Book of Demons, aka Paper Diablo

I agree, and I don’t take exception to this game trying that—it’s just not for me. I just take exception to someone insinuating that free movement is frivolous, even in a genre such as this. I personally don’t feel that simplifying game mechanics down to their bare essentials is a good way forward. But having said that, maybe a lot of gamers feel differently, and are more concerned with just the essential mechanics than they are the immersive experience.

That’s awesome. It’s so important to be receptive to feedback, but maintain a clear design vision.

I will say that when I’ve watched video, the restricted movement doesn’t look like fun to me. It may be that has something to do with the isometric view and simply getting past expectations. It may also be the case that it’s the sort of game that feels more fun to play than to watch. Also, I can’t put my finger on why, exactly, but the way the character bobs up and down when autoattacking (and I get this is part of the conceit) gets rather annoying when I’m watching video, which may be part of what’s putting my off. That’s something you are far less likely to notice when actually playing.

Anyway, it’s really cool to have you here, so thank you.

So I just reinstalled this after all the chatter here, trying out a ranger and WOW, really enjoying it. Game feels way, way more fleshed out than it did last I played when the only class available was the warrior.

There is a Ranger class?

He means Rogue.

Whatever, the one with the bow. ;)

Just tried the mage class too. Fun times.

It’s telling that you had to go back to Diablo 2 to bring up an example of meaningful positioning. Which I don’t even remember, but I’m happy to take your word for it.

I don’t mind moving in action RPGs, but benefiting from standing in a specific place with any consideration other than range is rare these days. Monster Hunter comes to mind. I know that Warhammer ARPG – Something Something Martyr – would have you think that it’s partly a cover shooter, but I’m not convinced Neocore has the chops to pull it off. Otherwise, I can think of plenty of turn-based games that play with terrain and cover and flanking and so forth. But action RPGs? Games based on the kinetic thrill of hack-and-slash? They’ve all streamlined it out of the design. Book of Demons is the only game I know of that does it openly.

But you’re just proving my point that it’s a sacred cow for some people. Some people need the (false?) sense of agency that comes with walking up to a treasure chest to open it, or standing to the left or right of a monster while you’re fighting it, or having to walk into every nook and cranny to make sure you busted open every last barrel. I just don’t see how anything is lost in Book of Demons when the game has a tacit agreement with the player: “Look, you and I both know you’re going to walk around to find every chest, so we’ll just skip the formality of making you do it. We furthermore know that none of this room matters beyond how far you’re standing from these zombies, so we’ll skip that formality, too.”

-Tom

Is this an actual Mage class or like a Warlock or Summoner? :)

The interesting thing to me is that positioning becomes that much more important when you are limited this way. It’s very easy to get boxed in if you aren’t careful.

The beginnings are like that. Without cards, you are limited to hit and run attacks. Later on, some Warrior builds allow and even reward getting close and soaking the damage. It also depends on the class you pick. Warrior is close quarters and will remain like that. Meanwhile, with Rogue, you can snipe enemies from distance and with Mage from medium range.

That’s what killed WoW for me, removing the need to actually run for 3 hours to an instance and before that actually negotiate with random people at IF and build a party. On the other hand, it had to happen because no one has time for this anymore. I fondly remember adventure games from '90 but playing them again now is a torture. UI is terribly dated, everything takes ages, the character walks through screens at a snail’s pace and dialogues are unskippable.

While we try to be as inclusive as possible in our design we designed the whole series for people like us, post-hardcore players. People who used to play a lot back in the '90 but eventually, life caught up with them and they can’t invest 12hrs a day anymore. We want to condense the game until the experience of playing the genre is left and then allow players to control the time they have for the game (the Flexiscope system actually generates dungeons to offer the best gameplay flow with a closure in the time provided by the player).

Such design decisions like cutting free movement aren’t easy because it’s obvious there will be players who won’t like it. But in the end, if you can’t bring yourself to do something painful and risky you won’t make progress. At least that’s what we think.

Whenever something is frivolous depends on context. Were we making a spreadsheet-based Rogue game visuals would be frivolous ;-). It’s just that it’s not necessarily a requirement for hack and slash in our opinion.

It’s cool to be here, thanks! The animations are like that for three reasons. We wanted to go with symbolism in the visual layer, so the players would engage their imagination. Bendy animations also look awful on paper characters, at some angles parts become too thin to see at others they look weird and whole character becomes an unreadable mess. Last but not least, animating all the characters in the game would murder our budget. We are self-funded indies.

That’s intentional, double-click is for retreating.

That was the idea, to make poositioning meaningful. Now if monster wants to block you it has to throw two icicles on path. If we had free movement the only option would be to spam icicles around player, make a huge icicles or just freeze the player. Now we can have the same thing but with fewer more readable elements.

PS Sorry if I’m replying in multiple posts, I’m not familiar with this board engine and nested threads.

You know, I never figured this out (and a bunch of other things yo mentioned, including WSAD or controller support)… Maybe that was why I bounced.

I have been clicking and then clicking again and getting frustrated. I never even tried a double-click. :/

Movement without an easy way to disengage is frustrating, no question there!

By the way, clicking once and holding LMB down will also cause your character to walk away without engaging until you turn back or release the LMB. That one was mentioned in the movement tutorial, we didn’t squeeze double click into the tutorial though.

FWIW, I watched a couple of hours of footage last night that from within the last month and I found it more fun to watch than before. Maybe because there is more stuff happening on screen than before? Not sure.

Different question for you: I noticed the 2nd and 3rd games in the R2G series have icons now (don’t remember if they did before or not). Any hints been dropped on what those will be?

There is a lot more happening now, that’s true :D

I can only tell you what already leaked because we messed up with string tables. One of the books will be called “Book of Aliens”.

OH IS IT NOW? Hi, Brian Rubin, noted space game enthusiast.

Heh, and here I figured you already knew that (since you mentioned buying into R2G). Incidentally, looks like the price may be increasing in a couple of weeks?

Oh, and @Konstantyka, this is what the website looks like on mobile safari. Kind of a problem to read.

@Konstantyka are you planning 6 other books? Will they be dlc or stand alone games?

Separate games, each inspired by a classic 90s title.