Bad Sector said,

It does seem to be of high quality. At least the art assets are high quality enough. I find the setting interesting too.

My biggest problem is with the user interface. For example, the text is way too small in 1920×1080 (although apparently they’re working on a fix for providing a text size option). Having to read stuff that spans across a 27″ monitor in tiny characters isn’t fun, especially when the game is text heavy.

I’m not sure I like the camera controls either. I would prefer if there was an option to have the camera follow the character because I keep spamming the Z (center to character) key. There could have been a way to unlock the camera if needed.

I have only played for the few first minutes of the game (in practice I’ve spent much more than that in the game, but more on that below) but it strikes me as very scripted. Dunno, I think I would like myself to walk towards the innkeeper, guildmaster and other characters and talk to them instead of having that done automatically. It might have been an engine limitation though – while the environments have a lot of detail, they seem to be very small in area. Having to switch/reload every couple of meters while walking around might have been a bit too painful.

I almost like the combat. I say almost because there is a feature I didn’t like: the fact that it is very common for enemies to disarm you. While normally that wouldn’t be as bad alone, combined with the action point system and the cost for accessing the inventory makes the combat hard. I had my character lose his weapon in a combat twice – in the whole combat I basically just managed to strike a single blow! The rest of the time was spent trying to pick up my weapons from the inventory. Not very fun, really.

Talking about inventory, I think the game is a bit buggy there. For example after I got some black leather armor from an assassin I naturally wore it. Then a couple of screens later my character was wearing some other armor that I had in my inventory!

The initial assassin is a very hard in my opinion. I decided to make a mercenary and I spent a lot of time (and more than 10 character setups) trying to figure out how to kill him. Of course there is the option to not do that – but you know what? I’m a mercenary, I am supposed to have a background in fighting, I wasn’t some random dude with a weapon in hand pretending to be a professional killer – I am supposed to be one. For a game that was supposed to be giving you options, there doesn’t seem to be much of an option here.

Anyway, so far this is what I’ve seen from the game. The way I presented my experience sounds negative, but I generally I liked what I saw. However it feels like a valuable but unpolished gem. It is in need for a bit of balancing (i’m not the only one who said that the battles are brutally hard – I’ve seen this mentioned in a few other places too), stability (once I had a character that I managed to keep alive, the game crashed…) and UI fixes.

Especially the text and the inventory. How hard is to put a popup over items that tell you how an item might affect your stats? Shuffling around the inventory and having to wear to see the results is tedious.

But I may buy it once I am in a better economic situation…

Kyle said,

I won’t be supporting them, but not because of the game. Game looks great.

The lead developer is being a jerk to people who show up on the company’s forums, and actively chasing away customers.

Exchanges run something like this:

New Member: “I just heard about the game. Looks cool. Played the demo and it’s neat. I think combat is too hard.”

Developer: “Combat isn’t too hard. Go play a different game.”

New Member: “Well, as a new player I thought I’d share my initial impression.”

Developer: “Initial impressions don’t count. I think combat is easy. The internal beta testers, who have been playing for months, don’t think combat is too hard. Go play a different game.”

New Member: “Well…”

Developer: “Fuck off.”

Game looks fun. But I prefer not to patronize places that are contemptuous of their customers.

Rampant Coyote said,

I just find it ironic that it plays more like Choose Your Own Adventure and how he reels agains “I win button” or “press button something awesome happens” game design, yet the skill checks in the game pretty much achieve the same thing in the end.

I made similar discoveries with Frayed Knights, though. You start out with this high-minded ideas of what an RPG should be, and these examples from the best games of the past that you want to build upon. But when the rubber meets the road, you have to make compromises. You realize that Best Idea #1 is incompatible with Best Idea #2, and one or both of them will have to be modified to get them to work together. After many protests from the playtesters, you have to decide whether you want to stick to your guns about what is “right” or modify the game to make it something they want to play. You also find there’s a gravitational pull that keeps moving you in a particular direction even if you don’t really want to be there — because it solves so many problems at once.

So yeah, I know how that happens. I’m not holding that part against the game. I just don’t know how they can sustain that many permutations in the plot throughout a full game.

shaf said,

For a Torque Engine game the graphics are exceptional, the map interface requires a little work but otherwise an excellent old school type RPG with a fairly non-standard setting.

I kept getting killed as a fighter and switched to being a loremaster using knowledge and persuasion instead of combat to solve problems.

Kyle said,

RPGHeaven and BadSector,
You make fair points, but they are irrelevant to my own. (Though to be fair, I think I muddied the waters by using combat difficulty in my little dialog example above.) I think that I’d largely agree with both of you if we talked about design decisions ITS made and how fun they will and won’t be.

RPGHeaven, the fact that he’s making a game for a very specific niche has nothing to do with my complaint. Regardless of the intended audience, he’s treating people who show interest in his game with contempt.

He put out a beta and asked for feedback. Then he responded defensively and churlishly to folks who provided the very feedback he asked for.

That’s surely turning off some people who make up his target audience. (me, at the very least.) Which is counter productive at the very best.

Bad Sector, the fact that he’s not a jerk most of the time doesn’t really do it for me. If my local bookstore acted like jerks to 2% of their customers I’d stop shopping there, even though they aren’t jerks to me. Bad behavior leaves a bad taste, and I prefer to do business with people who show others a basic level of respect, instead of active contempt.

I don’t mean to suggest that the developer should try to make everyone happy, or take every suggestion seriously. Just that telling your customers to get lost is counter productive.

WhineAboutGames said,

(This isn’t me defending him as I haven’t visited the forums and haven’t played the demo yet. Just saying that in general, sometimes recognising people as NOT your customers isn’t such a bad idea.)

Alan said,

The download link in the article appears to be wrong.

Kyle said,

Guys, I think your points very validly explain the behavior I’ve complained about. They don’t excuse it, in my eye, but you haven’t claimed they do. I think you’re all spot on.

Nevertheless, I don’t buy from people who treat customers poorly. There are lots of good indie developers out there, and I enjoy supporting them and playing their games.

If AoD is in the position where they doesn’t need customers, then I’ll oblige. But if someone like Rampant Games is ever in a position where they don’t NEED customers, I’ll probably still consider buying their product because I get the sense of a basic respect for the customer.

Cuthalion said,

Ugh. Since when to you teach people how to play a new game by telling them to go memorize the rulebook?

That said, everything I’ve seen of the actual game looked neat. The developer, on the other hand…