Reviews for Guild Dungeons

[dnd3edm1]

Flawed Design

First, I'm glad that you had the gumption to make a management sim. I wish more game makers would take a page from your handbook.

Second, though I'm hugely fond of management sims, this game suffers from a very common design failure in the genre: user choice. Making choices in this game doesn't feel meaningful due to its meaningless number mechanics (What, exactly, is "one meat"?) and ming boggling complexity (why do I have to build 50 lumber yards just to feel like I'm getting enough lumber to have enough adventuring gear to actually tackle a moderate level adventure, and how am I ever supposed to have enough silver without spending a full minute holding a button in the trading screen?).

These mistakes show that you spent more time programming and less time designing your game to be *fun* than you should have.

Your next assignment should ask the question: "How do I make every player choice meaningful," again and again ad infinitum until the game becomes not a micromanagement nightmare but a fun experience.

[beneboy21]

I can't even play it.

Each time I click the begin button the game just flashes back to the ad. I tried over and over but to no improvement.

[theifofdreams]

interesting

Cool concept.
Unfortunately, execution was kind of weak.
First, there's no quick tutorial.
Going on from there:
Bad things happen far too quickly.
The buildings tab does a good job of explaining everything about what you're building and what to expect, but many of the buildings are vague about the exact amount of change they cause.
The Leaders tab does a poor job of explaining the exact effects of the leaders, and also doesn't mention any sort of cost.
The Research tab doesn't explain what the effects of any of the items are, so good luck researching what you need atm.
My biggest complaint comes from the Magic tab, however. You essentially throw the player in blind. With no way to make notes of what combinations work and what order they're in, and with that many different basic elements, the player is left to guess and pray.
Oh and dozens of glitches, of which you seem to be aware.
Suggestions to improve: Try to give a quick once over tutorial with a skip option, so noone gets thrown in blind.
Try to use more precise phrasing then "decreases riots alittle" or explain the exact effect.
If you're going to use a magic system like that, then have "spellbooks" that drop on adventures occasionally, or some other form of reward, that contain the specific combination to a new spell, and/or have a method for the player to record and quickly draw upon different spells.

Also: I did love the art style, but I felt like some music would be excellent.
Overall: Good basic foundation for a game, but there's alot that could be improved. 4/10 and 3/5

[bosaap]

Freaking Half Ass game

Dude. Y is this game only half done?
1. There are no archers. I get 2 ranged units and both are kinda useless.
2. I get to take feed along for what? My dogs and mules and who i have to pay lots for. Maybe incorporating taking food with will help. e.g Army needs 100 food for the trip.
3. Sending people on missions is a pain. Button that says send all would be cool.

Hyptosis responds:

There are like 5 or 6 ranged units jackass :P
I went to scope out your games to see what a full-assed game looks like, but big surprise, you haven't made a single thing. Like, nothing at all. Huh.

[SensitiveJerk]

Nice game, but so out of balance.

Freaking crap, man, you expect someone to dull around on your game to collect 500 gems or 100 mushrooms (after hours of screwing around, I got about 1/10th that number) for upgrades? WITH NO SAVE OPTION?! Goddamnit!

A lot of things are easily pulled to my advantage. Goat farm makes cheese, which is a high value - I sell it to get gold, gold to silver, silver to stone... but it takes a looooooooooooooooooooong time to get through it all. Most of my time on this damn game was holding the mouse button and switching resource values, one at a fucking time.

Some upgrades weren't worth jack shit. Backpacks, wagons, sleds... they increase the overall supply capacity by just a few point, but the cost was hundreds or thousands of resources.

Population, even after all the upgrades, didn't go up nearly at all. An hour nets about 30 more people. Now, compare that to losing your army in a quest and now you need to recruit those 350+ troops again. Play for 10 hours? Fuck that, and WITH NO SAVE OPTION. Fuuuuuuuuuck it, man, fuck it all.

Heroes have stats, but they're unkillable? They get gear and weapons, but again... they're unkillable? What gives? I hired and used the ones that the descriptions fit most well with the environment (like that Eln guy for forests), but that's it. I chose the ones who'd save their units more often.

Can't buy or sell in bulk? Prices fucked up, out of balance? Fuck it. I did what kingssman did, and just built hundreds of hovels to fill my ranks. You can't expect people to live within the game boundaries without exploiting when you give them no option BUT to exploit.

Why even bother submitting a game that NEEDS A SAVE OPTION but has none, yet admitting not knowing how to implement one? What's a game that needs a save, but has none? A bad game.

The better part of the game was the researches. Rope, lanterns, ammunition... they all add up to better chances in success. Some are useless, others have less impact but cost far more to research. Again, it's way out of balance and requires lots of time or mouse-clicking to buy them, and a real drag when there is NO SAVE OPTION.

Some troops need a downgrade. The gnomes were nice because they're the only decently ranged units one can buy in mass. All other ranged ones were way out of the question in terms of power or cost (wow, spend 10 mushrooms on ONE mage? Fuck that!). A huge costly unit that you can lose is too costly.

The artistry and "path of progress" in the game is nice and appealing, but it's hard to play on when no matter how far you get, you have to start over because of NO SAVE OPTION.

I hope someday you update this game, fix the imbalances, and most importantly put in a SAVE OPTION. I would love to see a SAVE OPTION on this game, because it makes even the more tedious, time-consuming parts worth doing, because you have a SAVE OPTION to save it. I ended up telling myself, "I don't want to do this or that, because it takes too long, since I don't have a SAVE OPTION and it'll be a complete waste", which is why I gave a low score.

Also, one other issue: preparing for a quest can cost a lot more than the rewards, in most cases. Unless lucky enough to find gems and mushrooms, the silver cost to launch it will cost more than you receive in rewards.