Indie Heroes of a Broken Land

[Jaesun]

https://wingedpixel.com/heroes-of-a-broken-land/

Spoiler

http://indierpgs.com/2013/04/heroes-of-a-broken-land-announced/

One-man studio Winged Pixel (a.k.a. Andrew Ellem) writes in to announce the development of Heroes of a Broken Land. Do yourself a favor and look past the game’s rough graphical presentation for just a moment as we read:​

Turn-based gameplay, with first-person dungeon crawling, a sprawling 2D overworld to explore, plus some town management too. You can control up to 6 separate parties at the same time, each with up to 6 individual hero recruits. The entire world is procedurally generated, so you get a new world each game.​

Dude.​

Let me just recap that last paragraph: Heroes of a Broken Land combines first-person dungeon crawling, a turn-based strategy overworld layer with town management, procedural world generation, and control over up to 36 characters spread across six separate parties.​

This game is not screwing around.​

Heroes of a Broken Land is up to Alpha version 0.1.0–said alpha build is currently playable for free in-browser right here.​

HoaBL is in development for Windows, Mac and Linux, with an estimated release date of Summer 2013. You can pre-order the finished game for $5. I’m tempted to suggest we all do that so Andrew can hire himself an artist. This game deserves graphics to match its gameplay ambitions.​

 

[cvv]

This guy should go Kickstarter.

 

[Lorica]

Holy shit, cool.

He says the alpha includes:

* A full world generated for each game, each with unique treasures
* Multiple dungeons a variety to explore: Caves to explore, crystal mines to capture, dungeons to delve, magic towers to search and more
* Town management - you choose what stores and upgrades are available in your town
* Multiple heroes to recruit and train - up to 6 characters per perty
* Multiple parties to manage - up to 6 entire parties (36 heroes in total)

...already. Sounds playable.

Anyone know his history? I only see an Ozzie accountant and the studio doesn't have any other games listed on site or on the Indie DB.

 

[Broseph]

Really cool and original idea. Awesome. I wonder if your parties can face off against each other or work towards a common goal?

 

[Humanity has risen!]

Wow, the demo is really really fun, a mix of Might and Magic and Master of Magic. How can this not be incredible?

Granted, the tactical elements of the game do not look very deep, but I suppose we can't ask too much from one guy, and it has overworld and town management elements too so I guess it evens out.

I pre-ordered it immediately, for $5 this is too easy. I love FPS, turn-based RPGs so much, and this is such a good twist on the formula.

Well, I meant I was about to pre-order it instantly, but it keeps failing. Is it going through for anyone?

 

[Metro]

Not sure I'm following why you'd want to control six parties in a first person dungeon crawler. Is there some AI where the others go off adventuring on their own while you control one of them?

 

[Humanity has risen!]

I posted a short comment on his blog and invited him here

 

[WingedPixel]

Thanks for the interest in my game! I've been working hard for quite a long time and now that it's finally released I'm really happy people are intested. When you develop this type of game in isolaton you're always worried nobody will be interested when you announce it. Fortuntately that hasn't been the case, and a lot of people are like me - gamers who enjoy turn based RPGs.

Well, I meant I was about to pre-order it instantly, but it keeps failing. Is it going through for anyone?

Seriously, that shouldn't happen? If you have problems ordering my game PLEASE let me know! (andrew@wingedpixel.com)

To answer some questions:

Really cool and original idea. Awesome. I wonder if your parties can face off against each other or work towards a common goal?

Not sure I'm following why you'd want to control six parties in a first person dungeon crawler. Is there some AI where the others go off adventuring on their own while you control one of them?

The multi-party facet of the game design isn't fullly utilized yet. The multi party system was desinged so the player would have more options on how they choose to explore their world. Do you power up one party? Or do you spread your resources across many potential parites?

You are all right in that currently there really isn't any pressure to use more than one party. I do have ideas to make multiple parties useful (even requried) - perhaps through multi party dungeons or even linked dungeons, where you MUST have more than one party clear a dungeon at the same time.

Also as for randomization: you're correct that at some fundimental level it really is dungeon after dungeon. I think that's true for most games, procedurally generated or not. If you don't enjoy the second-to-second gamplay, then then minute-to-minute doesn't matter. Same with the quest-to-quest gameplay.

That's one reason why I consider the game is still in Alpha. Currently the long and mid term goals are weak or missing, so every game feels the same, even though the world and dungeon layout is different. These issues need to be explored further, and need to be addressed in some way before HOBL is finished (or Beta). These are difficult problems, with no ready solution.

That said, my priorty really is to make the short term decisions interesting an meaningful. If the core gameplay is engaging and fun, then replaying the same game should also be fun and engaging. If not then I've failed as a designer somehow.

 

[Lady_Error]

I just hope you are not overstretching yourself and can finish the game within a reasonable amount of time. There is a good cautionary tale about a talented one-man CRPG developer who is working on finally getting his game finished and released after 17 years in development.

 

[Metro]

Thanks for the response. While I have a better idea of what you're going for with the multiparty system I'm thinking it might get tedious if you have to manually level them up/control them all on your own. Now if there was some kind of AI feature where the parties not under your current direct control would go off on their own (with some macro-management by yourself in terms of the town, offering them equipment, giving general orders, etc.) then that would be a bit more appealing. That said I realize programming something like that might not be viable for one person.

 

[Crooked Bee]

Posted this as news: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...nnounced-turn-based-multiple-party-rpg.82625/

 

[Reapa]

This is going to be a kind of review updated whenever i feel like i can add anything important.

1. Very nice dungeons so far, they are supposedly randomly generated but i see no major differences compared to older games. So big plus on that!
2. Loot on the other hand is so far obviously random generated (diablo style with name suffixes for stats/resistances improvements). So major minus on that!
3. Dungeons get mapped automatically and while old school fags might see that as decline they can just ignore the maps and draw some themselves - for me it's incline!
4. The implemented need of a second party sucks ass since I normally explore all dungeons I find with my main party and I wonder how the second one should get experience when I need it to explore the dungeons that need two parties. It seems dungeons get re-randomized (repopulated) after a while.
5. Weapons and armor can increase resistances and stats by about 50 points each while a level up gives you 5 points you can choose where to put in, which invested can really mean only 5 points (+5 points strength = +5 attack, +5 wisdom = +10 mana)
6. Recovering health and mana cannot be done by resting within a dungeon. Compared to Stone Soup Dungeon Crawler that is decline. I'd rather have monsters wake me up than having to walk all the way back to the surface to rest or spend money and time on potion management. Using potions and healing spells between battles has nothing to do with tactics, it's just tedious.
7. Town management - don't expect HoMM3. Only 2 resources and 10 buildings to chose from (only enough space to build 6 but can be upgraded but there are other cities on the map which allow building the remaining buildings).
8. No "in-dungeon" stories.
9. No right click function and poor inventory interface.
10. Loot is not bound to party or characters, except the stuff they are wearing. It cannot be organized/sorted and if you're a hoarder of magic loot then in time it's going to get messy. In other words, you don't have a bag on you in which you put your stuff in, but a kind of magical pool of loot for the whole kingdom from which you can distribute it directly to any character in any party you want.
11. The game is extremely addictive.
12. Accidentlly found the speed adjustment button - the game's awesomeness just hit the ceiling.
13. 3 days in a row, still no crashes - solid game.

Available currently only on STEAM: http://store.steampowered.com/app/314470/

 

[WingedPixel]

I'm glad you like the dungeons. Personally I'm surpised, and very happy, the random dungeons work as well as they do.

The inventory screen has been an issue since day 1, it's really difficult to fit an easy to use inventory in a low-res screen. I have some ideas to improve the management a bit (better sort/view by item type, etc). Hopefully I'll get them into the final release.

 

[JudasIscariot]

I have a couple of questions, if I may

1. When buying equipment, I can't seem to find a way to find out the stats of equipment unless I am missing something. Would it be possible to bring in some sort of menu to compare or to even see what's special about equipment? This concerns more or less magical armor and weapons. I feel like I am sort of gambling when buying stuff :D

2. How come poison doesn't expire once a character dies? I keep having a problem where I revive a character only to have him/her die to the poison that killed him/her the last time. The reason I constantly try to keep a character alive is so they don't miss getting experience from a fight

3. Who thought up the Mother Slimes? Seriously, I hate those things: tough to kill, can't be stunned, and the bastards split in 4 ...

4. Will there be more music added later?

 

[WingedPixel]

1. I'll add a hover/tool tip to show you the item stats. It's not meant to be gambling, you should know what you're buying.

2. The poison remaining on death is a bug. I think all statuses/buffs should be cleared on death, but remaining poisioned is pretty annoying.

3. I was thinking of adding Queen Slimes, which spawn Mother Slimes. What do you think?

4. Maybe a song or two at most, maybe none. I think the problem isn't the total number of tracks, so much as it's currently one track that repeats per dungeon. I should probably just have all tracks in all dungeons to reduce the repetition.

 

[JudasIscariot]

1. I'll add a hover/tool tip to show you the item stats. It's not meant to be gambling, you should know what you're buying.

2. The poison remaining on death is a bug. I think all statuses/buffs should be cleared on death, but remaining poisioned is pretty annoying.

3. I was thinking of adding Queen Slimes, which spawn Mother Slimes. What do you think?

4. Maybe a song or two at most, maybe none. I think the problem isn't the total number of tracks, so much as it's currently one track that repeats per dungeon. I should probably just have all tracks in all dungeons to reduce the repetition.

At number 3, I had a nice long list of expletives when I first read that. I hate those things

Number 1 would be awesome because I keep finding stuff in dungeons and I'd like to compare it to my own homemade items.

Also, I am not sure if I am missing something and this is a case of RTFM but is there a button that allows me to center on my main town (the one with the crystal statue) when I am trying to get a party to walk there when I am being attacked?

I also noticed that the further away a destination is for one of my parties, the longer it takes for the game to I guess calculate the path or something. All I know is that if I try to set a destination quite a ways away, the mouse pointer changes into the regular Windows mouse pointer and the game just halts for a few seconds while it calculates/works/whatever the technical term. It's quite noticeable.

 

[oldschool]

Item stats wuld be a nice addition.

One thing about items: the ones that add HP and MP just increase your capacity, they don't actually add the hp and mp when you put them on. That's fine, but when you are trying out diferent equipment, and then put it back on, you end up losng the bonus until you've rested up or healed. Not a big deal, but seems kind of quirky.

Bring on the Queen Slimes!

On a side note, am I the only moron that can't figure out hw to make sorcerors, assasins, or monks? It's really starting to annoy me that I can't find a way to do it.

 

[WingedPixel]

Item stats will be in the next version.

Finding your town is a good point for larger worlds. The next version will let you click on the world map, but I think I'll make right clicking on the town icon zoom to the town too.

The HP/MP boosting items affecting current MP/HP on equip/dequip behaviour won't get fixed. If MP/HP are restored/added on equipment change, you'd be able to exploit that effect to get free MP by changing equipment. (at least I haven't thought of a workaround)

oldschool Not all upgrades at found at towns!

 

[oldschool]

Item stats will be in the next version.

Finding your town is a good point for larger worlds. The next version will let you click on the world map, but I think I'll make right clicking on the town icon zoom to the town too.

The HP/MP boosting items affecting current MP/HP on equip/dequip behaviour won't get fixed. If MP/HP are restored/added on equipment change, you'd be able to exploit that effect to get free MP by changing equipment. (at least I haven't thought of a workaround)

oldschool Not all upgrades at found at towns!

Yeah, I thought about that after I posted. It's not bad the way it is, just annoying when I acccidently unequip something trying to compare stats. The item stat pop ups will be handy.

I must be missing something obvious on the class upgrades. I've explored complete maps and never found any way to do it.

 

[oldschool]

oldschool Not all upgrades at found at towns!

Is it possible that the mechanisms for making these class upgrades don't spawn in every world?

 

[WingedPixel]

Possible. If you have a tiny world you won't have everything, it's probably possible you don't have any world class upgrades. if you have a small world you're likely going to miss something. It would be very rare to not have them in a Normali sized world, and almost impossible to not have Sorcerer, Monk AND Assassin. Sorcerer's pretty common. Larger worlds would have all upgrades.

 

[Desktop Commander]

So I finally had some free time to mess around with the latest beta a bit and I must say that this has come quite a long way (in a relatively short amount of time). The new UI fluff looks great, too; makes you almost forget you're playing an indev version.

Also, a small suggestion if I may: The line "You are one such wizard." during the intro text does not, as I perceived it, have the impact that it should have and I think it would be better, if the screen showed just that one line and nothing else when it comes up. It would also be a great line to end the intro with, as I must admit that I find the current end with the title drop "You must assemble many Heroes so save this Broken Land" or something (don't remember the exact wording right now) rather unnecessary and also a little bit silly.

But it's a minor point, really; the game itself is awesome and I'm glad that I bought it.

 

[thesheeep]

Wait, you are forced to play with multiple parties?

Hmmm... How should that be played with XP balancing in mind?
Just enter each odd dungeon with the odd group?

 

[WingedPixel]

The intro sequence will be changing a bit anyways, I like your point about "you are one such wizard". The last line is cheezy and meant to be cheezy (you can't have a game inspired by M&M not be cheezy!)

thesheeep There are many ways to get higher level heroes - you can recruit higher level heroes when you fame goes up or through quests. Dungeons will regenerate and quests will spawn one off dungeons too. You can also re-arrange your party to create two mid-level parties.

 

[Don Peste]

It will be on the next IndieFort (This Thursday) along with No Time to Explain, Smooth Operators, Masterspace and Tales of Maj'Eyal.