It’s finally here – the sequel to the much-beloved Dragondot! It’s kind of hard to explain all the sources of inspiration that went into this, so you should probably just try it out (and feel free to guess in the comments). Be patient with the download – I wrote a ton of songs for this one, so it may take a bit.
Oh – one more thing that may not be obvious at first: if you move into an area with 20% threat or higher, you’ll be forced to fight rather than passing through.
What are you waiting for? Go play it!
Game 18: Dragondot's Sky,
Posted late due to a last-minute game balance issue – specifically, one of the boss attacks crashed the game, which extensive playtesting revealed was somewhat unfair.
Man, this game is pretty hard, kicked my butt anyway.
Okay, if I understand the concept here, it’s the opposite of the original dragondot. You don’t gain levels in this one, and you want to kill the bosses FIRST, or all your kobolds will be quickly overrun. I tried to kill weak stuff first, but that wasn’t working, and I didn’t seem to be gaining any levels.
The controls are kinda hard right now, I haven’t gotten used to fighting in midair. Do you ever get any kind of ranged attack? Because going fast and flying combined with only close/melee attacks is pretty tough.
Sorry, double post, but nevermind the range attack issue, I just figured out that holding the attack button lets you blow a fireball.
It seems that if I don’t kill a boss the first time, I gotta restart the game or the game will get too hard, but whenever I refresh the page, the game crashes at the “enemies reinforcing” message.
Yeah, this was absolutely destroying me for my first dozen plays or so. I kept trying to clear out enemies. Finally I noticed that they were spawning at a much faster rate than I could ever defeat, so I started going for the bosses. But it looks like even if you try to tackle the bosses first, you have to be absolutely perfect (and a little lucky as well) in order to win. Still haven’t managed it.
It seems that it’s actually a complete waste of time to attempt to ‘save’ any of your kobolds where there are exclamation points. After you save them, three more squares will be in even greater peril. You pretty much have to head straight from boss to boss, no detours.
I wouldn’t say that this game is ‘unbalanced,’ but the strategy is certainly rather unintuitive. Now that I think I’ve figured out how it works, I might stand a chance at winning.
Oh! But that’s all overworld strategy stuff. The actual arcade play is very very fun! It took me a play or two to warm up to the ‘you are always moving’ thing, but once I became okay with that, it was smooth and entertaining. This is definitely a mechanic that becomes more and more fun the better you get at it.
Okay, I’ve figured out how to kill 3 of the 4 bosses, but I won’t spoil that. (That Pterodactyl is still killing me) I want to point out that if you fail the first time, and DON’T reload the page, but just keep playing when it gives you the chance, all the enemies spread out a whole lot more on the first turn before you can even do anything. If you refresh the page to start over (if it doesn’t crash on the “enemies reinforcing” message) The enemies only advance a little bit.
I think the overmap strategy does need to be tweaked to be a little easier though. Maybe scale back how much enemies move? add another explanation point before you start losing kobolds? Or maybe new enemies only spawn every other turn instead of every turn. You need a perfect playthrough and lots of luck in order to beat it as it is.
I do agree that the arcade part has grown on me and gotten much more fun now I have the hang of it. It took me forever to figure out that dashing into an enemy does damage to it, but when I did, it made the dash feature much more fun and useful.
A big part of why I like this site is I love the feeling of being a game tester, seeing new games right after they are made up, and offering input. Please keep it up! I hope you don’t run out of ideas any time soon.
The last site I was on that tried this kind of thing stopped after a few months.
I had very little time to playtest the game in its current form, and I do have hooks for tweaking the “enemy movement” and “kobold threat” rates so I may adjust that. I have beaten the game in its current form so I know it’s possible. Also, just realized where there might be a bug (thanks for the bug report – “all the enemies spread out a whole lot more on the first turn before you can even do anything”)… BRB…
Also, something that should have been documented but wasn’t – enemies move based not on “turns” but by amount of time you spend in a level – kill things faster, and enemies move less.
Ooh, that’s very good to know. Also pretty neat.
I have to admit, the whole enemies-advancing map mechanic is really cool. It’s frustrating to have it tied into my lose condition, since I have so little control over it. But as a way to spread enemies through a map, it’s fantastic, and the sort of thing I’d want to emulate if I ever got myself into gear and made something.
I kinda miss the satisfaction of clearing away a map full of enemies that you get from the first one. I think it would be pretty neat if killing a boss didn’t kill its spawn. As things are, any non-boss screen feels like a waste of time — I’d even go so far to say that this is the game’s main weakness.
Changelog:
*fixed early-movement bug
*adjusted boss threat, making them spawn fewer foes
*decreased Dart Hawk overworld movement
*decreased kobold peril global scaling slightly
*made enemy’s initial advance more reliable
*added version number to credits screen
Excellent point, Stephen – and definitely something I’ll experiment with when I work on a proper revision. (The enemy-spawning thing as it currently stands is a very kludgey way of doing it, and if I find a better way of throttling enemy spawn/advancement it’ll make the map much more tactical.)
I’m wondering if the game would be more fun if the kobolds were tied to strength or something rather than game over. If losing the kobolds made the enemies tougher or stronger, you’d still have the “protect them” aspect without seeming like an escort mission.
Changelog (v1.2):
*Adjusted enemy map movement and game-start movement
*Changed rout behavior (only once all bosses are killed)
That was pretty fun! A worthy followup to the original Dragondot. With the way it’s currently balanced though, you’re best hope to save all of the kobolds is to make a beeline for the bosses.
I like how there were character portraits during the dialogue parts, and it’s just a larger picture of a circle.