Defender's Quest - Tower Defense + RPG = Amazing

larsiusprime

We're hoping to get on Steam like any developer, but that's up to them, not us. You could always email them or post on their forums asking them to consider us, though

Monztamash

My friends were quickly put off by the artstyle.
The cartoon-ish nature of the game is fine, but the characters in cutscenes look weird.

I admit it could look better, but the gameplay makes up for it.

The Dude With Herpes

Check out the dev blog and compare to the old art style. The new stuff is much better and is much closer in style to the quirky dialogue. I liked its simplicity but I suppose I can see how it would put some off. It would be cool if the in battle graphics matched the cutscene art though.

Marty81

So I played this a lot today and I'm really enjoying it. It's really easy to fall into the "ok, just one more map" trap, and before you know it it's way past your normal dinner time and you're starving. Just from personal experience.

I like the art and the music and the story so far. The cutscenes are good too. They're short and usually pretty funny (at least they make me smile).

As far as combat, while I agree that archers are great and I build most of my strategies around them, I've found that I have a hard time if I use too many of them and too few of other things. The classes complement each other pretty well. Archers do a lot of general damage, ice mages slow guys down for archers to deal more damage (and do pretty respectable damage on their own), knights break armor, berzerkers mop up whatever gets past the archers for low psi cost, healers are occasionally useful (they have a super low psi cost if you don't boost them), and dragons...well, I guess they give you something to spend excess psi on. I'm not quite sure how to use them yet.

For knights (and maybe archers), I think it would be useful if they had a target:armored command. Target:strong usually seems to work pretty well (I think it targets the enemy in range with the highest HP?). but occasionally it'll make my knight target an unarmored enemy over an armored one. There was one instance tonight when there was an armored enemy in between two higher-health unarmored ones and I couldn't figure out how to tell my knight to hit the armored one.

Bug report: On the map, if you drag the map so that your pointer ends up over "Tips" and then let go of the mouse button, the tips screen pops up. The other buttons don't do that.

As far as hotkeys go, in battle it might be nice to have hotkeys for game speed (1/2x, 1x, 2x, 4x) and Send (N)ext, and on the overworld map, hotkeys for (P)arty, (M)ovies, (O)ptions, (T)ips. Totally not necessary though. (But I'd use the Party one all the time.)

A few questions: The chilling effect % on my Ice Mage's Sleet (boost lv 3) seems to keep going up, but I don't know why. Is it tied to the level of the mage or the level of the skill? Also, it's not totally clear to me how xp is allocated at the end of a battle. Does every unit that participates in any way get the same amount? Is there any splitting of xp? Is there any way to powerlevel a recruit you buy later on?

Ok, I wrote more than I expected to. I'll be telling my friends about this game and I'll be sure to buy a proper copy of the bonus edition when it comes out.

larsiusprime

Hey Marty,

Here's how targeting works:
First - enemy with the least distance left to Azra
Last - enemy with greatest distance left to Azra
Strong - enemy with greatest remaining HP + Armor points
Weak - enemy with least remaining HP + Armor points
Fast - enemy that is moving the fastest. If multiple are in range at the same speed, the closest one to Azra.

I'm pretty sure the chance of chill is tied to the skill, rather than the boost or any of the particular stats, but I'll double-check to be sure.

Here's how XP works:
Say you earned a total of 2,000 XP when all is said and done from killing enemies, challenge bonuses, multiplier, etc.

Defenders who were on the battlefield at the end of the level get 2,000 XP each. (Full XP)
Defenders who were not on the battlefield at the end of the level get 1,000 XP each. (50% for "bench-warmers.")

Basically, each person gets their own copy of the XP, and you get more if you were summoned and alive at the end.

Borya

Hi,

is it possible to get another Tiger Skin Vest or Ozimal's Coat? They didn't appear in the inventory after the perfect victories.

The Dude With Herpes

Make sure you're checking the right units. Tiger Skin only archers/priests can equip. I'm not sure about Ozimal's. They won't show up in the other units inventory. Berzerkers can't equip armor at all so nothing will show in their inventory for armor.

But no, you can't re-obtain the special rewards for completing a mission the first time on a given difficulty.

Marty81

There's definitely a bug with the sleet description in the party menu. I have several ice mages with different xp levels and different levels of the skill, and for all of them it says that it chills enemies (56.9999999999999999%). I know it used to say something a lot higher, like 80%, for my highest-level maxxed-sleet ice mage. Hovering over the upgrade only changes the damage, slow %, and length of the slow, not the chill %. Edit: I restarted and then it said 50%. Then I did a couple battles and now it says 75%.

By the way, I'm building all my guys differently. If one character makes an enemy bleed, that affects all hits the enemy takes, right (not just hits from the character who caused the bleeding)? I've got a dedicated bleed-inducing archer. Some of my other guys are built to be good at high boost levels, and others at low boost levels.

larsiusprime

Hey Marty!

Sorry about the bug, we'll work on fixing it. The game auto-updates, so whenever we get it fixed and up on the servers, the next time you run the game it will detect it and prompt you to download/install the patch right from the game.

And yeah, it affects ALL hits the enemy takes, in fact all sources of damage from anywhere. So, if an enemy has both bleed AND poison, the bleed multiplier is applied to each periodic poison hit, for instance. I also believe bleed is applied BEFORE armor is subtracted, so bleeding an enemy can make the difference between a weak defender's attacks getting through the armor or not.

Ozimal's coat is light armor, which is only for rangers/healers. Unique items will not show up in the store interface because you cannot sell them (we're planning something special for them in the bonus release, that's why we force you to hang on to them).

Borya

Yep, I forgot I had to select someone's armor to see the vest/coat.

TheKoolEagle

looks pretty fun, although I am instantly reminded of the Protector series features on kongregate. Although this looks like it focuses more on specific heroes instead of gear for commanders and the like

Lanrutcon

TheKoolEagle wrote:

looks pretty fun, although I am instantly reminded of the Protector series features on kongregate. Although this looks like it focuses more on specific heroes instead of gear for commanders and the like

It's waaaaay more easy-going than Protector, and I mean that in a good way.

Borya

Deleted.

Page-

The only change I would make is giving healers a way to cast zeal without someone taking damage. I want it for the damage buff, not for actual healing, and it's annoying that it will only be cast if someone gets hurt. The buff only lasts 7 seconds and the skill has a 25 second cooldown, so it's not like it would be on all the time.

The Dude With Herpes

Yeah, the zeal thing for real needs to happen.

Dignified Pauper

This needs a mobile version on android!

Borya

Page- wrote:

The only change I would make is giving healers a way to cast zeal without someone taking damage. I want it for the damage buff, not for actual healing, and it's annoying that it will only be cast if someone gets hurt. The buff only lasts 7 seconds and the skill has a 25 second cooldown, so it's not like it would be on all the time.

Also, when chosing "Both" as the strategy for healers, they should be able to heal even when there are no enemies nearby (currently they start healing only after casting damage spells).

JamesC

Hey everybody! I'm James Cavin, another one of the developers from DefQ (Lars is up to his ears in code at the moment).

@Page: Sorry about Zeal! The Zeal not firing when no defenders are hurt is a bug that we're gonna squash in the next update.

Borya wrote:

Also, when chosing "Both" as the strategy for healers, they should be able to heal even when there are no enemies nearby (currently they start healing only after casting damage spells).

- That is definitely not supposed to be going on. I've passed it along to Lars, so it should be taken care of in the next update.

The game automatically checks for updates when you launch it, so you don't have to go hunt down patches or anything.

Borya

Oops, mistake.
I meant "when choosing priority "Fight".

larsiusprime

Hey guys! Just want you to know I'm working on the next update, so we'll be fixing the Zeal thing and a few other bugs people have sent in for sure.

Marty81

larsiusprime wrote:

Hey guys! Just want you to know I'm working on the next update, so we'll be fixing the Zeal thing and a few other bugs people have sent in for sure.

Great! Another very minor bug: Sometimes in battle it will say that there are still infinity waves to go, even when that's not the case for the battle. This usually happens the battle after a boss battle.

If anyone is on the fence about this game, I say just go ahead and buy it now. I was originally planning on waiting for the bonus edition, thinking I'd wait for the game to be finished. It's finished now. There are a few very minor bugs (fewer than most games), the story is complete and fulfilling, it's balanced well, and the difficulty scales nicely. It's very well put together. I've beaten the game and I'm close to completing every map at every difficulty at 17 hours now. I'll probably finish at 20 hours.

larsiusprime

Thanks for the vote of confidence, Marty!

And yeah, we'll throw that visual glitch on our buglist too. I probably mentioned this before but the game auto-updates so you don't have to hunt down patches.

RainbowDespair

85% score from Destructoid:

http://www.destructoid.com/review-defender-s-quest-valley-of-the-forgotten-220503.phtml

larsiusprime

OMG, thanks Zeboyd! I missed that one. Also, some fans got a steam forum thread going:
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2505520

Anybody who wants to see it get on Steam, feel free to chime in there

Alfred J. Kwak

just bought it, looks fun

oh, skill trees, nice!

e: and finished it, heh

Alfred J. Kwak

perhaps I should post some quick impressions and feedback

game crashed twice over the course of ~9-10 hours, both times in the post-mission screen after applying level-ups/equipment changes. It saved everything, so that wasn't a big deal.

gameplay spoilers

Armor seems a bit useless - as long as I placed my troops inside the radius of one, or better yet, two of my priests (who are dirt cheap to deploy and level up to tier 2/3), they were nearly unkillable anyway. Same with the HP upgrades, not really necessary in my opinion.

Those mage boss fights (I counted 3 of them) could do with some tweaking, I think - as it is now, the enemy waves don't scale with time, making the fight progressively easier the longer it goes on.

My standard strategy (I had 2 units of every kind, 3 berserker and archers) was to build a tight maze with knights, priests, ice mages and dragons. Knights and ice mages seem to perform exceptionally well, I'm not actually sure what the dragons can do that knights wouldn't do better, but I deployed both of them anyway. Berserker and archers were of little use to me, late-game.

I'll be honest, I skipped most of the cutscenes after chapter 4 or so. It's not super important, but the quality of the art and writing could be improved. Right now, it kind of reminds me of Battle of Westnoth

Ketar

Installing the update ended up removing the launch icon for DQ from my desktop. Not a big deal, but something that should probably be corrected for future updates.

spitzeuk

So I've completed every level on 3 stars and unlocked one endless level (got to level 341 and it made me 89k scrap ^^) at 33 blue stars I believe. Just wondering if there is any more endgame content, or is this to be added later?

The Dude With Herpes

What? Endless level?

When was this added? I was just playing last night and didn't see anything new except the patch.

spitzeuk

There is a yellow "Bonus" button along the bottom of the main map screen once you unlock it.

The Dude With Herpes

Yeah I just saw that.

Was that always there? Because man I really wanted that before

Doing it now. We'll see how uber I really am. :P

EDIT: How do I tell what wave I'm on?
EDIT2: well right now all the enemies are level 150 and going up. Virtually nothing has made it past my first row of defenders and I have 3 rows on both sides and everything has been maxed out since enemies were like level 70.

I think I can just set this on 4x and go exercise. Maybe in an hour or so the enemies will be strong enough to make it past the first set of defenders.

E3: that was weird. At around level 220 something triggered removing a bunch of my guys. Oh, they're actually dying now. Lvl 250+ is actually more than just automode.

EDITFINAL: well, Got up to enemy level 391 before I got overwhelmed.

Good times.

And a book I can't use. o.O

Marty81

The Dude With Herpes wrote:

Yeah I just saw that.

Was that always there? Because man I really wanted that before

Yes, it was there before the patch, heh.

The Dude With Herpes

I wish respeccing didn't cost so much. I think I could redo my priests and make that considerably easier.

EDIT I did start a new game though the other day so I could have all my talents be "right" since it just costs too much to respec late game. 40k a pop = no thanks.

Spawnbroker

I just bought this game today and it's super fun! I got about 10 missions in, I'm still getting the hang of it, but it's great so far!

larsiusprime

Just want you guys to know I monitor this thread every couple of days for feedback issues for the next patch

The endless mode is basically a proof-of-concept, it should probably be unlocked waaaay earlier given its difficulties, and actually well-designed endless modes (with useful feedback like what wave you're on, and being able to "cash in" progress without dying) is one of our key features for the bonus release.

I'll look into the scrap cost for re-speccing too, it does get pretty expensive later on.

Mongrel Idiot

So I'm not sure if I'm getting a bug on the last level, or just not doing it right.

I can easily knock out Eztli-Tenoch's first health bar, but after that I can't seem to do any damage to him. I've had all of my main characters attack him, hit him with all my spells, and even tried casting the matching spell when he casts his. Nothing seems to dent him.

If I'm just not trying the right thing, don't tell me what to do, but if it's not supposed to do that I'd like to know.

Marty81

No, that's how it's supposed to be. You're just not doing it right. If you have in-battle dialog on (set it to "always" to be sure) that should help. edit: or maybe the thing that would help was in the pre-battle cutscene, I can't remember.

The Dude With Herpes

Last battle, you have to

Boost your Librarian to the max

to be able to finish him.

Mongrel Idiot

Ah, got him!

I didn't think to click on my librarian.

Thanks!

Marty81

Finished the game (3-starred all maps at 21 hours). Very good overall. I agree with other comments that adding some stuff for new game +/post-game/challenges/secrets would be fun, because there's really nothing else to do at this point. I also think that it costs a bit much to respec (it depends only on character level, right?), but I had enough by the end to respec several of my characters. Maybe it would be more fair to charge the player per point they want to respec, like 1000 scrap per "undo" point.