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KickStarter Monomyth - A first person action RPG/dungeon crawler - now in Beta

DJOGamer PT

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RatTower I won't make any proper feedback until next week.
But I couldn't resist so I played around half an hour (until the guy in the red helmet). So here's my quick thoughs/impressions:

-so far the level design is nice; not anything amazing but it's still just tutorial area and you've already shown to be more competent in this field than most devs; so this keeps me exicited for future content
-I am impressed in how detailed your areas are, specially considering it's just you making this; and the game looks good too!
-that said, I think you're missing a good oppurtunity by making most small objects static
-it migth be a little early to say this but like your writing for the dialogue; it reminds me of morrowind and deus ex in the fact it's short and to the point but still has enough flavour to it that the character feels like part of the world he lives in and not simply an NPC
-my performance is a solid 55fps with all options maxed out (1080 res); the most taxing bit so far was a small room with 2 poisonous mushrooms protecting a king's leaf (tanked to about 38fps); the graphical options didn't change much performance wise (about a 10fps gain)
-I think blocking consuming stamina (and by this I mean just being in the "block" stance, aka RMB) is bit too penalising, and will only scare player relying on defense (unless this is your intent);
-the arrow traps should be a instant kill this early on
-the slimes didn't spit balls of acid like you shown previously, did you disabled it for the demo?
-when I use a torch, it don't appear in any hand and there's no way to put it out; is this intentional or a bug?
-the biggest problem with it so far is the slow movement; I like running being tied to athletics, but the default walking speed is just to slow

By the way what do mean by dexterity determining the weapon's effictivness?
Also is it okay to post some pics and record some footage?

So what you're saying is it's more finished than Underworld Ascendant?

From the little I played, it already seems more finished than UA.
 
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zwanzig_zwoelf

Graverobber Foundation
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I hope you guys have fun.
As a matter of fact, I do.

the biggest problem with it so far is the slow movement; I like running being tied to athletics, but the default walking speed is just to slow
Disagree. Strongly disagree.

I was concerned that the developer might make the default movement and combat too fast to appeal to the modern action game audience, but the movement, running and combat speed feels just right.
 
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Pearass

Educated
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Dec 11, 2019
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Syrup Land
Alright, so I've played a couple of hours so far. The first thing I want to say is that I am extremely impressed. For a game just beginning its alpha, it shows a remarkable amount of quality work already in. This is going to be great, I can feel it! I haven't fully completed the demo yet, but I plan to do so soon. However, I have a list of impressions and feedback that I wrote out while playing, and I would like to share that here :hug:

Intro
The intro cutscene is clearly in its early stages, but it is functional. I found that the text scrolled by a little bit quicker, but it worked well enough. In terms of pure content, I found the base premise to be enough of a hook to keep me invested. It isn't anything magical or gripping (especially with no context of the world abroad), but I'm sure that is far from the current focus. As far as music goes, I really enjoyed it! It reminded me a lot of the wind waker music, which is a definite plus. More on music later.

Graphics
Right off the bat, the game looks pretty great. My computer is a piece of junk by modern standards, but I simply had to lower the AA, post-processing, and shadows to get to a playable fps. However, that stuff is pretty unimportant when compared to what really defines a game's graphics... the art style. When first walking around the level, I was continuously reminded of the Legend Of Grimrock games (especially the first one, due to the setting). This isn't exactly a surprise, given that Grimrock was also made in the Unreal engine I don't know what I'm talking about. This is certainly not a negative in any way; given that Grimrock did a somewhat similar type of game well, there's no negative correlation. The environments generally have enough variety in appearance to be distinct (that is also a function of level design, but more on that later). Enemies have a great vibe and atmosphere. I love the look of the slimes and wastelander-types. While not terrifying, they look extremely fantasy-esque and match the environmental style/graphics very well. The lightly-shimmering glow of magical objects just looks fantastic, really. Given that the game is really quite dark, it clearly differentiates magic and non-magic items to the player in a consistent way. However, that brings me to another point and my personal biggest issue with the game (possibly a bug).

The game is just too dark. Now, to preface this, it could 100% be an issue on my end. I have tried adjusting the brightness on my monitor, changing the settings, etc. No matter what I do, I just can't seem to make it bright enough. This is what I'm referring to: https://imgur.com/a/V8vOXLv

Without a torch, certain areas are unplayable. This is by no means a bad thing - it gives a lot of power and weight to both the torches and divine light spells. Because torches and magic are a scarce resource, it gives them even more weight. So often in games, these types of items are simply rendered useless due to a game being too lenient with its light. However, I found that the torches still didn't illuminate enough, and when they did, it was too centered on the player. In the center of a room, I would expect the sides to be further illuminated than they were. An easy (or maybe not so easy, because I do not understand coding at all) way to fix this would be to add a gamma slider. If that would break balance too much, perhaps making torches/divine light stronger would do. Just my 2 cents! This was my biggest annoyance, and it was extremely minor compared to many alphas I have played, so hats off to you!

Segueing from that, I love the atmosphere generated so far. One benefit of the game being so dark is that the light sources give everything this super-realistic and dramatic lighting. It looks and feels like delving into an abandoned ruined fortress, which is what I assume to be the intention. The random enemies patrolling in the dark add to this tense nature as well. On top of that, there's the music to talk about.

Music and Sound
Normally it wouldn't make sense to group these together, but seeing as there isn't really a ton of music in the game, I feel that it's appropriate. The ambient atmospheric drones, as I mentioned earlier, compliment the atmosphere. It's that thin, whistling noise, or the sounds of your own/enemy footsteps that add to this. Often times, developers feel pressured to add music to the game because they might feel that silence is boring. Here, I would argue that it augments the game greatly. If I had some epic strings playing as soon as an enemy gets my attention, it would almost cheapen the experience for me and break my immersion. More variety might not hurt, but there wasn't really any points where I thought about it beyond the context of the atmosphere, so it looks good to me!

In terms of sound effects, I generally like these as well. Breaking pots feel really powerful due to the high presence of low-end frequencies in the sound effect (I don't know if that was intentional, but it works really well). Enemies groan, and they don't sound out of place, which is really all they need to due.

Voice acting in the few parts I heard it seemed well done (I can only recall the adventurer's spirit, but I could be wrong). No complaints there. Obviously, having the dwarf NPC be fully voice-acted would be cool, but that's entirely superfluous in the grand scheme of things. This is a game after all, and the gameplay here is king!

Gameplay
Ah yes, the meat and potatoes of this genre. Overall, I enjoyed the gameplay. It's hard, but not impossible. As DJOGamer PT said, there are a few things I would change. You may be missing out on an opportunity by not making small objects interactable. I wrote on my sheet that I was a little sad I couldn't throw the fish, or pick up some of the hammers in the workshop. This is far from a big deal, and I have no idea how resource-intensive it would be to change that, but it was just something I noticed. Speaking of the fish, I was not enamored with how closely the items drop from your character. I would personally prefer it if the item just dropped a little further away from the player, or even better, allowing the player to place it. I recall the instance of cooking the fish; I felt like I had to almost stand directly on the fire in order to place it correctly. I could just be really awful at placing things, but that's just me.

As far as movement, I love leaning! It feels great in the game, especially with the bow. I'm extremely grateful that you added it in. Walking is a little slow at first, but investing in athletics, as mentioned above, can alleviate the problem pretty quickly. Echoing what zwanzig_zwoelf said, it just makes stats feel a little more important. Casual players will get used to it, especially because it gets easily remedied. It also leads to a more cautious playstyle more appropriate to the genre (in my opinion of course). Jumping feels a little bit janky due to lack of control while in the air, but that's really not that much of an issue, providing there's no real platforming to be had. If there is, I would just suggest making ledge grabbing a little more generous to account for it.

Combat is fun! Each encounter has (I feel like I'm repeating myself here) weight. Each attack from an enemy matters, because they hit pretty damn hard. Fortunately for us, the AI is not exactly a genius. Enemies can be fairly easily distracted, and archers won't try to hit you if you hide behind a pillar or wall. This might make for a balance issue in the future, but that's all fine-tuning. The bases are definitely there. I feel like investing your stats in swords or whatever weapon would help a lot with this, so it will likely get better as the game progresses. I'm going to once again echo DJO and say that the shield might need a bit of a rebalance. The stagger felt too long for me and became a bit of a turn-off. It felt like the enemy shield was a lot better than mine, so I just opted to not use one instead. It could just be me, of course. Every encounter I had was fun though. None of them felt like a slog, which I suppose is easier early on. If enemy variety keeps on changing, however, it will certainly be great.

In terms of stealth, it seems pretty good! I didn't play with it as much as I would have liked, but it seemed to work decently well. Shadows factor into hiding, which is always a major plus for me. Enemies can be distracted (although as I mentioned earlier, maybe a bit too much?). I managed to sneak around two of the guys pretty nicely, and it was satisfying. I wanted the chest they were guarding, so I threw a crate across the room. They went to investigate, looted the chest, and dipped. Felt good man. Not insanely unique or anything, but it worked as intuitively as it could, so it looks good to me.

Magic seems nice, but I didn't exactly experience a ton of it. I found the divine light spell and promptly used it once my torches had run out. Work intuitively, so no complaints here. I believe that each stat ties into one of the three types of magic available, as well as one for mana. I could be wrong, but more on that next.

Character Progression

Finally, a game where the levels mean something! As I said earlier, athletics is pretty much necessary early on. You move too slow without investing a point or two into it. Most of the points work exactly how you might expect, so no complaints there. Throughout the stats, it's clear that build variety will be common. It's pretty modular, so you can likely specialize pretty hard the further you progress in-game. Experience points come from enemies and from spirits (from what I can tell). Early on the exp-to-enemy ratio felt fair, so hopefully, that balance remains. I wish I could have experienced more of it, but it's shaping up pretty nicely. You lose some experience points on death, which I feel is a fair trade-off; similar to Dark Souls in that regard. A lot of the progression reminds me of Dark Souls actually... I guess that shouldn't be surprising, given that both Dark Souls and Monomyth originate from King's Field.

Level Design
It's a tutorial level, so I was not expecting anything fancy. I was pleasantly surprised, however, to find a large amount of interconnecting areas. You can see rooms that you might reach in the future, find a way to get there, loop back around and open a locked door you couldn't open before, etc. It's a small slice, but this would be great (but very, very hard) if applied on a macro scale. Most rooms have something of value. The ones that don't have much are kind of boring though. I usually at least like to find something of note in each room, but I guess that's not really realistic, is it? Still, I'm not a huge fan of walking along a long corridor just to find some raw fish. This is insanely nitpicky, but I just figured I mentioned it (I only felt this maybe once or twice the whole time). From what I saw, you can reach every area that you can see, which is really satisfying when the player spots a weird ledge and wonders "I wonder what's up there?".

There's not really any illogical areas that I can think of. Claustrophobia inducing small corridors make combat intense, and the large rooms add good variety. I'm not much of an expert in level design (or any of this for that matter), but I liked what I saw. Branching looping pathways are pretty much always a plus in my books.

Some more torches along the levels would be nice too!

NPCs
I only encountered two, but I enjoyed what I had to see. They aren't particularly complicated, but have enough personality to keep the player engaged. They don't have a ton to say, but generally what they do say is of note. I'm sure that there will be a lot more NPC interaction as the game goes on, given that speech is an entire skill to invest in. So, good job here. Some voice acting would be nice, but it might be a little much to expect.

Conclusion
This alpha is really great. Barring some issues with the lighting, I really enjoyed this experience. I'm eager to continue on to the end and play through it again multiple times. Guys, get hyped. I think this is going to be very, very incline.

For such a small indie effort, this is really shaping up to be quite the achievement. I like what I see. Much love and respect to you Rat Tower!
 
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zwanzig_zwoelf

Graverobber Foundation
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I've played it for about 2 hours and sent my notes to RatTower. It's one of the few games I kept running almost immediately after closing the application, as I wanted to get more of it even if it means I'll lose a few hours of sleep.

It's coming along nicely. Still needs work (obviously, it's an alpha), but these 2 hours were pretty good. I'm going to restart it and play it again and see what else I can find (and keep sending nitpicky reports about every nook and cranny just because).

The intro cutscene is clearly in its early stages, but it is functional. I found that the text scrolled by a little bit quicker, but it worked well enough. In terms of pure content, I found the base premise to be enough of a hook to keep me invested. It isn't anything magical or gripping (especially with no context of the world abroad), but I'm sure that is far from the current focus. As far as music goes, I really enjoyed it! It reminded me a lot of the wind waker music, which is a definite plus. More on music later.
The intro is pretty much King's Field (the original one) in a nutshell. Cheap, easy to produce, but effective enough.

Also nitpicking, but:
Grimrock was also made in the Unreal engine
49nEjwZ.png
 

Pearass

Educated
Joined
Dec 11, 2019
Messages
44
Location
Syrup Land
I've played it for about 2 hours and sent my notes to RatTower. It's one of the few games I kept running almost immediately after closing the application, as I wanted to get more of it even if it means I'll lose a few hours of sleep.

It's coming along nicely. Still needs work (obviously, it's an alpha), but these 2 hours were pretty good. I'm going to restart it and play it again and see what else I can find (and keep sending nitpicky reports about every nook and cranny just because).

The intro cutscene is clearly in its early stages, but it is functional. I found that the text scrolled by a little bit quicker, but it worked well enough. In terms of pure content, I found the base premise to be enough of a hook to keep me invested. It isn't anything magical or gripping (especially with no context of the world abroad), but I'm sure that is far from the current focus. As far as music goes, I really enjoyed it! It reminded me a lot of the wind waker music, which is a definite plus. More on music later.
The intro is pretty much King's Field (the original one) in a nutshell. Cheap, easy to produce, but effective enough.

Also nitpicking, but:
Grimrock was also made in the Unreal engine
49nEjwZ.png

Oops, that's my bad. Did a 20 second google search and was wrong. Ignore me ;)
 

DJOGamer PT

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the biggest problem with it so far is the slow movement; I like running being tied to athletics, but the default walking speed is just to slow
Disagree. Strongly disagree.

I was concerned that the developer might make the default movement and combat too fast to appeal to the modern action game audience, but the movement, running and combat speed feels just right.

I didn't mean nothing like that.
Just that compared to something like Thief, the default walking seems slower. There's some resistance in the PC's movements, like he's walking through a knee-deep mud puddle...
 
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zwanzig_zwoelf

Graverobber Foundation
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the biggest problem with it so far is the slow movement; I like running being tied to athletics, but the default walking speed is just to slow
Disagree. Strongly disagree.

I was concerned that the developer might make the default movement and combat too fast to appeal to the modern action game audience, but the movement, running and combat speed feels just right.

I didn't mean nothing like that.
Just that compared to something like Thief, the default walking seems slower. There's some resistance in the PC's movements, like he's walking through a knee-deep mud puddle...
The movement feels pretty close to all three main sources of inspiration. With endless sprinting and the ability to pump the athletics stat, it's a non-issue.
 

zwanzig_zwoelf

Graverobber Foundation
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endless sprinting

What...
That's a bug rigth?
I mean that would defeat the purpose of sprinting costing stamina....
You can still sprint if your stamina is drained. Same thing was in King's Field starting with 2 (1 in the US), so I'm pretty sure it's intentional.
If you run out of breath while running into a room full of enemies, it'll take a while to recover, which leaves you vulnerable to attacks, but it also saves time when it comes to backtracking.
 

Child of Malkav

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Is XP rewarded for killing enemies? I thought it would be like Vtmb/DX1 rewarded for completing objectives or quests or for exploring. Hmm, maybe even the oddity system from Underrail would work.
Edit: typo.
 
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Farewell into the night

Guest
This one looks pretty cool. Looking forward to it & I wish happy testing for the testers.
 

SophosTheWise

Cipher
Joined
Feb 19, 2013
Messages
522
Hey RatTower, it seems my invite got accidentally lost in the mail? Still waiting at the letterbox - s-so excited!

Damnit, same here. Seems like not having played King's Field put me in the back (well, go figure).

But loving to read the feedback so far, would love to see more screenshots and some videos even more.

Keep it coming guys! And have fun!
 

Pearass

Educated
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Dec 11, 2019
Messages
44
Location
Syrup Land
Is XP rewarded for killing enemies? I thought it would be like Vtmb/DX1 rewarded for completing objectives or quests or for exploring. Hmm, maybe even the oddity system from Undertail would work.

From what I've played, it has both! You do get XP from killing enemies, but I found this "adventurer's spirit" that gave me some hefty XP as well. So, maybe the best of both worlds :D
 

RatTower

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Developer
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Apr 24, 2017
Messages
468
Unfortunately not much time today, but already thanks A LOT for the detailed feedback!

Here a few things I caught skipping through all of this:

Fighting enemies only rewards you with a small amount of XP.
Most XP is gained from solving puzzles and/or finding important items.
There are also adventurer's memories which are supposed to reward thorough exploration (in the tutorial it's just used to give people an XP boost and test the character progression)

Sprinting at zero stamina is in fact intentional. As zwanzig_zwoelf already said, it's a king's field thing and starts becoming useful in bigger areas.
Additionally to athletics, movement speed is also affected by equipment weight. It might have been be a poor decision to place the iron broadsword right at the beginning because it immediately puts you into weight class II.
You can increase your weight limit by pushing endurance, which is something I forgot to mention in the stat description.

Torches currently work pretty much like in Arx, with the exception that you can't douse them. That's still a missing feature (just like manually removing any beneficial status effect).

Ranged attacks for slimes are currently disabled, but will return in some other form.

Items can be carried in front of the player. Hold F while looking at an object to lift it up. You can then pull it towards you or push it away with the mousewheel, making it easier to place it in a specific spot.

Dexterity is a "semi"-requirement for wielding a weapon. If you are strong enough you can "hold" a weapon, but if you are "clumsy" (i.e. don't have the necessary dexterity) you will botch your attacks and do less damage.

SophosTheWise, Nyast and siegsui: I've only sent out a couple handpicked keys so far. These were for deployment testing only (to see if the game actually downloads and runs correctly). You can still drop me a DM and I can pull you forward into the slots that got free if you want to.

In fact anybody can do that. "Why?" you might wonder.
I've not been picky with assigning keys. In fact I just shuffled applicants and split them into test groups (last one being public alpha).
That's nice if you are doing some sort of case study, but if you want actual response rates you'd better go with people that have already engaged with the development process somehow.

That's why I pull certain applicants in front. Because it is more likely to get feedback from a codexer or some guy that's been following me on twitter for years than someone who goes by "[random word salad]@qq.com".
In the end it would probably balance out but the sooner the better. Later batches have more people in them. More people means more engagement. More engagement means more virality. More virality means more likelihood that the then current state of the game becomes cemented as the "standard" quality of the game in the heads of a broader audience (even non-alpha-testers). That's why you wanna fix the rough stuff in the beginning and not towards the end of the alpha. Otherwise the reputation of a "buggy mess" may established itself.
I know it's marketing thought and I'm a strong believer in "real" alphas (contrary to "marketing" alphas) - but with almost 500 applicants there are things that are beyond your control I guess.
So instead I'm following a "controlled burning" strategy.

Which brings me to "recording" footage: Yes you can always do that! Especially if you share it with me!
Captured impressions are basically perfectly documented user stories. The more blind you go into it, the better.

I'm gonna work through that feedback now! Hopefully I can upload a patch or hotfix soon.
Someone suggested adding a debug display for the player position, to simplify feedback. And they are right, because I have no idea where this is. The other stuff I found.

Anyway, thanks again for the reports so far!
 
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Nyast

Cipher
Joined
Jan 12, 2014
Messages
609
SophosTheWise, Nyast and siegsui: I've only sent out a couple handpicked keys so far. These were for deployment testing only (to see if the game actually downloads and runs correctly). You can still drop me a DM and I can pull you forward into the slots that got free if you want to.

Sure, thanks. Note that I've already sent you a PM ( last monday ) with my alpha registration e-mail as you had originally asked but I didn't get an answer. If it got lost just let me know and I'll send you another one.
 

Namesake

Novice
Joined
May 6, 2018
Messages
20
SophosTheWise, Nyast and siegsui: I've only sent out a couple handpicked keys so far. These were for deployment testing only (to see if the game actually downloads and runs correctly). You can still drop me a DM and I can pull you forward into the slots that got free if you want to.

Couldn't send a PM here, but sent a message to your Twitter :salute:
 

RatTower

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Apr 24, 2017
Messages
468
Should have you all covered now.

One mail actually landed in the spam folder so if you don't get yours with the next batch be sure to check there as well.
 

Stormcrowfleet

Aeon & Star Interactive
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Messages
1,020
Maybe I'm not cool enough but I had registered for a key and didn't receive anything by email (also checked my spam). Maybe I made an error when I registered ?
 

zwanzig_zwoelf

Graverobber Foundation
Developer
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Someone suggested adding a debug display for the player position, to simplify feedback. And they are right, because I have no idea where this is. The other stuff I found.
That was me. I have a simple debug display in DGS that shows just the bare minimum required to note down where exactly map errors/bad triggers/softlocks/other bullshit occur.
It's still available in the released version, just requires an unusual key combination to toggle it on/off.

AvB5gp6.png
 

Murk

Arcane
Joined
Jan 17, 2008
Messages
13,459
Man, I really wanted to get in on this Alpha but it'd be for selfish reasons -- to play it, not to actually test it.

:hero: to those who will support it in proper testing, but fuck me I'm jealous.

edit: given RatTower's approval to broadcast footage, anyone plan to upload a pseudo-LP to youtube or stream it?
 

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