Book of Demons, aka Paper Diablo

It was a major downer for me. Something about it just rubs me the wrong way. I immediately feel constricted, which is the last thing I want in gaming generally speaking.

I did like what I saw other than that, but I’ll hold off until the game is finished and maybe look into getting it when it’s down around this price in the future.

I think playing so many GO games this past few years (Hitman/Croft/Deus Ex) has made me crave even more restrictive level design, it is one of the major things that sold me on this game.

I grabbed this during the sale as well.

I bounced off it. Lovely design in so many areas, but I felt like it encouraged/demanded/rewarded carefully timed movement - and then crippled your ability to move.

I tried the demo and passed. I like the art style, but nothing else. It’s on rails, it’s limited to three unoriginal and boring character classes, and it doesn’t support my (admittedly rare) preferred resolution of 3440x1440.

okay, I played the demo for about ten levels, and I have no idea if I like it. It feels like a cross between Diablo and Kingsway. You’re poisoned? Click on the top of your health orb at the right time to get rid of the poison. Fighting a spellcaster? Click on the casting circle above their head to counter the spell and make them vulnerable. Fighting an armored guy? Click on the shield icon floating on top of them somewhere to break their armor.

Also I didn’t realize what people meant with the “being on rails” comments. I thought it meant the path through the dungeon didn’t have any forks. What it actually means is that you can’t step off the path in the center of the room/passage you’re in but all the monsters aren’t bound by that, so it mostly eliminates kiting or agility in general. No combat rolls like D3 certainly.

Mhm, internally we call it “carpet movement” because in early builds there were carpets that hero walked on :D

The idea is to make movement simpler and let the player focus on skills (both his and enemies’) by taking movement from 2 dimensions to 1 dimension. With on path movement teleportation/jumps (cards that drop after the demo) are easier to use since you don’t have to aim them, you always know where you will end. So it’s easier to coordinate comboes like ice wall, frost nova or meteor and teleporting away by just prerssing 3 buttons in sequence.

Anyway, this is an interesting thread and I’m trying to keep my eye on it but for some reason the forum engine is not shhowing me notifications about new posts :|

Have you selected “Tracking” for the thread?

I did when I first found it. And it seems to be working, I just got an email about your post but didn’t get one for all the posts before yours. Lets hope it will work from now on…

Yeah, this is what I love about Book of Demons! Moving around in a game like Diablo is pretty much a formality in any terms other than this distance to your target and getting out of the way of telegraphed attacks. There’s no meaningful terrain and no real positional gameplay. So why is it even in there? Because people are used to moving their little action figures around inside the dungeon. You guys are killing a sacred cow by taking that away. I love it.

One thing that does kind of confuse me about Book of Demons – although I confess I’ve only plinked at it since I’m waiting for v1.0 – is whether I’m supposed to be moving out of the way of attacks or just taking the punishment. In most action RPGs, you want to dodge attacks if you can, so my temptation in Book of Shadows is to keep backing up as much as I can. Is this intentional? Or should I be holding fast and soaking up damage as part of the combat?

-Tom

And we get a lot of flak for it but we stand fast by our design choices ;-) The funny thing is we often get accused of “being lazy by not allowing free movement” which is amusing since marrying on path movement with free movement for monsters is actually a lot of headaches. Allowing regular movement would be the easy way out.

I’m glad you appreciate the direction we took!

Depends on a class you pick and hand you build. Since we went for archetypical ARPG classes the Warrior is about clicking a lot while soaking the punishment, Mage is about dispensing huge amounts of damage while being a somewhat glass cannon. Rogue is the distance class that gets in trouble quick when swarmed. Still, each class can be customized with cards so the base playstyle can change. For instance, Rogue with Jump and Claws is lethal when jumping into the fray. Similarly, Mage can slow time while retaining attack speed and with the legendary variant of that card on death he gets teleported to the spot he was while casting with health restored. So even he can become a melee monster for a moment ;-)

Before launch, we will add a whole batch of new cards and legendaries which will allow further playstyle customization.

Edit: Actually when writing this I came up with an idea for a legendary card variant that would incentivize suicidal Mage builds… it’s certainly going to get added.

I very much dislike the design choice, but I would never accuse you of laziness! What I do find is that the controls for moving - along the 1D axis - are very poor, yet moving back and forth is a key component of combat. If your design rewarded/encouraged movement less I would have enjoyed it more. Or if the controls were better for this.

Also, if all enemies had been constrained to a single dimension, I think I would have preferred it. Having to engage with enemies in 2D but only move in 1D is very frustrating.

What’s the ETA at this stage, if you can say?

Initially, there was only mouse movement. We added WASD because of popular community demand, and keyboard movement is somewhat finicky because of that. Plays great on a controller though (another thing we added due to popular demand). I will revisit WASD movement before launch and try to iron out the wrinkles.

I will be trialing “no autoattack” mode on test beta branch this week. If it catches on we will integrate it as an in-game option. That should make escaping easier.

We are aiming at the end of this year. There is a pretty detailed roadmap on Steam community.

You know, I did ponder this, but I couldn’t work out how this would work with… you know, clicking on things!

Movement is neat and precise. Selecting stuff is done via movable object selector that is controlled with right stick. Not ideal but works. We will probably try to add auto picking stuff up later on, which might allow us to do precise target selection without moving a selector object. That object works awesomely with steam controller though, super intuitive on that touchpad.

Once you have object selected you just attack with a button.

It’s possible that my objections are tied to only having gotten ten or fifteen levels deep in the demo and not having the cards/classes to know what the options will eventually be. Right now mobility is clearly important - there are those exploding poison guys, the fire circles my artifact makes when I attack (I assume those hurt me also? I didn’t actually check), sometimes I get surrounded which seems intentional - and I don’t feel like I have the resources to tank things, so it seems like the point must be to run away.

I noticed when I want to retreat I have to click twice? Once to stop moving, and once to start moving in the opposite direction. Is that correct? Is it intentional, if so?

There’s plenty of positional gameplay in Diablo 2 (and meaningful terrain in games like Dungeon Siege and Titan Quest). Especially if you’re playing as a summoner or a ranged character. But even apart from that, I ask why it wouldn’t be there? Isn’t giving your players freedom of movement in their environment kind of the default? Would Stalker be better if it played like Typing of the Dead? Would Morrowind? People like exploration, even if it’s not terribly engaging exploration. They want to feel like they’re in that world; not like they just paid for a ticket on an interactive dark ride.

I understand what you’re saying, in that you’re apparently for condensing the gameplay to the most meaningful decisions and culling the rest. I get that. I also think it’s an atrocious idea. It rips the soul from the game. It reminds me a bit of when they implemented fast travel in Oblivion, which allowed you to teleport to a quest giver, then teleport to the objective, then teleport back for the reward. Hey all that walkin’ is just a formality! This just completely destroys the immersion, which is a huge part of why I play those games in the first place.

I mean, at what point do you stop condensing? You might as well just play Rogue, or a spreadsheet that simulates Rogue, so you don’t have those frivolous ASCII graphics to distract you from the important decisions.

Yes, which is exactly what I mentioned above. But culling elements from the usual designs is a viable approach. Is XCOM “worse” because you get two actions instead of xx time units? Who knows. But it’s different, it’s an intriguing design choice, and it works for a lot of people. Same with taking land mana out of Hearthstone. Regenerating health instead of medkits in whatever Call of Duty (?) started doing that. Cooldowns instead of mana reserves. Limiting movement in Book of Demons.

Just because something is “kind of the default” doesn’t make it a necessary element of all game designs.

Why don’t you design a game a find out! :) I’m sure somewhere between a Paradox strategy game and a clicker you can find a comfortable compromise.

-Tom