Demeo devs have announced the 2d flat version will be free for current VR owners (including Oculus owners) and it will have crossplay.
Huh. Nice of them I guess, but if there is cross play and I already have VR, why would I play 2d? That would seem to take a lot of the charm out of the game.
It’s out now. But marked as Early Access on Steam.
I don’t know that I’ll get VR as I currently don’t have the set up and I fear The Nausea, but I’m pretty excited about the 2D version.
Not having a VR headset is the dealbreaker, but as to nausea, I would think Demeo is SUPER safe. As it is a game played and exists in game as a seated and stationary experience, the sensory disconnects that cause VR nausea are not present.
I’m not sure how the non-VR version will strike people. I think a huge amount of the charm of Demeo is a digitized tabletop reality. It is a really fun group game as the social element, just like the real world version of what Demeo emulates. However, I’m really not sure if it has enough digital board game hooks to be compelling without the VR. I could be wrong, but I suspect the least impressive way to play Demeo would be solo without VR.
Good.
(but also, silly it wasn’t an option from the start, just put a menu where every player click on which character(s) to control)
Coming in two days.
I played twice the new dungeon. The impressions are very good.
The theme of the new dungeon is great, a ruined city in the desert. Different to the rest.
It has six new enemies. Reptile brute (4 abilities), reptile mage (he throws you the same red miasma), reptile engineer (who deploys a turret, like you), reptilian archer (3 abilities, including a burst of arrow to several tiles), scorpions (venom attack, they have some armor which can be avoided by hitting them from behid), and rift servant (4 abilities), which can teleport-swap characters, use telekinesis to throw lamps at your and other fun stuff.
There is a new environmental trap, corrupted shards, that spread out a red miasma that hurts creatures (friendlies and foes) and giving them a 2-3 turn berserk status effect, where you lose one of the 2 AP. You can destroy the shards to remove the surrounding miasma.
Another new environmental thing, there are sand piles you can excavate to find a) gold or b) a hidden enemy (scorpions) or c) lamp (or d), a jeweled bettle, see below)
There is a npc on the dungeon! On the new map, there is trader that wants a jeweled beetle, in exchange for four random cards.
A new unique item for the map, water flasks, to heal you or throw them and do an aoe water effect. Apart from interacting with lightning or ice like the third dungeon showed, the water cleanses the berserk effect.
The new character is original, which is now harder being the sixth one. She has a bit of everything, with a permanent pet which can level up, some utility in the form of portals and shields, and some offensive utility.
In between having to choose 1-4 heroes of a total of six, and the fact you can repeat them, I think there is a lot of mix and match available.
And new general stuff:
-the old mage has new abilities, he can charge up his basic ranged attack for proper chain lightning spell with more damage.
and finally, there are several new items:
-Potion of Magic: +1 magical damage.
-Potion of Bravery : +3 max hp.
Temporal buff potions:
-Potion of fire protection.
-Potion of Ice protection.
-Luck potion: crit on next hit
-Focus potion: +1ap for three turns.
-New general card (magic) : Magical Tsunami.
-New general card (magic) : Lightning Scroll.
HOWEVER, the final boss is damn hard. And no, the game still doesn’t have difficulty selector.
Not only he is hard, the trick is hard to understand, imo.
Don’t fight the hydra. The real boss will revive it always, even worse, the hydra will reappear with the ‘pissed off’ bonus. You have to find the real boss who is invisible (!!), you have to place a hero in one of the four special tiles with an eye drawn to reveal him. That implies separate the group yes, which also implies you will have to clear up the map.
Another tip: hitting the tail of the hydra will stun it for a turn, but only can be done every three turns.
Very excited to check these all out!
Teasing the new adventure.
The new hero, a barbarian with a pull ability
So Steam has this on sale for $24 (PC non-VR version).
I already have Gloomhaven PC which I grabbed for free on Epic but have not yet tried. I attempted to get some impression of this game from this thread but the game was in development so long and in VR for so long, it’s hard for me to get a sense.
What’s the current view of you folks on this game, PC non VR version? Specifically, is it enjoyable for solo play?
I think it’s pretty different from Gloomhaven in that it doesn’t have any kind of permanent progression, campaign, etc. It’s just single dungeon ‘runs’, with no character progression or changes beyond buying a few cards between floors.
Despite this ‘simplicity’, it’s a fun, well designed game, I like it, but that’s especially on VR because it has no competition on that market, on PC… dunno, surely there are other games that are better, that they are deeper or have more content or whatever?
It’s also not a big discount, given the sales that there are usually on Steam. I’d wait for a 33% off.
By the way, the new scenario is out today, but I couldn’t play it, I was busy with High on Life and Darktide. Impressions tomorrow, then.
Funnily enough, it seems that… no, I was wrong. I’m doing searches to see what there is
https://i.imgur.com/oWAIY40.png
and it seems this type of ‘Heroquest’ style of game, with 4 heroes fighting in a dungeon, without having a to go to ‘single player rpg’ experience and being closer to a classic tabletop session, is not popular. I thought there would be a niche on Steam of similar games.
Ok the new scenario.
First, you start with a new item given to every hero, Vortex Dust. It’s a 1 dmg in a 3x3 area, with a pull effect like the vortex lamps, useful to deal a bit of damage or do a bit of pull on enemies to put them in the ideal position.
There are npcs that talk to you. Some give gold, other health potions, other are sellswords you can hire (200g for a dude with a crossbow moved by the AI with their own skills like poison arrow or panic arrow).
The new barbarian is fun. Perhaps the most surprising ability is the Vargas whatever, what lets you accumulate extra damage in a permanent counter (by first shouting to an area of enemies, the more th emerries), and said damage is only spent later in the right amounts. If a enemy has 3 hp, the extra damage counter isn’t used, if a enemy has 10 hp, 7 extra damage is used up, etc.
Enemies:
Elf lancer: low level enemy, throws a lance that pushes you, and have a vortex dust item too.
Elf Archer : I think it’s different of the usual archer? He has a ‘heavy arrow’ attack.
Elf Summoner: ‘mini boss’ level enemy. 48 hp! Teleporting, and a shield ability. He is hard to kill because he will skirt around the periphery. He appears on the first floor and second floor. His main skill is how he summons several rifts with a single spell, you have one turn to destroy the rifts, before they start summoning new enemies. The rifts can merge if they are close, changing from minor to normal to major rifts, with more hp each, and able to summon bigger enemies.The vortex dust item closes them instantly, bypassing their hp.
Something funny is how they are really rifts: they can summon enemies unique to other scenarios, like the desert scorpions.
There’s a demo.
I was going to get it yesterday until I read that you can only save when completing a floor, which can be quite large. That killed it for me.
Yeah that’s an issue, for example the game I played this morning was pretty long, the second floor was eternal. Still, it’s a turn based game and you can save 2 times per run (before Floor 2 and Floor 3) so it isn’t a killer flaw, imo. YMMV.
What I’d like is to have difficulty options, or even better, custom house rules. It’s supposed to be a tabletop game, so it would go with that idea well.
I reached the final boss of the last scenario and man, he is hard. I got him to 50hp, and I can do it slightly better next time now that I know how he works, but still, I don’t picture myself winning anytime soon.
This final fight has some neat gimmicks, with stone walls rising from time to time enclosing you or the enemies, and giant spectral hands smashing things in an area or in a line (at least they indicate what they will do the previous turns).
Note to myself for next attempt:
Beggar accepts:
-water => swiftness potion
-teleport => golden scarab
-rejuvenation => special card against the boss?
I learn some new tricks, like the barbarian can use the hook to retrieve the wounded.
But… this new update has served, more than anything, to highlight some the flaws of the game.
The new dungeon can be sooo long, that not having free option to save the game when you want is bad. Even crazier taking in account this is a fairly small turn based game, it should be trivial to do. Just store the positions of every unit, the status, etc, baam, done.
Right now I will go to sleep in 40 minutes, and because of that it’s better to not start a new game because it still could be in progress 50 minutes in, only the first floor.
Second, being the hardest scenario of the game, makes really miss a difficulty option, as I have commented it before.
Also, the high difficulty highlights how some of the class balance is spotty. Playing a game with the hunter vs another game without her and with the bard is crazy. Her killing power is notably higher, just one strength potion and she is doing 6 damage per turn, ranged, while additionally she is also doing extra damage with summoned rats and wolves (the rats can get ridiculous, low damage but they hit every turn, because the enemy won’t target them).
And killing stuff is more useful than the CC of the bard, because killing them not only remove them of the board, but also gives you more cards.