This game is everything I wanted in KotC2
Posted: Tue Dec 22, 2020 4:28 amI've made it through the Moon Crypt so far, in about 50 hours. The puzzles are fun, the encounters are fun, the spells are fun. It's like the ideal campaign where your skills matter, your choices matter, and you never know what's coming next.
This is such a programming achievement. For example, the codebreaking screen is just a joyous, fluid, intuitive user experience. I feel like you could sell that to the website for Cryptograms in the newspaper. The AI is still so smart. The user interface is full of nice little helpers like scrolls telling you when you can learn them, or only listing the most recent ten saves so the interface is cleaner (it really does help). And it's easy to tell which save is which because of the screenshots and timestamps.
The look of the game is great. The tokens look great, the moon puzzles look great, the voiced character speech really works to make them feel alive. Nothing feels like it was skimped on -- it's a great value.
Every spell that was tweaked (like making protection from energy a move action for the druid) improved the design. This is the ideal 3.5 game for me. The magic item rewards are really fun and powerful! Much better than the ones in the DMG, or the ones in Dragon Age where the rewards are all like "6% better to hit".
I'm using the prebuilt characters. Thanks for making those with a good spread of skills, races, and classes. The system where you can take certain dialog options if you're a water druid, small, or have Detect Magic is fun and makes you feel special.
My thanks to all the beta testers who tested out the difficulty for us late adopters. I beat KotC1 so I would have been surprised when this was harder. I chose no gold cost for leveling, 25% slower init, reroll below 50% hit points, and an ability score point every three levels. So far that's been perfect. I'm doing between 2-8 retries per encounter, but trying different strategies each time, not just save scumming. It's fun.
The optional challenges like going down the well are fun. The constraints on when you can rest are fun because I trust BlueSalamander's design from the last game and the constraints are what make the choices matter. I complained about some things last game when I was just getting used to your DMing style, but now I love how intelligent and tricky everything is. It makes a great niche for an indie game because you have a true unique vision for how D&D should be balanced. Thanks so much for returning to it!
Let me know if there's any way I can contribute to support further development. Seems like the Kickstarter is closed.
This is such a programming achievement. For example, the codebreaking screen is just a joyous, fluid, intuitive user experience. I feel like you could sell that to the website for Cryptograms in the newspaper. The AI is still so smart. The user interface is full of nice little helpers like scrolls telling you when you can learn them, or only listing the most recent ten saves so the interface is cleaner (it really does help). And it's easy to tell which save is which because of the screenshots and timestamps.
The look of the game is great. The tokens look great, the moon puzzles look great, the voiced character speech really works to make them feel alive. Nothing feels like it was skimped on -- it's a great value.
Every spell that was tweaked (like making protection from energy a move action for the druid) improved the design. This is the ideal 3.5 game for me. The magic item rewards are really fun and powerful! Much better than the ones in the DMG, or the ones in Dragon Age where the rewards are all like "6% better to hit".
I'm using the prebuilt characters. Thanks for making those with a good spread of skills, races, and classes. The system where you can take certain dialog options if you're a water druid, small, or have Detect Magic is fun and makes you feel special.
My thanks to all the beta testers who tested out the difficulty for us late adopters. I beat KotC1 so I would have been surprised when this was harder. I chose no gold cost for leveling, 25% slower init, reroll below 50% hit points, and an ability score point every three levels. So far that's been perfect. I'm doing between 2-8 retries per encounter, but trying different strategies each time, not just save scumming. It's fun.
The optional challenges like going down the well are fun. The constraints on when you can rest are fun because I trust BlueSalamander's design from the last game and the constraints are what make the choices matter. I complained about some things last game when I was just getting used to your DMing style, but now I love how intelligent and tricky everything is. It makes a great niche for an indie game because you have a true unique vision for how D&D should be balanced. Thanks so much for returning to it!
Let me know if there's any way I can contribute to support further development. Seems like the Kickstarter is closed.
