KeeperRL (formerly Zagadka)

[miki151]

Can you guys re-download the game? It should now have both a different font, and it goes back to the main menu after you quit or die.
http://students.mimuw.edu.pl/~makbet/keeperRL_alpha4.zip

Had some issues with inventory, when I went to drop something it did not show what I had equipped, having different inventory lists like that depending on the command can be confusing. A minor GUI thing.

Yeah, I guess the window can display equipped items, but they would be grayed- out. Is that what you mean? Btw, you can also drop directly from the main 'I'nventory window.

[Vanguard]

I played your game some more.

The scrolls of combustion are really cool.  I like that the scroll itself bursts into flame and then you throw it or whatever instead of just casting a fireball spell.
Combat seems excessively random.  I don't see a way to improve my chances of winning fights other than to spam consumable items.
Combat seems extremely lethal, usually ending in a few rounds.  This is a good thing.
Poison is ridiculous.  It's good that conditions aren't negligible, but I don't see a good way to prevent myself from being poisoned in the first place.
Sometimes the game crashes during world generation.
It's cool that people get dismembered all the time, but it means that nearly every every enemy killed leaves a corpse which the game describes as "some items."  The only way to know if the pile of items is good or if it's just a gnome's head and torso is to check every pile.  It'd be good to either place gibs adjacent to the main corpse rather than on the same tile.  It'd also be good to let the game name two or three items in a pile before resorting to calling them "some items."

[Vanguard]

I killed the great goblin and the bandits and cleared out the crypt and I couldn't find anything else to do, so I started killing everyone in the starting town.  The duke cut both of my arms off and I bled to death because I couldn't use a first aid kit with no arms.

Anyway, the impression I get from this game is that it has a good number of fun little features, but weak fundamentals.  The consumable items, dismemberment system, and things like that are all great, but the basic combat system is determined entirely by equipment and luck.

[miki151]

By fundamentals do you mean anything else than combat?

Basically I designed it as you said, around consumable items. So you need to use stuff like fire, speed, invisibility, blindness, etc. to combat more powerful enemies. If you play the Keeper then those things are available as spells with timeouts.

Yeah, poison is not very interesting yet, I just added it recently. I guess throwing knives would count as prevention. I'm hesitant to add resistances, because they are just so boring.

I'm planning to add a separate UI element for examining and picking up lying items, so that should solve the "some items" problem.

[Vanguard]

By fundamentals do you mean anything else than combat?

Mostly.  The game also feels kind of directionless.  Like, there a few little side quests out there, but I have to seek them out and I don't know why I'm doing them other than that it's just something to do.  There's no goal.

Note that everything I said in my last few posts only applies to adventure mode.  I haven't spent much time in keeper mode.

Regarding consumables, I think that Brogue the best consumable-based combat system out there.  It's a good game to study if you want to make something similar.  Every potion type is unique and all of them are useful in the right circumstances.  Brogue is fairly strict about how many potions it gives out, and the player's combat options are robust enough that potions are rarely necessary. 

Actually, I think "rarely necessary but always helpful" is the sweet spot you want to shoot for with consumables.

[miki151]

I was planning to leave the adventure mode open-ended. I think just hitting the road and seeing what's ahead would be interesting enough. Of course it would need way more locations and quests. I was thinking about doing a persistent world, but that's still light years ahead.

Btw, was it hard to find out who's giving the quests? I was planning to give a hint when you enter a settlement, but it seems that the players are able to figure that out by themselves.

I could also add an AI-controlled Keeper fortress, and the hero would have to recruit a team and attack that. It could also be pretty interesting.

[Vanguard]

I could also add an AI-controlled Keeper fortress, and the hero would have to recruit a team and attack that. It could also be pretty interesting.

That sounds cool.

You could even use it as a pseudo-timer.  The longer you spend looting dungeons, the bigger the Keeper's army becomes.  Take too long and he becomes overwhelmingly powerful or summons the ultimate evil or whatever.  Don't prepare enough and he beats you up by himself.

[miki151]

13 yr old playing KeeperRL 

Observations: in roguelike mode, he just keeps clicking on things until they're (or he is) dead. In both modes, he wants to collect every item and mine all the resources. But otherwise I see hope in teaching him how to play RLs  . In any case, I filled a notebook page with notes on how to improve the game and simplify things.

[guest509]

Priceless feedback. I think sometimes old timers won't even see flaws or get tripped by obscure UI things and what not.

I realized this when I couldn't get my gamer friends to try my 7DRL, it was ASCII, it was hard. You don't learn on the way to beating it. You learn by dying a lot...just that concept is hard so the rest has to be silky smooth. If yo are going for wider audience, that is.

[miki151]

Yeah, but at the same time he liked that he could kill a stronger opponent by throwing a potion of blindness and sneak attacking.

I had a few friends playing when it was still all Unicode, and it wasn't that bad, although everyone said it's now easier with tiles. I think obscure keyboard shortcuts are the worst. The inventory button has to be somewhere on the screen or best if you just show the inventory somewhere on the side. If you use 'I' for inventory, then the same key has to close the window, not just Escape. That's what two gamers told me, I would never figure it out by myself. If you add little things like that, the game gets easier and easier to play.

[Vanguard]

I'm playing Keeper mode now and I'm having a good time with it.

I like building designing a base tactically so that I have escape tunnels, anti-archer rooms, thin hallways that force enemies into 1v1, etc.

E:

It'd be nice if the keeper had a bit more strength or if corpses were a bit lighter.  Carrying bodies to the necromancy room is inconvenient.

[Vanguard]

Ok, I "beat" keeper mode.

Anything with equipment has an overwhelming advantage over anything without equipment.  Top tier monsters go down easily against enemy redshirts with swords and armor.  The keeper is more than capable of destroying both armies by himself if he can get his hands on some good items.

[miki151]

I like building designing a base tactically so that I have escape tunnels, anti-archer rooms, thin hallways that force enemies into 1v1, etc.

Cool. I want to spend significant time to make base building more interesting for next version. Any ideas?

It'd be nice if the keeper had a bit more strength or if corpses were a bit lighter.  Carrying bodies to the necromancy room is inconvenient.

Hmm, the imps didn't do their job? Or is the problem that corpses outside the dungeon aren't fetched?

Anything with equipment has an overwhelming advantage over anything without equipment.  Top tier monsters go down easily against enemy redshirts with swords and armor.  The keeper is more than capable of destroying both armies by himself if he can get his hands on some good items.

Yeah, that's true. Keep in mind there is a difficulty setting in the menu, you probably played at "easy".

[Vanguard]

Cool. I want to spend significant time to make base building more interesting for next version. Any ideas?

It seems fine to me.  It'd be nice for the different types of summon spells to be more differentiated and better explained.  Like maybe necromancy minions are weaker and less durable than other types, but they auto-revive after being killed.  Maybe minions could have unique resources they need to consume to survive or level up.

You could add traps but if you do make sure they have some kind of opportunity cost.

[TheCreator]

Observations: in roguelike mode, he just keeps clicking on things until they're (or he is) dead. In both modes, he wants to collect every item and mine all the resources.

This is known as the Diablo Syndrome. I've noticed the very same thing when my wife was playing Fame. Any ideas how to fight it?

I don't like the Keeper Mode. The idea itself is cool, but real-time gameplay is something I just can't stand. It feels like Dungeon Keeper with much worse graphics. Why not make it turn-based?