Hi from Wave Light Games - Indie Game Development Focussed on Windows & Windows Phone

[a5cent]

My next game (after the Gun Frenzy port to Windows Phone) will be Demon's Bane (working title). It's a cross between XCOM and Diablo and essentially has you exploring a dungeon with a team of six heroes in a turn-based format. The game will use a hex grid and action points to determine how much a warrior can do each turn. The game is currently at around 50% complete ... the core engine is done and the first 5 levels are in a fairly polished state. 8 out of the 16 hero options are done. Here's an early screen shot to wet your appetites ... I expect to release on Windows Store and Windows Phone before the end of the year.

I see the influence of Blackguards!

What I loved about Blackguards was the depth to character development, the old school combat mechanics, and that it was for once a game where the hardest difficulty setting actually was strategically challenging (at times). ;-)

The worst thing about Blackguards was that it was too closly tied to the DSA ruleset. Particularly when the difference between a party wipe and winning the encounter depended on a spell not misfiring in the first round. If it did misfire, you'd know the fight was over before it even started. Typically you'd just reload and try again, until the spell didn't misfire. That is not fun. Instead of the all vs. nothing approach, I'd recommend a system where spells always work, but just be more or less effective, particularly if casters are mainly buffers/debuffers like in Blackguards. If you'd want to make it hard you could say a caster may not be attacked in the same round of spellcasting or something like that, but provide enough opportunities for a caster to find cover or be defended from meele attacks by other party members.

IMHO the story was also very corny. Definitely no DA:O.

Finally, the character development system wasn't intuitive enough. I figured it out, with the help of an excel sheet, but understanding the interdependencies between attributes, abilities, talents and spells required more time than what most players are willing to invest. A character development system should give a player a lot of meaningful choices, between a lot of desirable options not all of which can be obtained, but it shouldn't be difficult to understand. I'd site the first Witcher game as a character development system that was well done, much better than in the sequel.

 

[WaveLightGames]

Thanks for the feedback. I haven't actually played Blackguards so there isn't anything from that game that will influence this one ... or if it is, it's just a coincidence.

I'm a games designer as well ... I worked on the tabletop miniature game Armies of Arcana so I'm taking a lot of my game design cues from that game. Demon's Bane has very reliable magic system ... only a small number of spells can fail and those are generally the "take control of enemy unit" or "summoning a creature" type. Most other spells will work consistently all the time but will do varying amounts of damage depending on the nature of the target and luck in general. Non-magical skills for warrior, archer, priest classes work in the same way .... will generally always work. That being said, I may add a sort of Chaos Sorceror that has more powerful spells but with a chance of failure so that players that feel adventurous can use that character class in their party.

For character progression, I haven't really gotten that far yet. I'm thinking of doing something similar to Warhammer Quest where characters accumulate experience points and then as they reach new levels, they gain random stat bonuses that will always include an increase in their action point total. Special abilities would be unlocked as a player's action points climb up to the required level to use that special ability. Fairly simple but along with a fairly in-depth magical item / inventory that is already built, it should allow for a lot of variety in player character builds. Also with 18 possible character classes to choose from .. there should be a lot of replayability.

 

[dKp1977]

Really? That would be fantastic. I'll get in touch with you later this week for testing Gun Frenzy Windows Phone. My current testing device is a 920 so making sure it works on a 1520 would be great. German translation for Demon's Bane would be phenomenal.

Did Gun Frenzy work okay on the Surface Pro? I tried deploying to my Surface RT early in the development and it had some issues but I didn't go back and check since then ... I figure I'll do that after the phone release and get it working on Windows 8 touch devices.

I'll put up a developer bog or post for Demon's Bane so you can follow the progress. This week, I'll finish the Gun Frenzy port and then next work switch gears back to Demon's Bane. As I'm using Unity Pro for both games, I may be able to set up a web browser demo so you and others could play early versions of it from your web browser.

I had to get used to the controls. I was badly missing touch controls, as I barely ever use mouse and keyboard for gaming on my Surface Pro. If you could add touch controls, I'd be loving the game even more.

 

[Muessig]

This all looks great. If a couple of people have already shown interest for beta testing and generally helping you out I'd suggest making your own Wave Light Games thread here: Windows Phone Games - Windows Phone Central Forums and post a few screenshots etc - we can keep the discussion going and I'm sure you'd get more recognition!

Edit: Just noticed you've already beat me to this suggestion by making a thread!

 

[Maritox Cacici]

Please support 512 ram devices!

 

[WaveLightGames]

I had to get used to the controls. I was badly missing touch controls, as I barely ever use mouse and keyboard for gaming on my Surface Pro. If you could add touch controls, I'd be loving the game even more.

I'll take another look at it in an update. I plan to release several updates such as additional weapons and obviously bug fixes / tweaks. I did have touch controls in an earlier version but my game development tool (Unity 3D Pro) had a bug in it such that it wouldn't recognize the Surface RT as a touch-enabled device. They probably have fixed that bug since then so perhaps it can be done. I'll experiment and let you know.

 

[WaveLightGames]

@Maritox Cacici: Will do my best ... I'll need to get a 512 Mb device for testing at some point.

 

[WaveLightGames]

Hi everyone,

I've put up a development post here on the Windows Phone forum to get feedback on the Windows Phone port. Please check it out if you haven't seen it already:

http://forums.windowscentral.com/wi...g-post]-porting-gun-frenzy-windows-phone.html

Also, would it be okay for me to put up a new thread about my upcoming game, Demon's Bane, or would that be considered spamming? I'd like to keep the existing thread related to the Gun Frenzy port and not confuse it with images / videos of Demon's Bane.

 

[a5cent]

Also, would it be okay for me to put up a new thread about my upcoming game, Demon's Bane, or would that be considered spamming? I'd like to keep the existing thread related to the Gun Frenzy port and not confuse it with images / videos of Demon's Bane.

Absolutely. In the 'developer spotlight' forum, we'd encourage you to create one thread per title.

However, we'd appreciate it if you wouldn't maintain more than that. This thread for example is really more about the games themselves rather than about introducing yourself, which is why I'm shutting it down. Don't take this the wrong way. We very much appreciate your participation here, it's just that we want to keep things organized, so our members can find everything related to a particular one of your games in one place.

Good luck!