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

Aargh ... just realized there's a PS2 game called Demon Bane. Man ... this naming thing is hard. How about Demon Hunters' Saga?

Anyway, here's another preview of the work I did today. I worked on getting the Duelist class ready. She's a melee fighter but not heavily armoured. Instead, she's a bit of a glass razor in that she can dish out a lot of damage but can't really take a lot in return. The Duelist is basically a sell-sword ... a low class fighter that makes a living fighting on behalf of others in honour duels or just fighting in tournaments for prize money. Her abilities are obviously melee-oriented but are focussed on stunning or disabling an opponent and dishing out as many attacks as possible. Summary of some of her abilities:

- Stunning Kick: A quick kick to an opponents face ... something they rarely expect. Does a bit of damage but more importantly stuns the opponent for the next round.

- Reckless Charge: The Duelist gains +3 movement and +2 melee attacks for one round. Very useful for getting her into melee quickly and then do a lot of damage when she gets there.

- Run Through: The duelist basically sticks her blade through the opponent in front of her and into anyone behind him as well. A good way to kill two enemies with one strike.

- Double Strike: A quick flurry of attacks ... the duelist attacks a single enemy twice.

- Break Weapon: The duelist makes a wide swing that knocks the swords out of her opponents hands (or otherwise disables their attacks). Does no damage but reduces the effectiveness of the attacks of those hit by it.

- Blinding Powder: The duelist hurls explosive powder at her enemies. All those hit by it are stunned for 3 rounds.

No fancy magic abilities but several dirty tricks and a lot of skills to pump out attacks. A high-level duelist will be able to make more attacks in a single turn than any other opponent except perhaps the Orc Berserker ... however, the Orc Berserker tends to lose focus when it makes a lot of attacks whereas the Duelist does not.

Here's the character screen shots and stats screen as well as a video preview:

DemonHunters 2014-11-30 21-33-37-99 by raj_dhillon, on Flickr

DemonHunters 2014-11-30 21-33-42-87 by raj_dhillon, on Flickr

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Hey guys ... here are a couple of ideas. Let me know what you think:

Demon Hunter Fables

Mystic Alliance

Shadow Walkers

Thoughts?

Also, since I'm going to delay the release slightly ... I decided to add another 6 levels to the chapter 1 release. Adding levels isn't too time consuming and I should be able to add them without a hitch. Also, I think I've gotten the revised XP system working. I need to just do a few play throughs and test it.

For those interested in playtesting, I'm aiming to release a build before the end of this week to you.

 

oops ... double post.

 

Thanks for the kind words ... I hope it doesn't disappoint you.

 

You can see some examples of the cover system in the Duelist video. When the player selects to move to a tile adjacent to some cover items (cago / sacks), icons show up that show the type of cover and from what direction.

 

Not sure but I think the first one might have been taken.

Would like to go with Demon Hunter Chronicles ... but there's a recent game called "Demon Hunter: Chronicles of Blah Blah blah". So that probably won't work. Might go with Demon Hunter Fables or perhaps "Chronicles of the Demon Hunters"?

 

Demon Hunters' Saga might be the winner, I think. I'll go with that for now. Okay ... back to the real stuff. Actually making the game.

Today wasn't too productive. Mostly just minor bug fixes. Working on getting the Pyromancer finalized. Should have a demo video of him for tomorrow. I'll try to show one of the later levels as well (and some different background music).

 

Hi guys,

Here is today's preview. This is the Pyromancer ... a fire mage. A borderline pychotic that just wants to burn everything. Very destructive magic ... no nice healing spells or aura buffs in this guy's repetoire. Just spells that blow things up in various ways. His spells are generally template / area damage and will harm friends and foes.

DemonHunters 2014-12-02 18-28-41-54 by raj_dhillon, on Flickr

DemonHunters 2014-12-02 18-28-46-34 by raj_dhillon, on Flickr

Quick summary of his spells:

1 - Fireball: A big fireball that does area damage and leaves the affected tiles as burning ... which means that units occupying them continue to suffer damage in later turns. A great spell to flush out enemies who are hiding behind cover.

2 - Incinerate: A cone-shaped fire damage spell.

3 - Fire Sigil: A trap spell that is placed on an empty tile. Anyone that ends their turn on that tile suffers damage as the sigil explodes.

4 - Cloak of Flames: A self-buffing spell that increases the range and damage of the Pyromancers' attacks.

5 - Summon Fire Drake: Summons a nasty fire wyrm onto an empty tile. The fire wyrm is immobile but can spit fire and has a nasty melee attack. It can also cast the Fireball spell itself.

6 - Flames of the Phoenix: A large, cone-shaped damage spell that just does huge amounts of damage. I particularly like the effect of dozens of pheonix' errupting from the Pyromancer's hands.

You can see all the abilities in the attached video:

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Let me know what you think. He's one of my favourites.

 

Thanks ... I really hope it measures up to everyone's expectations. Right now, the first chapter's basically done but my to do list is several pages long. All little, minor fixes and things to finish but I need to get them all done before release. It's very hectic ... especially as I want to add another 6 levels before release. Curse my last minute ambitions!

 

Hi guys,

Glad you liked it. There are still a few tweaks I need to add to the ability. For example, I want to have some sort of effect as the Fire Wyrm emerges from the ground. I'm thinking of some kind of ground explosion effect.

Anyway, next preview will be a heavy hitter such as the Minotaur or Half Giant.

Here's a picture of one of the later levels. It's one of the new levels I'm adding to the chapter 1 release so chapter 1 should have around 30 levels rather than 25. I like the level design ... it's a bridge over murky green water. There's actually some cool fog hovering over the water to imply that it's some kind of polluted / acidic liquid. Lots of little details too like bones littering the floor (and inside the water if you look close enough).

Gameplay4 by raj_dhillon, on Flickr

 

Cool ... glad you like it. It is a challenge sometimes to have variety in the effects but I'm trying to have that as much as possible. Each character is very different from all the others though and each has a specific focus with strengths and weaknesses. My goal is to have it so that players will want to play the game several times to explore each character class.

I'm not too up to date on the various iPad names to be honest but I think the iPad Air 2 is fairly recent. It should be no problem at all. I'm currently testing the game on an original iPad 2 and an original iPad mini. These are pretty ancient devices so anything newer should be fine.

I have three different levels of graphics settings so players can tailor the experience to their device. There is some code that detects if the device is old and will update the settings accordingly. The only problem I'm facing with having the game run on really old devices is that sometimes it will crash because of memory issues. This can be fixed by just limiting the selection of characters so for low memory devices, I'll probably limit the character selection options.

Again, on an iPad 2 Air or anything with 1GB of RAM ... you should be totally fine and will get the full experience.