The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums here.
The Guiding Principles and New Rules document is now in effect.
Defender's Quest - Tower Defense + RPG = Amazing
RainbowDespair
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So this little gem came out yesterday and I'm not seeing much discussion about it.
http://youtu.be/wFkdCv7daTs
It's a Tower Defense/RPG hybrid. Plays like your typical Tower Defense game except all of your "towers" are heroes with skill trees, equipment slots, and the like. Interesting plot, fun dialogue, great music, but mostly it's just a blast to play. Hits all of my tower defense checklist items...
Adjust the speed of play? Check.
Easily see enemy routes & where I can place units? Check.
Detailed information on the stats of both my units and enemies? Check.
See upcoming wave information? Check.
Upgrade my units both in and between levels? Check.
Different difficulty levels for each map, each with their own set of enemies and rewards for victory? Check.
The game's currently only available directly from the developer and is $6.99 (although if you enter ZEBOYD as a password, you get $1 off - as thanks for me being such a big fan of the game during beta I guess). If you're not quite sold yet, the game also has a really long demo that you can download. Both the full game and the demo can be found here:
http://www.defendersquest.com/
http://youtu.be/wFkdCv7daTsIt's a Tower Defense/RPG hybrid. Plays like your typical Tower Defense game except all of your "towers" are heroes with skill trees, equipment slots, and the like. Interesting plot, fun dialogue, great music, but mostly it's just a blast to play. Hits all of my tower defense checklist items...
Adjust the speed of play? Check.
Easily see enemy routes & where I can place units? Check.
Detailed information on the stats of both my units and enemies? Check.
See upcoming wave information? Check.
Upgrade my units both in and between levels? Check.
Different difficulty levels for each map, each with their own set of enemies and rewards for victory? Check.
The game's currently only available directly from the developer and is $6.99 (although if you enter ZEBOYD as a password, you get $1 off - as thanks for me being such a big fan of the game during beta I guess). If you're not quite sold yet, the game also has a really long demo that you can download. Both the full game and the demo can be found here:
http://www.defendersquest.com/
RainbowDespair on
0
Posts
Currently playing: GW2 and TSW
I spent all day/night playing it and 3-gold-star'd every map by this afternoon. That damn magic sheep took me forever to finally get perfect to where it went down before killing me. And that's with pretty much everything being capped at 40 (by the way, you cap at 40 but you still gain xp and skill points). It was crazy.
Yes, I played it way the hell too much.
Sad there's not really anything else to do; a newgame+ option would be really nice, particularly with that 500k sword you can buy that you can't really afford unless you don't buy anything including recruits.
Hopefully they expand on it as time goes on. Half the world map isn't even touched during the course of the game, so there's plenty of room for it.
But yeah, newgame+ would be great.
EDIT: Also a "warning" to new players; recruit costs are cumulative, so if you max out on berzerkers and archers early on, once you can get other things their prices will be pretty high. The last couple units cost 20k+ scrap. Just a tip with scrap though; don't feel like you have to upgrade every town. Between rewards from harder difficulties and whatnot, you can probably get away with skipping every other upgrade and save scrap.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
Steam ID : rwb36, Twitter : Werezompire,
yessssss
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
Steam ID : rwb36, Twitter : Werezompire,
Ok, so the game is good. I really like it, but I don't know about this. 7 bucks and beating it in 1 day? and 3 stars too?
Thanks for starting this thread, Zeboyd!
@ The Dude with Herpes:
We'll definitely have a New Game+ feature for the bonus release when it comes out.
How long did it take you to get through all the content?
It usually takes me between 15-25 hours to beat most of the challenges, and even longer to go super completionist on it. I guess The Dude With Herpes is super hardcore
Also, the demo represents a little less than 20% of the game's linear content, and the rest of it ramps up in difficulty pretty well.
Save file says 13 hours.
I've been playing a lot of Tower Defense games lately so it's where my mind is at. I played most of the game at 4x always with the occasional pause to set up something. I'd guess someone else would take quite a bit longer.
I have no complaints about the length vs cost even without the extra content you're planning on putting in. But I'm definitely looking forward to more. Newgame+ and a survival mode sounds great.
Read above. With the ZEBOYD coupon code it's only $6, and with the current content and planned content, I'd say the price is more than right.
I mean, on a whim this evening I decided to load up Portal 2, which I paid full price for at release and the single player portion took 8 hours. So $6 is quite the deal if you ask me.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
Also, whenever I'd run into a stage where I couldn't beat it with what I had, I always assumed that whatever the next unit coming up was, would be the "key" and it usually was, so I didn't spend a lot of time trying to beat stages that I knew I didn't have the tools for; I just moved on and came back and cleared it out.
I suppose if you want it to be super challenging, try to do some of those earlier extreme difficulty maps, with the armored skeletons and such, with only berzerkers and archers without points into armor piercing.
However, in most of the stages after you get them, like so many TD games, slows are the key, hands down. Ice Mages are glorious, as are archers (who don't slow). Archers with their range maxed out with bleed and armor piercing man...ruiner of worlds.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
Looks pretty awesome though.
I love how specific this list is :P
I'm very particular about my tower defense games. Although I've liked plenty of games where they don't meet every checklist point.
Steam ID : rwb36, Twitter : Werezompire,
Thank you for putting my recovery back several months. I hope you like my money.
When we finish our first round of fixes the game should auto-detect it on startup and ask if you want to update.
Some things people have noticed around the internets:
-Sometimes in-battle dialog doesn't show when it's supposed to unless turned on to "ALWAYS" (Options->Misc)
-If you earn the "Glory of War" armor before you have heroes #4 and #5, you get a weird but non-fatal error when you try to equip it
-Rare freezing on some levels.
-Rarely, battle won't restart after Azra dies
We'll do our best to fix these ASAP and push out the new version!
I'd hear all the sound effects for gaining xp but the screen would just go black. Alt-tabbing did nothing but if I ctrl-alt-del to the task manager, if I tried to reselect the game it'd still be the black screen.
When I'd go to kill the process when this happened it was usually eating 1.5-2 gigs of memory according to win7's task manager (x64).
Even then, however, it'd have saved exactly what I had done in that battle, so when I loaded the game up and went back into my save it had saved all the xp from that battle and if there was any armor reward I'd have it in my inventory.
This, iirc, only ever happened after beating extreme maps; since I didn't really do extreme maps more than once or twice I don't think I could narrow it down to any specific stage.
EDIT: not a bug, but just a gripe...with the ever increasing costs of recruitment on top of how expensive gear is later in the game; the cost to respec an individual unit feels way too high. I could load it up and check but iirc respeccing a single guy at higher levels costs 30-40k scrap. That's nuts. And, since it seems the rewards you get for beating each difficulty/stage are awarded once, you have to rely on in-map scrap only. Even the later stages at extreme only award 10k or so a pop. EDIT2: though, with the additions planned to the game, it's probably not an issue.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
Was this for the final mission, or just regular levels on extreme difficulty?
It didn't ever happen on the final mission, just random ones. I don't know if it matters but each time it was for sure on an extreme difficulty version of a map; as I distinctly remember always worrying i wouldn't keep the equipment and would have to do it over; but it saved.
But yeah, didn't seem to be any consistency to it; except it was definitely latter half missions. It never happened before I got the
I didn't actually use that unit much however. Well, no, I mean I virtually always summoned them every map because I couldn't tell if you got full xp or not if they weren't summoned; but they weren't usually upgraded because their cost vs what they could do compared to other classes, and particularly their big benefit was negated by the vastly more useful ice mage, which diminished how good they could be. Also I was pretty disappointed that a fully upgraded Nom wouldn't eat the super sheep because that sheep took me forever
Anyway that's off the bug topic. I don't think it's related to that unit but it only happened after I got them.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
I had the black screen bug after completing "Old Friends, New Enemies" on Extreme. I think it occured when I should have got the description screen for the Tiger Skin Vest, either that or the level up screen, whichever comes first. I could hear the sound effects for the interface when I clicked on the screen but it was completely black.
This was on Windows Vista x64 running the game in windowed mode.
Either way, we'll try to have a fix out for this soon!
Here's 5 free download codes for everyone's trouble
www.defendersquest.com
FREE8NNTY
FREE5EAUD
FREE3JMWM
FREE7CAUC
FREE3AKDU
Thank you. Thank you so much.
I went ahead and claimed the first one. I've been watching this thread with interest since it popped up and I thought I might hold off until the final version comes out, but if it's free I can't help but give it a try now. I'll definitely let you know what I think!
This is a good game!
One thing that would be nice (or maybe I haven't found it yet) is a hotkey for advancing cutscenes, entering towns, or otherwise choosing the default option in dialog boxes. I know if you hover over the button you want to press and then hit enter, it presses it, but it'd be nice to be able to press the main button without having to move the mouse to it. Just a little thing that would be nice going through the cutscenes.
Since it's running on AIR, is there any talk or plan of porting it to iOS or Android?
If going mobile is in the cards, the real challenge with iOS / Android, etc, would be to make sure it performs well and that the UI experience and text readability is good.
I'll try to put a hotkey in for that in the next patch
Healers - Probably the least used unit of the bunch. There simply aren't enough instances where enemies that attack you do enough damage to be a big threat, except possibly a boss or two. So healing often isn't even that vital; and the damage they do is pretty negligible; though the weaken thing they do can help. Zeal is their saving grace but it has one massive flaw in that if no one needs healed the healer absolutely won't cast it. So, for instance, on the super sheep map where zeal damage bonus would have been a huge boon, nothing hurts you so the healer simply sits there doing nothing. It will use its basic attack but that doesn't do anything to the sheep with 10mil hp and isn't "evil". incoming damage needs to be a bigger threat if these guys are worth using the Psi on, and in too many stages I found myself simply placing them so they got xp. This, however, might be related to Archers, but I'll get to that in a bit.
Ice Mages - Assistant destroyer of worlds. They (help) rule the game. Their lower level abilities don't do a ton of damage but slows are vital to virtually every map in extreme. Well placed Ice mages coupled with Knights to knock them back and take out the slow armored guys is just brutal and handles quite a bit. Sleet and Blizzard are the key to everything and you can't go wrong maxing out your Ice Mages over any other unit type. They even do good damage at higher levels with proper skill points. Slowing enemies down and/or outright stopping them compensates for other units maybe not leveled/boosted making them queens.
Knights - The armor break is invaluable in damn near every map after you get them. Their damage scales well and while they don't attack multiple targets like the Berzerkers, what they bring to the table as far as knockback and armor piercing/breaking makes them vastly more useful. Their top attack doing so much damage too is super nice, beacuse you want them focused on the strong armored things anyway; might as well hit him once and take them down. Probably the best units after Ice Mages and Archers.
Dragons - Huge disappointment. I was really hoping for more than they were but they have some key problems. First off boosting them costs so much. For the cost of one level 5 Dragon you can have almost two entire archers at level 5. And even capped, while they do good damage, their burn ability is negated entirely by ice mages which bring way more to the table, their melee attacks thus end up being far better than their ranged, not to mention their ranged abilities are level 3 and 5 so you have to invest heavily to have access to them; and their melee attacks tend to be done better for various reasons by Knights. And they share the same melee range. Noms could be their saving grace but most enemies don't have enough health to cause it to matter than much and those that do, namely bosses and the magic sheep, can't be eaten so it doesn't matter. Trying to rely on an enemy both being in range of a dragons melee and sub 10-19% health is just not gonna happen so that's out too. Really underwhelming and I honestly never found a good use for them for their cost and abilities. I'd have to go well out of my way to set up a situation where their burn ability wouldn't be negated by ice mages, and still do something that could already be done better by archers or knights. Yeah, its one unit instead of two in that regard but again, just didn't cut it.
Archers - I saved these for last for a reason. They're insane. Most stages, most difficulties you could very well get perfects using only archers. It hurts me to suggest it because god I loved how powerful they are, but they probably need nerfed. They do what every other class (except ice mage) do, and generally better. Multi-enemy attacks? Check. Armor Piercing? Check. Bleeds/dots? Check. Range? Check. Even their intended weakness, being their deadzone, is very easy to work around to the point that it becomes a non issue. Capped range increase makes it so a level 5 archer placed in the center of any given map can cover virtually the entirety of the map. In various maps you can cluster them in a center point and have coverage of virtually every path, corner, entrance and path to your Librarian. In maps without central placeable masses, there's still enough land elsewhere to provide multi-archer coverage of every given area. Their various attacks are incredibly powerful, have very low cooldowns and you end up having each one attack so fast that you can take down anything. And with armor piercing, even armored units fall prey. Coupled with poison, high health units fall. They are seriously crazy. Coupled with Ice Mages, their single weakness of not being able to slow is covered and I don't have any doubt I could play through and do almost (need more for the sheep and the sheep can't be slowed) every map on every difficulty with just ice mages and well placed archers. Regarding healers, its highly likely that attacking enemies would have normally been a threat and made healers much more vital, but since you could take out virtually everything dangerous without them having a chance to hit you, there was rarely an opportunity for healers to do their thing; and I think it is entirely due to archers.
Some general game thoughts/observations:
Also, I liked the Librarian being more of a focus in combat. It's easy in straight TD games to just be that "god" watching from up high, some games giving you spells, others not; but making her what you have to protect, and even if it was purely visual, having all boosts, summons, spells etc coming from you just made you feel like there was a point to what you were protecting. Often in TD games you're protecting a crystal or some money or some such. Making it the main character on the battlefield and part of the action just helped the feeling of the game quite a bit.
Regarding the RPG elements, they were mostly great. Caring about your units outside of battle and inside made it all feel much more worthwhile. While sometimes the skill bonuses per level felt a little underwhelming (.5 per point for speed on berzerkers? 5 for 9 points just doesn't make enough difference with all the other options of their base attacks), I understand the reasoning behind the relatively marginal upgrades per skill point given how TD games play. If the upgrades had been more substantial then enemies would have had to been buffed to compensate for that much more power and in the end the disparity between early game and late game would have been too much; let alone between difficulties. Sometimes though, with so many units, distributing skill points could start to feel like a chore. I'm not entirely sure how it could be sped up or automated so that you're not constantly just clicking the same buttons over and over again on each and every unit; but something like the option to duplicate skill ups across all units of a type would just make it easier. I mostly just had the same stats on every unit of a type so, personally I didn't really differentiate any of my units; though I could see why someone might. But an option to just dupe would be useful. Not a big deal either way, however. The fact that you can customize them in such a way is great on its own and worth it. Equipment upgrades were nice, but by the end of the game, when you were getting only a few more damage/armor points per upgrade, when at higher levels it's such a small percent of your overall damage, most of that coming from boosting; it just felt a bit like the upgrades weren't worth the scrap you could spend on them. I recommended in an earlier post to skip every other upgrade, but you could probably get away with waiting longer than that. It's a neat feature, but something about it is just missing that...something I can't quite name. So I know that doesn't help, but yeah.
Lastly, I just wanted to say a few things that I'd really like to see down the road. I already mentioned newgame+, and your update said things like survival is coming; but some more "puzzle" type maps would be wonderful. While the magic sheep wasn't quite a puzzle map, it had to be played (or maybe I was just doing it wrong) differently than other maps due to the amount of health the sheep had, how you had to acquire Psi and dealing with the fact that leaving anything not attacking it was a waste of Psi, the setup of the map meant that leaving any unit in a spot for long meant you had to keep your units on the move, which meant lost Psi every unsummon, and planning ahead to account for the sheer amount of health the thing had and the fact you couldn't slow it down or knock it back. But yeah, more stages where maybe you have to think on your feet, or the layout provides a puzzle that you need to figure out to stop certain things from happening. I don't know if it's possible in your engine but maybe a surprise door opening in harder difficulties, or a path being opened/closed unexpectedly so you're forced to adjust mid battle instead of setting up your forces and going to town once it is "right". Also, some more unit-restricted maps would be cool. There were only a couple at the end, but maps where you lose, say, ice mages, for the map, that makes you chance the way you'd normally play to account for the loss of a vital unit. Granted, too much of this stuff would come across as gimicky and/or get frustrating too fast, but either as an extra mode or just pretty rarely I think it'd spice it up quite a bit.
Anyway, enough of that. This is a super long post. Awesome game, enjoyed it more than other $60 I've played in the past while. Really looking forward to whats coming. Keep it up!
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand