Playtesting... Here's what the game engine looked like four years ago
I recently read an article by Jeff Vogel, the founder of Spiderweb Software and author of the
Exile games my brother and I played in the mid to late 90's.
Link! He points out his dislike for RPGs because of two reasons:
1. The game is often about a player who starts out very weak and learns to become very strong. The process of learning is a grind that can eat up an absurd length of the player's time
2. "Trash", or what I would think of as "Fluff": the monsters, objectives, etc., that don't have any real consequences. They're there to pad out the distance from two more significant events.
I can't say I disagree with him. I don't remember the
Exile games having much fluff or long periods of grinding--but those were twenty years ago. Modern players may have different expectations--and even older players' preferences would've evolved over that time span.
Just this week I have started playing
Towers of Vallas completely through. That's something I've never done, because it hasn't been possible up to this point. All 15 maps are playable and linked together, so I can finally play the whole game. It's a good time to check that the reality of the gameplay matches my visions on what the player will experience.
I've classified
Towers of Vallas as an action role-playing game (ARPG). I think it's the best fitting genre, and a lot of the usual RPG elements are present in the game. I've also taken a few departures from the common RPG fare. In my mind, the most significant departure is downplay of grinding to level up.
Well, for one, there is no "levelling up", because there isn't a player level. Marika's abilities are entirely determined by skills acquired and power-up items consumed. The only hint of a level is a "Psuedo Level" that is reported in the save-game selection, and functions as a way to remind the player how far they are into the saved game.
Grinding is usually a symptom of not having enough experience points to progress further in the game at the point where the player is ready to move on to the next stage. In
Towers, this doesn't happen very often. Usually, by the time I complete a stage and am ready to move on to the next one, I have just enough experience points to make use of any power-up items I have. Of course, I also know where everything is... and I've yet to see if a new player would have the same experience.
There is a finite amount of experience points in the game, so it's conceivable that if a player somehow manages to clear a stage before finding all of the experience, they will progress to later stages insufficiently equipped to face them. I've tried to make sure there's something interesting in all corners of each map, to encourage the player to explore. This will be something I'll need to pay close attention to when I move into beta.
The game is also short. I haven't yet played through without pausing, because I keep finding bugs that need attention. But I estimate that if you know where everything is, you could beat the game in about two hours... maybe even one. I don't know if that's a good thing or not. I think it's more important what a player coming in fresh experiences.
I'm happy with combat. I'm used to two characters standing and wailing on each other until the one with the highest HP/DAM/AC wins. In
Towers, there's a fair amount of tactical retreat, running, and maneuvering around hordes of enemies.
At the beginning of the game, Marika is strong enough to beat the highest level enemy in a one-on-one fight, albeit with a bit of luck and no errors on the part of the player. The difficulty of a fight is mostly determined by the number of enemies and architecture of the room. The number of enemies as a factor is obvious, but the architecture surprised me. Long corridors force enemies to line up in a way that the player can pick them off one at a time. Large, open rooms give the enemies opportunities to trap the player.
Another factor that surprised me is timing. When an NPC is struck, it is stunned for a bit. In a group scenario, it is disadvantageous to strike one NPC because the others can attack while Marika is in her cool-down phase (about 1/2 second). When Marika strikes, she hits enemies within +- 60 degrees of her field of vision... so running around the room to encourage the enemies to group in front of her is a good tactic--provided the architecture of the room allows it. It also makes the skill Frenzy more useful than I thought it'd be, since it allows her to strike all enemies in any direction, although with a high MV cost.
I kinda hate to admit things surprised me, since it suggests poor planning on my part... but I like the results so far. I feel like the combat, in particular, would be more engaging with higher fidelity graphics. When Marika retreats, I'd like to have a walking back animation (the combat in Prince of Persia comes to mind). Instead, I just play the standard walk animation. There's just not enough resolution and color depth to show much else. Hopefully the graphics are abstract enough that the player can use their imagination to fill in the details I can't convey.
