Reviews for Wondrous Lands

[JimGiant]

Solid 4.5 Stars by NG standards. Had a lot of fun with this one but that being said it's not without fault:

1. A couple of times loading stopped before fights and I had to reload the page. Perhaps some form of detection for this and reload attempt?

2. Could do with a few quality buttons, faster world map speed etc. I did find it just a tad slow at times.

3. Could do with more shop/inventory options. Organise shop items by price, Sell all, lock item, quality indication colours etc.

4. Got in to a wizard duel when I only had healing/silencing skills and the fight never ended so I had to reload. Could do with a forfeit button, countdown timer or perhaps mages attacking with melee when no damage spells and is alone.

5. Interrupting gameplay to tell me Vorag is trying to escape puts on pressure in a way I didn't like. I don't know if you get a gameover if you're too slow but I didn't want to find out and this put me off from exploration. You're generally better off rewarding players for playing how you want them to rather than punishing/pressuring them for not. Good talk on this subject here: watch?v=7L8vAGGitr8

6. Axes chop, they don't slash and broad curved "sabres" are very poor thrusters/piercers. Probably not an issue to anyone who isn't a HEMA enthusiast but if you are things like this are disappointing. If I was to modify the engine I'd have weapons with multiple damage types do different amounts. For example you could have Rapiers do 100% piercing but 50% slashing, sabers 100% slashing but 50% piercing for example and show the weaker percentage.

7. I wish it was longer and you earned things which could be carried over to the next game.

DLord2 responds:

Thank you for very detailed feedback!

Bugs that you've mentioned (points 1 and 4) should be fixed in the next update. We'll consider the quality of life changes as well if we'll get spare resources.
Update: I made fix and published the update.

[Emma2]

Nice game. I like the concept and the execution. I can see this growing into something popular with better graphics. The story seems nice but I started playing an hour ago so I don't know much about it yet.

DLord2 responds:

Thank you!
We did our best this game and we'll try to improve in the future.

[Berder]

Nice game, apparently a lot of depth to it.

My first observation is this is not a roguelike. Look up roguelikes, they're very different. In a roguelike you don't have a separate mode for combat. Everything in a roguelike, combat and motion, happens on the same turn-based grid. You don't have a party in a roguelike, it's just one guy. The only thing that makes this game at all similar to a roguelike is the permadeath (after your lives run out).

Other comment is that it would be nice if enemies of a given difficulty level were grouped together in an area, instead of mixed in with more difficult enemies. It's really annoying to have to wander all over the map doing just a little bit of each area at a time!

DLord2 responds:

Thank you for you feedback! Glad you're enjoing the game!

We're aware of originals of the genre, like NetHack, ADOM, Dungeon Crawl, etc (and one of us enjoyed these games a lot).
And to be fair this game isn't purely "roguelike". The preferable term here will be Roguelite. That means mixing roguelike elements (permadeath, randomness, replayability, more content than you can see in one play) with elements of the other genres (for example shooter or platformer). Our game is just one of those.

Regarding your suggestion, currently the skill game demands is picking your fights properly. So we tried to provide you a variety of enemies, no matter what level you are or what is your team composition. Also we wanted to give player a little bit more freedom in picking which part of the world he wants to explore currently.
We'll think how to make it less frustrating though.

[billythesquid]

This is a very well-made game. The interface is straightforward, and the gameplay is fun. My two complaints: first, a fast-forward button for battles would be nice. Since we can't do much, it would good to speed things up. Second, some way of controlling the PC strategy would be nice. I don't mean direct control, but just general tactics: this rogue focuses on melee attacks, this wizard hangs back and focuses primarily on buffs, this fighter tanks the enemy. I tried multiclassing, and I ruined their ability to fight properly. I don't mind the wasted points, but I wish I could keep them from just casting the same useless spell over and over and have them actually fight the enemy.

DLord2 responds:

Interesting point! During the game creating we had not only "run away" comand button in battle, but also "defence position" button and "take a rest"(battle map was larger: 2-3 screens with scrolling). But after game testing we decided to focus on battle preparation like wisely choosing abilities, equipment and enemies.

[Zeranil]

Wow! I really liked it! Only a variation in the music its what i actually missed.... But the work is fantastic and makes you enjoy the adventure trying multiple combinations...