7 replies to this topic

[Avataro]

Fight the Monsters III

Link to project: https://www.purezc.n...projects&id=485
(has screenshots )

Introduction:
Hey everyone. So this is a project I've been working on and thinking about for a longer while now. And now, it's pretty much in a presentable state! Thanks to a contest on VD, I've put my idea into something real. This project feels too ambitious, probably because it is. I'm not sure if the core idea is even good. Nevertheless I put a lot of effort in so far and I could finish it "relatively" fast. I'd like to hear peoples thoughts on the idea of the quest.

About the quest:
I've been loosely inspired by the roguelike-genre, Slay the Spire, as well as Jamian's former project "To The Bottom", which was a Binding of Isaac inspired quest. Basically, it's got a randomized dungeon to explore. You will mostly fight enemies, in typical ZC manner, but there is so much more to it. I honestly don't know how to talk about it in an organized manner. But I'll try:

Characters: There will be multiple playable characters of various origins. Link is here, Nayru will be one, Gale from RotS, as well as some original characters. They will play vastly different and have unique abilities.

The rules: Entering the dungeon marks the start of a run. There are 3 floors, each sized 5x5. There will be one linear path to the boss room, with branches all around the place to lead into the other rooms. After entering the bossroom, you have to kill it and then advance to the next floor. After the third boss, you've won. (There will be a true final boss to unlock later)

MP regenerates by itself, HP is more valuable. There is a defense counter, which lets you negate damage for that many times. Then there is an attack power counter, which is bonus damage added onto the base damage of all your attacks.

Items: Items are seperated into 2 categories. Useable and passive. The passive ones are powerful treasures, mostly found within bigger chests. Items have nothing to do with the players weapons (A, B and R buttons), which are fixed.

Types of rooms: Besides combat rooms, there's big treasure chest rooms, shops, and event rooms. Event rooms will be able to be anything (traps?, gambles?, minigames?, challenges?). The player is able to visually sense the room types of adjacent rooms, so you know what you're getting into.

So that's basically the idea. I have some kind of prototype demo basically ready, but that can wait. And I don't even know if people would wanna try a demo. For now, you can discuss my project and everything around it! Do think it's flawed? Would you be interested in a quest that is LIKE this in ZC at all?

[Epsalon ZX]

I've played the others. Didn't really get far into the second one....and it felt overly repeatative and difficult. This looks like a vast improvement though. I look forward to seeing the direction it goes.

[Shoshon the Elegant]

I'm very interested personally. I have to say the getting the feel for adjacent rooms bit makes me think of minesweeper. Which is cool.

[Dark Ice Dragon]

as you know, i really liked the previous games and i think this idea of the roguelike is great.

I have few roguelike rpg , just 2 Guided Fate Paradox and Fatal Labirinth, i like this kind of games, but are a bit unfair, you will have to be very careful to balance the difficulty of the game.

"I don't even know if people would wanna try a demo" ?  i will like try it!

[James24]

Just played your demo and I died when I first played it because I didn't know what was going on.  But I comfortably managed to beat it the second time around.  I think your balance is right for an easy mode, but for a game so focussed on fighting, there should be a medium and a crazy near impossible mode.  The items in the big chests are just too powerful and combined with the shop items, it just became a repetitive stroll in the park.  The enemies are never upgraded to take into account that the player gets very powerful.  Not very fun.

[Shane]

I intended this to be a review for your demo, but it seems I was unable to post so I'll post here.

 

I definitely recommend playing this demo to anyone who might be undecided still. This is a giant step up from the previous FtM quests. I'm not crazy about combat-driven quests because a lot of them feel uncreative (and oftentimes cheap) but this quest is one of those exceptions. You've given ZC combat new life by adding all new enemies and items. And with a rougelike set up like this, it makes your decisions in combat more important than tanking it or simply repeating until you get lucky. The current end product might not be the most challenging, but it feels like one of the most engaging and creative combat-quests out there. I actually enjoyed seeing my character grow powerful as I progressed, it felt like actual progression. A very good reason to keep going and it prevented the quest from consistently dragging out its room to room gameplay. I think there would have been tedium otherwise.

 

I can't wait to see what you have in future for this, a lot of the things you listed sound very interesting and promising.

[Dark Ice Dragon]

i liked it,  is true that is too easy due the great power of the items, but this is just the demo, so i guess you will add more monsters and floors.

If you like the idea, can you put a room whit a optional enemy, stronger that the boss ?

You already decided how many characters there will be  ? a large cast was my favorite thing in FtM2

[Avataro]

Small update: I've been putting this project aside for a while and will return to actively work on it again someday in the upcoming months.

 

I've got a lot of great feedback and ideas, so I'm enthusiastic about this project!

 

(The biggest problems I'll fix are the enemy difficulty curve and too many waves, but other than that there's still a lot to do)