Messages

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7DRLs / Re: Rogue Sector [7DRL 2015 - SUCCESS]

« on: April 22, 2015, 03:03:21 AM »

In general, you aren't meant to defeat the enemies. You should be aiming for the wormhole; it's pretty rare for me to get a kill except as the Cobra.

So the general strategic maneuver is to go as far forward as you can go while still turning just a little bit. This lets you get closer to the wormhole while minimizing your chances of taking a hit.

The reason this is so effective is that the AI is mindnumbingly simple -- it always goes for (SPOILER ALERT) the spot closest to the hex three tiles in front of you, regardless of anything that's in the way, with a 60% chance to use a tension move if it's available. This makes it really good at tailing you and less good at predicting your movement. (The only difference between the regular ships and the blue "elites" is that the elites get full hull/shields whereas the regular ships have half the health of a player in the same ship.)

Since the AI won't always use its tension move, you can usually just outrun it, especially in the Dart. Just don't stay directly in front of it. If it's got a one-tile offset, it won't move to correct that unless it's already very close to you, and you can exploit that to keep on going.

Oh, and one more thing... you should play on minimum zoom. Default zoom is a bit of a trap.

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7DRLs / Re: Rogue Sector [7DRL 2015 - SUCCESS]

« on: April 22, 2015, 12:36:09 AM »

Thanks!

I really suspect that the reviewer played the first sector with all three ships and called it a day, not realizing there was more to the game. It's certainly not easy, although I've won with all three ships. Wish I could contact him and figure out what happened.

I recommend Blade as an introductory ship. It has most of the Dart's movement, but managing your tension becomes more important, and there's more room for error due to the added defense. The key to surviving past the first couple sectors (which you can easily win by beelining to the exit) is to use evasive maneuvering to avoid enemy fire. Don't travel in a straight line if you can help it: the enemies are decent at tracking you, but they have trouble with a moving target.

In sector 6, the enemies are overwhelming, and you basically want to fly in circles until you can make them crash into each other. Here's a shot of my most recent winning run:



By all accounts, it looks like I should die there. There are five ships on the screen between me and the exit, plus an elite Cobra coming from the other direction. The previous turn probably looked a little worse.

The Dart largely plays like the Blade, except you can outrun everything and can't take a hit. The Cobra is a little more interesting, although it tends to be trickier due to your limited options. It does afford you the option of ramming straight through enemy Darts, which is fun. Collision damage is based on remaining health, so you can easily ram through an enemy Blade if you shoot it first.

Thanks again for playing. Hope you get this message -- I know I'm a couple of weeks late in replying.

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7DRLs / Re: Malleus Goblinficarium (7DRL 2015) - FINISHED

« on: March 29, 2015, 09:40:26 PM »

The updated version has some nice new features. I beat it after several attempts, but I am currently having no luck with the rogue, who leans heavily on the presence of big red dice to get anything done before his stamina runs out. Am I missing something, or is the second character not very good?

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7DRLs / Re: Malleus Goblinficarium (7DRL 2015) - FINISHED

« on: March 21, 2015, 08:22:13 PM »

Amusing bug:

Let's say I have a yellow die and a red die. I can switch the order of those two dice indefinitely. Not only does this scroll the dice off to the right, but it also increases my stats.

This works with any color except white as long as you have a yellow die and a die of that color. White dice sort of disappear if you rearrange them. I think you might be able to do it with two dice of the same color, but I only tried with yellows. If you have a yellow, red, and green, then you automatically win that round: you can hit the enemy's face without fail.

I won using the bug on my first try. Really fun game, bug or no. I had a basic hatchet (4 speed, 4 attack) for most of the run, and I wished I had stumbled onto something better. And that's probably my only complaint: loot drops seem totally random. I think I'd enjoy being able to choose between two enemies on each pre-demon stage, seeing in advance what (or at least how many) items I'd get.

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7DRLs / Re: FireTail

« on: March 17, 2015, 06:21:53 PM »

Ah, I tried to activate Bombard that way, but it wasn't clear that it had actually bombarded, so I never really tried it again. If this weren't a 7DRL, this is where I would be chiding you on not providing more visual feedback, but it's understandable given time constraints.

The pre-Aura boss fights were good. I'm glad you took Witch down to 3 HP, since the difficulty in that fight is entirely in approaching her. After I got Aura, literally every potentially difficult encounter was dealt with by running in a circle. Of course, this didn't work on the queen, although if Erupt does what it looks like it does, then I could have gotten away with it there, too.

If you were planning any updates to the game, I'd recommend more Aura-resilient enemies. Some examples:

• A 1 HP enemy that can move when you move on the firetail. This breaks a fundamental rule of the game, so I can understand how you might be reluctant to add something like this.
• An enemy that is invincible to conventional attacks that can only be defeated by being surrounded by X fire tiles -- perhaps 3?
• An enemy that actively seeks out your fire tiles to extinguish them. Aura would still deal with this guy like anything else if you have your tiles already set up, though.
• An enemy that retreats 1 tile on taking damage.

You say that Aura is more powerful on level 6. I would contend that it is no more powerful on level 6, and in fact is most powerful on level 3. Consider the following layout:

Code: [Select]

.1 2
3 4 5
.6 7
If I have tiles 1, 2, 3, and 4 lit up, I can kill every enemy adjacent to any of those hexes by running in a circle on those tiles, regardless of health. I can then move to tile 5 or 6 and repeat the process, chaining Aura indefinitely as I snake through the stage in diamond formations. Taking Aura sixth not only delays how early you can get it going (only on the last level!), but it also makes it harder to start up. Since Aura 3 deals effectively infinite damage to everything except the Queen, there's no benefit in making it more powerful.

Another more global change that you could make is to make enemies more willing to step on the firetail. This makes it harder to create an Aura loop, although it probably makes it easier to execute the other attacks.

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7DRLs / Re: FireTail

« on: March 17, 2015, 07:22:49 AM »

I was really looking forward to getting my hands on this, but I'm afraid I have to level the same complaint against Firetail that I've had with most 7DRLs: needs instructions. At least you have a readme; that's more than most. At this point, I'm beginning to suspect I may just be a bit dense

I enjoyed the game, but I really had no idea how to use most of my powers. I took Aura 3rd and Dazzle 6th, and those two powers would have won me the game on their own if I hadn't fat-fingered during the Queen fight. (Here I could complain about the control scheme, but I honestly don't think there's a better way to control a hex-based RL with the keyboard.)

My full list of powers was:

• Burn: Activated by bumping into an enemy, as far as I can tell.
• Bombard: I don't know if I ever managed to use this.
• Aura: This carried me through the game.
• Explode: I don't think I ever managed to use this.
• Starfire (or whatever it's called?): I don't think I ever managed to use this.
• Dazzle: Great fun.

The game was a pretty bog-standard "bump into the enemy" roguelike before I got Aura. After that, I ran around in circles and killed enemies. The vast majority of my time with this game was spent running in circles to get Aura procs onto adjacent enemies. If the other attacks are activated by bumping into enemies with more than one adjacent fire tile, then I couldn't tell. I managed to get to the last stage on my first attempt using only Burn and Aura. I don't know if that says more about me, the game, or just Aura, but free movement that also deals damage seems a little overly powerful to me.

The animation on your blog makes me wish I had tried Erupt -- it looks much more effective than Dazzle.

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7DRLs / Re: Rogue Sector [7DRL 2015 - SUCCESS]

« on: March 16, 2015, 09:39:22 PM »

Thanks! I've seen Car Wars, but I can't say I've played it. I'm really satisfied with how the maneuvering feels, which is good, since it's pretty much the entire game

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7DRLs / Re: Rollgue (7DRL 2015) - Complete!

« on: March 15, 2015, 05:27:23 PM »

I've been watching your delicious screenshots all week, and I'm looking forward to sitting down with this one. I hope it plays as well as it looks!

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7DRLs / Re: Rogue Sector [7DRL 2015 - SUCCESS]

« on: March 15, 2015, 05:23:25 PM »

That's really weird. If you happen into it again, could you post a screenshot?

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7DRLs / Re: Rogue Sector [7DRL 2015 - SUCCESS]

« on: March 15, 2015, 05:47:34 AM »

Really enjoyed it. Deceptively simple gameplay leads to some deeply satisfying maneuvers and outcomes. As an added bonus it reminded me to play Renegde: Legion Interceptor again

One problem is that the purple arrow disappears quite often. Don`t think this is intended?

And unless I missed it somehow it`d be nice to now what the shield/hull HP level is.

Glad you enjoyed it! You're not the first to report the indicator disappearing, but I've never had it happen in my plays. The indicator disappears on purpose when the wormhole is onscreen, even when it's only slightly onscreen. Could that be what happened to you?

The hull/shield bars are in the top left. Or did you mean the enemy's?

(edit) The indicator also disappears during the animations, of course.

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7DRLs / Re: Six Way Wanderer [7DRL 2015]

« on: March 14, 2015, 07:36:14 PM »

I liked this, although it was short and rather easy. I never figured out what the wind element was for outside of combat, and it would be interesting to have a second half of the game that expected you to use all four elements to solve puzzles. Still, though, an enjoyable five minutes.

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7DRLs / Re: Here Be Dragons 2 (7DRL 2015) - FINISHED

« on: March 14, 2015, 07:21:19 PM »

I preferred the aesthetics of your previous game, but this one's a lot of fun. My primary complaint is that there's no way to restart the game after dying -- I have to refresh the page. I also wish there were a way to gauge the strength of an enemy (both attack and life).

The game could benefit from some instructions. It took me two games to realize that map completion determined my starting life for the next level, and I'm still not sure if treasures do anything. Seems like there should be a score based on cumulative treasures, maybe with a bonus for exploration.

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7DRLs / Re: Conservation of Ninjutsu [7DRL 2015] [Finished]

« on: March 14, 2015, 06:45:21 PM »

I gave this a try last night. It needs instructions badly. I don't know what the tools do, it's not clear how I gain or lose ninjutsu, and it's not entirely clear where I'm trying to go (presumably in the direction of the arrow, but the arrow itself is kind of dodgy. It seems like there are terrain effects, but it's hard to tell.

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7DRLs / Rogue Sector [7DRL 2015 - SUCCESS]

« on: March 14, 2015, 06:06:12 AM »

It should have been a standard patrol mission. You had wrapped up your sweep and were returning to the Leviathan when a hijacked wormhole led you to this rogue sector. The good news: the onboard nav has calculated a route back to the Leviathan. The bad news: it's going to be a long trip through six sectors filled to the brim with asteroids and bandits.

Rogue Sector is inspired by the board game Wings of War (more commonly known for the X-Wing Miniatures spinoff franchise) as well as space dogfighting games such as the Wing Commander series. This marks my second 7DRL success; if you were around last year, then you might remember Succession, which took 5th place overall. I feel like this is a somewhat weaker game overall (although there were, shall we say, mitigating factors), but I'm happy to once again put forth a finished game after seven days of development, and Rogue Sector is a solid entry on its own merits.

You can play Rogue Sector from your browser here. Let me know what you think.

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7DRLs / Re: Tales of the Adventuring Company (7DRL 2014, Success)

« on: May 26, 2014, 08:57:20 PM »

Bugs in latest PC version (not sure how many of these you've fixed in the mobile release):

• If a hero dies in combat, he doesn't get the on-kill/on-hit proc (e.g. Mage damage or Knight atk down); the hero who replaces in gets it instead.
• If you rescue while you have two or more dead heroes, the status bar goes crazy. This can block you from switching leaders.
• Quitting during an episode cancels all the quest progress you made during that session.
• Rogues don't receive an attack penalty versus ghosts if the ghost is alone. I think I reported this earlier, so you've probably fixed it by now.