Adventure themed flash. Pixel art makes up most of the graphics. Gameplay is good, but it always plays out the same exact way. I would have liked to see new allies and monsters each playthrough to make things random. Combat desperately needs upgrades.
Reviews for "The Legend of Quintavius"
Is there an explanation for why your fallen comrades are alive and well in the next scene?
ImmanentDeath responds:
Not other than saying that they're "defeated," but not "killed." There's just the assumption that when you win a battle, your defeated soldiers are only wounded and will be fully healed by the time the next battle happens, probably with the help of the healer Quintavius.
It's not something I thought was important enough to address in this game, since the story is the main focus and it assumes a main character won't die when they shouldn't. Your allies are just tough, and when they fall they'll get back up and walk it off.
Hmm, this one was pretty rough for me and I found myself quitting rather quickly.
For one, the game is absolutely overloaded with too much exposition and dialogue, and even when the game isn't delivering text, it's giving these cutscenes with incredibly slow pacing. I'm sure it's a very nice LOTR-esque story, but I don't want to have to get through all this text before I'm allowed to get a taste of what the actual gameplay is!
Having said that, though, I don't think the gameplay was worth slogging through all that text and cutscenes to get to. I like the concept of supporting your army by healing them and attacking monsters and so on, but it just felt overly simplistic and monotonous with how easy it was to just loop between healing and fireballing. Even worse was how healing and fireballing felt so unsatisfying due to a lack of feedback, and the fighting of allies vs enemies was so dull and muddy, lacking any sort of pizazz. Perhaps the game gets better with enemy units that challenge you to use different tactics, but after 2 boring fights, I wasn't inclined to stick around and see, especially since I'd need to read through another bookload of text to get to it.
As said, it's not a bad concept as I've seen other games like 'HEAL ME PLZ' explore this concept as well and be quite fun. But the execution here felt quite lacking and it seemed more effort was put in the story than the gameplay.
Also, a little side note: I was confused as to why the game requires you to use the mouse to advance text when everything else is done using the keyboard keys? Feels weird to be forced to switch back and forth instead of just sticking with one control scheme.
The visuals of the terrain make it hard to tell what you can and can't walk through. I lost a lot of fights due to getting stuck on obstacles I didn't know were there. I think you should put thick outlines around them or something so they stand out.
Also I'm not sure what the point bonuses at the end of combat mean. Is 'Player Damage' how much damage I dealt or how much my team received? 'Soldiers Defeated' should be 'Allies Defeated' or something - both sides have soldiers, you know?
Also the ring thing should be explained to the player somehow.
It also wasn't clear if losing any of my guys in a fight meant they were lost permanently or not.
EDIT: Hey, thanks for taking some of my feedback into account.
If you end up not liking the thick outlines for obstacles, brightly-colored outlines might work too, or simply making the obstacles somewhat brighter than the passable terrain.
As for explaining the ring in the game, could you have Quintavius mention his ring somewhere in dialogue? That would at least highlight that the mechanic exists to the players - right now it's just a weird hand in your HUD.
Here's some sample dialogue that might help you come up with a scene that works.
Quint: "I nearly lost my ring in that last fight!"
Someone Else: "Your ring? I had no idea you were married!"
Q: "Ah, regrettably I'm not. 'Tis not that kind of ring, but a magical one."
SE: "My word! Do you mean without it you'd be unable to cast spells?!"
Q: "Certainly not! It simply amplifies spells cast with whichever hand I wear it upon."
(change the HUD hand to the left hand icon)
Q: "When I wear it upon my left hand, my fire spell is burns more fiercely."
(change the HUD hand to the right hand icon)
Q: "And when it sits upon my right hand, the potency of Healing Light is similarly increased."
Something like that.
Other ways to make it even harder to miss:
1. Use the switching sound effect when switching hands in that dialogue scene.
2. Capitalize the letter 'H' in hand in that dialogue scene and maybe even give it a different color. Players sitting in front of a keyboard naturally link that sort of thing to the appropriate key.
3. Make it so that Quintavius glows as though he is being healed when it's on his right hand - and maybe put a small fire on his staff when it's on his left.
4. You know that little white pip on the health bar that appears when losing/gaining health? Have that start coming out of Quint's current health bar the moment you switch hands to the right hand. That way the healing effect is immediately obvious. You could even add a little red line in the health bar that indicates how much health he'll have after it heals him, and time everything so that the healing effect happens when the white bar hits that red line. That way the player can time, just by looking, how much time it'll take for one more HP to be restored.
I know this is a lot to read. And I don't mean to come off like I'm demanding a bunch of stuff. I like to give feedback that creators can actually use to improve things. And that includes giving solutions instead of just pointing out problems sometimes.
Couldn't actually play it, I didn't have time.
However from the loading screen alone I can tell that this is a game that you have put a lot of work into, so it seems very good.
I don't think a browser game would need such high system requirements, I have task manager opened and my browser is only taking up around 11% memory, and I'm on a cheap laptop with at most 8 GB of ram.
If the game is really that big, I would suggest uploading it to steam.
ImmanentDeath responds:
Believe me, I thought about releasing on desktop instead. And a re-release there isn't off the table, either. It's just more time and work to do.
I guess I just wanted to push the limits of a web game. I make it crystal clear from the very start that this game is chunky: 4 GB of memory and about 1.5 hours of total playtime. That way everyone knows what they're getting themselves into. So it will take a hot minute to load, and your computer will start using more memory as it loads everything. Your laptop should run it fine with the RAM it has, it's the same as mine.