Vapourware That Which Sleeps - Vaporware Strategy RP

I pretty much agree with everything Ulminati have said : blood drops are a bit more readable than biological hearts (especially if you want them in 16*16), and the status infos are better conveyed by icons.

 

Blood drops would be fine but really, if you want hearts just make them less pony pink and more gruesome dark red and they would be fine too. Seems like a nitpick to me.

 

It definitely is a nitpick on my part, but a consistent visual theme is important to set the mood of the game. The blood drops, anatomical hearts or just the less-anime looking hearts in age of wonders 3 are all a better alternative to Zelda hearts.

 

I kinda like the idea of having zelda hearts for the enemies and grimdark hearts for agents of darkness.

 

Blood drips are an interesting option as well - we've avoided dealing with these "nitpicky" decisions while the game was in primary development so we could really focus on mechanics, but now that we're in the final stretch it's nice to have a lot of critical eyes on the product to give this kind of feedback. I really hate having to swap out resources, send to testers, swap out again, etc etc etc.

It seems like the consensus is "it doesn't matter what it is as long as its darker" - the blood drip looks appealing, I may lean towards sending that out in the next build.

 

To be honest, I'd prefer numbers instead of a bunch of small icons for resources. It's easier to parse at a glance than having to count # of icons or estimating how empty a bar is. As an added bonus, you can have the resource icon larger and more detailed with the actual number beside it or superimposed like this:

 

And backedified. Good luck

 

Voted on greenlight and backed on kickstarter. Just the poorfag $10 pledge, sorry but the Peso Argentino sucks balls right now and I want to eat and get drunk and high.

 

Greatly appreciated! I'll make sure to do what I can, which is nothing, to help stabilize the Argentine economy.

 

KingDinosaurGames If nothing else, you've seen from my feedback a wave of people saying they prefer something else other than the current hearts (except for one poster). I hope that in itself is enough to convince you to consider other representations of health. I'm not Japan-phobic, but anime and JRPG elements just don't feel appropriate to your theme and aesthetic.

To a different point: how is your interaction with media? Do you know if any sites are going to pick up your KS and run articles on it? That's the most crucial part of getting your project and stretch-goals funded, imo.

 

I don't particularly dislike the hearts, but blood drops would definitely fit better. Not too keen on a bar myself.

 

Buy lots of Wine from our wineries at Mendoza! They are top-class and you save a penguin every time you barf.

 

We are up for exploring alternatives to the hearts, it's a relatively easy change to make so it would get into our post-KS polish phase - it's nice to see the community here be able to discuss the issue first before making the change as that saves valuable time for me having to go back and forth.

Our interaction with the media has been mixed, we've gotten some coverage and RPGWatch has been exceptionally helpful in posting every one of our updates since the beginning. However, our emails to the larger game sites that review indie content have been greeted with silence so far, but they may simply have a longer lead time. Tactical Cancer will be sending us some questions soon, and that's exciting because that's really our core audience - but we will continue to try and reach out to the more mainstream sites and even youtube communities because that can help propel us, as you said, through the later stretch goals.

 

I wouldn't mind simple numbers for health myself; perhaps cardlike similar to Armageddon Empires:



Speaking of things you could take from Armageddon Empires, I quite liked how variable the difficulty was. You could stumble across a cache of great weapons right at the beginning, or be stuck in the mountains while your opponents strip the map clean. Not knowing how a game will play out is nice (though it probably needs to be communicated to players/reviewers ahead of time, lest some grow frustrated from a bit of bad luck and say the game's terrible).

 

Never played Armageddon Empires, looks right up my alley.

We tried the "card" type approach but we actually rejected it because we didn't think we'd have the art (we then later put the current minions as placeholders) so it may be worth revisiting. I see what you mean with how the numbers work there, simple but with distinct placement so its easily readable. I think I like having at the very least icons to signify what the attribute is, but maybe we can restructure to get all the values fitting on the battle screen in a more orderly layout like this.

That Which Sleeps has a definite "variable" difficulty as you are meant to react to the events of the world as much as shaping them yourself, but I do think one of the problems with the game which simply cannot be changed is that you may not know how "well" you are doing. There's no concrete feedback to say if you are properly setting the stage for your return or really just dicking around while the heroes and the world grow more powerful. Still, I somewhat prefer that - losing is just as fun as winning though maybe not as rewarding - and it makes replays more compelling.

 

Is there a maximum number of units involved in a battle? Can an agent control more minions than he can bring to battle?

Armageddon empires has the same problem, although the games don't last very long. It's biggest issue is it's a very easy game to beat.

 

Agents bring all the minions he can control into battle, we "balanced" it so that you generally won't have more than 6 in a battle but if you're deadset on it I've had up to 13 minions in a battle, in which case the map becomes scrollable. We tried zooming out, which gets a little blurry with the details, but found that scrolling is generally better given how rare it is to bring more than 6 minions into combat.

Units involved in battle is a trickier question, armies have basic troops that are used almost like "hit points" which are limited only by the command rating of your commander. The Elite Units that supplement these troops can be deployed in varying amounts depending on the terrain - for instance in a pass or river crossing only one elite on either side can be deployed (exceptions for 'special' units exist) but on a plain you can deploy up to 5 of them to change the course of combat. However, while the majority of mechanics in the game are locked down we are still receiving and implementing feedback on the military side of the game and it is not unlikely to see possibly major changes even up to release.

We don't have a "difficulty setting" per say on That Which Sleeps, instead we have "Game Modes" that are configurable. The AI remains the same, but you can set a "The Age of Kings" Game Mode which makes all the leaders of the world have exceptional personality qualities - this makes the world much harder. Add in 'Heroism' game mode and you'll have more powerful heroes as well - I don't think I've ever beat a game with those two modes set.

Edit: that's not true, I beat it with the Death God - who is brutally overpowered and that's why he's out of the game for now

 

haha, he WILL be in the final release - the problem is that his current mechanics are INCREDIBLY FUN but since they are all involved in this terrible positive feedback loop they are impossible to balance. Either we make it so that the "Engine" is tough to get running which takes away the fun or we dismantle the engine of his mechanics. We'll probably do a backer-supported Death god only build sometime after the kickstarter to see what people say - it may be that he's just worth keeping in as is because it's absurdly fun and you just only play him with the hardest difficulty level.

The other side to this is that if we hit the Religions stretch goal I can easily incorporate passive countermeasures inside of it to combat his rise, which makes sense. We'll see!

 

Any particular reason you don't have a 'Design an Ancient Evil' backer tier?

EDIT: You could make a special extra-difficult scenario for the Death God. As an aside, a list of recommended gods for each scenario isn't a bad idea either, in terms of difficulty or theme.

 

Maybe it's the "surprise" 10k tier.

I imagine designing and balancing an ancient evil - not to mention making it mechanically distinct from the existing ones - is a lot of work. At least compared to letting people add 5 names to a db and decide what hero classes they should pop up for.

I just hope there'll be rip offs homages to the chaos gods. Playing a Slaanesh spinoff and making the rulers lust after each other's wives and ruin alliances would be lulzy.

 

^ This - We have, since the beginning, aimed to make a game that we can complete and do justice to. We allow ourselves a certain number of "risk factors" in development and we try not to exceed them. The other backer tiers that are 100+ are all easy to quantify the time and the asset cost, an Old One can require so much work to do justice to and we don't want to let anyone down with a huge pledge or delay the game for other backers.

But who knows, if interest is expressed by a group and there's some reasonable discussion with significant backer support we would be able to arrange something.

 

Damn, if it had meant that I get to play Jesus Christ Zombielord I would have donated 10k for sure.

 

FUNDED!

 

You should (that is, if you still have time for gaming...). Armageddon Empires is oozing with atmosphere, and has really cool mechanics. The UI is atrocious, but Vic Davis is really good at designing computerized board games (that is, games with a strong board games vibe, but that would be unplayable without a computer). I think Armageddon Empire is the best of his games (it's a good exemple of emergent storytelling too).
Grats on getting funded so quickly