zk_kiralia feedback

claxo on 2009/02/06 14:31 of zahmeKatzen-P1

Much improved !!!
I am not a fan of the genre but a combination of presentation and good enough
hints made me into the game by two hours.

More activities:
As I see the gameplay, the player is in a loop:
	repeat:
		wander
		fight
		sometimes:
			trade in city
			break in castle
with most of the time in the first two. And this feels a little repetitive.
What about adding more activities to happen in the wander, by example:

. find things ( for trade or improve powers ). Things visible only from short distance.
. RPG condiments: have NPCs on the road (static and wanders). Get pieces of map or critical
 info from them.
. Portals where the player warps can be protected by a spell that must be broken; this gives
 another reason to interact with NPCs and find things. Also, this protect the player for
 going too fast into the more dangerous zones. 
. show in the wander mode where near enemies are, allowing to chose alternative route if
 available
. with more things to do while wander, the number of fights can be reduced after a
 while: too much in a row and begins to feel repetive. 


Clarity factor:
In general it is clear whats going on, and what is reasonable to do.
But:

after a while, I was wondering about where to find the strings. The only things found by
 wandering were enemies and sites to trade. Enemies are invisible in the wander map, will the
 string be invisible ? Will be captured in one of the road fights ? The story  can tell
 that the 'Dark Lords' has taken the string ( the word 'lord' more assosiated with 'castles' ),
 NPCs can give notices about diferents 'Dark Lords': this way you reduce the
 'I dont know what to do' factor.

Found the first castle, issue enter, win the guardian round, not realized that you must issue a
 second enter. Can be better if you put the guardian out of the castle or if after kill the
 guardian the player goes automatically into the castle.

Possible bugs:
Elixirs are supossed to be persistent boosts, but inteligence elixir over athon vanishes.

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Comments

ServalKatze on 2009/02/06 20:35:

Hey, thanks for the feedback! :)

We would have loved to add more NPCs, towns (where you can actually walk around) and quests but we were running out of time. Walking around and fighting is rather repetitive, I admit.

Currently, all Lords are equally strong because we don't know where the player will go first. Protected portals would help here, good idea.

Since most enemies are random encounters (except boss monsters), showing them on the map is kind of tricky. ;)

The intro NPC should have been more specific with his quest. (He has been dealt with. *cough*) We thought it'd be clear what to do because.. uh.. we've made the game. Other NPC hints ("There are baddies in that evil castle down south.") could be helpful, too.

There was supposed to be an epic gate-opening scene after killing the castle guard (*thudthudthud*), but other issues (bugs) became more important.

... Oh, dear. Maybe I've broken the elixirs by adding conditions. I'll look into it.