Life as a Lich (Post-release discussion thread, Discussion about balancing from post #191)

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Life as a Lich.

The game is hopefully releasing on the 6th of June. Currently >200,000 words in length, with playthrough of ~55,000 (non fantasy) to ~60,000 (fantasy setting).

Demo:

https://dashingdon.com/go/15425

The premise is that you recently managed to turn yourself into a lich, inside an abandoned subterranean complex belonging to a previous necromancer. You thus need to start getting to know your new surroundings, research new spells, raise your minions -skeletons, zombies, ghouls, necrodragons, golemns, etc -, organise them, and try to decide what it is you are doing.

As with all my games, it relies very heavily on mechanics. There are spells to learn or research, minions to manage (in that sense, it has turned into a bit of a management game), and as always, side quests to conduct. There are several endings, with currently two main “ending paths” (related to trying to save your childhood friends, deal with a threat facing your world, or trying to become a demi-god, with various other permutations).

Anybody who wants to playtest the full game… can I ask you to try to provide some feedback on it -even if it is just some options you would have liked to do, or highlight some bug, or something that could be improved, etc-. Then, I can add you to one of the playtesting groups and provide the link to the full game.

The game has already been playtested quite a bit, so I am fairly confident that a) It kind of works as intended, b) There may be some small bugs still there (though hopefully not game-breaking), c) It is not well balanced (please help me with this!)

This game can be played in 4 modes:
-As a sequel to Tokyo Wizard (if you managed to turn yourself into a Lich)
-As a sequel to Raiders of Icepeak Mountains (I have yet to code the quest that will allow you to turn into a Lich, but will do so in the coming months, before this is released)
-As a standalone game in a fantasy setting.
-As a standalone game set in Yokohama/Tokyo (Japan).

#fantasy #necromancy gender-choice high-fantasy

91 Likes
2

How did you feel about the length of the game?

  • Too long. I got bored towards the end (played in fantasy setting)
  • Too long. I got bored towards the end (played in Tokyo/Yokohama setting)
  • Long. The game was too repetitive (played in fantasy setting)
  • Long. The game was too repetitive (played in Tokyo/Yokohama setting)
  • Just correct (played in fantasy setting)
  • Just correct (played in Tokyo/Yokohama setting)
  • Short. I didn’t have time to do everything I wanted to (played in fantasy setting)
  • Short. I didn’t have time to do everything I wanted to (played in Tokyo/Yokohama setting)
  • Very short. Seriously not good in that respect (played in fantasy setting)
  • Very short. Seriously not good in that respect (played in Tokyo/Yokohama setting)
0 voters

RESERVED FOR POLL for game.

3

How did you feel about the ROs in the game?

  • Was there any romance? Couldn’t find any…
  • I think ROs in this game are not really applicable/interesting
  • They were good
  • They were ok
  • They were a bit boring
  • I didn’t care at all about them
  • ROs need a LOT of extra work!
0 voters
1 Like
4

Did you get the feeling the game was “finished”?

  • Yes, I got the feeling the game was finished.
  • It feels a bit rough around the edges, but overall feels finished.
  • It still needs some work: it needs to be longer.
  • It still needs some work: it needs to have more side missions
  • It still needs some work: it needs to have more ROs
  • It still needs some work: it needs to have more options for the ROs
  • It needs different endings
  • It doesn’t feel finished at all. Keep working!
0 voters
5

How did you feel about the diffuculty of the game?

  • Too hard!
  • A bit difficult
  • About correct
  • Easy…
  • Piece of cake!
0 voters
6

Did you feel it was easy to achieve the objectives you had set out for yourself?

  • Yes, it was easy.
  • No, I ran out of time.
  • I was trying to do too much, so I couldn’t achieve anything.
  • The game was just too confusing.
  • I was just trying to keep my head above the water!
  • I didn’t really set myself any objectives… just went with the flow and had fun!
  • I didn’t really set myself any objectives… just went with the flow but got confused/annoyed.
0 voters
7

Did you feel the game was railroaded?

  • The game was completely railroaded.
  • I felt the game was pushing me, but I still had some freedom.
  • The game provided me enough structure, but my choices still mattered.
  • I felt I was free to pursue whatever I wanted.
  • I felt the game was too unstructured… I had no idea what I was doing.
0 voters
8

How did you feel about the replayability?

  • I would only ever play this once (anyway I only play games once)
  • I would only ever play this once (wasn’t that interested in playing again)
  • I can see that I could play this twice, but not anymore.
  • The game is quite replayable
  • There is a lot of replayability in this game!
0 voters
9
  • The game was very buggy!
  • There was the odd bug, but it was still very playable
  • Didn’t feel there were any bugs
  • The grammar was awful!
  • The grammar needs some improvement…
  • The grammar was fine/good
0 voters
10

I think the game has a very good structure but I’m not sure if this is just a me thing but even on easy it seems still rather challenging because you constantly need to multi task and as soon as you fix one problem such as rats you immediately have another issue which impedes progress on exploration and studying. I really like where it’s going but it could use some improvement :+1:t2: Keep up the good work

8 Likes
11

Something I noticed, either trying to fight the bear early in the game or the golem when exploring your lair leads to infinite loading time.

Nonetheless, so far it seems promising. Haven’t gone through the whole playthrough yet, but i’m definitely interested.

6 Likes
12

Damn, I’m impressed to see the game has grown so much, there are even ROs now.

1 Like
13

Whenever I get to the golem at the entrance, I click it and it just loads forever.

4 Likes
14

Sorry about all the bugs with the fights, they should now be sorted so that the game doesn’t crash anymore (it was all down to one letter being in capitals instead of lowercase, which seemed not to crash the game on Choicescript but did crash it in Dashingdon!)

1 Like
15

Yes, I take your criticism, and this is something that is really playing with my head.
mmmmmm thinking today of something to address this, based on the comments of some of my other playtesters :slight_smile:

3 Likes
16

It’s fun! Though I’m not finished yet, there are a few suggestions I’d like to make :slight_smile:

  1. If there was an option to cast spells when you learn them, that’d be great. As an example, take Skeleton Hero; since a large part of the game is time management, being forced to take one block of time to learn a spell and then another is a bit stressful.

  2. Be able to raise minions without taking up time. I really want to be able to raise minions consistently, but I’m always caught up doing other things! It’d be a lot more convenient for the whole minion management system if it didn’t cost time to raise them.

  3. Please give clues as to how we’re supposed to achieve some things.Specifically, the Interplanar Portal; I literally have no clue how to forge it (I’ve got the forge up and running, along with skellies mining).

  4. Maybe allow Mind to increase spells learned in one block of time to two? This is a suggestion that’s way more dependent on your vision for the game, but I’d personally enjoy it if once we got to say 80 mind we were able to learn more than one spell.

Bugs:
Cave ins just don’t work at all. It says Error whenever it happens and mentions reporting it to you.

Fights automatically default to 50 strength for player-side

Relationship score for Samurai Skeleton just is labelled “relationship_skeleton” rather than their name

Titanium resource amount just says “Titanium: resource_titanium”; yellow crystals also aren’t listed under resources

There are also some random slashes at the end or near the end of words on occasion, but I haven’t been documenting them (probably should’ve, sorry lol)

Anyway, I think that’s it for now! This is all meant to be constructive, and I really do enjoy the game! I was a big fan of Tokyo Wizard, along with loving all things black magic-ey, so I am a bit biased however :sweat_smile:

5 Likes
17

@adrao the introduction scene with he four armed undead lich happened like three times along with all the following scenes, same with the demoness and stealing the couldron of the damned souls, happened multiple times, I could barely trigger akane interactions. Are the red vials Astral travel components? If so I barely encountered them, got to Astral travel once in the entire demo.

1 Like
18

Hi, thanks for letting me know. This is very odd… I wonder, were you starting from a save?

Is anybody else having the same problem? I am playtesting myself, but the game seems to work fine… mmmmmmm do you have any screenshots?

19

I still have a few comments left to address (in the feedback I got the last day alone, plus other stuff from earlier). Anyway, just uploaded a new version. Some of the highlights of this

-Around 2000 words more, I think.

-MANY bugfixes! (thanks for all the reports!)

-Hopefully the bug that makes the fights automatically default to 50 strength are fixed.

@Leoxen (and others who reported similar feedback, thanks!. If you have a high mind score, and you don’t have the nostalgia madness, you can now learn more than one low level spell, depending on your mind score (hope that helps?). Added extra info about how to craft the portal. Not sure about your points 1 and 2… I’ll see if more people complain about the same… but, maybe just this point of allowing more spells to be learned helps?

-Fixed cave in error

-Fixed resource bar

-Fix fight bugs that were causing game to crash

-Introduced a limit to rat numbers on low difficulty levels (does it feel better?)

-Introduced a new spell that will allow you to “slow down time” and get extra actions (although at the cost of lowering your mind attribute)

3 Likes
20

And I just uploaded yet another version, which does several things:

-Adds more description about what your familiar is doing in some instances.

-Creates a specific action to go and talk to people (skeleton or other lich). Maybe the option to go and talk to them was buried under too many other options? Essentially, these are currently the two ROs. You should be able to go and talk to them many times… is anybody having trouble talking to them more than once?

7 Likes