It's been two months since I left DungeonQuest frozen in the dark and spooky limbo of unfinished indie games. Since then, I've had plenty of time to think about what's right and what's wrong in the game.
Where can I start making DungeonQuest the best multiplayer platformer-RPG ever?
The first thing to improve is the combat system. Every RPG game needs a good combat system, and up to date all my efforts to make DungeonQuest combat system interesting had failed. Since the game is as much a platformer as it is an RPG, attacking, defending, ducking and jumping are still the main combat mechanics. How about a little arcade touch to these actions? Combos, special attacks, breaking defenses and the like. Of course, when the game grows more complex in one system, something needs to get simpler to keep the overall amount of work manageable. So who's getting cut in process? The leveling up system. Some stats will get out of the way, others will be predefined for each hero, and so on.
The second issue is the art style. Retro pixelart is a great way to hide my poor artistic abilities. But even the simplest atari pixelart needs to be polished to catch the player's eye (which means more work than I expected). Here's a small preview of where's the pixelart style going:
The third improvement in the list are game editors. DungeonQuest level editor is cool for creating dungeons in just a few minutes. But there's more than dungeons in DungeonQuest. I need a character editor to create heroes, NPCs and enemies. Also, I need a boss fight editor to create huge bosses and epic battles at the end of each dungeon. Last but not least, I need a quest editor to create all the dialogs and quests of the story.
Well, that's pretty much it for now. There will be time for more self-critique as soon as I get another playable version ;)
Thanks a lot for your support and patiente.
Cheers!
Emanuel
Excellent art style. I had never heard of this game before but now I'm somewhat interested.
However, cutting the stats completely sounds like a bad idea. That seems to me like you'll be taking the rpg out of rpg-platformer. Perhaps you could streamline them in a similar way that Mass Effect 2 did. Reserve the stats for active abilities, rather than having complex RPG stats.
Thanks a lot, Murdouken! I'm really glad you like the new pixelart :D
And about the stats, I'm not cutting them off completely. Just reducing the overall complexity of the leveling system: limiting the maximum level of heroes, the amount of stats per hero, etc.
However, your Mass Effect 2 idea looks very interesting. I'll see how I can use it. Thanks again, man!