Demon Lord Reincarnation - Codexian Developed Blobber

[Grauken]

Kinda interesting to know, though this is spoilered for the endgame portion of the game

Spoiler

As Leinad you will face everyone from your original group + Metatron when you try to leave the dungeon. That is, everyone who survived the final fight with Leinad. So can try to fight Leinad with fewer characters if you can manage that or try to get some of your characters killed in the fight with him so that you eventually have to face fewer enemies at the end of it.

 

[Grauken]

Finally, nice to send god's messenger packing

I had to claw him to death when I ran out of mana

Spoiler

The second half of the game will make a lot of people give up on it.

Not sure if that was technically not easy to do, but not giving you the choice to control the hired monsters makes it harder than necessary to really survive here. Would have been better to control them to have a bit more control over combat, especially in the final fight with the heroes' party and Metatron.

Also, a lot of people upon reaching Metatron will regret having pimped their party too much before fighting Leinad. If you have a really strong party going in with Leinad, all 8 skill slots filled and upgraded to Level III, and all of the heroes in the heroes' party survive, this will be a hell of a fight. I only had to face three and that was already a handful (thankfully my 2nd char with Inferno III died in the fight with Leinad, a bit of luck there).

Metatron himself is pretty tough and I had to grind a bit to get my monster party strong enough to beat him, and only barely, in the end, it was just Leinad and one surviving monster clawing and kicking him with basic, 0 mana cost attacks. Basically came down to luck at the end, could have easily gone the other (as it did in far too many attempts).

One thing that would have been cool is if the dungeon during Leinad's sleep had changed so that you couldn't just rush back to the surface but have to map all over again. Could just have added doors where none had been before, or deleted some that existed before, so without changing the level architecture but just changing the route to escape. Because the reason you go slowly down with the heroes' party is to also map your way, without that back up as Leinad you just rush and are seriously weak when reaching the final confrontation.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Finally, nice to send god's messenger packing

I had to claw him to death when I ran out of mana

Spoiler

The second half of the game will make a lot of people give up on it.

Not sure if that was technically not easy to do, but not giving you the choice to control the hired monsters makes it harder than necessary to really survive here. Would have been better to control them to have a bit more control over combat, especially in the final fight with the heroes' party and Metatron.

Also, a lot of people upon reaching Metatron will regret having pimped their party too much before fighting Leinad. If you have a really strong party going in with Leinad, all 8 skill slots filled and upgraded to Level III, and all of the heroes in the heroes' party survive, this will be a hell of a fight. I only had to face three and that was already a handful (thankfully my 2nd char with Inferno III died in the fight with Leinad, a bit of luck there).

Metatron himself is pretty tough and I had to grind a bit to get my monster party strong enough to beat him, and only barely, in the end, it was just Leinad and one surviving monster clawing and kicking him with basic, 0 mana cost attacks. Basically came down to luck at the end, could have easily gone the other (as it did in far too many attempts).

One thing that would have been cool is if the dungeon during Leinad's sleep had changed so that you couldn't just rush back to the surface but have to map all over again. Could just have added doors where none had been before, or deleted some that existed before, so without changing the level architecture but just changing the route to escape. Because the reason you go slowly down with the heroes' party is to also map your way, without that back up as Leinad you just rush and are seriously weak when reaching the final confrontation.

Nice.

The main reason why monsters can't be controlled comes down to the variable size of their groups -- issuing commands to 10 monsters would be a nightmare if you had to adjust your tactics all the time.

Changing the dungeon was considered, but I decided to keep it as is -- the player has already mapped the dungeon and knows how to escape, so now it's a question of growing stronger, getting stronger monsters w/ more skills, and getting out of there.

Spoiler

Also, if you fail your first try to kill Metatron and come back again from the beginning, the heroes will be gone, as they've fulfilled their mission, so you'll just have to kick Metatron's ass, which makes it *much* easier.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Update 1.0.3 is out on Steam and GOG.

• Added skill descriptions in combat.
• Fixed certain cases where cursor memory caused annoyance to players.
• Adjusted flags and status ailment probabilities for certain skills.

Big thanks to whoever provided feedback. Imma go on a long vacation to recharge my batteries and wait till the Japanese localization is ready.

 

[Berengar]

The art is cool! Who did it?

 

[Grauken]

The art is cool! Who did it?

https://www.pixiv.net/en/users/5887541/artworks

It's from Toriotto's archive. Initially it was created for Javardry, but the artist allowed to use it in other projects, including commercial ones.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Japanese localization is out in case you have friends (lol) in Japan.

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2395150/view/3689065475854384183

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Released a small DLC with extra goodies for superfans.

 

[calgary.alberta]

I should buy this, but my budget is tight

 

[Abu Antar]

i wonder how the srquel will be like.

I never said that I'm done with the game. The return back up was something else. Especially fighting your own party!

In general a game with some cool ideas, nice art, and lots of pulling chest hair.

I'd love to see the sequel being fleshed out, but I am not a big fan of perma death in general.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

i wonder how the srquel will be like.

I never said that I'm done with the game. The return back up was something else. Especially fighting your own party!

In general a game with some cool ideas, nice art, and lots of pulling chest hair.

I'd love to see the sequel being fleshed out, but I am not a big fan of perma death in general.

It's too early to tell, as I've shifted to Ringlorn Saga: Book Two, since designing two similar projects back-to-back is a terrible idea in my opinion.

Personally, I want DLR2 to have more features (equipment, passive abilities such as the ability to spot hidden passages) and improve what's already there, but I want to avoid micromanagement hell as much as possible, especially if permadeath will stay as a mechanic -- part of the reason why I enjoyed working on DLR1 is its streamlined nature, which kept me playing the game instead of stopping to sift through menus on regular basis.

That said, I don't mind adding a way to revive dead characters as an expensive option, but I'll have to ensure it won't kill the tense atmosphere that the original created.

I might consider a two-step approach similar to the DG series (a spin-off/expansion to improve what's already there with slight additions and a sequel that takes these improvements and builds new stuff on top) because I have an impression that a lot of complaints behind DLR1 don't come from the lack of certain features, but rather mistakes made in design/implementation of existing features.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

The Steam page for DLR Gaiden is up.



Why make a standalone expansion? The sequel ended up going in its own direction, turning into an Ultima-style game, while the initial scenario for it was too good to discard, so I decided to improve the original codebase and make it happen.