Unfinished: Crawl 04/03/2014

QFT

I would care more about this game if it was a single player dungeon crawler/roguelike.

I disagree, I think this game looks amazing and I love the conceit, but mechanically I think it needs a lot of work. The very fact that Vinny was able to get so many kills with so many low-level monsters by waiting to attack the hero until he was near death, that tells me that the game needs to reconsider just what kind of strategies it's trying to encourage.

Right now it seems to punish monsters that are more aggressive and are willing to attack the hero when he's at full strength, and it rewards monsters who are more opportunistic and lets the other players wear the hero down before attacking. Certainly that's one way to go, but personally I think the game needs to get rid of the last-hit-becomes-the-hero mechanic entirely, because in my mind it's the sole reason why the session in this Quick Look became so lopsided. It's kinda ridiculous how many times Vinny was human, meanwhile Brad only managed to become human once, and he just happened to spawn on top of a spider web and got wrecked. The fact that it's possible for an entire game session to occur without one player getting a decent human run, to me that's not good design, and it's not fun. If you suck at the game, you should still get a handful of shots at being human, the game just needs to balance it so that a shitty player is leveling slower than everyone else.

If everyone will indulge me as I do a little backseat game design, here's what I'd do to balance this game a bit:

1. Make it so that the monster who's drawn the most blood thus far becomes the new hero, and not the monster who gets the last hit. The game is already tracking this, after all. Let's say at the start of the game Player 1 is the hero, and when he dies Player 2 has drawn 12 units of blood, Player 3 has drawn 10, but Player 4 (who has been hiding in a corner waiting to get the last hit) only draws 4 units of blood. If I had my druthers, Player 2 should be the next human, not Player 4.
2. Monsters' blood levels would drain gradually. So now Player 2 is the human, but Player 3 still has his 10 blood, which is a bit unfair to Player 1 since he's been human and has 0 blood so far. So P3 and P4 's blood levels would drain slightly to give P1 a chance to catch up. Since P3 and P4 haven't been human yet, I think it would make sense to give them a slight advantage, but not an insurmountable one if P1 is really good. Meanwhile Player 2 has banked his 12 blood and can convert it into gold, though maybe if he dies before cashing it in it goes back to zero, I dunno.
3. Ghosts could cash in a significant amount of blood to spawn a monster without the need of a spawn point. It looks super frustrating right now when one player is Level 10 and can run straight to the boss and there's literally no way to stop him because all the spawn points have been exhausted. I think it would nice to be able to throw one last-ditch monster attack at him, even if it means spending all your blood and sacrificing your shot at being human.
4. Ghosts could steal each others' blood somehow. I have no idea how it would work, but seeing as ghosts need something to do while they wait to spawn, and in my mind part of the gameplay should be that the three ghosts/monsters should always be jockeying for position to be the next human, that stone would kill both those birds.

Anyway, that's what I think, amateur game designer away!

Still continues to be one of my more anticipated games, just looks incredibly unique and fun.

Well everyone's commenting on balance, so I might as well get in on it.

1. More things to do as a ghost is needed, but the dev says he knows that, so it should work out. Since there's so many boxes and chairs lying around that don't do anything, it would be neat if the ghosts could maybe fling them around as an attack.

2. People keep saying that the signs in rooms should respawn, but I disagree. The way they are currently means that on any level, there is a safe path back to the blood for gold guy. This means that those people who've been a monster the whole time and have a bunch of blood, but no gold weapons or levels, can catch up at least through equipment. If signs respawned, there's a chance those low level players would never even get the chance to visit the blood guy, and the issue of under leveled human characters would get worse.

3. In regards to the guy getting the last hit being turned human, I think that's part of the fun. Maybe if there were a system where, if you did the most damage in that room, but another person got the kill, there would be a duel, like the tie breakers in samurai gun. Whoever wins the duel becomes human.

I feel like there should probably be a limit of at most 1 health potion per floor since at the moment it looks like it's just way too easy for the human to recover health as, other than that and the mentioned lack of things for ghosts to do, this game seems like it's pretty great.

@kevin_cogneto: Very interesting ideas! I'm not even necessarily saying that the game IS balanced, I wouldn't want to make any decisions on that without spending a decent chunk of time playing the game. For me, it's all about actually really exploring the possibilities of what is already currently available before making changes. I think there are some great examples in fighting games of both how over-zealous and under-considered balance changes at the behest of vocal players have both hurt and stunted the development of a game (say, Mortal Kombat 9) and also of games that could actually sorely use some balance tweaks that won't likely see any lead to some really creative development of techniques and the furthering of the depth and the level at which the game is played (Ultimate Marvel Vs Capcom 3, to use another modern example)

Regarding the last-hit mechanic for monsters, I think you definitely raise valid points. The nature of the different abilities of the monsters mean that some are probably going to be better at actually getting that last hit than others. But as you said, Vinny's repeated successes were more in relation to his approach to the situation. As much as Vinny likes to belittle his own skills at games, I think he shows a commendable ability to do things like adapt, make clever use of his options and understand how to play into situations to gain advantage etc.

I think if they played another round or two, they'd catch on more to what Vinny was doing and start changing their approach to the game in order to try and turn things back in their favour or at least try to nullify something Vinny is twisting to his advantage. You think it's problematic that somebody can just sort of cherry-pick the last hit when somebody else did the brunt of the work and I can definitely see that. But I also think it makes things much more interesting.

Suddenly, everyone is keenly aware of the simultaneous co-operative and competitive nature of the monster phase. It stops being everyone bum-rushing the hero, trying to attack. Just that knowledge of your doing damage potentially creating an opening for somebody else to take big advantage of would make every attack more considered. But does that prevent people from fighting as efficiently as a team as they could be doing, using their abilities in tandem etc? They need to manage that in order not to give too much liberty to the Hero. Or it would perhaps bring more strategy to other areas, ie considering if it could be advantageous to die on purpose if there is one monster spawn left in the room, things of that nature.

There would certainly also still be a lot of nuance left to explore in the combat. One thing that immediately springs to mind is Vinny's combo attack. He only had time to hit it once on the boss because the recovery of the really damaging third attack was so long, but he could have done more damage by, say, doing a two hit combo followed by a three hit combo, since it was only that last attack that had the seriously recovery. Again, if they played a few more games, the way they played would probably change quite drastically as they started to understand the capabilities of the hero and various monsters, formulated strategies for using or fighting the various monsters etc

I think it actually boils down to two different types of balance. One being your standard balance that competitive games like Street Fighter or Star Craft and such strive for. The second would be one of balancing how much the game rewards skillful play, how unforgiving it is of beginners, how easily does it facilitate perhaps not entirely earned comebacks, does it feature any rubberbanding etc. It's definitely something to consider, as this is the sort of game with a bit of a party-game type vibe to it. Does it work against a game like that to be unapologetic in kicking the ass of those who don't play as well as others? There are certainly plenty of examples of games like that that would be brought out in the sort of setting one would play Crawl, such as fighting games, but then also games very suited to that setting that are the very opposite, something like a Mario Kart.

If they went for the former, I don't know that they'd even need much more for the ghosts to do. You got wrecked, so you have to float around and wait. Maybe press X to rattle some chains and wail. If they were building their game to the latter approach, I think I'd rather see it done through less mechanical tweaks though. For example, larger exponential growth of the experience requirements for levelling, with maybe a likewise increase to the vitae gained through the levelling of others. Things like that. And then more things for the ghosts to do, be it more ways to interfere with the hero or maybe just scavenging for gold. Maybe even press X to rattle some chains and wail.

I dunno, it's also the sort of game where the interplay between all the systems would cause a knock-on effect when you start changing things. ie tweaking Hero health or how many health potions are around etc has an effect on the amount of blood the monsters are spilling and thus how much money they will gain and so on. It definitely requires some consideration!

Anyway, I've written entirely too much, sorry! But I appreciate you engaging in this little thought exercise!

but then it loses what makes it unique. there's plenty of those to go around anyway (or you could get back into D3 if you haven't yet; it's really turned around with RoS).

It being weighted with the last hit just giving an added chance would be nice. So if Player1 did 2/12 damage, Player2 did 6/12 and Player3 did 4/12 and got the killing blow, they'd have 2/12, 6/12 and 4+3(or something)/12 chance to become human.

I like the idea of the last hit not being meaningless, but overall damage still mattering.

14:50

Brad becomes human. Lasts for 10 seconds. I feel a little schadenfreude! Seems like a message to not become one in Dark Souls 2 ;)

The gameplay sounds fantastic. The audio work sounds dreadful.

It looks really fun to play. It looks really awful graphically.

hey guys, Barney here from Powerhoof- this looks like a pretty interesting discussion in here, I'm stoked people care enough about our game to feel strongly about the balance and be putting forth suggestions!

There are a few things I should put down about the build and the stage it is at-

We have mechanics in the works for the ghosts to have fun stuff to do- I want them griefing the living players and working towards getting to spawn back in whenever they are in ghost form, never just waiting around :) We just haven't got to prototyping that stuff yet!

I really like the devious strategies which evolve around the last hit mechanic :) kill stealing is just the kind of thing we wanted to encourage for local multiplayer silliness- one second you're working together, then you're stealing their kill, next second you're attacking eachother! The concept of weighting this against damage dealt and other factors have all been considered, but we have made this choice intentionally.

We need to do a lot of work to communicate some of the mechanics and systems to players before we launch- watching this match is a little painful as it really shows up where we haven't communicated to the players clearly. Rest assured, we will be tweaking feedback, hud info and putting in simple explanation boxes to get everything better understood by players before we launch.

We do have a system for equalizing losing players a little, but there are a few holes currently- here is how it works:

The money you get from the statue is built up every time you damage the hero- you don't build this while you are a hero, so essentially you have to spend time as a monster to afford hero upgrades in the shop. If I am doing significant damage to the hero, but somebody keeps stealing my kills, I will have built up a lot of gold from all that damage by the time I do become the hero. The system currently has a fatal flaw, which is heroes who are falling behind will get killed again before they get to a statue then back to the store to cash in all that gold and upgrade! So we intend to so a few things to make this less of an issue, including trying out some ways you can pay a small price to be teleported to the shop and cut down on all the backtracking!

Anyway this is already a long post so I'll leave it there, but feel free to ask/suggest stuff, we are very excited for your feedback- we can't afford the kind of playtesting a game like this would need, so you can really help us out!

@barney_cumming: Just wanted to say that you guys are doing a great job on the game and I love the sound and graphics!

Geez it's like the local/shared screen multiplayer renaissance or something, so many of these small teams just pumping out fun as hell games. Every time there's another local multiplayer quicklook/unprof friday I'm thinking surely this one will suck but nope they're all good, really amazing time to be a gamer. This game looks pretty neat, really interesting/unique concepts with lots of potential. Hope to see them play another round of it sometime cause I have no friends to play it with :P PS Why does Vinny always seem to win these games, dude is good at games.

@jigglemaster7 cheers :)

It has been a big surprise to me how many people are enthusiastic about the crazy low res art style!

We zoom in and out a bit so we don't have a hard-set resolution, but most of the time the screen is around 200px wide for the enviro and character art :D

The low res art and bleepy retro sounds are not for everyone, but that's true of pretty much all the art I like- trying to please everyone stops you pushing the personality in any specific direction out of fear of alienating the people who like the opposite- you end up with very boring games that way hehe

@darkest4 hey thanks, I'd be curious to see them play another after they've got some more experience to see how their strategies have changed, and if they've picked up on the more advanced techniques with each monster- definitely being familiar with the monsters makes a huge difference, and it is a little hard for me to watch when they have the special ability charged up but don't realize they can use it :)

Definitely means we need to tutorialize some things, but I want to come up with a way that doesn't break the flow of the game- tutorials in multiplayer where maybe only one player is new to the game can be a tricky thing

sold

This still seems really interesting. The best idea here is that the progression never stops - if you die you become a ghost, and you will be reborn later, so it's not a screeching halt to a stop and restart when the human dies. That makes it fun.

However, I will never have a chance to play with anyone locally, so this should have solid online.

@barney_cumming:

This game looks awesome, and to hear that you're still planning out balance tweaks and extra features is very encouraging. Something I was wondering about is bosses. Assuming there are multiple bosses in the final build, how will it be determined what the human player faces? Will it be based on what gods the 3 ghost players selected, or something else? Also, if the game does well at release would there be plans to add more gods/monsters to the mix? Thank you for your time!

the amount of vanished xp and gold is too damn high

The basic idea of this game is brilliant but you can tell it's one of those ideas that I'm sure people have thought of before and you can see why it'd be daunting to do. Very tough to balance and figure out. Still, awesome this exists and I hope they keep working on it.

@barney_cumming: I think the boss fight should emphasize to players that teamwork is super important for it, because everyone's been for themselves the whole time. That doesn't work here because the attacks are complementary. It took a while to notice the boss should not spam attacks, but launch attacks around the pink caterpillars when they show up (since the player has to use them).

Where are those skeletons bleeding from!? and another game with even more ghost problems.

Oh god, this looks so incredible. Forget Steam sales, this is going to be a day one purchase for me.

The endless stream of profanity from Brad is getting tiring too :(

Jeez Brad got destroyed in this. Game looks super awesome though!

That fucking music

I did walk away for 5 minutes of the video but I didn't really hear Brad complain at all? Not sure what everyone in the comments is smoking.

I'm having panic attacks seeing all the blue exp orbs sitting around until they vanish and almost every single treasure chest being unseen and unopened.

D:

@barney_cumming: the game you are making rocks! I love everything about it! Also, lol at Brad being Level 1 for the entire match. He's a god sport though.

@dr_mantas hey thanks, we will be looking into the possibility of online play once we have the local version up to scratch!

@edmundus yep we're definitely planning multiple bosses for the final release- just how many depends on prototyping, but we have a few ideas in the works! I would definitely like to have some different ways the player can choose/influence the boss they get- ranging from simply going down to the next floor because you don't like the boss portal on that floor, to having to activate or smash specific scenery items to chalklenge a secret boss! it all depends on how well the game goes on early access really- if it goes well, then we'll get to put in a lot of cool secret stuff!

Also, we are definitely planning to add loads more monsters and gods to the mix- I have at least another dozen monsters half made at the moment who aren't ready to go in the game, and we have lots of ideas for ways to make the choice of god have more meaning- altering stats and giving you buffs/weaknesses based on the choice.

@maggo007 haha yes, it was hard for me to watch them disappear :) but also just part of learning the game i guess!

@artisanbreads thanks, yes it it a very challenging game to design- so many areas to be figured out, where our strange gameplay premise does not let us use conventional systems from RPGs and such- seemingly simple things become very complex to accommodate the monsters being players! hopefully we can pull it off i n the end :)

@gyozilla yes exactly, I think the change of play style is not obvious at first, but hopefully it will make sense they have to cooperate once they play more. We still have a lot of work to do on the boss to get the difficulty balance and the cooperative play just right... So hard for me to watch the pink beam staying up there at the end after the boss dies- a big silly visual bug, and they use that image for the banner on the page haha how embarassing!

We would like to push the co-op element even further with future bosses- bosses made of 3 creatures with distinct roles who have to heal and support eachother- bosses where one guy controls the legs and runs the beast around while the others control his other body parts to attack- bosses where the movement control is shared between all 3, so they must cooperate if they want to move properly

@meatsim hehe in the crawl universe there is an implied narrative where skeletons have their skulls filled with blood as part of the voodoo that keeps them standing... that and it looks better when you hit them to have a splash like the other creatures :)

I think the bit of complaining from Brad is probably warranted- we have details to fix to stop trailing players being left behind... though it is also pretty funny to watch :) something about one guy constantly missing out brings back a lot of local multiplayer memories for me :)

Hopefully they notice the xp orbs and treasure chests next time, and thanks guys for the encouragement, we're working hard to make this better!

Personally, as a developer myself that is the exact type of feedback I would want at this point in development. There are a lot of things as a developer I would have learned from watching this that I wouldn't have learned without Brad being there. It's important to see, for example, what results when you have a very good player (Vinny) go up against a very bad player (Brad). Also understanding what is going through Brad's head as he plays. It's like a running commentary which, again, is great to have. I think the key moment is at the end, though, where Brad says how much he loves the game despite spending the rest of the time complaining about balance issues and getting absolutely destroyed. Seeing someone have all those complaints and issues but still really enjoy himself despite getting his ass kicked tells me that the developers are really onto something.

Point is I guess that being an unfinished product means that being super hard on things is exactly what you should be doing. Trust me when I say that developers would prefer getting honest feedback that rips their game to shreds than the type of feedback you get from a friend who is too nice to point out major flaws. And not understanding certain concepts in a pick up and play couch multiplayer game like this is a flaw of the developer's not Brad's. If the things people were saying in the comments were obvious to everyone but Brad, or even if one of them understood some of the leveling up mechanics then it would be right to complain. But none of them understood how the leveling worked exactly. That is fine in something like Dark Souls, but in a game that you and your buddies are supposed to play for half an hour half drunk these things need to be clear immediately without the need for experimentation.

Basically this looked like the unfinished product that it was and every complaint they had,valid or not, will be very helpful for the developer going forward.

@raven10 yep, you are spot on with this! This kind of video ends up being so much more useful than our testing sessions, because people vocalize their frustrations and explain them as they're happening- we can watch what's going on and hear the complaints and learn and improve the game!

When we do playtesting, people will often play silently and we'll have to ask them at the end what problems they had or things they liked, and that often leads to pretty vague answers :)

So yes, all the complaining is great and will definitely result in a better Crawl when it comes out!

@barney_cumming: Trust me I know. It's super tough to get people to open up about their problems with a game when they are talking directly to the creator. One of the few benefits of working for a big publisher is having a whole department to do this type of thing for you. People don't realize how hard it is for an indie developer to get good honest feedback. People either are too nice or they aren't familiar enough with gaming to make valuable criticisms. Having a bunch of professional critics voice their complaints at this point in development really can make all the difference between a great final product and a crappy one.

And good luck! You guys have a great concept and obviously these guys had a lot of fun with it.

EDIT: Also if I might offer a piece of advice that might help with them missing so much experience and gold. Give the XP orbs some sort of sound that you can increase in tempo as they get closer to disappearing and then put in a stinger when the player has collected all the orbs and chests in a room so they know it is safe to move on.

Someone made munchkin for videogames. This game is perfect

"I'm really blowing it here" - Brad (just 29 seconds into the video)

You sure are Brad, you suuuuuure are.

They've covered this a million times in various podcasts as well as on countless episodes of the major gaming vid/podcasts on the net and it's always, almost 100% unanimously that 360 controller. There's also really not a ton of competition, they kinda got their foot in the door (being MS and all) and really nobody ever caught up.Make sure you get the redesigned version (quick search on Amazon) with the high quality coating and transforming d-pad because the original d-pad is a hot mess and the bump up in feel and function is worth it, I've bought 3 now and they last much longer that standard versions.

And then Razer got into the game a few years ago with the Onza Tournament Edition controller, I have one and like it a lot, it's virtually the exact same design with a few premium quality internals and whatnot - like the face buttons are clicky and fast as shit, you can tap them as fast as you can click a gaming mouse and it never gets old pressing them, it's really really satisfying. Also the analog sticks can be quickly twisted on the fly to add or reduce the tension of either one, which can really dial in the controller to meet your needs - also it has macro or turbo type support stuff but I've never even looked at it. The D-pad is actually just four wedge shaped buttons forming a circle. It feels really really similar to a 360 controller and the computer doesn't know the difference - only thing that makes me not use it 100% of the time is the most drastic change they made and that's the triggers were extended just a hair to be more like a gun trigger on each side and that slight length to them just feels odd when my index fingers are resting on them. I think if it didn't feel so indentical in every other way it might not be as jarring but by no means is it a deal breaker.

FYI you can also use PS4 controller or a PS3 controller but it doesn't "just work" and 99% of the games on PC will have 360 icons when you're using a controller anyway because it's just so uncommon for anything else to be used making it jarring and I've heard it works for (crazy) people who actually like PS controllers.

Also it's a PC...use a fucking mouse. duh.

Spoiler: JK!!!!!!11111

Vinning.

How did I miss this before? Such a great concept. Here's to getting more out of being monsters.

@nightmaresabin: I know, right? If they'd bothered picking up xp they would have leveled much faster.