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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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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. :)

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

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.

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.

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).

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.

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?

Jesto
Dec 22, 2004

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

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%.

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

Jesto
Dec 22, 2004

Balls.

larsiusprime posted:

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/

That's pretty neat. :) I thought you might save the 50% off sale for Christmas, dropping it this early is great. You might want to add something to the frontpage of http://www.defendersquest.com/ indicating you can get it for 50% off there, I didn't realize it was on sale directly through you until I went to the buy page to check.

Is the Kongregate version going on sale, or does Kongregate not do sales? I don't believe I've ever seen them do even a Christmas sale on their games. Then again, Defender's Quest is pretty much the only full game for sale on Kongregate, isn't it? Every other game only has premium upgrades and cash shop items.

Jesto
Dec 22, 2004

Balls.

Jelly posted:

Are you supposed to play this in windowed mode?

That's how I've always played it. Try that and see if you have any problems?

Also, everyone should play the demo before purchasing Defender's Quest. There's no reason to blindly buy the game based on our reviews, the demo will provide you with hours of playtime to help you decide whether or not it appeals to you. :)

Jesto fucked around with this message at 06:27 on Nov 22, 2012

Jesto
Dec 22, 2004

Balls.

Velveteen posted:

I thought this game was fun then I hit new game+. This game is now awesome. I like how the characters are all a little wacky but with the journal you actually learn a lot more of the world. I know its a TD game and all but I like reading stuff.

It's not until Sidequest #6, Wrenna and the Temple, that you get a feel for why everyone seems kind of 'wacky'. :smith: Living in the pit is awful, the creator of the Exile/Avernum series could write a fantastically hopeless story with the writer of this game. I hope more people in this topic reach that battle.

It has one of my favorite exchanges in the game, too.

Azra: You want to talk?
Wrenna: Words solve nothing.
Azra: I hope that's not true, otherwise I kind of picked the wrong career.


If an expansion ever does come around, it would be nice to see it featuring around Wrenna, either her past or her future. She's one of the more interesting characters by far.

Jesto fucked around with this message at 10:10 on Nov 25, 2012

Jesto
Dec 22, 2004

Balls.

Schwarzwald posted:

I'm getting toward the end of play+, and my damage output can't keep up with increasing enemy health. This is further exasperated when enemies have phase, and have limited periods of vulnerability. Am I missing something obvious, or do I just need to level?

Towards the end Play+ expects that you probably have six of each class at decent levels, with a bunch of characters who all have their own skills. Some Knights with maxed knockback or armor piercing and armor break, some Ice Mages with slowing and freezing, a Berserker or two with maxed Bleed and so on.

Evni+ on your most powerful Berserker placed carefully helps, as does a bunch of Dragons with decent Nom. A ton of rangers with enough arrows to shred the enemies is great, too.

If a setup isn't working for you, just reset their skillpoints and reallocate them.

Also, Slow Start and Slow End are the best books you can use. PSI Shield will help you maintain a Perfect rating if one or two enemies leak, but you should do everything you can to avoid leaking to begin with.

Which battle are you having problems with?

Jesto
Dec 22, 2004

Balls.

Kharmakazy posted:

The title had me excited, but the sub NES graphics leave me somewhat not.

Sub NES, really? :( The pixel work in this game is actually very well done, screenshots alone doesn't quite do it justice. Download the demo on Steam or play the flash demo to see them in action to see if your opinion changes.

http://www.defendersquest.com/play_demo.html

Jesto
Dec 22, 2004

Balls.
Yeah, if anything the cutscene art is like an adequately drawn webcomic. Every background in the game is pretty drat nice in my opinion.

Jesto
Dec 22, 2004

Balls.

Countblanc posted:

"Adequately drawn webcomic" is a good thing now?

Compared to NES art, sure. Your opinion could be that it's lower quality than NES art, but your opinion would be factually wrong.

- NES
- SNES (Der Langrisser, a Strategy RPG, if anyone is wondering. Fantastic game.)
- Defender's Quest

Jesto fucked around with this message at 03:57 on Nov 28, 2012

Jesto
Dec 22, 2004

Balls.
Dragons are mainly good for putting near the end to nom enemies that leaked by, or right in the middle of chokepoints to ensure enemies get ripped apart for longer. Their AoE stun is fantastic, especially if you toggle off their fire attacks. Roar + Ice Mage slowing is an amazing combo. Using them as shields to take damage for other characters is good too.

I like to put a dragon on either side of Azra combined with Slow End to make sure they nom / Roar anything that tries to hit her.

timg'd for spoilers, click to enlarge

No one is getting past those bouncers. :colbert:

Jesto
Dec 22, 2004

Balls.
Looks like the developers are asking for community feedback and suggestions for what people want them to do for the sequel. If you had any issues with the game or stuff that was missing that you wanted to see, post it here.

http://steamcommunity.com/app/218410/discussions/0/846938351044358949/

Or I guess you could post it in this thread, too. Lars probably still checks it, I'm guessing.

Jesto
Dec 22, 2004

Balls.
Slak probably would have gotten you to 200 if you gave him Envi+ and put him right at the end to mop up everything under 10% HP. Still, that's pretty impressive.

Jesto
Dec 22, 2004

Balls.

Sloppy posted:

I haven't unlocked it yet...1 more gold star on the last level that is driving me nuts :suicide:

I posted an image showing a good setup for that level a little earlier. What you want to do is:

Put archers all in the center, so they can hit everywhere on the battlefield. They just need a few healers to help them survive the enemies that walk out from spawn.

Slow Start + Slow End to ensure you get the maximum amount of time to do DPS.

Put Knights everywhere, even desummon and resummon them if you need to to knock off armor.

Dragons on either side of Azra to keep her safe.

An Ice Mage above Azra to keep enemies that spawn right above her from rushing to her. You can also put an Ice Mage near Zelemir to protect him, but his survival isn't necessary.

Slak right above Azra as well with Evni+, to help the dragons mop up weakened enemies. He can be moved elsewhere when he's no longer needed there.

Boost Azra up whenever you get a surplus of PSI so Zelemir can start spamming powerful spells.

Once your guys manage to keep the generating enemies at bay, just go crazy summoning extra units around the final boss wherever he may teleport to.

Jesto fucked around with this message at 01:18 on Dec 8, 2012

Jesto
Dec 22, 2004

Balls.

Velveteen posted:

I can't seem to beat any stages on extreme after the sheep boss in new game+. Nor can I beat anything on advanced after the hand boss. Not sure what I'm doing wrong as stuff just rushes past and eventually I get overwhelmed and Azra dies.

The level cap is 60, you might want to go ahead and turn EXP up to 300% so you can hit it sooner if you need to. Also, do some bonus maps for books if you don't have any good ones, they help.

What's your general strategy? Putting down some maxed archers can help to slow down the enemies while you get PSI for units with a shorter range.

Jesto
Dec 22, 2004

Balls.
:toot: Congratulations on the game getting the daily deal. What milestones are there left for you guys with this game, getting hosted in a humble bundle? Hopefully if you do ever get added in one, it'll be alongside a few other awesome games.

Also, I've been playing some of your Tourette's Quest tech demo, it seems like a really intriguing idea. It's amazing that it got as much press as it did, any idea how that happened?

You might want to talk to Edmund McMillen for tips on developing mechanics for it, or just to get his opinion of it, since he knows everything about oldschool Zelda-dungeoneering after Binding of Isaac.

Jesto
Dec 22, 2004

Balls.

anviroid posted:

For god's sake hire an actual artist.


This is not acceptable for a game you expect me to pay money for. High school art students draw better than this.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/113200/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/70300/

:ssh: Indie development teams with a tiny handful of people and little to no funding developing in the flash engine aren't going to give you triple-A cutscenes. Either press Skip on all the cutscenes, come to terms with the fact that the graphics style you see is what you're going to get, or just buy something else and wait for the sequel to come along with better cutscene graphics because they can probably afford better artists now.

I happen to think they at least look better than Fire Emblem cutscenes. v:shobon:v

Jesto
Dec 22, 2004

Balls.

anviroid posted:

This is not up to par to be on sale anywhere... this is freeware quality stuff. The mechanics aren't bad... but I can't justify paying even the $5 "sale" price for this. I mean... rpg maker games look better than this.

http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=25503.0

Considering that it had 14,000 sales in April back before they redid the cutscene backgrounds and six months before they were on Steam, there's plenty of people who seem to disagree with you. :confused:

Is your overall issue with the game the fact that you want to continue playing past the demo, but don't want to pay for it due it's cutscene graphics or what? Because most people who didn't like the cutscene graphics probably just wouldn't bother with it at all.

Jesto
Dec 22, 2004

Balls.

Sir_Seth posted:

The flash cartoon style graphics and Tower Defense (c'mon, this genre has been done to death) elements are a huge turn off.

:what:

I don't really like platformers, but I don't go into threads marked as platforming and complain that I wish the game were a roguelike instead.

Jesto
Dec 22, 2004

Balls.
It's best to have two save slots, one dedicated to the normal game and one dedicated to Hero Mode. Hero Mode isn't something you want to attempt on your first playthrough.

If you play through Play and Play+ on your normal savefile, you'll have a general idea of how to prepare for playing with so few characters and how to allocate their skillpoints. It's also highly reccomended you switch EXP to 300% in the options menu when attempting Hero Mode.

Jesto
Dec 22, 2004

Balls.

Sloppy posted:

I just found out I did something really dumb. I was confusing Envi with another sword, I've never actually had Envi :downs:

Maybe it will be easier this time around!

Evni is kind of easy to miss if you don't look through the items in the final store and skip through the dialogue there about the sword.

For anyone else who has this problem: Evni is in the Swords menu of the Hoard in Play. A secret unique armor is available under the Heavy Armors menu in the same place in Play+, and it upgrades to be pretty drat nice.

Jesto fucked around with this message at 03:25 on Dec 19, 2012

Jesto
Dec 22, 2004

Balls.

NewtGoongrich posted:

I don't see in what sense this game could be called "FFT-styled". It's a decent game, but it has absolutely nothing in common with FFT.

I was using the creator's own words on their Steam page, because I didn't know what else to write.

quote:

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

Maybe Larsiusprime could explain what he means by that. I could ask a moderator to change it to something more fitting, if anyone has any suggestions?

Jesto fucked around with this message at 05:56 on Dec 19, 2012

Jesto
Dec 22, 2004

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

Defender's Quest is 66% off until January 5th. $5.10, so if you missed picking it up last time, now is the time to do so. :toot:

Jesto
Dec 22, 2004

Balls.

Saoshyant posted:

Nope. It's the DRM free version. But you can always add the Steam overlay over it.

Technically the Steam version is the DRM free version as well. You can move Defender's Quest out of it's Steam folder and launch it without the Steam overlay, if you want.

Jesto
Dec 22, 2004

Balls.

Looks like it doesn't care whether or not you have Linux, it's 50% off for everyone. :)

How's the sequel coming? You and your team still hammering out the details and looking to potentially hire extra people, or are the blueprints already laid?

Jesto
Dec 22, 2004

Balls.

ChiTownEddie posted:

I just rebought it on steam hehe. (because Im weird like that)

Where did you buy it before? If you bought it through the developer's website anytime in the past year or so, you should have had a Steam key emailed to you when it released on Steam.

Jesto
Dec 22, 2004

Balls.
1. Every character has a 'Reset Pts' button near the top left of their screen, if you screw up a 'build' you can always just get the points back and rebuild them how you want. You need to boost their skills if you want to get any real use out of them.

2. 2 of each class is risky, but safe for a normal playthrough. You ideally want 3+ of each class, ideally 6 rangers and 6 berserkers for crowd control and some healers.

3. Repeating older levels still gets you EXP and Scrap for killing enemies, but you should be trying to perfect new ones on Advanced and Expert for their bonuses.

Jesto
Dec 22, 2004

Balls.

larsiusprime posted:

And obviously I'm still doing support for the original. Our big project is getting a translation engine in there and getting fan translations for a bunch of languages done.

Is there actually a large push for Defender's Quest to be in multiple languages? Because you guys spent an awful lot of time on mod support and I haven't seen any actual mods appear for DQ, which is kind of disappointing. Hopefully language support is big enough to expand the fanbase for the sequel. :)

Also, when do you think you'll make the next Defender's Quest sales chart thing? I'm really interested to know how much the various sales across various websites helped the game, as well as how popular it's gotten since it's Kongregate days.

Jesto
Dec 22, 2004

Balls.

larsiusprime posted:

We just posted a full sales stat breakdown on Gamasutra:


Since it's not listed, I'm assuming being featured on SteamGifts didn't do anything for exposure for you? I saw 25,000+ entering the giveaway, I thought that might have spiked sales at least a little bit. Though maybe that would have worked better if it were on sale at the time. :(

Jesto
Dec 22, 2004

Balls.

larsiusprime posted:

Oh, did that go up already? :)

http://forums.somethingawful.com/adlist.php

You can see yours down at the bottom. 4 copies means you spent at least $120 to advertise on SA? :monocle: I hope this thread has given you guys a lot of clickthroughs / sales to make up for that.

Jesto
Dec 22, 2004

Balls.

larsiusprime posted:

And as always, I'll be posting a full write-up on whether advertising has been worth it

Speaking of advertising, did you ever try to court youtube game reviewers as a part of your marketing campaign? I'm just curious if you ever emailed OMFGCata (Jesse Cox) or TotalHalibut with a description of who you were, what your game is like and a Steam key to try it out. It might be worthwhile to drawing up a list of 10 appealing, popular youtube gaming channels that feature indie content, tossing a Steam/Desura key their way and seeing if even one of them bites.

It might be worth including a link to a savefile with plenty unlocked as well, so they can skip the tutorial and see what the game has to offer if they prefer. The initial two tutorial battles tend to suck up almost the entirety of a 10 minute review, I find. :( If people are going at x2 or x4 speed, they might get far enough to meet Ketta before the first impression review is over.

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Jesto
Dec 22, 2004

Balls.

larsiusprime posted:

I've already contacted TotalHalibut/Biscuit several times already, got through to his business person once, she said she's pass the game along but that was as far as we got :) I'll try again with some of the others.



The problem with TotalHalibut/Biscuit is that he tends to review things right as they come out, and RPG isn't a genre that he's fond of making videos of since it takes a while to get into it - it's not a true 'first impressions' if he's been playing for 10~ hours to see all the mechanics the game has to offer.

That's why you'd be better off trying JesseCox, who does more niche stuff for several episodes, or maybe even sending a key to the Yogscast. Heck, you could send a key to every member of the Yogscast since they all have their own channel with their own videos. Hannah might enjoy it.

And as much as I can't stand his commentary, PaperBatVG is a good option too for his extensive coverage of Terraria.

WarLocke posted:

except for the sheep one.

If you want the easiest strategy for that one spoiled:

Max Chill on one IceMage. Max Bleed on one Berserker. Max Critical on Archers + Max Zeal on Healer + Max Frenzy if you truly want overkill and sync it up with the Healer's Zeal for a slaughtering good time.

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