Warrior Cats: Dark Forest Apocalypse *UPDATE: VERSION 0.5*

[thelazykittypet]

I've decided to release a partially completed version of my game in order to gather feedback and bug information. I expect to release it sometime in the near future.

EDIT: Version 0.5 out now!

List of changes:

-Battles now take place in a new side-view system with enemy health bars, damage and status pop-ups, and faster battle speed. (screenshot updated)
-Added a power level to the description of each move. (moves without a power level do not heal or deal damage)
-Removed some of the skills and added new ones. Made minor adjustments to other skills.
-Added a battle tutorial
-Enabled saving in the Dark Forest
-Reduced enemy HP in most cases
-Characters can no longer be killed by poison. (damage stops at 1 HP)
-Separated prey hunting and herb gathering into two different spots
-Minor dialogue changes and fixes
-Reduced Full Restore time to 6 Daylight Hours
-Enabled up to 16 characters for the player's name
-Level 7 added for gameplay
-Minor changes to pcs

Download here: www.mediafire.com/download/j9et2h1uw3xogff/Warrior_Cats_Dark_Forest_Apocalypse_V0.5.zip

Some things to know about the game:

-It was created using RPG Maker VX Ace Lite
-The element of fantasy is quite amped, so bear with me.
-The storyline is pretty basic because I suck at writing stories. I focused mainly on the combat.
-The completed version will contain more levels (obviously), easter eggs, different game modes, and a post-story quest.
-Picture and face graphics were taken from warriorsproject.tumblr.com , which contains a load of cool-looking, transparent warrior cat designs.
-All background music was taken from other video games. Tracks were obtained from downloads.khinsider.com, which contains lots of free-to-download video game tracks.
-Pretty much everything else was done by me.

Screenshots (click to enlarge):

[piplup10036]

If you need some help with some help with story writing shoot me a pm, I'd be willing to help out.

[thelazykittypet]

Dec 21, 2015 23:21:37 GMT -5 piplup10036 said:

If you need some help with some help with story writing shoot me a pm, I'd be willing to help out.

I appreciate the offer, however currently my game is too far developed to make any major changes to the story. Depending on how this game turns out I may make another, so maybe we can work on something then. =^.^=

[marshall !!]

I love this idea!

[thelazykittypet]

Thanks Rainfeather! :3

Just about to post the link.

[Dawnpelt]

Looks really interesting! Can't wait to try it!

A minor flavour complaint regarding the screenshot - heal doesn't really feel like a Dark Forest ability. I think that life drain/regeneration would feel more like evil cats sort of skill.

It seems like this was the great year for the Warrior Cats games. So many great games (or demo/preview versions) released.

[thelazykittypet]

Well I wanted the game to be a generally level playing field, so pretty much every skill used by pcs are also used by enemies. Life drain and regeneration are definitely involved as well though.

Also I ran into some difficulties with uploading, but the link will be available tomorrow.

[Dawnpelt]

I think adding the game warrants a new post, and not merely an edit, those are easy to miss!

Anyway, I'm trying it out right now. I'll post what I think after I'm done with it.

[thelazykittypet]

I'll probably make a new post when I release the full version.

Thanks! All feedback is appreciated.

[Dawnpelt]

I meant post, not thread, haha.

Sorry for not posting, but festivities and things.

Anyway, I've played through the whole game and I think that the concept is really cool, the story is interesting, and you have a lot of great ideas!

However, I had some issues with the gameplay.

- The accuracy of most of the attacks seems really low. Depending on the attack, character, and the enemy, it sometimes felt like I've missed almost half of the attacks. And that doesn't feel much fun.

- There are a lot of skills in the game, and it's cool to have options, but I think that they all come too early and aren't explained well enough most of the time. This is especially notable at the start, when I got thrown in with four characters, each with a variety of skills, and no word of explanation regarding what's each character speciality. It's very overwhelming, and I think it could use some more gentle start. Perhaps some tutorial that introduces and explains characters would be useful here (detailing their former wars against BoulderClan or something). That would be also a good opportunity to expand on the character's background.

The lack of information about skills makes it also difficult to choose which skill to use. I don't know if a skill is magical or physical, how much this skills deals damage, and things like that. It also makes it hard to tell elemental weaknesses. With no rough idea how much given skill does damage, I was never sure if I was correct with what I thought was a given character weakness (resistances were easier to tell, since they seem to have more influence).

I think the game could use a manual being delivered with the game, describing how all skills work, etc, etc.

- I think that fights last too long on average. I'm okay with Boss fights being long, since that's pretty much definition of the boss battle, but average Dark Forest mook seem extremely durable. I'm pretty sure that a random patrol of say two Dark Forest hunters is about as durable as a boss of the level the are introduced in. Bosses don't really have that much oomph to them. I think it would be better if you moved some of the power from random Dark Foresters onto the bosses.

- Poison seems to kill bosses really fast. I'm not sure if that's good and what you wanted to have, or not, but I figured out I point that out.

- Going Dark Forest level after Dark Forest level feels a bit monotonous after a while. I thought it was really cool when BoulderClan attacked, and I think the game could use more such events between different Dark Forest levels.

- Having 12 hours to spend is really awesome idea! But I don't think that there's much choice. I feel like doing a complete heal after each level is a must, since the other options for healing/refilling mana seem to be much more expensive in hour-time.

- I don't like saving in the Dark Forest being disabled. It feels unfair, and it makes playing a game difficult, given how long the later levels are, say, if I have to go after some time. And having to replay the whole level after dying to boss also isn't much fun.

Despite all this, I had some great time with it, and I hope you will continue it! Seems like the best Warrior Cats game I've played so far!

[thelazykittypet]

Dec 26, 2015 15:57:29 GMT -5 Dawnpelt said:

I meant post, not thread, haha.

Sorry for not posting, but festivities and things.

Anyway, I've played through the whole game and I think that the concept is really cool, the story is interesting, and you have a lot of great ideas!

However, I had some issues with the gameplay.

- The accuracy of most of the attacks seems really low. Depending on the attack, character, and the enemy, it sometimes felt like I've missed almost half of the attacks. And that doesn't feel much fun.

- There are a lot of skills in the game, and it's cool to have options, but I think that they all come too early and aren't explained well enough most of the time. This is especially notable at the start, when I got thrown in with four characters, each with a variety of skills, and no word of explanation regarding what's each character speciality. It's very overwhelming, and I think it could use some more gentle start. Perhaps some tutorial that introduces and explains characters would be useful here (detailing their former wars against BoulderClan or something). That would be also a good opportunity to expand on the character's background.

The lack of information about skills makes it also difficult to choose which skill to use. I don't know if a skill is magical or physical, how much this skills deals damage, and things like that. It also makes it hard to tell elemental weaknesses. With no rough idea how much given skill does damage, I was never sure if I was correct with what I thought was a given character weakness (resistances were easier to tell, since they seem to have more influence).

I think the game could use a manual being delivered with the game, describing how all skills work, etc, etc.

- I think that fights last too long on average. I'm okay with Boss fights being long, since that's pretty much definition of the boss battle, but average Dark Forest mook seem extremely durable. I'm pretty sure that a random patrol of say two Dark Forest hunters is about as durable as a boss of the level the are introduced in. Bosses don't really have that much oomph to them. I think it would be better if you moved some of the power from random Dark Foresters onto the bosses.

- Poison seems to kill bosses really fast. I'm not sure if that's good and what you wanted to have, or not, but I figured out I point that out.

- Going Dark Forest level after Dark Forest level feels a bit monotonous after a while. I thought it was really cool when BoulderClan attacked, and I think the game could use more such events between different Dark Forest levels.

- Having 12 hours to spend is really awesome idea! But I don't think that there's much choice. I feel like doing a complete heal after each level is a must, since the other options for healing/refilling mana seem to be much more expensive in hour-time.

- I don't like saving in the Dark Forest being disabled. It feels unfair, and it makes playing a game difficult, given how long the later levels are, say, if I have to go after some time. And having to replay the whole level after dying to boss also isn't much fun.

Despite all this, I had some great time with it, and I hope you will continue it! Seems like the best Warrior Cats game I've played so far!

Thanks so much for the feedback! I'll go over each of the points you listed:

Attack Accuracy: I honestly think this may just be bad luck. I programmed most of the attacks to hit at least 85% of the time.

Number of skills: I am definitely considering reducing the number of skills in the beginning. Longer descriptions for skills would also be helpful, but as you can probably tell the text box isn't very big.

Game manual: This is definitely a good idea. I might end up creating a game website with full character profiles and such.

Enemy power: If I reduced the health of the regular enemies I'd probably have to boost their attack and such, but that may not be a problem. I also wasn't sure how strong the bosses needed to be, but I guess if I made the enemies have less health it would be okay.

Different events: I'm not too sure as to what sort of events that I could include; some ideas that come to mind would require new maps, but since I'm using the free version I can only have 20 maps and I don't currently have any to spare.

Poison: Unfortunately poison can only be set to a percentage of MaxHP, and I can't diminish the effect on certain enemies, so there isn't much I can do there.

Healing: I could definitely dial down the time it takes to do a full heal. 

Disabled Saving: I think I originally included this because I had some problems with enemies reappearing after the game was shut down. I'm pretty sure I eliminated this problem though, so I can definitely change that.

[marshall !!]

I am going to play it soon. How long is the game?

[Dawnpelt]

Dec 27, 2015 14:34:01 GMT -5 marshall !! said:

I am going to play it soon. How long is the game?

3-4 hours, assuming you explore every level completely and don't have to restart any level.

[marshall !!]

Darn! I can only go on a computer 1 hour and then go off 3 hours because of extropia!

[Dawnpelt]

Dec 28, 2015 7:41:52 GMT -5 marshall !! said:

Darn! I can only go on a computer 1 hour and then go off 3 hours because of extropia!

You can always save, and continue it later. You don't have to do it in one go.

[marshall !!]

Oh we can save now! YAY!

[thelazykittypet]

Okay, so now I have sufficient feedback to continue working on the game, however I'm still not quite ready to release a full version right after. I need everything to be the best I can get it before that happens. So basically I'm going to make the changes suggested to me, then release another demo version so that it can be compared with the first. (If you downloaded the first demo and don't want to download the second then that's fine.) I'm hoping this new demo will be out before the second week of January.

[marshall !!]

Okay

[thelazykittypet]

So, another developer sent me a new script file containing a side-view battle system, so battles will look a lot different from the first demo. If anyone's confused as to how it works, feel free to ask.

[thelazykittypet]

Version 0.5 out now!