"Unfair" Gameplay

[Ionizer]

I've got about 6 hours into the game so far.

Anyway, it's a fun game but with one serious issue that I keep running into.

Most tower defense games, inclusing this one work like this.

Start a new level, knowing nothing about it. Loose because you have no idea what monsters/waves are coming. Try again, knowing more, eventually beat it. Pretty much every Tower Defense game does this.

The problem with doing that in this game is that if you lose a level, you also lose progress.

It's especcialy evident when you attack a new island, and have NO idea what towers/powers to pick because you have never been there. And if you say, pick Death towers instead of Plague towers with a map that has spiders in it, you are going to lose. Which is ok, BUT, the first time you have NO idea it's coming so good luck.

I think being able to see the map and monsters BEFORE picking your towers would be a big improvement. It can be frustrating to get an attack on a random island and start the game with all the wrong towers because there was no way to see the map beforehand. Especially with the seeds which can't be adjusted except at the main screen.

I call this unfair gameplay because it can punish you for making the wrong decision, but gives you no way to make the right decision.

Anyway, fun game but needs some tweaking to do more to prevent losing progress because I am not psychic. :)

[Black Flag]

Ahoy matey!

Thanks for your feedback. I agree with you, it's one of the biggest issues of the game. We had planned two features to solve this problem. Unfortunately, we felt short on budget and they were cancelled...

At first, Yrminsul was in Iron Man mode. There were only auto saves and you couldn't load/save at will. It was harder, but you had one advantage, you could spy. There was an infamy betting system which allowed you to learn about the enemy waves on each islands.

The second feature was the Build Mode. On the map, you could spend one turn to visit an Island in order to build defenses preemptively. It was really hard to balance because it was making the game too easy if you played the long con. The easiest solutions to implement were to give a limited amount of time to finish the game (which was rejected because too frustrating). The other solution was to limit the number of towers simultaneously built, but that was hazardous, clunky and a bit unfair while breaking the persistance of the universe.

In the end, we hadn't enough budget to polish enough those features to have them in the final release of Yrminsul. You can still have a hint of what you'll have to defend though. :)

On the map, the defending Island (the blue one) will show the path of the enemies and the turret slots available (you can zoom in and out on the map):

Screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/uaeT2Zl.png

Then on the first preparation screen, you will see which enemies are attacking you. We were thinking about adding on the portraits of the enemies the number of each one in the wave, but we are not sure if it's a valuable information...

And that's it, a wall of text! Sorry if it was painful to hear, I hope it was an interesting read. :D

[TheVampire100]

If you have a problem with the current system, do the following:
Before you attack an island, save the game. Play the level. If you loose, load your save game. You will have your island back and you will know what enemies come at you in the attack.

[Ionizer]

Yes, that's a work around that I have used but it would be nice to have the game mechanics slighgtly adjusted to address it directly.