okay so its more animated than, say, geosociety, which is completely static? kind of like puppysaurus where the monsters just kinda hop around and move some
Haven't played the games you mentioned, but this is what happens: Every monster picture is static, but they are animated. E.g. the enemies hover up and down in battle. There are animations for attacks, but they are mostly static. One of the attacks makes a dragon come out from the corner of the screen, settle on your target then leave. Happens in the space of a second and the pic is static, but something still happens. Another move is a time (haste?) buff - makes a neon-y clock appear above the portrait of your creature. The hands on the clock move. Yeah, I don't know about the other games you mentioned, but hope you can tell from my somewhat clumsy description.
Yeah I could make sense of your post. Thanks for replying. I bought GeoSociety but one of the things I hate about it is there is absolutely no animation whatsoever in the battle scenes (unless you count the monsters life bar draining as an animation). the monsters are static and the attacks are shows as text: "monster" attacks "monster" with a fireball." and "fireball does 35 damage" so I was curious to see how this one handled those types of things.
Great to see people discussing the actual game now that its "in the wild". Keep up the questions and lets try to stir some buzz ! >) <) o)
Beta Impressions Ok, I've been testing this for roughly a day now, and I have to say, I'm impressed. The scope for this game seems very wide, and considering the quantity of content in the first 16th of the world map, I estimate quite a long play time to finish all the quests and collect all the monsters. There are an impressive array of methods to collect them, from catching them in the wild, to combining, to hatching specific ones, to being able to summon from items, which eliminates the tedium in some games from the 'rinse and repeat' formulas. Monsters also have varying rarities, and some are quite difficult to find, which really makes hunting for them challenging and entertaining. The art is nothing less than gorgeous, both for the monsters and for the encounter backgrounds, although some of the randomly generated dungeon maps could be a little more organic and less boxy. The battle mechanics are fun, if a little bit simplistic, and will likely keep me engrossed without any trouble. It would be better if the status effects would be a bit more relevant. Place to place travel is functional and not detrimental to the gameplay, however i think this type of game would benefit from a walking system found in most other games in this genre, which would allow for more random encounters. Currently, the game employs a tap to move system to preset points. these points will each have an encounter with random monsters. Although this would not be my choice, I don't believe it hurts the gameplay too much. Overall, if the original scope of the game is fully realized in development, this is on track to be the leading game in this genre currently available on the ios platform.
I'm glad more and more people are posting their first impressions, allowing those of us who aren't playing it yet a glimpse at what the game is like. I'm not a big fan of "tap to move" either, though if it were a fluid movement, like on RTS games, rather than having to tap which platform/section you want to move to I would be more accepting. If nothing else, this has me intrigued enough to want to see a video of the game in action, seeing an actual player holding their device (so I could clearly see how the movement controls work) Greyhoundgames: any word on when this will be released and how much it will cost? (Wishing I had seen the beta list earlier and signed up)
Thanks for your great feedback. Ill post a couple responses: Tap to move world system: This was put in place to provide a new way of handling random encounters. Instead of random encounters being arbitrary, they are now tactical goals. The ability to reach some place in the world is determined by your ability to beat the X(say 10 or 12 for a longer trip) battles that lead there. This is as opposed to your luck in getting attacked 20 times vs 5 times etc. When there is more ground to cover you will be able to see this better. If we did our job right, people will have discussions about the challenge in reaching town X or dungeon Y and "I was able to do it using this selection of monsters in my line-up" Status Effects- You probably have not seen the gambit of these. The main types we have are sleep, stun, paralyze ,slow, Stat XYZ Down. On the positive status effect side we have haste, stat XYZ Up and status curing. Most of them are fairly self explanatory. Sleep is broken if you hit them, but general lasts longer, paralyze you can whack on them to your hearts content, stun shifts their position in the turn order, slow and haste are counter parts to each other. There are also a few other more unique ones like berserk. Have you guys clued into the fact that there are elements and what the purpose of them are(on each monster)? Wondering if we explained that well enough or whatnot.
The release will happen once the beta finishes which is totally up to how many bugs are found and how much work is needed to fix them all. There are also a few art items still outstanding. We are planning on a 99 cent launch special to reward the people who followed the games early days.
Fast reply! For 99 cents I'll definitely give it a shot. This is why I love iOS games: developer interaction. Something you rarely, if ever, see with console games
I just got the beta to work and must say I am very impressed. The monster collecting is well implemented and the battles are very FF-like. There are options to swipe for combat(my preferred method) or one can just tap and choose. I know I just started testing but the game feels like it will take up a good amount of playtime. I personally don't have problems with movement as it only means I don't worry about a virtual dpad.
I find that the movement arrows take a bit of getting used to, but are fine after a bit. I agree with the swiping for combat. It's very easy and well executed. That and the idea of swiping for combat is pretty genius, I like it a lot.
I wanted to share some new artwork for dungeons. Not only did we redo the art after your feedback, but there are also 4 dungeon types: Traditional(brick and tile style dungeons), Forest, Cave and Sunken(think water logged). If your wondering what the Caught 0/X means, each dungeon has a certain number of creature types in it. This shows your progress to having found one of each type! In addition each dungeon has a catch challenge quest which challenges you to find 3 specific monster types. If you get those 3 you receive a reward. Here is a picture of a cave art dungeon.
i have been setting my eyes on this game since it was announced last year and I can't wait till it comes out. you guys have done a great job of making the game and it will be a great pokemon-like game. how is the game going so far? and approximately what month should it come out?
I believe Ryan is going to release 4 or so more worlds to beta in the next few days so that will be more then half the game playable in beta. I think 3-5 weeks is reasonable.
world 1-1, 1-2, 1-3, 2-1, 2-2, 2-3, 2-4 is now open. 7/16 now open. almost half way done with beta. we should be able to pick it up as there should be less bugs going forward.
No one got replies. Beta has started, and people who have been helping us were invited to a beta group. http://forums.toucharcade.com/group.php?groupid=553 (if I remember correctly, viewing is public) Will be back to post a video soon.