Universal Demon Hunters - Upcoming Turn-based Dungeon Crawler from Wave Light Games

Hi guys,

Just want to show a preview of the upcoming RPG / Dungeon Crawler from Wave Light Games. It will hit both iPhone and iPads before the end of the year. Currently in the fine tuning and testing phases of chapter 1 of what will be a 3 chapter game. The game is a turn-based dungeon crawler similar to Warhammer Quest. However, it also includes cover / line of sight aspects of XCOM. Players form a party of 6 heroes from a choice of 20 character classes and explore underground ruins and face ratmen, demons, undead, goblins and other monsters.

Here are some screen shots to show what the game looks like. The following are the main title screens and team selection screens:





Here is the player selection screen. Players choose 6 characters for each play through out of a current roster of 20 character classes. Character classes include some interesting classes such as Elven Paladins, Vampires, Minotaurs, Centaurs, Orc Berserkers as well as the usual suspects found in RPG's. Each class has a specific play style and special abilities so a play through with a different party will be a very different experience ... hopefully adding to the game's replay value.



Here's some shots of gameplay. Gameplay is turn-based where players move, attack and perform special abilities with each of their 6 characters. The computer then does the same with its creatures. There is a cover system as well as line of sight so anyone that's played XCOM will be very comfortable with this game. Unit abilities are varied and include things like special attacks, area attacks, buffs, debuffs, special melee attacks, and even some more unusual things like summoning spells, searching an area for treasure, setting traps, teleportation, etc.





Gameplay is tactical and the AI is smart as it leverages cover and focuses on trying to kill wounded player characters. Combat rules are based on some pretty complex RPG mechanics but all the calculations are done by the system and then just presented to the player as % chance to hit or get a critical hit and so on. Before making an attack on an enemy, this information is presented to the player in a small info box, as shown below:



Most of the action is from a top down view but players are free to zoom in and pan and rotate the camera using the touch controls. Pinch to zoom, two fingers to rotate the camera and so forth. There is also an XCOM style action cam that zoom in on the action when players or enemy AI performs attacks. Here you can see an example of a zoomed in action cam shot.



We have heavily optimized the game such that it runs on low end hardware. If it detects that the device has only 512MB of RAM, it switches to lower quality textures at run time and disables some special effects. Therefore, It runs really well on even a first generation iPad mini and iPad 2 and looks spectacular on newer devices. I believe it should also run on an iPhone 4S but I haven't actually tested it yet on that device. It's probably best played on a tablet or larger phone since the inventory and shop / vendor screens will be hard to see on a small phone screen but it should still be playable.

Please let me know what you think and if you're interested in the game. We're hoping to submit to Apple within the next 10 days.

 

Absolutely. The game will launch on ios, android, amazon and windows phone / windows 8. Actually testing it on my Note 3 right now.

 

Thanks for the kind words. Video will be posted soon. I would value feedback on the app preview so I'll post versions of that as I develop it and that will be all game play footage.

The is a leveling system as well as inventory system. Each character has a backpack that can carry 20 items and has 13 equipment slots for items. Things like cloaks, rings, weapon slots, etc. There is also a vendor so you can buy and sell equipment between battles.

The system doesn't have a way to reserve action points but I intend to add this to a Sci Fi spin off that will use the same engine. I just felt it wasn't suited for a sword and sorcery game but more for a gun game. This may change in the future with an update but not in the initial release.

Regarding pricing, this will be a one time pay model. I hate freemium games with a passion and don't like to charge for dlc. Instead, the game will have a low intro price on release and as I add each of the 2 subsequent chapters, the price will go up. Those that purchased it early will get those 2 chapters for free.

 

Thanks ... and yes, that's correct regarding the camera. You can touch with one finger on the screen and drag the camera around to look at different points on the map. You can rotate the camera to any angle (vertically and horizontally) by touching the screen with two fingers and moving those two fingers in the given direction. Lastly, you can pinch and unpinch to zoom in and out. Here's a picture that shows the extent to which you can pinch / zoom / pan / rotate. You can get really up close and personal with the characters. There's also Level of Detail (LOD) technology in use so that as you zoom closer, the character models look more detailed. When you zoom out, the character models become less detailed to save on processing power since you can't really tell the difference when zoomed out anyway.

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The above pic shows 3 of the characters up close. The Pyromancer is a fire mage and has spells that do a lot of damage over a wide area but can often hurt friends as well as enemies. The Storm Seer is a priestess that casts storm / lightning spells ... she also fills the obligatory role of scantily clad female found in all RPG's. Last but not least is the Samurai ... cool warrior from the east that is both a skilled melee fighter and archer. He can also summon an oriental dragon spirit at higher levels.

Yes, I'm just fine tuning the leveling system right now in testing. All players characters start out at level 1 and have fixed stats depending on their class. When they complete a level, the game rewards them experience points for their actions and then when they get enough XP, they level up. Leveling up gives a random boost to their life and action points as well as an increase of 1 - 3 random stats. Character class affects this boost so mages will tend to increase stats relevant to spell casting more often than stats relevant to melee combat, for example.

I'm in the process of deciding how to reward XP. I'm thinking of the following:

- XP for surviving a level. Any warriors that are knocked unconscious during the battle (reduced to zero life) will receive less or no XP for the battle. I want to incentivize keeping all members of a party alive during play. I could even add some permanent negative stat effects for being knocked out during a battle ... such as permanent -1 to some random stats. Will have to explore that.

- XP for harming / killing enemies. Pretty self explanatory ... system will reward certain points for either killing or wounding an enemy. I want to avoid having all the rewards go to the character that inflicted the killing blow so I'll likely have a small amount of XP given for each successful hit or point of damage inflicted.

- XP for successful abilities. Each time a character performs a special ability like a warrior ability or attack or spell, they gain some XP. XP given will correlate to the amount of action points needed to perform the action so performing a single, complex action will be just as rewarding as doing multiple small abilities.

- XP for failures / missed hit. I think that in real life you learn more from your failures than your successes so I'm thinking of giving XP for situations where players miss their attacks and fail to perform spells or special abilities. Possibly reward more XP for failures than successes since XP represents advancements from learning.

What do you guys think about the above system? This is one of the main things left to fine tune so I would welcome feedback on the concept. The leveling system is otherwise done ... at the moment it just rewards a fixed amount of XP for finishing a level and players level up and get a stat boost.

I've heard the term roguelike used a lot but I don't really know what it means. I understand it's something like if the player character dies, he completely dies and the player has to restart? That would be very harsh in my view but I think I could probably add that as an option. Right now, there are three levels of difficulty so I could add a "hardcore" difficulty setting that has the player's party permanently killed if they lose a game or flee from a dungeon. Seems sado-masochistic to me but hey ... if that's what the people want.

Fantastic ... thank you.

 

I suppose here ... I'll add a lot more info over the next few days. Will describe some of the character classes and some of the later levels. As well as go into the story line. I'll also post versions of the preview trailer as I develop it so I can get feedback.

If you do want to see some gameplay footage. I'll record some footage of the game running on my Note 3 and post it up on Youtube later today.

 

Thanks for the kind words ... they and the general response here is very encouraging.

Here is a screenshot of the in-game inventory screen. You can touch and drag items from equipment slots to the back for each character and also drag from one character to another. The character's statline is updated whenever a new item is equipped or unequipped that modifies stats. The stat box grows bigger so it's easier to see if the player touches it.

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And here's a picture of the shop / vendor interface. It's still a work in progress ... just fine tuning it now.

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Regarding the items, there are actually two types. The permanent items that go into the inventory are rewarded after clearing a level and the type, quantity and quality is random but will be affected by the difficulty of that level. Then there are temporary objects that are dropped when enemies are killed and when treasure chests / containers are opened during a game. These are generally money, potions or scrolls. Scrolls have an unknown effect so are a bit risky to pick up but the effects only last for the turn. Potions do things like replenish health or action points and can generally be identified by the colour but I will likely add a mystery potion that has a random effect. Money is just money.

It's not an ideal system. Would definitely prefer to have equipment come as item drops and potions / scrolls as items that could be carried over from level to level. However, doing so would be heavy code change and I'd like to avoid that for now as it would significantly delay release. Hopefully something I can do via an update.