I feel like using AI for things like that sort of takes away from the charm in a way I can't explain. Gives me flash-era flashbacks maybe?

greetings!
sorry about that. unity generates a log file for when the game boots up, it might shed a light on what specifically is breaking for you. if interested, could you kindly send me the contents of these logs so i can take a look? i don't use ubuntu, but a quick google search tells me they should be over in ~/.config/unity3d/osur/Tower of Kalemonvo/Player.log

you can email me there over at kalemonvo@gmail.com. the files themselves don't contain any non-game information save the path it's in and some details about graphics drivers. 

sorry for the hassle!

played the new tutorial alongside my friend who has not played it since last DD

we got stopped as the scene where the paperpusher says "lets go to my office" - you couldnt click or enter his office no matter what

a lot of confusion probably arises from ESL, but at this point i know what you're saying so things are clearer for me. 

need an obvious progress bar or indication for research. i put a thing to research - is it done? is there a bar? nothing really tells me that it finishes - you can totally use the bottom left of the screen for "large" popups saying "X thing finished". you do have popups but theyre so small and go fast where i don't even finish reading them before theyre gone

the new transparent UI reports are nice.

friend's feedback from watching:

the UI should be changed - when you look at space games, you dont want to be obstructive with the UI to give the impression of the vastness of space. this UI feels like its limiting you to the screen both with the design and the yellow/brass coloring since it is trying to catch your attention instead of letting your eyes wander. it also feels too bulky

the tutorial navigation needs to be streamlined a bit. it also is missing the "game" component where you as the player don't know why you're doing anything. why are you sending a rocket into space? who cares? what's the goal? the game should get the priorities in order where the NPCs are funny but you as the player don't know what happens next - is there a campaign? will the NPCs have different dialogs? do they interact with the player Civilization style? 
should make it clear what the final goal is first before introducing all the characters

>Not sure why the linux version of the game has .exe files in it? 
Which zip did you download? the linux .zip file does not contain any .exe files.

youre right, my bad

i linked the wrong one, try this

https://mega.nz/file/fWIzFATB#ybPBGNUZj_V-Ip0RviNM1OtCmRW3_PViOW2FqVmt4JY

i'll play again tonight

>release

soon. prolly jan '25

no more DD submissions, the game is too close to release to warrant a slot in DD!

(edit: woops)

we played a run, and it was fun. good job! our main takeaway is to get more enemies ASAP, with different behaviors

i have played 2 runs, one i restarted and the other i lost due to no funding! public opinion

my thoughts:

pause game and resume game icons are reversed - if the game is paused, the icon should be "play"

a text displayed as inversed (from right to left) on a path to Incuben

the government wants to "replace everyone by less incompetent people" - so they want to replace us with competent people? are we incompetent? that's funny if it's not a mistake

when asking for money, the string "$agency" is typo'd as "$agnecy" so it wont show the name of the agency but will show just $agnecy

for rewards, what is the number of in the parenthesis? is that the money i got, next to my current money? a bonus? unclear

when i am unable to start an expedition, a sound plays telling me i can't do it. it should also tell me what i need to do, so it isn't so cryptic, especially if i accidentally make a mistake

i did orbiting missions but they give 0 public relations and i failed because public relation dropped to zero, but i was unable to travel to the planets since i needed more fuel, and it was NOT clear what i should do to obtain fuel. i researched more fuel but it wasn't enough - more hints to that nature would be helpful

kino is back on the menu

greetings, i hope you are doing well. 

i'm not much of a linux person, so i really can't offer any insight.  i have posted a new version which might help, but as far as i can tell the issue is a file type issue, and i am exporting x86_64 files which should work on most linux based machines.

i am sorry i can't be of much help on the matter

day 1 purchase

hopefully it really will be soon. the wheels on the free, for fun Immersive 3D RPG-shooter-thing (in space) collab have already started rolling, we're planning on starting it proper next year. your seat is still open should you have the free time for it.

What a Shame. any plans for a sequel or another 3D rpg?

thanks, i am glad to hear you had fun!
there's no plans on being able to sell your items at this time, although there are several shops throughout the game you can buy from

i have beaten it for the second time

my thoughts are: "i love it, where's the sequel". it was a lot of fun seeing this game through the DDs. it kinda fits with the story a bit- except instead of purgatory it's escaping agdg. maybe i'm reaching but it feels like the DD were part of the adventure.

anyway, here's a bunch of feedback to burden you with

SFX imbalance. a lot, like the waiting SFX, are grating and loud. would be fine if lowered but on their own as-is they're a pain. same with the default selection SFX, but the "back" sfx is fine.

fight speed resets every fight - leave it to what i set in the last fight please

fishing isn't explained to the player, you just sorta kinda do it. i caught every type of fish throughout the game, but just for the fun of it. apparently i got trinkets, but i have no idea what those are or where to get them.

mosca's RPS effect should have a soundbite to know the result - different pitch based on result?

killing the final enemy in a fight and having a party member have a turn immediately after leaves the menu open and interactable (until the text prompt shows up anyway)

xanadu soldier can guard two units at the same time? kinda weird

reloading save on the 4th round breaks things. game things i'm on an incorrect tile (away from where the screen is pointing), cant click anything. had to restart level. the exp also wasn't loaded, because i kept the old exp after reset, so doing the first fight gave me a level up

not gonna bother trying cards due to the bad presentation - a giant wall of text? bad impression. i'd rather just continue fighting. unsure what the reasoning for that and fishing are - i think the strength of your game was wanting to go and read the next story slide. doing the fishing and cards just delays that.

are bug when haydn attacked gazia, who used defend on haydn. haydn hits himself, lifesteals, and then his health bar above his head was full but his actual health was less than half

game crashed on a fight when haydn died in the thick forest level on the first fight. that level in general felt like a difficulty spike.

in the teleporter level w/ angels, after winning a fight in any biome, the path in that biome doesn't become white, so its a bit disorienting

medusoid hybrid d jelly sfx which sounds like a "radar ping" is obnoxious to listen to.

medusoid hybrid doesn't have a box around his animation when he casts his AAH spell

why do some portraits have AFTERLIFE GLADIATOR text in the background? feels like a temporary background element.

getting eliminated on the desert gaz level crashes game. the enemies that get hasted there (before the rotating tiles) are a bit too hard to deal with if you get unlucky and roll a difficult combo

gaz slaps mosca almost every fight. its great.

consider improving the artwork for when gaz gives finn the mantle and circlet. his reaction is kind of wonky

N E S S E N E E was what i took from the clues for the second sannoval trap, but having two options for a lot of paths (south left or south right?) made for i presume an incorrect answer since i followed what i thought was correct, but still got the "bug filled" u result. doesn't seem to do anything except be annoying a bit?

going underground with mosca, Enkidu and sasha, you reach the hallowed ground. i am prompted that finn has unspent points, but i cant select him - this happens for every ground that has an original party member and one that is not in the current party but has a unspent points.

i don;t remember if you could pick your party in the last build i played with brunner in the audience fight. very nice. in menus like these, 'RETURN' button is misleading - maybe replace it with PROCEED?

the haste sound from the carnivore dinosaur sounds like a banjo, pretty unusual.

looking back, most of the feedback is tied to just a few SFX sounds that can be quickly replaced if you see it. that and some crashes, but otherwise all is solid. the game did not feel particularly easy as it did before - although the final fight(s) are a bit on the easier side. the only mechanic i really dislike is when enemies need to be the last ones standing before you are allowed to slay them - the big issue is no indication. you expend resources to kill them, and you frustratingly find out "oops, you cant kill them yet!".

that's it. i wish you good luck with the release of the game. it's been a pleasure playing it every DD.

i tested performance with la_fafafa, it looks like he also has a lot of FPS drips in the middle of the burrows. i'll investigate when i wake up, thanks for the heads up

thanks for playing bakar!!

the framerate issues are new to me. is it in burrows only? was the previous level fine? it says youre hitting 59, which isn't that bad. does the framerate tank despite it saying 59?

the skullcap uses the stats from another helmet, it's fixed internally. oops.

>I also found a bug where you can get stuck in place and unable to move or attack. 

i found out what this is, but not what causes it. i'll simply bandaid this tomorrow morning and hope that fixes it. for some reason this never happened to me and i have no idea why. maybe something tied to FPS..?

thank you for playing!

> the merchant who give stuff in exchange of silver skulls, can reroll the store by reducing your mana 2 points.

Yeah, it's sort of intended. The game really is designed around playing ironman (no saves) so that stuff can't be done with that setting, but i allowed it for the default game mode - you can cheat if you want to but you dont have to. I didn't want to restrict that from players and it was too annoying to keep track of what the shop can roll, etc.

>Also, nice new enemy, she was powerful and fast  and killed me the first time I met her, and of course.... she steal my heart :3 

Thank you so much for the art and i am very glad you liked her! I think she is currently my favorite enemy, even if she will only show up a few times in the game. Im glad she's memorable :) 

thanks again for playing!