It's time to UNINSTALL this game.

[VirtualFM]

Hello!

Good things first: I love the concept of this game, how it looks and how it plays. Enough was said already about the originality of weapons, items and their effects, the incredible lighting, the strategic balance than can be achieved by a combination of the items at hand which, even if their finding depends on luck, they can be combined in your favour when put to good use, like when you meet a minotaur: You can reach satisfaction by defeating it with an army of skeletons, an huge rain of blue skulls, a blow from your mighty blade while it is distracted by one of your minions, or just trap it in a strategic place and use your laser cat to blow it to pieces.

Or when you realize that useless spell book that only makes crates is actually a key element for reaching a certain out-of-reach ledge with no switch in sight but that contains a shining warhammer.

So, it's a great game, has good ideas and provides great entertaining moments... however...

After spending 200+ hours in it I HATE IT!

And why did I put so many hours in it? Because this thing has no Save feature, no checkpoints, no continues, no nothing... I like to be thorough in my dungeon crawling, so a proper game that is going well and allows me to reach, say, level 20+, it's something that takes around 3 hours. I was even able to return with the treasure several times... each of those times were around 4 hours of gameplay or more. This sucks! There are no words to describe both how the he** can a game take that long to finish and doesn't have a save feature and how silly I feel to actually sit through a long session like this!

If that was not bad enough, even when we finish the game the "feel good" sentiment doesn't last, as there were a couple issues that really pissed me of in 2 occasions:

- reaching the 26th floor and finding the treasure, all-powerful and with no possible fear of death on the horizon, I noticed another set of steps going down... so I did go down. The screen went black and I "fell" into some place that looked like the usual dungeon but... something didn't feel right... what was it?! Oh, I see: I am not casting any kind of illumination aura anymore, not me, not my hat, not my firesword. On top of that, the item menu became half-broke. I say "half" because I was still able to switch weapons/items but the icons wouldn't scroll. I could see the items in my hand as I scrolled through them, but kind of difficult to know which book is which or which hat is better when I can't see either the icon or it's properties on the icon menu. I went up a few levels but didn't reach the tavern this time: died a stupid death in a dark room while trying to scroll through my items looking for a lantern (remember, it was pitch black, not even a pixel-wide lighting aura around my character). This may be a "feature" (a trap on the 26th floor) or a bug, as I reached the 26th floor on another occasion and saw some steps going down again in a room: Didn't try to go down that time!

- once I got an incredible game. I got one of those magic books that shoots random items and monsters, and between a mix of Blue Grimm Rippers that killed every enemy in sight and allowed me to harvest plentiful experience, health and coins, a powerful weapon I had at the time and allowed me to kill those monsters at will and I was an happy camper... literally! As I staid in some strategic rooms summoning monsters and hacking and slashing like if there was no tomorrow until eventually getting tired of it and move along.. to another room where i would repeat the process or until a giant skull was summoned and I had to get the he** out of there!
Then I realized that even those Giant Skulls were no reason to be scared, as I was really powerful by then. So I continued to hack through those Giant Skulls as they appeared. I could defeat them in a few blows. I could stand in front of Wraiths and tickle them for a while before punching them in the face into oblivion. I was that strong and I had that much health!
I finally got bored of it and reached the Tavern with a whopping 20K+ of experience (usually 6K is OK), lost track of how many levels I gained, each blow of mine was causing around 1800 points of damage by then... I wish I knew how to upload a screenshot of this to show it to you.

After 5 hours of satisfying but tiring hacking and slashing, I just wanted to get to the Tavern and see my score in first place (it had to be first place, I never saw those many coins in my life, and never saw that much experience ever, and never had played for so long... and never will!). So when I reached the Tavern... nothing appeared for a while, just the usual pixeldust and patrons standing around... and then my name appeared... ALONE... with "????" instead of a rank position.. WTF?!?! A moment later I realised that (what a coincidence!) my Internet was down for a while and at the time I reached the Tavern the game couldn't get the online scores, so didn't upload my score for others to see and I couldn't compare my position to others... Talk about bad luck and wasted time!

So those are the 2 major letdowns of this game:
-no saving feature of any form (I usually dislike checkpoint-only games, but even that would be better in this situation)
-not being able to see Online scores whenever we want, nor upload our local scores when we get online again.

As such, I need to uninstall this, and I cannot loose another 5 straight hours of my life... because you see, the first hour is entertaining... all the rest feels like obligation to sit there, it feels like work, and if we quit.. we just feel that it was 1 wasted hour, so instead we waste 3 or 5... it just sucks and I HATE IT!

[KingGraham'sPixelatedShoe]

Sounds like you really LIKE the game! I think it's great, and with the many exceptions of dying pointless deaths, I've had many, many hours of exploring. I don't feel frustrated concerning a save option, which is on its way, because it's part of the challenge and I schedule my time differently. This is the first game in awhile that I've had a lot of simple but satisfying fun with and it has to do with what I bring the game, but also GREAT sound effects and lighting, beautiful art, thoughtless but rewarding hacking and slashing, lava, strange alligator men, massive swords and great potions gulped in unfortunate places :D

[Rabbit]

So... uh...
Saves are almost finished, and I've been working on adding highscores to menu.
I guess glad you like the game? o_o

[lPaladinl]

Looks like he'll be reinstalling after the next patch, since it fixes all of the problems that inspired this fun read.

[VirtualFM]

Yes, Cap'n, it's a very entertaining game, congrats!
Maybe, IPaladini, maybe :-)

PS: I am glad you guys enjoyed the reading.

[sere]

please make an achievement for beating the game without using a save. having a save option is really going to lessen the appeal and challenge for some of us. just as many people who demand saves to make the game comform to their needs are people who enjoy seat of the pants playthroughs without the presence of a safety net or crutch offerings. yes, merely having the option, to use or not, is enough to lessen the game.

meh, the no saves were a feature that set this game apart from the plenty of games we already have containing such conventions. lack of those conventions are what some of us sorely need and look forward to because it's rare a developer will chance their game without compromises for the masses.

remember; there was an entire generation of games where 2-4 hour playthroughs without any save option was common. i had dozens of nintendo carts i enjoyed in my childhood that belonged to that generation of game and it wasn't a problem for some of us then and it isn't now. keep your 95 games a year that release with save options and online multiplayer, let the rest of us have our 5 games a year that don't.

[Rapscallion]

Just because in the past there were no saves doesn't mean it was good. don't get me wrong, I love old school games, but the lack of save is not something positive, quite the contrary.

I am not saying legend of dungeon should have saves of the "regular" kind, I say saves like dungeons of dredmor.
in dungeons of dredmor you can save anywhere, but if your character was built with permadeath, the save is gone when you die, so you can't go around, die, load and keep going. it's just a measure to prevent loss of progress if, I don't know, your computes locks, power goes out, you have to leave or, as many gamers, you lack the time needed for a full run.

[HalloweenSax]

Wait, the saves aren't going to be deleted after the character dies like in roguelikes?

[lPaladinl]

Messaggio originale di HalloweenSax:

Wait, the saves aren't going to be deleted after the character dies like in roguelikes?

If I remember correctly, the Developer said your saves are deleted upon loading, and when you want to save you must also quit the game.

It'll be Rogue-like.

And Sere, I don't want to take too much of a poke at you, but with respect, do you really need an Achievement to force yourself to beat the game without a Save?

With that being said, I still think it's a nice idea for an Achievement. A Proper "Achievement".

[Necros3000]

Messaggio originale di Cap'n Robot:

So... uh...
Saves are almost finished, and I've been working on adding highscores to menu.
I guess glad you like the game? o_o

woah you guys are so efficient! you are working on future complaints! let me try......Meh meh meh meh meh Online Coop... meh meh meh mehe

[Emphou]

finished the game in few hours. played it about 6 in general

[.PrimeMover.]

Play with friends, makes it more beatable, and more fun!

[Starvin247]

you should have put a spoiler alert in the title

[Artem]

I like this game as well, but i'm waiting on future releases. I don't want to get burned out on this game.

[K-poptosis]

Messaggio originale di lPaladinl:

And Sere, I don't want to take too much of a poke at you, but with respect, do you really need an Achievement to force yourself to beat the game without a Save?

With that being said, I still think it's a nice idea for an Achievement. A Proper "Achievement".

He doesn't need an achievement any more than you need saves.

He has a very valid point about not trying to make every game a clone of every other game. A point which is completely lost on 98% of all gamers. I see arguments like this on many forums for games which are advertised as difficult. Some games are designed with the entire draw being that it's a hard game. And yet these games will somehow attract complete morons who need a tutorial, practice modes, cheat codes, etc... These people will flood forums with complaints and requests for anything to make the game easier. And they will constantly say "just give us the OPTION" as though having the option to be easier doesn't diminish the difficulty of the game in the first place. But it totally does.

You see save features as simple progress, a technological feature which belongs everywhere. And some people do not.
Just having the option to save does ruin a small part of the charm of some games. So when the vast majority of games have save features, and there are literally dozens of other "roguelikes" (which are strangely nothing like the game Rogue) out there with save features, why don't you go play those instead of trying to change this game to be more like them?
Sere enjoys this game as it is, and you think it needs improvement. Why should your opinion be more important?
Why must every game have the same features? Why must every game be more like some other game, instead of unique in itself?

While I think a save feature would be appropriate to this game, I respect Sere's desire to not have it. There are literally hundreds of games with save features for the rest of us to choose from. Where are the hundreds of games without save features for people like Sere to enjoy?

Ultimately, the developer needs to sell the game, and they will bend to whichever option will make the most money. In this game's case, it means there will be save features. This means that people like Sere will be repeatedly screwed out of games they enjoy, just to satisfy the much larger population of gamers who have no desire to be challenged.
Current market trends are that games without saves are less popular, so they will make less money, and fewer of them will be made. People like Sere have to endure with crap title after crap title, should they also have to endure people trying to convince them that their tastes are wrong?
Leave the guy alone.

[FuzzSlam]

To me, having a save feature added to the base game would break the game, and probably for alot of other people too. I really enjoy the challenge of trying to beat my high score everytime I play without a crutch to hold me up.

Maybe they could add a couple of different gamemodes that could appeal to both sides of the fence?

LOD hardcore for the people that want to play it like an original rouge-like and LOD casual for the people that don't have the time or patience to sit down and play for 3 hours or people that just want a casual playthrough to easily get to floor 26.