With this kind of targeting system you should add a marker or an arrow to who the player is targeting. Sometimes I cast a spell at a mob outside of the screen so instead of shooting at someone with 1 point of health left I hit a dude and chain lighting to two other dudes and get rekt .
Other than that, this game is quite fun.
Reviews for "Specter Knight"
Beat the game in an hour so I don't know where the remaining 4 hours of gameplay went. /brag. Anyway, I started out only leveling regular damage and after a while it became a "thing" so I decided to clear the game only leveling this stat, meaning that I couldn't access spells. While that's all fine and dandy, I did kind of feel screwed over because CRIT DOESN'T WORK! No, seriously. I did 240 damage with standard hits and crits, both did the same. I know that this isn't just a display bug as my hits and crits would both bring certain enemies to 10% hp. Also, blocks bugged out quite badly when used shortly after attacks, they'd not go off and then randomly go up after releasing the X key... the fireball auto aiming is also pretty annoying as you lose control of it.
Also, the bees are consistently the strongest enemies in the game (including bosses), what's up with that? I died 4 times total... 3 of which were caused by bees. MEH!
Could be 5/5 if some of the issues had been ironed out.
It's pretty good and quite hard :D Fun game!
Good game, could implement more things:
-Different fighter classes
-More/better upgrades
-Better spells and attacks
-More bosses
-More armour and weapon upgrades
Very well done game. The mechanics are very simple, but serviceable. Same goes for animation and visual design. There's nothing extra and, in my opinion, this is both strength and weakness of the game.
The fighting and magic mechanics are very solid and provide for an interesting and somewhat challenging (especially on later stages) combat experience, that requires tactical thinking. In order to succeed in a combat you have to enter in a rhythm of a sort, an alteration of blows, spells, dodges and blocks based on the understanding and feeling of the enemy's movements patterns. In this sense the game is all about a rhythm, in fact, it is played in a single rhythm, with no sudden leaps or accelerations. Even boss fights are played in a very similar rhythm, with the same tempo as regular battles: learn your enemy's movement pattern, adjust yourself to it, move constantly, hit hard when the threat is minimal (bosses’ patterns are somewhat repetitive though). In combination with the knight's smooth and rhythmic movements this gameplay rhythm forms a very smooth (with occasional slips in permadeath, see below) and uniform experience, which is, again, both good and bad in terms of the overall gameplay experience. The procedural level generation works well, but variety of level's combination bring little (if anything) new in terms of gameplay variety. This would not have been a problem if the RPG element of the game would have been deeper and more complex (more meaningful loot variety, some items that could change or at least broaden gameplay experience). But since they are somewhat simplified (in comparison to the more traditional rogue-like games) the random gameplay generation feature remains only a feature and not a meaningful element of the game's composition. There is a similar problem the peramanent death (and by it I mean taking away significant part of players progress with characters death) mechanic. It would have been justified if only with every attempt the overall experience would have varied significantly enough to push again and see what new could you achieve/unlock/experience. This way dying and replaying again could actually be fun, despite the annoyances. But here dying only means that you will have to repeat same actions (clear room after room the same way you did it before) again with little to no variety. Why leave this feature at all? In my opinion, it is completely unjustified - at least, in terms of gameplay. Instead of variety of walkthroughs, it is only good for wealth accumulation.
It could be somewhat justified, though, if the very theme of the game - the undead, doomed to repeat the same actions over and over until his soul is freed - is taken into account. The there is some alienation between the character and the player: former moves and looks as a soulless machine, designed to eliminate his enemies, while the latter can experience excitement, boredom, fatigue and annoyance. In this respect repetitiveness and lack of variety are exactly how the game is experienced by the undead, it's an un-dead experience, soulless experience. This doesn't make me liking this experience though, as it lacks fun and in a few hours turns into a chore instead of entertainment.
This is not to say that this game has no "soul": as I've told, some of its elements (combat mechanics, movement and attack rhythm, variety of enemies’ movement patterns, etc.), just that most of its freshness an intricacy have run low within a couple hours of gameplay.
UknownXL responds:
Thank you for the review. I'm glad you enjoyed the game and I greatly appreciate the feedback. The whole dead repeating events as you put it is something I had thought about when making this game so im glad you pointed it out. Its a theme I would have liked to work in more as well.
I agree with many of the issues you pointed out. In the end we had run out of time and couldn't add much else in. This is a free game and we couldn't continue to work on it with out an equal return. I don't like it but its unfortunately the way it is some times. Thats one reason why we are working on pc and console titles now. (still some free games on the side though) There are a lot of features I would have liked to include but overall im still very happy with the game we put together. Such as hidden items in the dungeon and special rooms. (those bombs were suppose to blow up walls initially)
We do have some ideas for a sequel or even a spiritual successor so your suggestions are heard and appreciated.