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[scrdest]

Assuming they live long enough to benefit. Given enemies always get to attack first, and most midgame enemies have 2+ attack, and there's no source of healing outside an end-tier spell or finding a handy inn (which are one shot, since apparently after we rest, we burn the place to the ground ) anything without high health, some method of healing or a combination of both doesn't strike me as a good investment.

I do agree that Mercenaries are a good early source of meat shields, as 20 gold for a 6 health wall is a decent investment.

They are the most useful with the various abilities that give blocking. And there IS another way of healing you missed - Warlock's Huts, you can either get healing or fight for a spell.

[choppy]

Assuming they live long enough to benefit. Given enemies always get to attack first, and most midgame enemies have 2+ attack, and there's no source of healing outside an end-tier spell or finding a handy inn (which are one shot, since apparently after we rest, we burn the place to the ground ) anything without high health, some method of healing or a combination of both doesn't strike me as a good investment.

I do agree that Mercenaries are a good early source of meat shields, as 20 gold for a 6 health wall is a decent investment.

They are the most useful with the various abilities that give blocking. And there IS another way of healing you missed - Warlock's Huts, you can either get healing or fight for a spell.

There is also the inns and monastery's for healing.

[Astral]

I wish there was some way to allow your minions to go first, as the fact that enemies always go first puts you at a rather large disadvantage, every single battle.

It does turn it into more of a thinking game, though. I'm rather liking the Psychomancer, when it doesn't decide to add to my meter without actually adding the spell at times.

[scrdest]

I wish there was some way to allow your minions to go first, as the fact that enemies always go first puts you at a rather large disadvantage, every single battle.

It does turn it into more of a thinking game, though. I'm rather liking the Psychomancer, when it doesn't decide to add to my meter without actually adding the spell at times.

There is one - First Strike ability and spells granting it.

Assuming they live long enough to benefit. Given enemies always get to attack first, and most midgame enemies have 2+ attack, and there's no source of healing outside an end-tier spell or finding a handy inn (which are one shot, since apparently after we rest, we burn the place to the ground ) anything without high health, some method of healing or a combination of both doesn't strike me as a good investment.

I do agree that Mercenaries are a good early source of meat shields, as 20 gold for a 6 health wall is a decent investment.

They are the most useful with the various abilities that give blocking. And there IS another way of healing you missed - Warlock's Huts, you can either get healing or fight for a spell.

There is also the inns and monastery's for healing.

Han mentioned inns already. Monasteries heal? When I went into one, all I got was a fight.

[Mephansteras]

So, what are people's take on this so far? Worth checking out when I get off work?

[LordBucket]

Overall impression:

A game like this really needs a feeling of growing and gaining in power. It lacks that. Instead it feels like a semi randomized choose your own adventure story with a map. Replays are far too similar. I've done things, I've unlocked a class, but I don't feel like I'm any stronger. Even unlocking all the class via the option, I don't really feel like the more difficult classes are much better than the starter one. And because there's no way to farm any kind of power growth because number of encounters are fixed and increase in difficulty...plus raids that increase in difficulty and there's nothing we can do about it...even within a single game I never really feel like I'm getting any stronger. Every new game and even the progression within a single game, it all kind of feels the same. There's no feeling of getting more powerful, and the game suffers from a lack of replayability as a result.

I suggest:
 * Replacing the simple "do X to unlock starter person" system with a more complicated achievement system full of at least dozens of tasks you can do to power up your character (persistently between games) in various ways. Start with more gold, an income, mana of each type, more spells, health, reduced notoriety gain, etc. Then balance the game so that completing achievements is pretty much necessary to be strong enough to "beat" the game.

Misc:

 * Game eats 60% of my cpu when IDLE. Something is clearly wrong.

 * I dislike the "spell cards" mechanic.

 * I also kind of dislike the "only one spell with focus per round" mechanic. I realize you're doing it for balance, but it comes across as arbitrary and annoying.

 * The mouseover for areas we've already cleared shouldn't tell us how difficult the area is. Nothing is there. I suggest replacing it with informationon what we gained when we were there, or what benefit it's currently giving us in the case of places that give per turn bonuses.

 * I should be able to back out of encounters instead of being compelled to choose between two options. For example, if I'm offered the chance to recruit a mercenary for 20 gold and I don't have 20 gold, as if I have no choice but to fight him. Or especially your first visit is a place like a mad hermit the first place you visit gives you the choice of giving up mana (which you kind of need to survive) or just leaving and losing the encounter completely. Why not let me leave and come back to do the encounter later? Sure, sometimes it might make sense to not allow the choice to leave without a fight. Or possibly to have notoriety gains, since people are seeing you walking around.

 * The randomized mana gain from consuming souls is really annoying.

 * Why is a lich using elemental nature-y sounding kinds of mana anyway? I'm an undead lich. Why am I communing with nature and channeling the earth? The atmosphere is wrong.

 * Mouseovers for things on the top bar become unavailable during combat.

 * I've only tried a couple classes, but there more difficult to unlock classes are NOT necessarily stronger than the easier to unlock ones.

 * Related to the above, why can I not visit an Inn multiple times?

 * One time I went to a Mad Hermit's Hut, gained an ally, but the are didn't clear and I wasn't moved onto the tile. Stepped back onto it and was given another event and gained another(different) ally.

 * I should be able to delay my attacks rather than have the order always chosen for me. For example, if an opponent has 6 health and my ally does 4 damage, and my magic dart does 2 damage and restores mana on a kill, I'd much rather wait and have magic dart activate last so I get the mana gain,than be forced to fire it first and not get anything from it.

 * Why is there an option to instantly unlock all classes just by clicking a button? For testing, I guess?

[LordBucket]

So, what are people's take on this so far? Worth checking out when I get off work?

It's entertaining for 10 minutes. Lacks replayability. Good proof of concept, butnot a game you come back to. Needs work.

[Cthulhu]

Worth a few minutes for sure.  Not the best game but certainly worth a download.

LordBucket's right though, it could do more to gain a sense of progression and I also think some more atmosphere is in order.  Right now you could just change the spirtes and some of the dialog to turn it into a rebellion sim, or a good guy sim. 

[scrdest]

Eh, I spent a couple hours on it as it is now vOv

[Neonivek]

I am somewhat disappointed that they are all... basically the same character just slightly rearranged.

As well luck is a huge factor... I mean it always is for a Roguelike... but for some characters you MUST max out two trees in order to survive the final encounter.

But don't let its flaws fool you, this is a fun and entertaining game.

It is a bit fast paced for my tastes.

[Black_Company]

It is a challenging game overall, but with smart uses of companion and a bit of luck of getting ice wall(which give +3 of armor to everyone in your party) ,area based spell, and the artifact scroll I could finally beat the game with Psychomancer. Anyone ever win with an Archmage? The arcane system isn't liable for me, I can't cast them all at the same time because the Focus requirement on all of Arcane spell.

[Majestic7]

The game is fun but repetitive. After some grinding, I won as a battlemage. I have no desire to play again unless there are major updates. I agree that there was no real feeling of gaining power; I was constantly going through minions and the artifacts aren't that significant. It is a fun little game, good for a few days worth of gaming perhaps. I think I spent something like four hours on it before victory.

[mainiac]

A fun beer and pretzel game that I just burned two hours on.

There is a bug with the root spell that lets you get infinite mana by clicking on it.

[porousnapkin]

Hey, I made this game! Seeing some of you enjoy it totally made my day!

Black_Company is right that I haven't been continuing to work on it. There's definitely some quality of life improvements the game deserves (hints about what you'll get at a location on mouseover, some way to abandon some location events part-way through...) and I may go back and fix those. Primarily I've stopped because of how difficult it is to add content to the game without harming it. Additional locations adds to the players burden of knowledge, since memorizing what you get from locations allows strategic planning on what order to hit them in. Since advancement is purely from locations, messing up the random distribution with new weird locations can make the random map less predictable and ultimately play becomes more victim to the RNG. Generally any aggressive content additions cause a ton of potential knock-on effects that can easily make the game much easier or much harder.

So instead I'm working on a new game with a bunch of similar ideas but that's designed to be easily expandable. I'm hoping to make some simple tools so other people can add content to it as well. If it turns out well, I plan to keep working on it for a while after dumping it on the internet.

For those of you who do like it, I'd tentatively recommend checking out the Mage Knight board game. It was the inspiration for many of the systems (the puzzle-y combat, random mana generation, randomly ordered spell lists, etc.) and a surprisingly excellent single-player board game.

[Retropunch]

Hey, I made this game! Seeing some of you enjoy it totally made my day!

Black_Company is right that I haven't been continuing to work on it. There's definitely some quality of life improvements the game deserves (hints about what you'll get at a location on mouseover, some way to abandon some location events part-way through...) and I may go back and fix those. Primarily I've stopped because of how difficult it is to add content to the game without harming it. Additional locations adds to the players burden of knowledge, since memorizing what you get from locations allows strategic planning on what order to hit them in. Since advancement is purely from locations, messing up the random distribution with new weird locations can make the random map less predictable and ultimately play becomes more victim to the RNG. Generally any aggressive content additions cause a ton of potential knock-on effects that can easily make the game much easier or much harder.

So instead I'm working on a new game with a bunch of similar ideas but that's designed to be easily expandable. I'm hoping to make some simple tools so other people can add content to it as well. If it turns out well, I plan to keep working on it for a while after dumping it on the internet.

For those of you who do like it, I'd tentatively recommend checking out the Mage Knight board game. It was the inspiration for many of the systems (the puzzle-y combat, random mana generation, randomly ordered spell lists, etc.) and a surprisingly excellent single-player board game.

Great to see you here! I really like the idea of playing as an evil mage/rpg character instead of the usual goody-two-shoes knight and i'm sure you'll do great things with your next project!

I'd be wary about the whole 'opening it to others to make content' path though. CataDDA, whilst great fun, struggles alot with player added content. I know they've got a bit more of a handle on it now (it was ridiculous at one point - with players just adding their own fetish items and whatever) but it still takes a team of people working tirelessly to monitor the influx of stuff.
I'd instead suggest you recruit a number of dedicated people to help advance purely the content side of things within your set boundaries. There are tons of people who would love to get involved in that side of things, but lack the coding ability to really start from scratch. Making a JSON system for them to add stuff into would probably be your best bet.