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Jesto
Dec 22, 2004

Balls.
Update - Defender's Quest 2: Mists of Ruin now available!

Pre-order DQ2 and receive DQ1 for free! Read more on the website.

https://www.defendersquest.com/2/



Back to your regularly scheduled Defender's Quest 1: Valley of the Forgotten.



Defender's Quest is a strategy RPG game with tower defense elements. While this isn't necessarily a new idea, it takes elements from both genres and meshes them together into a game that's addictingly perfect in gameplay mechanics and aesthetic.

Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKe54cEGYto
Lengthy demo: http://www.defendersquest.com/play_demo.html
8 pages of goon reviews: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3516398
AxeManiac's video review: http://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=-X4f7WeN-0w#t=156s
Steam page: http://store.steampowered.com/app/218410/
Or buy direct: http://www.defendersquest.com/buy.html Includes - Steam key, GoG key, Desura key, having it on your Humble Bundle account, a DRM free version, the soundtrack in downloadable format, GoG profiles / artwork and Steam cards. Plus Lars gets more money this way. :)

Story: You're Azra, royal librarian. Life is pretty swell for you, until the plague catches up with you, then there's only one thing left for you. You get thrown in The Pit, a barren wasteland where all the diseased are exiled never to return. The good news is that you get better, the bad news is your situation gets much, much worse. But at least you make some wonderfully murderous friends along the way!


Characters


Azra - The lead character. She summons in friends using PSI, a talent she acquires immediately after awakening in The Pit through mysterious circumstances. Needless to say, everyone is pretty happy with their new friend with magical murder powers since the Revenant in The Pit can't seem to be killed any other way than by these powers.

Azra doesn't fight like the rest of your units, she brings units onto the field and boosts up their power using PSI, which you get from killing enemies. Leveling her up gives more PSI. She also has access to a list of spells you can access, starting with Lightning - an cheap emergency move which deals a lot of damage to one Revenant, but reduces their PSI reward on death. Additional spells are obtained through progressing the storyline, including buffing your units, healing them and inconveniencing enemies in a number of ways. Azra can be additionally empowered by books you find throughout your journey, which change the function of her spells, ally powers or enemy behavior. Choose carefully, she can only bring two with her into battle.

If Azra dies, it's game over. If she's wounded, it's a bother since you miss out on the Perfect reward for that battle. Try to take care of her, since Perfect rewards tend to give very powerful equipment. It's usually worth going back to try earlier stages on Perfect before going too far, especially since Perfect gives gold stars, which in turn unlock Bonus battles and books for Azra.


Slak - The berserker, your first ally in the pit. A bit strange from his time in The Pit, but trustworthy.

Pros: Rapid attacks, crowd control attacks, can hit every single enemy within range, bleeding enemies (+60% damage received by them at max), decent evade, fantastic damage.

Cons: Very little defense, torn apart by groups of spiked enemies, can't equip armor.


Ketta - The archer, a friend of necessity. Tags along with you because you're her best shot at getting out of The Pit.

Pros: The longest range of any unit, fires arrows like a machine gun, minor crowd control skills, bleeding enemies (weaker than berserker bleed), poisoning enemies (weaker than dragon poison), high critical, can pierce armor and level up range. Range increases on boost.

Cons: Low HP, can't hit enemies within a minimum range around her.


Bakal - The healer, a wise man who seems to know more than what he lets on.

Pros: The only unit, aside from Azra's spells, who can heal. Can blind enemies to prevent them from hitting your units, expose shadowed enemies so your units can hit them, strike a 5x5 grid around himself with harmful holy magic, heal all units within that range and buff their damage. The most inexpensive unit to summon and boost.

Cons: Very low HP, weak attack.


Wrenna - Ice mage, surviving Princess of the Quaid Empire, Daughter of the Flame.

Pros: Can slow enemies down, freeze them solid, strike through up to 10 enemies for crowd control, cast AoE debuff / attack spells. Wears heavy armor and has decent HP, she won't go down easily. Range increases on boost.

Cons: A tad expensive, all her debuffs are cancelled by fire.


Markos - The Knight, the sane one. He owes you a life debt his honor demands he repay it.

Pros: Is a walking tank. Massive HP, defense and heavy armor ensure he doesn't go down without a fight, and with a healer nearby he might never go down at all. Immensely powerful attacks that can pierce through enemy armor and more importantly shatter enemy armor, allowing your other units to actually damage armored Revenant. Knocks enemies back, stuns them, counterattacks hostile Revenant, can boost his own attack and defense even higher.

Cons: Can only attack one enemy at a time, a problem made worse by his slow attack speed.


Niru - The Dragon, tolerates your company in her quest for vengeance.

Pros: The most HP of all, will not die unless you're doing something terribly wrong. Powerful physical that tear through enemies. Has both a melee attack area and a ranged attack area. Inflicts powerful poison, can set groups of enemies on fire for additional damage over time, can stun entire groups of nearby enemies at once, can increase it's own already ridiculous attack and HP. Most important of all, can insta-kill any enemy under a certain % of HP with it's base attack (maxes at 18%). Ranged attack area increases on boost.

Cons: The most expensive unit. Costs 1,525 PSI to summon and boost to maximum power. Ice spells and the water negate fire debuffs. Can't equip weapons or armor, which means no unique effects in Play+.

Mechanics

Unlike most Tower Defense games your units have levels that persist from battle to battle. Every time a unit levels up they gain a skillpoint. These points can be spent to increase attack skills or passive effects, but you don't get enough levels to max out every skill. Thankfully the game allows you to recruit up to six characters in each class to name, design the appearance of and stat out to your specific needs. Having at least one or two characters in each class dedicated to a specific role is a good idea, but if you want to experiment the game allows you to reset skillpoints at any time for a price.

Enemies

The enemies are the Revenant, a good variety of undead and mutated creatures powered by some unknown source. Some mindlessly shamble, some strike out at nearby targets, some take aim at distant targets, some squirm their way towards Azra as fast as they can, some are defended by powerful armor or a shadowy mist and some explode into groups of smaller Revenant on death. In Play+ all Revenant acquire unique skills and become even more dangerous.

There are also enemies who aren't Revenant with their own unique skills, but those shouldn't be spoiled.


The Map

Where you move from battle to battle and town to town. The map has 32 battles to experience and each battle has four levels of difficulty, each level providing it's own unique challenge with different enemies and different layouts. There are also 10 towns, where you can recruit additional characters, barter for weapons and armor and take on sidequests in Play+.

Red icons are battles, blue are towns, black are abandoned areas, purple are sidequests and gold are skull traders.

Play+

Once you beat the game, it's not over. Play+ takes the base game and almost completely changes it up. In this mode:

- The level cap is increased from 40 to 60.
- Unique equipment obtained from battles in Play can be upgraded in Play+, making them relevant again. Each upgraded item acquires vastly increased attack, defense and a unique effect. This can range from setting enemies on fire on hit, to freezing enemies solid upon being hit, to increasing specific stats like range or slowdown speed.
- Seven sidequests are added that further develop the characters and a secret additional storyline.
- Seven additional Bonus battles for even more books.
- Azra's journal, updated after every new battle completed. Gives more insight into the lead character and the party beyond what the cutscenes show.
- The mysterious speech is all translated in Play+, allowing you to see what the golden man is actually saying.

Additional

Other interesting facts or tips about the game:

- The 18 piece soundtrack is done by Kevin Penkin, a composer who has worked with Nobuo Uematsu, which would explain the vaguely familiar early Final Fantasy style to the music. When you purchase the game, the soundtrack is bundled in for free in the game's download folder.
- The game has five different endings which are recorded in your Movies menu when unlocked. How many can you find?
- EXP / Scrap gain can be customized in the Accessibility menu. Normally units that don't participate in battle suffer a 50% EXP penalty, but this can be disabled. If you want to hit the level cap as soon as possible and gear out your characters without redoing old battles, you can set EXP and Scrap gain to 300%.
- Sometimes quality is better than quantity. Boosting units unlocks their more powerful skills, which might be better than having your entire army on the field with only their base skill available. Later battle will give you more than enough PSI to throw out and boost whoever you want, though.
- The game has full modding support available on the main menu.
- The game operates under a 'FreeLC' plan. What this means is that all future expansions will be completely free, and some are being developed at this moment.
- Your demo save can be exported into the full version if you decide to purchase.
- Each unit recruited makes all future units cost a little bit more. Immediately purchasing 6 units of every new class you acquire could make later classes unbearably expensive.
- The game can be run from 1/2 speed to x4 and can be paused instantly at any time with the spacebar to manage units.
- Each unit has an AI bar that you can use to further set them apart. They can be directed to target fast units, slow units, enemies close to or far from Azra, try to spread status effects to as many enemies as possible, hit armored or weak enemies or only use powerful skills when necessary.
- All keys can be completely remapped in the options menu.

Skill Trees


Equipment


Full party of 36


A battle


Extra character recruitment / design


Also, this is my first topic, so if there's anything I should add or change, say so. :)

Jesto fucked around with this message at 03:00 on Oct 29, 2013

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joshtothemaxx
Nov 17, 2008

I will have a whole army of zombies! A zombie Marine Corps, a zombie Navy Corps, zombie Space Cadets...
Is there any sort of multiplayer or planned multiplayer for this? Either way, it looks awesome and I'll be picking it up around Christmas time.

Jesto
Dec 22, 2004

Balls.
There's been no mention of multiplayer, but I don't know how multiplayer would function in a game like this if it were planned. It's a pretty straightforward SRPG/TD singleplayer experience. I'll update the topic if they announce plans to add a multiplayer component in a patch or a sequel. :)

larsiusprime
Nov 7, 2012

Buy my awesome game because I'm awesome.
Hi! I'm the lead dev. Thanks for this OP thread, Jesto!

I can confirm we don't have any multiplayer plans at the moment. This was our first commercial game so we didn't want to bite off more than we could chew.

If anyone has any "inside baseball" questions that other goons can't answer, let me know, I'll be hanging around the SA forums from now on.

Jesto
Dec 22, 2004

Balls.

larsiusprime posted:

If anyone has any "inside baseball" questions that other goons can't answer, let me know, I'll be hanging around the SA forums from now on.

I have a few. :)

1. If you were to develop a sequel, about how long do you think it might take to develop? Would it use Defender's Quest's engine, or a new one? I'm just hoping it would allow for bigger map sizes for more complex battles.

2. Did sales spike after putting the raffle up on SteamGifts? I'm curious to know if SteamGifts actually helps developers reach more customers, or if it just increases awareness.

3. What's the scale of the expansion you're planning? A few extra challenge battles, or something like the sidequests in Play+?

4. Can we expect more super-battles like the Golden Sheep? A fun battle could be themed around trying to prevent a superpowered enemy from gaining progress for as long as possible, through a combination of spell knockback, knight knockback, dragon roar and ice mage slowing. :D

Deki
May 12, 2008

It's Hammer Time!
Welp, it appears that I sold the crappy unique weapons before the new game plus came out. Any easy way to add them back or am I screwed for the upgrade mechanic?

e: Never mind, there's just a lot less unique weapons in the game than I remembered.

Deki fucked around with this message at 08:08 on Nov 17, 2012

Jesto
Dec 22, 2004

Balls.

Deki posted:

Welp, it appears that I sold the crappy unique weapons before the new game plus came out. Any easy way to add them back or am I screwed for the upgrade mechanic?

I didn't even know it was possible to sell the unique weapons. There's an easy fix for missing equipment, though. You just need to export your save file, open it with notepad and look at this topic.

http://steamcommunity.com/app/218410/discussions/1/882964761009575487/

You need to figure out which equipment pieces you're missing and add them into the inventory section of your save file. Make a backup before you do this in case you mess things up. Or you could wait for Lars to swing by and post all the necessary lines to add.

Mitama
Feb 28, 2011

Jesto posted:

4. Can we expect more super-battles like the Golden Sheep? A fun battle could be themed around trying to prevent a superpowered enemy from gaining progress for as long as possible, through a combination of spell knockback, knight knockback, dragon roar and ice mage slowing. :D

The Golden Sheep battle is terrible, honestly the least fun part of the game to me. I don't even want to know what it's like in NG+.

Thanks for the thread though, Jesto. OP looks good. :)

Jesto
Dec 22, 2004

Balls.

TurninTrix posted:

The Golden Sheep battle is terrible, honestly the least fun part of the game to me. I don't even want to know what it's like in NG+.

It's not very hard once you figure out the strategy.

1-3 unboosted Ice Mages casting their initial spell with Chill maxed out will slow the sheep down for the entire duriation of the battle, giving you triple time to work with.

A berserker with maxed bleed will make all attacks do +60% damage against it.

A Healer with maxed Zeal will add even more damage.

Six archers surrounding the healer will rip the sheep to shreds with this setup.

Mitama
Feb 28, 2011

Oh no, I finished it just fine. It's just that the whole thing is pretty tedious compared to some of the later extreme challenges (the second to last stage is my favorite, which has much more stuff going on to react to). This one to me is mostly just stacking mages and melee fighters and hitting 4x.

Schwarzwald
Jul 27, 2004

Don't Blink
This is the first I've heard of this, but I'll definitely check it out.

One question I do have is how you managed to get the game on to Steam? I was under the impression that any new indie title has to start on Greenlight.

Count Uvula
Dec 20, 2011

---

Schwarzwald posted:

This is the first I've heard of this, but I'll definitely check it out.

One question I do have is how you managed to get the game on to Steam? I was under the impression that any new indie title has to start on Greenlight.

They were accepted before the Greenlight system started.

I think this thread also deserves an award for most misleading title :stare: Final Fantasy Tactics?

Vanilla Mint Ice
Jul 17, 2007

A raccoon is not finished when he is defeated. He is finished when he quits.
Yeah the golden sheep fight is pretty drat tedious and unfun in both modes.

Jesto
Dec 22, 2004

Balls.

Count Uvula posted:

I think this thread also deserves an award for most misleading title :stare: Final Fantasy Tactics?

I'm just using the developer's description. :(

http://store.steampowered.com/app/218410/

quote:

Defender's Quest is a Tower-Defense/RPG Hybrid (Think Final Fantasy Tactics meets Tower Defense).

Xaris
Jul 25, 2006

Lucky there's a family guy
Lucky there's a man who positively can do
All the things that make us
Laugh and cry
Everyone should own this game unless they have a vendetta against fun

larsiusprime posted:

Hi! I'm the lead dev. Thanks for this OP thread, Jesto!

I can confirm we don't have any multiplayer plans at the moment. This was our first commercial game so we didn't want to bite off more than we could chew.

If anyone has any "inside baseball" questions that other goons can't answer, let me know, I'll be hanging around the SA forums from now on.

Multiplayer really wouldn't work in this type of game anyways, so good call. There are only a few ways that multiplayer in TDs can work: - Competitive TDs (i.e. Squadron TD for Starcraft 2 which I'm a developer for), Action-RPG TDs (Orcs Must Die/Dungeon Defenders), and Survival TDs (Traditional standard WC3 TDs to see who can survive the longest).

Speaking of which, and obviously it's out of anyones control, but it's annoying that typing in "Defenders" into Steam brings up a page of Dungeon Defender stuff :(


I'm interested in seeing your responses to Jesto's questions, and here's some of my own:

1) How often do you play games now? I was stalking looking at your steam profile and you've got a nice list of good indie games, but it doesn't seem like you play any of them.

2) Any plans for an iOS/Android port? Seems like it be great on a tablet (just like FTL would be amazing on a tablet). Now that I think about, there was a game called Defender Chronicles for iOS that was really fun and I used to play which is similar to Defenders Quest. Did you ever play that?

3) How do you feel about the new Steam Greenlight system?


Now, some general comments/suggestions about the game:

A) Armor is worthless for the most part. The hitback passives on the upgrade uniques can be useful, but in general having some Healers were more than enough to mitigate any damage that units received. I can count on my hand the number of times I've lost a unit. Similarly, I've found Defense/Evasion/Extra HP passives are entirely useless because units just don't die with healers backing them. Oh yeah, the Heal ability on Azra is useless except on maybe one or two levels.

I don't know what to recommend for that. I guess Healers could have a longer cooldown on Aid/Group Heal.


B) How about a new set of "Accessory" items? Aka items that just provide some passive stuff: 10% Cheaper upgrades, -0.1 Minimum Range on Archers, Increased Critical Damage/Chance, Lifesteal on hit, Gains extra Psi on Kill, etc. You know the usual little buffs that can tweak how you want to use a unit.

C) I found Fire skills (Azra's skill and Dragon's fire actives) to not be worth the cancellation of slows. I always turn Fire Breath off and didn't even tech up the other fire skill. Even though it wouldn't make much sense physically, I think Fire shouldn't negate the Ice-slows/stuns. That would make them infinitely more useful

Xaris fucked around with this message at 02:19 on Nov 18, 2012

NET WT 30 OZ
Apr 12, 2003

YES
I really like this game! The storyline gets a little overbearing, but I'm a sucker for TDs. The only thing I would like more would be some kind of exclusive path-type system (say, instead of an ice mage, you get a mage, and can upgrade to fire or ice or what-have-you).

Terrific work though!

Farbtoner
May 17, 2011

by Y Kant Ozma Post
I played the free Flash demo on Kongregate almost a year ago and it was decent, but there was really nothing about it that stood out enough compared to the countless other free Flash tower defense games with RPG elements and a story nobody cares about for me to want to spend money on it once the demo ended v:shobon:v

Pr0phecy
Apr 3, 2006
Game looked stupid and cheap.

I played one level.

This game is magical. Get it and support these developers, please.

Jesto
Dec 22, 2004

Balls.

Farbtoner posted:

I played the free Flash demo on Kongregate almost a year ago and it was decent, but there was really nothing about it that stood out enough compared to the countless other free Flash tower defense games with RPG elements and a story nobody cares about for me to want to spend money on it once the demo ended v:shobon:v

The Kongregate flash demo added two more chapters about a month ago, if you want to revisit it to see to see if the improvements since last year have added anything.

Korak
Nov 29, 2007
TV FACIST
Honestly I'd put a lot of other TDS games over Defender's Quest. Its good if you've played all the 'good' ones and you're still itching for something.

Archers are insane.

Jesto
Dec 22, 2004

Balls.
It's really about what specific niche of TD appeals to you. Building huge labyrinths for creeps to walk through is pretty boring to me, as are TD games where they start you back off from square one every single battle. The RPG elements in this one, where you can gear out your 'towers', level them up, skill them out and have it persist from battle to battle is what appeals to me.

Are there any other good TD games that function like Defender's Quest does?

Pr0phecy
Apr 3, 2006
Scrub Q:

When it says Triple shot on the archers and says for example, 4 damage, is that 4 damage per hit, up to 12 damage, or 4 damage total?

Jesto
Dec 22, 2004

Balls.
4 damage per arrow. I don't think any type of damage in the game is divided between enemies.

larsiusprime
Nov 7, 2012

Buy my awesome game because I'm awesome.
Answers to some questions:

1) I haven't had a lot of time to play games recently as all my time has been sucked up by development, and I generally prefer playing them off-steam, but they usually come with Steam codes so I also redeem them on Steam just 'cuz.


2) Never played Defender Chronicles, but I'm familiar with it. We don't have any plans for an iOS/Android port at the moment as I don't even own a tablet or smartphone. Whether or not to do it would be a pure numbers thing - and so far that market looks pretty scary, but I wouldn't rule it out entirely.

3) I feel mixed about Greenlight. It feels like a step in the right direction, but I'm not entirely happy with the $100 fee, I feel like that although people like us could afford it, it could really sting small-timers or devs from low-income countries. Also, discoverability seems kinda nonexistant at the moment. I know they're trying to avoid the "rich get richer" phenomenon vis-a-vis popularity on top 100 charts, but I wish they would model it more after Kongregate and NG's discovery engine, which I feel is about as close as it gets to a meritocratic discovery system.

A) Generally speaking I'd agree that armor and healing does take kinda of a back seat. We erred on the side of not having your party constantly dying all the time, and so you only really need armor for when you try levels right at the edge of your ability.

B) We're not looking to make major revisions to the game at this point, but we'll consider ideas like that for a sequel for sure.

C) Yeah, pretty much. There is a book that makes fire and ice not cancel, but I'm not sure if it's balanced correctly. In general, there's a lot of things we could balance/tweak, but I'm wondering at this point whether it's just better to admit the game has certain faults rather than to tweak every balance point, since doing so usually results in *new* balance issues arising elsewhere.

I'm interested in seeing what will happen with mods, as pretty much everything in the game's data can be adjusted that way.

As for how we got onto Steam, as was mentioned above, we were one of the last games accepted under the old model. Greenlight was announced a few weeks after we got our acceptance letter.

Here's how we got in under the old model: we submitted our game to Steam once a month, every month, for about a year. Each time, we included updated reviews and sales stats and refined our pitch a little bit.

larsiusprime fucked around with this message at 05:47 on Nov 18, 2012

Xaris
Jul 25, 2006

Lucky there's a family guy
Lucky there's a man who positively can do
All the things that make us
Laugh and cry
Thanks for the response!

larsiusprime posted:

A) Generally speaking I'd agree that armor and healing does take kinda of a back seat. We erred on the side of not having your party constantly dying all the time, and so you only really need armor for when you try levels right at the edge of your ability.

I agree having party dying all the time and trying to replace them would be annoying; however, I've found that I usually whenever I tried to push a harder difficulty I always lost because I couldn't do enough DPS. I don't think I ever lost because I couldn't keep my guys alive and that's using minimal no/armor and no extra HP/evasion/defense passives the entire game. Unfortunately, I don't see any way to make it more useful without increasing frustration unless there are some passive affects for having better armor.

quote:

C) Yeah, pretty much. There is a book that makes fire and ice not cancel, but I'm not sure if it's balanced correctly. In general, there's a lot of things we could balance/tweak, but I'm wondering at this point whether it's just better to admit the game has certain faults rather than to tweak every balance point, since doing so usually results in *new* balance issues arising elsewhere.

Hrmm, I have finished most of NG+ but I must have missed that book :( I understand the cause-and-effect problem. When I'd make what should be a minor change to Squadron TD, I'd end up causing problems hilariously broken balance problems the road due to it.

Xaris fucked around with this message at 06:13 on Nov 18, 2012

larsiusprime
Nov 7, 2012

Buy my awesome game because I'm awesome.
If you're not finding the book, it's "Book of Synergy", and come to think of it I'm not 100% sure it made it into the final version of the game. It should be supported in code if you hack your save file to add books with random id numbers, it might just show up :)

One thing I will be doing is try to support the game's mod engine, fix any glitches that arise, keep working on documentation and how-to guides, etc, because almost all of the game's details - skills, classes, passives, equipment, books, spells, etc, is all driven by data and can be changed around in a million different ways. So if someone wants to "fix" all the balance issues and re-tune the game a certain way, or release a total conversion with all new graphics and story and missions, that should all be possible. I really need to get off my duff and get Steam Workshop hooked up... just as soon as I get the Linux build working on the steam linux beta and patch all the bugs and etc etc... XD

Pr0phecy
Apr 3, 2006
I have spent the last 4 hours playing this game.

gently caress it's good.

edit2: Question for the developer. Should I 100% the Play before starting a Play+? I'm wondering whether to max out my characters in armour/levels/weapons before starting a Play+ playthrough or will the 50,000 gold items be irrelevant as soon as Play+ starts.

Pr0phecy fucked around with this message at 07:31 on Nov 18, 2012

Fina
Feb 27, 2006

Shazbot!
Just posting to say I really like the game. Bought it when it came out but then stopped playing after reading about all of the new stuff ahead in the Gold update and decided to wait for that. Now I've finished the first game and just want to pick up the rest of my gold stars before jumping to New Game+.

I'm not really sure what to suggest. If you put out an Android version of the game I'd pick that up but I'm not sure how well things would work on a touchscreen. This is already a great game to pick up and play for a few minutes.

More customization options for custom heroes would be nice as well, though I understand it'd be a ton of extra sprite work. Ideally it would be great to have both genders for each class so you can really have a very personalized party but again, tons of sprite work.

Countblanc
Apr 20, 2005

Help a hero out!
Is there any reason to not max exp gains? Like some sort of penalty I'm not aware of?

Jesto
Dec 22, 2004

Balls.

Countblanc posted:

Is there any reason to not max exp gains? Like some sort of penalty I'm not aware of?

Well, it'll make the game easier for you, since you'll be three times as power as you should be for most maps. Ideally you're supposed to play each level on Normal - Advanced - Extreme and it's balanced at 100%. But at 300% you can just try to tackle every level at Advanced or Extreme immediately.

If you just want to rush through the game and all it's content as quickly as possible, set it up to 300% and set penalties to 0%.

Cowman
Feb 14, 2006

Beware the Cow





larsiusprime posted:

If you're not finding the book, it's "Book of Synergy", and come to think of it I'm not 100% sure it made it into the final version of the game. It should be supported in code if you hack your save file to add books with random id numbers, it might just show up :)

One thing I will be doing is try to support the game's mod engine, fix any glitches that arise, keep working on documentation and how-to guides, etc, because almost all of the game's details - skills, classes, passives, equipment, books, spells, etc, is all driven by data and can be changed around in a million different ways. So if someone wants to "fix" all the balance issues and re-tune the game a certain way, or release a total conversion with all new graphics and story and missions, that should all be possible. I really need to get off my duff and get Steam Workshop hooked up... just as soon as I get the Linux build working on the steam linux beta and patch all the bugs and etc etc... XD

How would I add the book to the inventory? I realize it would destroy the game balance but at this point I've done enough that it doesn't really matter.

larsiusprime
Nov 7, 2012

Buy my awesome game because I'm awesome.
I believe this is the xml code for the book of synergy:

<item _class="weapon" type="book" level="15" owner="" alt="0"/>

Add that in your save file in the <inventory> tag. If we cut it from the final game, it's probably not properly balanced.

Here's it's entry in data_items.xml:

<weapon type="book" lvl="15" bonus="0" name="$ITM_W_BOOK_15_NAME" cost="0" special="unique:ice_and_fire|psi_tax:0.15" description="$ITM_W_BOOK_15_DESC"/>

So it looks like it comes with the negative effect of a -15% tax on all psi gained, which is probably pretty hefty. You could adjust this in a mod if you liked.

@Pr0phecy:

You want to collect all the UNIQUE items from NG+, as they can be upgraded in the new game and become super awesome. That includes the really expensive sword. All the generic stuff in shops will eventually be outclassed by new stuff in NG+.

You can switch back between the normal game and new-game+ world at any time, so if you don't get everything you can go back for it later.

Falcon2001
Oct 10, 2004

Eat your hamburgers, Apollo.
Pillbug
Just chiming in to say that I bought this a while ago and it's super awesome, and you should buy it too.

ughUGH
Oct 23, 2012

Farbtoner posted:

I played the free Flash demo on Kongregate almost a year ago and it was decent, but there was really nothing about it that stood out enough compared to the countless other free Flash tower defense games with RPG elements and a story nobody cares about for me to want to spend money on it once the demo ended v:shobon:v

Like what?

Farbtoner
May 17, 2011

by Y Kant Ozma Post

ughUGH posted:

Like what?

Kingdom Rush, Cursed Treasure, GemCraft Zero and Labyrinth, Demonrift, The Bloons Series, mini Tower Defense, Hands of War, and if you wanted to branch out into commercial releases Defense Grid is a lot of fun with a ton of content and top-notch production values, and it's always going on sale for ~75% off on Steam sales.

I have spent way, way too much time building towers and watching them shoot things.

H2Omelon
Aug 31, 2009
This game is like digital crack. It's eaten up far too much of my time lately.

I took a look at the modding ability of the game to see if I could cook up some sort of "challenge" level where you start with a predefined squadron of units but it turns out it's not possible to do that as far as I can tell. All mods require you to start a new game with no recruits and they can only be bought at level 1. Of course a large part of the game is all about building up a team between battles so maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree.

Schwarzwald
Jul 27, 2004

Don't Blink
How long is the full game compared to the demo?
Either way, I'll probably pick this up during or after the holidays.

H2Omelon
Aug 31, 2009

Schwarzwald posted:

How long is the full game compared to the demo?
Either way, I'll probably pick this up during or after the holidays.
I don't know how long the demo is, but if you're looking to 100% the game it can easily take over 40 hours. I've gone past that and not got 100% yet. Of course if you crank up the XP and money gains in the options, you can make the game quite a bit shorter than this.

Jesto
Dec 22, 2004

Balls.
If anyone is interested in the developer's earlier work, he made Super Energy Apocalypse, which you can play here: http://www.kongregate.com/games/larsiusprime/super-energy-apocalypse

It's a pretty fun little educational game where you have to use clean energy to keep back mutants who feast on your garbage. :) The song at the end is perfect, too.

Schwarzwald posted:

How long is the full game compared to the demo?
Either way, I'll probably pick this up during or after the holidays.

Regular Demo: Gives you 9 battles, 7 of which have 4 levels of difficulty with different battle layouts and enemies so they're all worth playing through. Armored enemies on Extreme battles could be a bit hard without Knights, though.

Kongregate Demo: I believe gives you 18 battles? I haven't played it through to the end, but I believe all 6 classes are obtained by the end of this demo.

Full Game: Gives you access to full Play and Play+ once Play is completed. Play has 32 battles and 7 Bonus battles unlocked for gold starring difficulties of normal battles. Play+ has 32 battles, 7 bonus battles and 7 sidequests that also have 4 levels of difficulty.

So the difference between the regular demo and the full game is 9 vs 85, or 30 vs 286 if you factor in Casual / Normal / Advanced / Extreme difficulties.

Jesto fucked around with this message at 03:36 on Nov 21, 2012

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larsiusprime
Nov 7, 2012

Buy my awesome game because I'm awesome.
Hey everyone!

We're on sale right now, 50% for the Steam Autumn sale, so if you've been fence-sitting, now's your chance to get it for cheap!

http://store.steampowered.com/app/218410/

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