My issues and loves

[Zekail]

Ok so this is a little gem right here, or rather it could be.

First off the game is beautiful, the level of detail in the maps, creatures, units and animations is astounding. The music and sound effects are also top notch, even the ambience inside the dungeons is great. Controls are intuitive and simple, no issues there. Theres alot of love put into this little game.

However (yep here comes the but) the game is hard for the wrong reasons. The tutorial gave very false impresions of enemy and friendly unit battle prowess. My little goblins made short work of the invading forces trying to plunder my dungeon. Spike traps that I placed along the floor paths did terrible things to toes and my barricades were mighty and held back an encroaching wave of invaders while my goblins were busy finishing off a different group. All the while kills were feeding me energy, the currency used for summoning more units and traps. Thus I was able to bolster my goblin ranks and properly defend my little tutorial dungeon from the pesky humans.

Now leaving the tutorial and stepping into my first actual dungeon defence was a very different experience. My 3 little goblins that I summoned 2 warriors and a shamman were promptly murdered by the first wave of intruders that consisted of only 2 human warriors. And I was left standing there as I watched helplessly as they proceded to break my dungeon core. It wasnt untill my third attempt that I heard the little fairy helper goblin thing tell me to smash things to restore my energy. (I was told to do this in the tutorial but I didnt recieve energy for it, so thought it was just a neat thing being able to interact with the enviornment) So now I summon my units then procede to start breaking everything I possibly can to get more energy to summon more units.

This kinda works and kinda doesnt. Objects respawn shortly after being broken so theres no shortage of them, however they are very unreliable as a source of energy. Id break everything and get 1 more point of energy and be left waiting for respawns while my units are simply being destroyed. Or id break everything and poof, have enough to summon 3 more units. Then youll break things and little items will show up like little coins that give bonus xp after the match is over, or little bombs and what appear to be poison flasks, and this is a very cool concept, but extremely random.

Traps also became a source of discontent. Spike traps that you place on the floors were no longer doing beautiful chunks of toe damage, and are seemingly reduced to a mild annoyance. Both to the enemy mobs and me, they needed constant replacing because now they seem to get destroyed at random (cant find anything that says they have X uses or whatnot) With their high energy cost on top of low damage output and randomly being destroyed, I quickly found them to be not worth using. Barricades also seemed to have all their hp removed and constructed out of paper, 1 enemy unit can make short work of a barricade, where in the tutorial it took a group of 4 to achieve the same results.

All in all this has made for a beautiful game that is hard for all the wrong reasons. I feel like Im either missing something or that some serious balancing needs to be done. Hopefully since it is in early access this one will get the love it needs.

[HG_QA]

Thank you very much for your in depth feedback!
We will take a look at the balancing issues in the future. We wanted to be sure that nobody will fail the tutorial so that's why it is much easier then the actual game.

[Zekail]

Originally posted by HG_QA:

Thank you very much for your in depth feedback!
We will take a look at the balancing issues in the future. We wanted to be sure that nobody will fail the tutorial so that's why it is much easier then the actual game.

Makes perfect sence for tutorials to be easy, just was really not expecting the difficulty to spike the way it did and I was playing on easy after the tutorial lol.

[Drge]

Very similar experience on my first go - albeit i need to find the time to play further. But yeah the first level is MUCH harder than the tutorial even though I had it set to Easy Difficulty - I can understand it being this tough on the harder difficulties but maybe a bit unforgiving for level 1 :D

I imagine the solution will either involve increasing friendly HP/Attack, decreasing enemy HP/Attack - or having some other method of restoring the energy. Maybe you could regenerate energy slowly by warming your hands on the Dungeon Heart, while smashing the pots/crates/breakables would give you a chance of a larger one-off boost? Just a thought :)

[Drge]

Actually a couple of things might be better explained in the tutorial to help first timers adapt to the difficulty - like dazing enemies by throwing things at them, or using a healing totem and pulling characters back when they need a health boost

[HG_QA]

Thanks for the hints. It shouldn't be a problem to make the first level a bit easier. :)

[Zekail]

Originally posted by Trogdor:

Actually a couple of things might be better explained in the tutorial to help first timers adapt to the difficulty - like dazing enemies by throwing things at them, or using a healing totem and pulling characters back when they need a health boost

The healing totem just angers me lol. I feel like its area of effect is way too small. Also never thought to throw stuff at the incoming enemies except for the bombs and whatnot.

[Techies]

I agree with OP's feedback 100%

[Zekail]

Im glad that im not the only one, I like to think im decent at strategy games and this one has been making me feel kinda dumb or that im missing something lol.

[Ben Plays VR]

I agree with the difficulty mentioned here. After playing for a while I'm at Level 3, and I still can't beat the first map on easy difficulty. :)

[HG_QA]

Oops... well some hints from us:
You probably have to constantly smash barrels and stuff to gain energy (you can argue about if this is a good game play element right now or not... we will see if we make changes to that in the future)
Spawn your minions in groups, otherwise they just will be slaughtered
Use shamans and healing totems in the back and not on the front line, so block the enemies with the cheap goblin units or barricades and protect shamans and after a fight put the injured units to a healing totem

The game is getting easier once you unlocked ballistas and the stronger goblin variants

I hope this helps a bit but we will also see how to improve balancing in the future

[Ben Plays VR]

Thanks for the hints!
I was smashing barrels a lot, and I kinda enjoy that mechanic since it keeps things very physically active.
But I wasn't aware of the healing totems, are those buildable from the green ring like the spikes? Or do those come from somewhere else?

[HG_QA]

Yes they are selectable like spikes. I'm right now not sure when they unlock... but I think pretty early in the game (or even right from the start).

[Zekail]

Originally posted by HG_QA:

Oops... well some hints from us:
You probably have to constantly smash barrels and stuff to gain energy (you can argue about if this is a good game play element right now or not... we will see if we make changes to that in the future)
Spawn your minions in groups, otherwise they just will be slaughtered
Use shamans and healing totems in the back and not on the front line, so block the enemies with the cheap goblin units or barricades and protect shamans and after a fight put the injured units to a healing totem

The game is getting easier once you unlocked ballistas and the stronger goblin variants

I hope this helps a bit but we will also see how to improve balancing in the future

I still think the aspect of smashing barrels and whatnot is neat but way too random. It should be a fixed ammount per spawn. And if I have to grind out failure after failure to unlock ballistas and stronger units then I still think something is fundamentally wrong with the balance and difficulty curve.

[lokiss88]

A more simplified aproach, would be to have a mana furnace that you could fuel with tossed in barrels. Or in true dungeon keeper style, have a workforce automate that for you. It's a VR like distraction, but not realy all that fun. More fun would be maniplulating the dungeon with destructable objects to slow invaders, destructable pilars ect.

I know your not aiming for dungeon keeper, but more busy work would flesh it out a little, and that could be done in a cool way in the VR world.

[Crafty]

The game is a lot of fun, but I agree that the tutorial is misleading as to the games actual difficulty. I would suggest adding a bit more time between the setting of the dungeon heart and the start of the invasion. There really isn't enough time to set anything up, and I find that to be one of the funnest parts of the game. It's hard to enjoy the nice graphical work that's been done when you are always in panic mode.