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Wednesday, May 9, 2018

The official 7DRL reviews are in, or Turncoat Tomb and the Goblet of McGuffin


Turncoat Tomb results are in!

First I'm grateful for the feedback.  Thanks so much to the review team that's a huge effort!

Overall my game scored 50th place out of 120+ entries so not bad, but not really where I was hoping to be.

The reviews were very fair and humblingly thoughtful.  They say a lot about how great the #roguelike #7DRL community is!  With this and other reviews I've read, they're not only consistent but really thorough given the ground they had to cover.



Scope#183.0003.000
Roguelikeness#203.6673.667
Innovation#263.0003.000
Completeness#363.3333.333
Aesthethics#473.0003.000
Overall#503.0563.056
Fun#842.3332.333




In Scope, innovation, Roguelike-ness I'm averaging near the top 20 so I can't complain.

What drug the game down were the two most subjective and hard to pin down aspects:  Aesthetics and fun.  Fun is the most important, and my worst showing --so I'm not gonna lie, that one hurts. Mostly because it's true, but they also gave me a relatively easy way to fix it!  So let's take a look:


FUN

I think in the first 10 or so floors, the game delivers a lot of fun moments. For example when you lead a monster into an opposing area and switch to its color letting it destroy your new enemies, or get an randomly irresponsibly OP hammer and wipe out a level or 2 like wheat to your scythe or have nothing but a 0 strength grey coat left and barely elude some one-more-hit-will-kill-you undead only because it paused to take a swipe at a lowly unlucky red grunt.  Those moments can be very satisfying.

However, these moments can't sustain fun all by themselves for very long.  They kind of repeat or "run out" once you've seen a lot of them. And with no special items and only a few weapons those interactions are very limited. 

But the biggest obstacle dragging my score down seems like it can be summed up in this selection from the judge's comments:

If there is a goal I couldn't find it."

"...no win condition was stated in the instructions.."


"With no apparent goal it seems pointless."

|...And with no goal in mind, I didn't feel motivated ...."


Based on these comments, it seems like all I would have had to do is  put a "Goblet of McGuffin" or something on level 20 for a "win state" and boom it would have been much more fun and complete.  Total of maybe 30 minutes of work might have put me in the top 20 for 2018, so that's a bit maddening.  Even the flimsiest goal is better than no goal at all.

It would have been that easy.


Goblet of McGuffin


I might do just this.  Something more appropriate for my theme, but yeah why not.  It would be easier to frame the game that way and manage progression if it had a limited number of floors.


I always envisioned but never had time for bosses and, sub goals that give the player powers like better hand attacks, immunities to things and so on, and an "evil otto" type invincible floating spectre chasing you to push you along instead of a hunger clock because I hate hunger clocks.  I will have a win state though even if it's a really simple superficial one.

So for my next release: Here's the prize you're after:

I give you... THE TURNCOAT




As long as it's charged it will act as all colors (except shadow) has ludicrous armor class and whatever else I can think of.  You will need the Turncoat to escape the tomb.

ASTHETICS

I spent a lot of time developing a consistent pixel art style and mood.  From the blood to the myst from the undead altars, to the window lighting there are a lot of details to hopefully support the mood and theme of the game. 

For example if an attack hits near a wall, the blood splatters differently to appear "on the wall" and actually runs down and there are different kinds of swipes for different weapons and bites.  Plus one reviewer said it was one of the best UIs this year.

Still 3/5 ain't bad I guess. . The lower percentage overall  just means that a lot of games had good aesthetics according to their judges and it seems like most people didn't like the screen rotation. I'll get into that below.

THE ROTATION

Some of these I've already changed.  I upped the camera speed / light updates which are just variables so I just changed a couple of numbers and added an options screen:




People didn't seem to like it, so by default it's almost off... it's very subtle now unless you crank it up so I left that as an option.  I also made the LERP adjustable but very fast by default so the camera won't have to "catch up" but it's also not instant which is really abrupt and jerky to me.  Most modern games lerp the camera to some degree.  I think I just had it too slow in the judged version.

The light updated only every second which for a turn based game I didn't think would matter. Apparently it does, so I updated it 4 times a second, and I added an extra lighting update "on the turn" so there is no delay at all.  So no more delays.

So if you like a really smooth camera and perspective effect like I do, you can turn them up.  Otherwise if you're getting motion sickness or your'e a soulless monster who hates anything different  (I kid I kid), you can turn them down or off.   They are very subdued from where they were by default.  I turn them up full blast when I play, but that's just me. Maybe I'm the only one.

I will keep working on the game because I really believe in the premise as an engine for emergent fun and I will continue adding more possibilities until it's a legit commercial quality game.


I'll respond now to the comments directly in detail:

  • I played versions 1.0.1.2 and 1.0.1.3. If there is a goal I couldn't find it. I got to floor 19.
    Scrolling zooms the map in/out.

    Agan HOLY CRAP you got to floor 19?  I'm not kidding I made the game and I don't think I've EVER got to floor 19.  But then there were times I might have but stopped because I was testing... still I have so much respect for this review! 
    Completeness 3
    Depositing gold from above an altar causes the gold count to flicker but seems to have no other effect.

    When you donate there's a moment where the gold "drops" into the altar.  During this real time event, you can run above the altar and grab it back --and a monster can grab it too before it goes in if they get a turn.  So you can't donate to altars from the north side of them --you just can't.   I could fix this, but then you would always donate from the North side.

    It's a conceit of the game which may or may not be worth the counter intuitiveness but I plan to implement more real time stuff.  For example you can actively "dodge" spider webs in real time by moving in turns fast enough, and I'd like the spectre of turncoat tomb that pushes you to complete floors to violate the turn system too and just float toward you in real time.


    Enemies will sometimes disappear despite being in the light.
    The problem is line of sight is calculated from one player's center to the other enemy's center.  You should intuitively be able to see a part of a monster around a corner even though maybe your center couldn't see their center.  I can probably think of ways around this but just haven't.

    Maybe I should just make visible be "in the light" as in touching a lighted area...holy crap that just might work actually!


    If there is a goal I couldn't find it.

    It was on floor 20 I'm tellin' ya! You were so close!  Just kidding it was more of the same! 

    Yeah this kind of Roguelike needs some goals. I'm convinced even just a useless nominal McGuffin item on a high floor and a "congratulation" message indicating a win state would have improved the "fun" rating drastically and been so easy to implement it's maddening.  I'm working on goals for the game.
    Aesthetics 2
    WASD to move. I wish you could move with arrow keys as well.

    Wish granted.  I thought I already had arrow keys by that version, but I guess it was later... Have to look at my dev log.

    The rest command passes multiple turns. Walking into walls passes one turn, so this is not a tradeoff, just a one time gotcha.
    I fixed the rest a lot.  Space does one  turn.  Holding the R key rests until a hostile monster is near the player.  No more danger in resting.  I don't know though I like that little risk.  I wonder if maybe whether you "wake up" depends on an ability and there's a chance you'll get killed by a monster in your sleep if you're holding R and getting a free heal.
    Tiles sometimes overlap so that what looks like a wall is actually walkable floor space.
    There is a long delay before stats get updated, a long delay before lighting gets updated, and a long delays as the map scrolls to catch up with the player character. It is visually unappealing and makes the game annoying to play.

    All of that is better.  I made the tall walls a little shorter to not completely block the floor on the other side.. I didn't want to sacrifice the aesthetics of the tall walls though.

    All good observations.  Even in the judged version walls become transparent when any enemy or the player is behind them.  
    Fun 2
    Slow moving, especially with the game's delayed reaction to everything.
    Decisions about when to run and what altars to support.
    With no apparent goal it seems pointless.

    It's faster now.  Also I'm working on tything of primary color altars giving you specialized items for each faction as well as that color hating you less.  Nobody seems to get making that color "hate you less" as a usable game mechanic.  It makes a difference down the road, but it's not really obvious.
    Innovation 3
    Different enemy factions fight each other.
    Scope 3
    A few enemy types and weapons.

    My next release doubles the number of enemies. 

    Wide open or room and corridor maps.
    Roguelikeness 4
    Turn/grid based
    Random maps
    Permafailure
    RPG stats and weapons

    This is a great review ... very thorough and thoughtful.  And floor 19!  Hats off! 
  • On my best run of this game, I got to level 12. I decided not to keep trying after about 45 minutes of play because later levels seemed to just be more of the same, and no win condition was stated in the instructions.

    There it is... man I hear that "win condition" thing loud and clear.  Next release I swear there's gonna be a win state if it kills me.
    I think this is a promising concept, but I didn't feel like the factions did much for me in practice. I felt like I could only take a couple of strategies:
    1. Switch colors every time I saw a differently colored monster
    2. Fight everything to gain XP and become a badass, ignoring the faction mechanic
    Of course, #2 is why I eventually died, but #1 isn't really a fun mechanic for me. And with no goal in mind, I didn't feel motivated to optimize for making it to a certain level.

    I'm beginning to see a pattern here...
    So while this isn't a standout entry to me, I did feel like it was worth my time to try out.
    Completeness
    Polished, balanced, no bugs that I could see. 4/5.
    Aesthetics
    Intuitive UI, good-looking, nothing weird or out of place. Definitely one of the best UIs this year. 4/5


    Fun
    Difficulty was bimodal for me. Either I died on the first level, or I was good to go for a long time. The level 1 enemies seem really unbalanced.

    That's true!  Since then I gave the player a really basic sword instead of just bare hands on the first level.  That really helps the balance on the first level. You can still die, but you have a much better chance.
    I never felt like I was able to predict how hard a fight would be before I had either already killed the enemy, or was in deep trouble.
    It seemed like some of the armor was better than the other armor but I wasn't able to swap it out to see if I already had full armor slots.

    You can swap now.  I had trouble implementing dropping armor for that version.  It works now.  The trouble was it kept treating armor like weapons in ways it wasn't supposed to.  It works now though you can swap armor except grey which is  your "default."
    So given the blandness of the melee combat, balance issues, and not feeling like the factions mechanic was fun for me, I'm going for a 3/5 here.

    Still not too bad!  The combat could use some more weapon types.  Maybe magic of some kind for the player but I'm committed to not having any offensive spells.  All "tricks" are to manipulate monsters and their behavior.
    Innovation
    A neat twist on the usual mechanics. In practice doesn't seem to have a huge effect, so 3/5.
    Scope
    Pretty much what you'd expect from a 7DRL. 3/5
    Roguelikeness
    Is clearly a roguelike. 4/5

    Three  4s from this judge! And great constructive feedback! Thanks! I give this review 5/5!    

  • Strange game... It's really hard to understand what's going on. As far as I can tell, there are enemies of different colors and coats of different colors. You can switch coats and enemies of the same color as your own are fighting for you. In theory this could be fun. But implementation... Spinning view makes me dizzy. It's often hard to see what's going on. Coats are rare. You can easily die before you even find a new coat. Monsters do not easily leave area of the altar of their color. So luring differently colored enemy to a monster of your color is very cumbersome. Line of sight calculation is very bugged. It is somehow delayed and it's easy to miss a turn because it's not immediately visible.

    I think I fixed a lot of the things that are bugging this judge.  Spinning is better just a quick thing at the beginning of a run and the tilting perspective is adjustable and much less by default.   Also you now get ep for "team kills" so the faction mechanic matters a lot more.
    This judge didn't  put the scores in the comments but I can tell by math based on the other 2 judges scores if my math is right:

    Completeness 3
    Roguelikeness 3
    Scope 3
    Innovation 3
    Aesthetics 3
    Fun 2

    Just the goal, and a little more monster interaction overall would have gone a long way.  Really good feedback all around!