Indie The 7th Circle - Endless Nightmare - single character dungeon crawler with TB combat and permadeath

[Chaotic_Heretic]

http://68k.prisma-comunicazione.it




https://af.gog.com/game/the_7th_circle_endless_nightmare?as=1649904300

Spoiler

This was bought to attention by Grauken in the BTIV Thread.

This didn't have it's own thread so i made one.

So I played for a while on normal difficulty.
While the combat is somewhat simplistic, the horror themed atmosphere and exploration is incline.

The spellcasting system is a bit different here form most of the nuBlobbers.
Stats determine length of debuffs/buffs and damage/healing, mana and mana regen.
Specific Magic Skill determines chance of success while casting.

To cast a spell you press 'C' and type in 4 alphabets and enter.

Till now I only found 1 spell of conjuration (which is in the tutorial section really)
'MAIN' which is the show map spell.
I found many other spells don't recall them since i progressed to third floor relying on pharmacology for healing as i hadn't figured out how to cast.

getting butthurt I erased data and started as a caster and welp, no spells known.

Anyways fun and cheap TB Blobber. Also if you know some other spells please say the code.
PEACH ; newtmonkey

'MAIN' Magic Map lv1 Conjuration
'LIFU' Fire Claw lv2 Elemental
'RACO' Freezing Ray lv3 Elemental
'CUFE' Cure Light Wounds lv2 White Magic
'ANTO' Torment lv3 black magic
'EVSE' Summon Skeleton lv3 Necromancy
'MALE' Curse Enemy lv1 Black magic
'ANVE' CURE Poison
'CENE' Blindness
'PIMA' Magic Stone lv1 Elemental
'BEDI' Bless
'BOFU' FIrebomb

by PEACH

'MAIN' Magic Maplv1 Conjuration
'EVSE' Summon Skeleton lv3 Necromancy
'ANTO' Torment lv3 black magic
'ARGI' Frozen Weapon lv4 Elemental
'BAGI' Ice Barrier
'MENE' Black Mass
'PIGE' Ice Rain
'SEZO' Undead Servant lv6 necromancy
'VIMA' Magic Vision lv4 Conjuration
'BEPI' Bless ((UNKOWN SPELL)) ===> Check plz
'RIBE' Restoration lv3 white magic
'BUMA' Compass lv3 Conjuration
'BUKA' Firebombs ((UNKOWN SPELL)) ===> Check plz
'NUVE' Cloud of Sickness
'PUMO' Warp to Death
'RICO' Warp to Start
'OSCO' Dark Command
'SAIN' Sanctuary lv7 Conjuration
'SATO' Holy Touch lv8 White Magic
'PILE' Light Feet

 

[PEACH]

I've written down quite a few in a notebook, not sure if you've found any others by now but here are the ones I have (if some don't work blame my poor handwriting):

'MAIN' Magic Map
'EVSE' Summon Skeleton
'ANTO' Torment
'ARGI' Frozen Weapon
'BAGI' Ice Barrier
'MENE' Black Mass
'PIGE' Ice Rain
'SEZO' Undead Servant
'VIMA' Magic Vision
'BEPI' Bless
'RIBE' Resto
'BUMA' Compass
'BUKA' Firebombs
'NUVE' Cloud of Sickness
'PUMO' Warp to Death
'RICO' Warp to Start
'OSCO' Dark Command
'SAIN' Sanctuary
'SATO' Holy Touch
'PILE' Light Feet

 

[Chaotic_Heretic]

OK, "Pure" caster is not very viable. Low mana and step on trap = buttrape and death. should have leveled up a single melee weapon for.

started a 12 str/9 body/9 speed with skills unarmed 4 (main damage) /white magic 4 (heal and stuff) / conjuration 4 (for exploration spells and mana management) with the mana thief trait and it works surprisingly well on standard.

Since relying on unarmed for damage, white magic for healing and wearing some shitty lv1 light armor and had a much easier time than elemental caster. once you get the higher level perks for unarmed, it works very very well.
Maybe doesn't compare to a fully upgraded twin weapon for the combo buildup and damage, but you don't need to grind the crafting skill for the upgrades. just keep on punching and healing and resting and so on.

 

[Serus]

This was bought to attention by Grauken in the BTIV Thread.

This didn't have it's own thread so i made one.



So I played for a while on normal difficulty.
While the combat is somewhat simplistic, the horror themed atmosphere and exploration is incline.

The spellcasting system is a bit different here form most of the nuBlobbers.
Stats determine length of debuffs/buffs and damage/healing, mana and mana regen.
Specific Magic Skill determines chance of success while casting.

To cast a spell you press 'C' and type in 4 alphabets and enter.

Till now I only found 1 spell of conjuration (which is in the tutorial section really)
'MAIN' which is the show map spell.
I found many other spells don't recall them since i progressed to third floor relying on pharmacology for healing as i hadn't figured out how to cast.

getting butthurt I erased data and started as a caster and welp, no spells known.

Anyways fun and cheap TB Blobber. Also if you know some other spells please say the code.
PEACH ; newtmonkey

I don't want to sound like a person bent on definition but from what I understand you only control one character at a time in this game. If that's the case then it's clearly not a "blobber". We can have discussion about what "blobber" means on the Codex but one thing everyone agrees on is that it can't be a single character.

Other than than, looks interesting. I certainly like the graphic style of the monsters.

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Circuit the Short]

We can have discussion about what "blobber" means on the Codex but one thing everyone agrees on is that it can't be a single character.

So, EotB is a blobber, but Dungeon Hack and LoL are not?

Does blobber stop being blobber if you do a solo playthrough?

 

[octavius]

I thought Anvil of Dawn was an evolutionary dead end.
Seems I was wrong.

But to be fair AoD was quite good.

 

[V_K]

I thought Anvil of Dawn was an evolutionary dead end.
Seems I was wrong.

But to be fair AoD was quite good.

Given the horror theme, seems more of a legacy of... Legacy

So I played for a while on normal difficulty.
While the combat is somewhat simplistic, the horror themed atmosphere and exploration is incline.

How is level design? ?Any puzzles?

 

[octavius]

I thought Anvil of Dawn was an evolutionary dead end.
Seems I was wrong.

But to be fair AoD was quite good.

Given the horror theme, seems more of a legacy of... Legacy

Good point.

In theory I dislike the idea of one character games in blobber style, but in practice they can be good.

 

[Darth Canoli]

Seems very nice, tun-based at that, might try it soon.

 

[PEACH]

How is level design? ?Any puzzles?

Level design isn't bad at all, can be a bit plain at times but from what I saw there's a good amount of diversity to the floor designs and as you progress there at least a few with neat gimmicks and navigational trickery. Won't blow you away but it's a thousand times better than say MMX.

Unfortunately there are no real puzzles but there are timed events where you need to go to certain coordinates at specific times in the lunar cycle which I thought was pretty cool.

All of that said, having played until floor 8 or 9 on a melee build I ended up getting really bored due to the difficulty curve being incredibly frontloaded, so I wouldn't recommend the game.

I briefly touched on it in another thread but by about floor 4 I was already unstoppable and by floor 8 I felt like there was no reason to keep playing when I could one shot half the monsters. If you find the rarer chests and secrets you can easily end up with equipment that mitigates almost all damage while dealing 4 to 40 times the damage per hit (depending on Crits) as anything you'll come up against including bosses. I even had two magic skulls and one cast a poison dot at the start of every fight that could take enemies down to 50% HP before I had a chance to attack them myself. The other one gave me 100% adrenaline forever, which is huge too.

Due to all this, the high volume of fights get really tedious because there's no strategy when you're a god 1/3 of the way into a dungeon crawler. Mash A for basic attack is the optimal strategy once your stats are high enough and the game's combat lacks the depth or nuance to throw any curveballs at you that might change that.

Add in the fact that the permadeath system feels super pointless and unnecessary when dying is impossible and the way the difficulty curve defeats the need to use potions, rest spaces or crafting and you kinda get a game that does a lot right on paper but actively works against itself constantly.

I'd go as far as to say the permadeath gimmick adds nothing to the game and might've ultimately hurt the design when the devs have to worry about fucking with players too much and have to balance difficulty around the assumption that you'll be dying and losing levels at least once in a while. What this means is that if you simply don't die you'll be a god sooner than later no matter what because you'll always outrun the curve on a melee build

Would try on harder difficulties but I don't really want to play through half the game again for some number tweaks and no other changes given how fluffy a lot of it felt even the first time I did it. Also, it was so hard to even intentionally die by the time that iquit playing that if I wanted to die to spend my 100,000+ currency I'd need to let myself get hit for probably 15-20 minutes straight by an average monster if not longer

Overall I don't think it's worth picking up personally but I also don't regret giving the dev a chance. Hopefully next time around he either commits to making a roguelike or to making a proper static level dungeon crawler, cos as it stands those elements are compromising one another constantly and neither were handled as well as they could've if he focused on one or the other

 

[Chaotic_Heretic]

So I played for a while on normal difficulty.
While the combat is somewhat simplistic, the horror themed atmosphere and exploration is incline.

How is level design? ?Any puzzles?

Puzzles? Not much really unless you count going to certain locations at certain times which gives you certain challenges/bonuses.

The level design isn't bad; but dont expect anything spectacular. but there is decent variation so there is that.

and yeah if you stick with one melee weapon and some spells for support; game is EZ mode. So I would suggest starting on one of the higher difficulties.

is this the nu coming of blobbers? No.

But a very good effort by an indie dev, and its p. cheap so you can give it a try. And it is very very hard to die on standard after floor 2 unless you play like a retard. so the permadeath mechanic is kinda pointless I suppose?

I mean the atmosphere in this game is p. amazing and exploration is decent. Combat is repetitive and kind of emh once you figure out the ropes. All in all, I would say p[lay this if you are itching for a decent blobber.

 

[Contagium]

Been following this game for a bit... looks like the dev put in a lot of work on the game, but there's been very little publicity.

Takes sheckles to make sheckles I suppose.

 

[Darth Canoli]

I briefly touched on it in another thread but by about floor 4 I was already unstoppable and by floor 8 I felt like there was no reason to keep playing when I could one shot half the monsters

There was an update yesterday or a couple of days ago to balance melee weapons superiority over magic adding armor to most enemies while magic damage bypass it.

 

[68kStudios]

How is level design? ?Any puzzles?

Level design isn't bad at all, can be a bit plain at times but from what I saw there's a good amount of diversity to the floor designs and as you progress there at least a few with neat gimmicks and navigational trickery. Won't blow you away but it's a thousand times better than say MMX.

Unfortunately there are no real puzzles but there are timed events where you need to go to certain coordinates at specific times in the lunar cycle which I thought was pretty cool.

All of that said, having played until floor 8 or 9 on a melee build I ended up getting really bored due to the difficulty curve being incredibly frontloaded, so I wouldn't recommend the game.

I briefly touched on it in another thread but by about floor 4 I was already unstoppable and by floor 8 I felt like there was no reason to keep playing when I could one shot half the monsters. If you find the rarer chests and secrets you can easily end up with equipment that mitigates almost all damage while dealing 4 to 40 times the damage per hit (depending on Crits) as anything you'll come up against including bosses. I even had two magic skulls and one cast a poison dot at the start of every fight that could take enemies down to 50% HP before I had a chance to attack them myself. The other one gave me 100% adrenaline forever, which is huge too.

Due to all this, the high volume of fights get really tedious because there's no strategy when you're a god 1/3 of the way into a dungeon crawler. Mash A for basic attack is the optimal strategy once your stats are high enough and the game's combat lacks the depth or nuance to throw any curveballs at you that might change that.

Add in the fact that the permadeath system feels super pointless and unnecessary when dying is impossible and the way the difficulty curve defeats the need to use potions, rest spaces or crafting and you kinda get a game that does a lot right on paper but actively works against itself constantly.

I'd go as far as to say the permadeath gimmick adds nothing to the game and might've ultimately hurt the design when the devs have to worry about fucking with players too much and have to balance difficulty around the assumption that you'll be dying and losing levels at least once in a while. What this means is that if you simply don't die you'll be a god sooner than later no matter what because you'll always outrun the curve on a melee build

Would try on harder difficulties but I don't really want to play through half the game again for some number tweaks and no other changes given how fluffy a lot of it felt even the first time I did it. Also, it was so hard to even intentionally die by the time that iquit playing that if I wanted to die to spend my 100,000+ currency I'd need to let myself get hit for probably 15-20 minutes straight by an average monster if not longer

Overall I don't think it's worth picking up personally but I also don't regret giving the dev a chance. Hopefully next time around he either commits to making a roguelike or to making a proper static level dungeon crawler, cos as it stands those elements are compromising one another constantly and neither were handled as well as they could've if he focused on one or the other

Hi, I'm the developer of "The 7th Circle".

Thank you for your feedback about my game. I'm still try to balance the gameplay difficulty and a couple of days ago I've released an update to increase difficulty on higher levels, so please, if you wish, try the game again and tell me if it's still too easy. And remember that you can change the difficulty level at any time in the Settings Menu (you don't need to start over with another character).

Anyway, you gave me a good suggestion and I'll probably add a way to easily kill a character :D

 

[Serus]

We can have discussion about what "blobber" means on the Codex but one thing everyone agrees on is that it can't be a single character.

So, EotB is a blobber, but Dungeon Hack and LoL are not?

Does blobber stop being blobber if you do a solo playthrough?

Why would you mention Lands of Lore in the same question as Dungeon Hack? Last time I checked there are multiple characters in LoL and they act (both outside and in combat) as a "blob" unless my memory plays tricks on me.

Design of a game != how the game is played by a particular gamer in a particular playtrough. Very many games can be played in a slightly or even completely different way than they were designed for. Does it change their genre every time any player chooses to test the boundaries of a system or an engine?

However if you really want to discuss this topic further, we had a whole thread on this very subject very recently, please feel free to contribute there and to not derail this one any further. I'll answer your posts there if you are interested in discussing this topic:
http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/first-we-have-to-define-what-is-a-blobber.123727/

 

[Chaotic_Heretic]

68kStudios
do higher difficulty enemies give more xp/blood?

is cure light wounds and similar spells healing hp affected by the magic damage modifier?

 

[68kStudios]

68kStudios
do higher difficulty enemies give more xp/blood?

is cure light wounds and similar spells healing hp affected by the magic damage modifier?

Yes on higher difficulty you'll get more xp/blood (but it's not directly proportional to the enemy power) and yes, healing spells are affected by INT in the same way as offensive spells.

 

[PEACH]

Hi, I'm the developer of "The 7th Circle".

Thank you for your feedback about my game. I'm still try to balance the gameplay difficulty and a couple of days ago I've released an update to increase difficulty on higher levels, so please, if you wish, try the game again and tell me if it's still too easy. And remember that you can change the difficulty level at any time in the Settings Menu (you don't need to start over with another character).

Anyway, you gave me a good suggestion and I'll probably add a way to easily kill a character :D

Looks like I was misinformed about the way difficulty settings work which I'm very glad to hear though I hope I didn't accidentally mislead anyone. You have the groundwork for a really great game so if you keep up the post launch support I'd be happy to stick with it and be proven wrong about anything I said. Later in the week when I have the time I'll try out a couple other difficulties as well as the recent update and give some more feedback.

 

[68kStudios]

Hi, I'm the developer of "The 7th Circle".

Thank you for your feedback about my game. I'm still try to balance the gameplay difficulty and a couple of days ago I've released an update to increase difficulty on higher levels, so please, if you wish, try the game again and tell me if it's still too easy. And remember that you can change the difficulty level at any time in the Settings Menu (you don't need to start over with another character).

Anyway, you gave me a good suggestion and I'll probably add a way to easily kill a character :D

Looks like I was misinformed about the way difficulty settings work which I'm very glad to hear though I hope I didn't accidentally mislead anyone. You have the groundwork for a really great game so if you keep up the post launch support I'd be happy to stick with it and be proven wrong about anything I said. Later in the week when I have the time I'll try out a couple other difficulties as well as the recent update and give some more feedback.

In the latest update (released today) you can find a "suicide" command (press SHIFT+K in combat to kill your character and go to the Pillars upgrade screen). Thanks again for the suggestion

 

[Chaotic_Heretic]

Hi, I'm the developer of "The 7th Circle".

Thank you for your feedback about my game. I'm still try to balance the gameplay difficulty and a couple of days ago I've released an update to increase difficulty on higher levels, so please, if you wish, try the game again and tell me if it's still too easy. And remember that you can change the difficulty level at any time in the Settings Menu (you don't need to start over with another character).

Anyway, you gave me a good suggestion and I'll probably add a way to easily kill a character :D

Looks like I was misinformed about the way difficulty settings work which I'm very glad to hear though I hope I didn't accidentally mislead anyone. You have the groundwork for a really great game so if you keep up the post launch support I'd be happy to stick with it and be proven wrong about anything I said. Later in the week when I have the time I'll try out a couple other difficulties as well as the recent update and give some more feedback.

Well with the new patches, nightmare difficulty is ... difficult if u start with new char on floor 1.
some shitty rat has very high speed and reflex; u only have around 45% chance to hit it with lv11 in polearms. also has lot of armor so mixing in spells is a must to beat even trash mobs. not sure how it will scale though.

 

[Roqua]

Anyone calling a single character only game a blobber should be perma IP banned. NuCodex has really turned into a playground for general gamer retarded kids that seem to exist to annoy people here because they actually like rpgs and understand simple common concepts.

 

[V_K]

people here because they actually like rpgs and understand simple common concepts.

Wait, there's more than one of you here?

 

[octavius]

There's also YES!

 

[Chaotic_Heretic]

68kStudios
Upgrading weapons needs an insane amount of scrap at higher levels. once you get by the rocky start (floor 1 to 2); and get the +50 dmg unarmed feat, unarmed is a bit better compared to light weapons due to low stamina usage.

How exactly does base unarmed damage (before bonus from str) scale other than the +50 damage feat? For weapons it requires upgrades to increase the base damage. But in the equip screen i noticed that after a few level ups (in str, levels and unarmed skill); the damage shown in the equip menu increased.