Yeah, this game is great. I got a free early pre-release key from the developer in a previous thread (in like January?) and I liked it so much I spent 40 hours on it and beat everything in it I could find. Then I bought the latest version on gog to show my support and I was pleasantly surprised to see my old save file still works! I hopped right into NG+ and it's been just as excellent as I remember it.
What is everyone's strategy for dealing with Dark enemies? I find that my priests aren't very good at keeping them visible.
Try hiring Priests until you have 5. Then place all of them and upgrade them to level 2.
You also want to position them so that the enemies enter the range of your priests slightly before they enter the range of your other units. Since the Priest spell has a cooldown (and a duration) this maximizes the time that they can be attacked.
Also set your priests to focus on attacking instead of healing so that when they cast spells they'll prioritize targets over anything else. I think one of their talents gives one of their abilities 'light' or something which helps too.
They're the cheapest unit to fully upgrade, I will regularly bump them up to 5, or 3 at the very least, the moment I put them out, over anything else. Then place them to provide the most coverage of paths that dark enemies take as possible.
We would never have had the confidence to do this without other developers who have shared their stats in the past, so it's only fair we share our numbers now.
Chief takeaways:
Direct sales are still #2 source of overall revenue
GOG is a viable (albeit small) competitor to Steam
Browser based demo was key to our success
Desura/Impulse were a disappointment
Your results may vary, this is just one data point and there's still no proof that we have any idea what we're doing. Hopefully this information helps someone!
larsiusprime on
+6
RandomHajileNot actually a SnatcherThe New KremlinRegistered Userregular
Anyway, great article. I believe I heard about the game through a thread here (not this thread in the Indie Games forum--pretty sure it was the original thread in G&T proper). I went to play the demo and honestly expected to be like "Yeah, that's a neat game, whatever, Flash games, lol." Then I actually played it and couldn't stop playing the demo. I power leveled as much as you can in the demo, because I knew you could export your save to the main game. I don't know how common that is in Flash-based game demos, but that is frankly a stroke of genius. Still, Steam has trained me to think that you don't buy games (especially Indie games) until they are on sale. At $7, I was still seriously considering just going ahead and buying it. I ended up jumping on it for $3 in the Because We May sale. Looking back on it, though, I enjoyed the game so much that $7 was incredibly reasonable. Had I been forced to buy it on Desura (I have an account mostly for HIBs) or Implulse (ugh, okay) I would have for sure.
I also love that you were able to wrangle up Steam keys for everyone who purchased it prior to the Steam version. The Steam gameplay stats are really interesting, but obviously it is missing all of the metrics for how much people played the demo and the non-Steam version. I know I played the demo a Hell of a lot, and then another Hell of a lot when I bought the game. I'm not sure I even want to know. I'm not huge on TD games, but this game is incredibly addictive. Any time the topic comes up, I recommend two games: Defense Grid and Defender's Quest.
I couldn't be happier for you folks, I paid full price back when the game was released and have gotten far more value out of it than what I paid; both in terms of gameplay and in support and communication. Getting a Steam code when it was released there was just icing on the cake. Actually, I got two Steam codes, one for pre-release testing that translated to the retail version, and another for my prior purchase, that went to a friend.
Just out of curiosity @larsiusprime any info/news on what you are working on now? I haven't checked the blog in awhile; I suppose I could just ask ya on steam But I imagine folks around here are curious too.
I'm working on the last bits of support for Defender's Quest I - it's still making money so it's worth finishing up. I'm about 95% done with localization support and fixing mod bugs, we just launched the linux version on Steam and I'm ironing out some remaining minor glitches with the mac/linux steam builds.
I've also already started work on Defender's Quest II. I'm open-sourcing all my UI widgets from DefQ 1 to speed up development, and we'll be making a full announcement about DefQ II's direction soon.
To save myself from burnout, on Fridays I sometimes work on my side project, "Tourette Quest", a ZeldaLike/RogueLikeLike about my experiences living with Tourette's Syndrome.
I can say for now that it will be a mechanical sequel rather than a story sequel, much like how the Final Fantasy series works. We wrapped up DefQ 1 pretty tightly and I don't want to undermine that story with the Metroid/MegaMan effect.
That's not to say those characters we all love so much won't turn up again in a future title of ours...
Been playing this for the past few days - brilliant, just brilliant. Honestly, I was sick and tired of tower defense games, but this one managed to hook me with its humor and rpg elements from the very first minute.
On a side note, I'm having some issues with the game randomly freezing during combat (Steam version, Win 7 x64). Is this a known issue? It makes the harder stages almost unplayable since the screen and my guys freeze but the enemies apparently don't, so when the game unfucks itself I'm usually dead already.
Anyway, other than that really great work guys. Waiting anxiously for Defender's Quest II.
I've heard some people complain about that, I'm not entirely sure what's causing it. It might just be a generic memory problem. In that case the only thing we can suggest is to try to avoid things that cause the game to chug - run it at 2x speed instead of 4x speed, turn down the particle effects in the video options, make sure scaling is turned off, turn off battle numbers, etc.
EsseeThe pinkest of hair.Victoria, BCRegistered Userregular
I'm guessing good ol' larsiusprime was probably going to post about this fairly soon anyway, but I just figured I'd mention that Defender's Quest is part of GOG.com's new sale that started today where if you grab 5 games at once you save tons of cash. The sale will be going on for about a week from now. So anybody who hasn't gotten the game yet (myself included-- I'm going to take advantage of the sale later this week), now would be a good time to grab it! There are lots of other great games to grab with it, so why not?
We did three more "Developer's commentary let's play" videos:
And we just uploaded our GDC 2013 narrative summit talk!
0
myelinatedGrand Moff PoopybuttKansas, USARegistered Usernew member
Hey! Love your game, I've been playing it for a few days now. The storyline and humor are both fantastic and the gameplay is solid. It feels like you spent a lot of time playtesting, the multiple difficulty levels feel very natural and I haven't run into any bugs that I am aware of.
I don't know if you're open to any suggestions from players but I'd recommend increasing the price of most of the equipment in the game. Also, equipment in general feels a bit dull at the moment. If you could add a greater selection of items for each class, with some items adding a small chance of a specific combat effect (burn, stun, knockback, etc.), I feel that would help make equipment more interesting.
Equipment is better in the NewGame+ when all those uniques actually become useful again. Their cost isn't junk at that point though, it's the skulls.
If I had to guess, though, why there wasn't more class specific equipment that buffed certain talents; is because for players who didn't choose said talent that equipment would be useless, so it remains mainly linear statistics and that's it.
So I forget. I have the regular version, not the steam version. Is there a way to change that? It's not a super big deal, but I haven't played this for a while and was wanting to get back into it, and figured that would be a nicer way of doing so...
depending on where you bought it, you should have gotten a steam code sent to the e-mail address you bought it with. It may have gone to your spam folder though.
Posts
FREE8NAZH & FREE8NNDM have also apparently been claimed. Now, off to make that Kickstarter pledge...
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1426761469/telepath-tactics
A lot of pledges usually come in on the last day, so this one will be down to the wire!
Nevermind, found it!
It's great GOG started selling new indies, I cant thank them enough for the $5 deal on Faster Than Light.
Blogs: Endless Space - galaxy seeds | Diablo 3 duels
:P
Dark enemies gave me soooo much trouble haha. Add a few priests, and use units that have a high rate of attack
3DS Friend Code: 3110-5393-4113
Steam profile
Try hiring Priests until you have 5. Then place all of them and upgrade them to level 2.
You also want to position them so that the enemies enter the range of your priests slightly before they enter the range of your other units. Since the Priest spell has a cooldown (and a duration) this maximizes the time that they can be attacked.
They're the cheapest unit to fully upgrade, I will regularly bump them up to 5, or 3 at the very least, the moment I put them out, over anything else. Then place them to provide the most coverage of paths that dark enemies take as possible.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
http://www.gog.com/news/gog_gem_promo_defenders_quest
24 hours only! Get it while it lasts
http://steamcommunity.com/app/218410/discussions/0/864959336396120861/
And also there's a big Steam Linux sale going on!
http://store.steampowered.com/sale/...?snr=1_4_4__118
We're taking part at 50% off:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/218410/
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/186940/defenders_quest_by_the_numbers_.php
Bottom line:
Gross: $286,646
Sales: 40,451
We would never have had the confidence to do this without other developers who have shared their stats in the past, so it's only fair we share our numbers now.
Chief takeaways:
Your results may vary, this is just one data point and there's still no proof that we have any idea what we're doing. Hopefully this information helps someone!
This is a clickable link to my Steam Profile.
Anyway, great article. I believe I heard about the game through a thread here (not this thread in the Indie Games forum--pretty sure it was the original thread in G&T proper). I went to play the demo and honestly expected to be like "Yeah, that's a neat game, whatever, Flash games, lol." Then I actually played it and couldn't stop playing the demo. I power leveled as much as you can in the demo, because I knew you could export your save to the main game. I don't know how common that is in Flash-based game demos, but that is frankly a stroke of genius. Still, Steam has trained me to think that you don't buy games (especially Indie games) until they are on sale. At $7, I was still seriously considering just going ahead and buying it. I ended up jumping on it for $3 in the Because We May sale. Looking back on it, though, I enjoyed the game so much that $7 was incredibly reasonable. Had I been forced to buy it on Desura (I have an account mostly for HIBs) or Implulse (ugh, okay) I would have for sure.
I also love that you were able to wrangle up Steam keys for everyone who purchased it prior to the Steam version. The Steam gameplay stats are really interesting, but obviously it is missing all of the metrics for how much people played the demo and the non-Steam version. I know I played the demo a Hell of a lot, and then another Hell of a lot when I bought the game. I'm not sure I even want to know. I'm not huge on TD games, but this game is incredibly addictive. Any time the topic comes up, I recommend two games: Defense Grid and Defender's Quest.
This is a clickable link to my Steam Profile.
Just out of curiosity @larsiusprime any info/news on what you are working on now? I haven't checked the blog in awhile; I suppose I could just ask ya on steam
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
I've also already started work on Defender's Quest II. I'm open-sourcing all my UI widgets from DefQ 1 to speed up development, and we'll be making a full announcement about DefQ II's direction soon.
To save myself from burnout, on Fridays I sometimes work on my side project, "Tourette Quest", a ZeldaLike/RogueLikeLike about my experiences living with Tourette's Syndrome.
I'm super excited, you have to keep us updated
3DS Friend Code: 3110-5393-4113
Steam profile
I can say for now that it will be a mechanical sequel rather than a story sequel, much like how the Final Fantasy series works. We wrapped up DefQ 1 pretty tightly and I don't want to undermine that story with the Metroid/MegaMan effect.
That's not to say those characters we all love so much won't turn up again in a future title of ours...
On a side note, I'm having some issues with the game randomly freezing during combat (Steam version, Win 7 x64). Is this a known issue? It makes the harder stages almost unplayable since the screen and my guys freeze but the enemies apparently don't, so when the game unfucks itself I'm usually dead already.
Anyway, other than that really great work guys. Waiting anxiously for Defender's Quest II.
Currently playing: GW2 and TSW
3DS Friend Code: 3110-5393-4113
Steam profile
We did three more "Developer's commentary let's play" videos:
And we just uploaded our GDC 2013 narrative summit talk!
I don't know if you're open to any suggestions from players but I'd recommend increasing the price of most of the equipment in the game. Also, equipment in general feels a bit dull at the moment. If you could add a greater selection of items for each class, with some items adding a small chance of a specific combat effect (burn, stun, knockback, etc.), I feel that would help make equipment more interesting.
If I had to guess, though, why there wasn't more class specific equipment that buffed certain talents; is because for players who didn't choose said talent that equipment would be useless, so it remains mainly linear statistics and that's it.
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
http://steamcommunity.com/games/218410/announcements/detail/1838872740220333330
3DS Friend Code: 3110-5393-4113
Steam profile
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand