From the same team that brought you Airstrike comes a brand new and original entrant to the 2015 Rock the Cabinet contest: Death by Fantasy. Wargirl has brought some of her very best work, creating an ambitious and beautifully landscaped Fantasy setting for the game, and Moustro’s completely original soundtrack is worth a playthrough alone.
Death by Fantasy is an incredibly simple game to learn: no difficult opening menus, no frustrating UI or unnecessary complex controls. It is a rogue-like adventure game following Raynor and his crew’s infiltration of the world of Fantasy in order to assassinate the evil Hybrid Maar, who is in hiding somewhere on the planet. You will fight through aggressive orcs, overzealous elves, hostile wildlife, and anything under Maar's corrupting influence.
Throughout your search, you will receive a variety of upgrades, ranging from different guns for your primary attack to fantasy-themed accessories. Each upgrade is presented as a simple choice between two alternatives. These alternatives are chosen randomly on each playthrough, meaning no two games will look the same!
Want to play through the game with the long-ranged Railgun, using Corrosive grenades, Blink, a Flamethrower, and accessories geared toward upping your speed and DPS? Or maybe you’d prefer a playthrough with a Shotgun and stun grenades, using a lightning-powered sentry to cordon off dangerous areas and emphasizing survivability?
Give it a shot and let us know what you think!
Will you be able to defeat the legions of Orcs, Elves, and fantastical creatures who stand between you and your goal? Or will it be…DEATH BY FANTASY?
Definitely fun to play. The humor fits the title, the fighting mechanic is really nice and the item-system is a very good addition to it. The flow is fairly good, still some of the upcoming points could definitely make it better:
aiming with your weapon is really hard. Neither can you manually place shots nor is there an indicator for range, which makes it really hard to develop a sense for combat. Especially for the Shotgun or the Railgun this would be very helpful
ranged enemies are far more difficult to handle than their melee companions, making the harpy-cliff passage the hardest (and most frustrating) part of the map.
Checkpoints are rather rare and replaying too much is definitely not fun (-> harpy-cliff). There should be a checkpoint before each bossfight or after a longer passage. This also applies to the forest region, where I unforunatley was killed by the forest-keeper boss and then was forced to replay the whole forest part
The massive army that spawns while fighting the tauren boss make this fight nearly impossible (and combined with the previous issue extremely frustrating) unless you exploit the fact that they almost exclusively walk on the right side of the area, making the left side (where the buildings are) completely vulnerable. This might be the designed strategy, but feels like exploiting a bug
the reroll feature makes the whole randomness of the Item System pointless. It should at least be limited to one reroll per item drop
the Dialog really is funny, but plays too fast especially at longer lines, making it hard to read everything before the next character talks. How about changing all this to instead be skipable (with a timelimit that is far enough to read everything)? This would grant everyone their own pace while not being too
intrusive and reducing gameflow
the huge camera shake along with the red flash everytime you take damage is really annoying after a while. Hitfeedback is good, but the definitely is too much. How about flashing the bloodscreen used in the HoTS missions instead? This would be much more subtle while still being visible
Some bugs I found:
The blademaster appears to shrink when he casts his whirlwind spell. Only a minor bug though
You cant go to the top-left after beating the blademaster if you didnt go to the lower right first
You can see pointer-actors flying on the lower-right when the harpy-boss is attacking. They seem out of place
There should be range indicators for all your weapons, I'll double check the shotgun and whatnot to make sure I didn't mess something up there.
I've heard from others the harpy cliffs are too hard for where they are in the game so far, so I'll rebalance that. I wanted to ramp up the pace of the game after the first level but it's looking like it's too much difficulty too fast.
The checkpoints are a tough point for me. I might add a checkpoint after the harpy cliffs before the orc village since it is pretty tough. I know no one wants to be "punished" for failure, but at the same time I don't want the game to be a walk in the park. So it's a fine line.
The re-rolling will be limited. It's only unlimited right now because the game's in testing stages and I want to make sure myself and others can try different things out with some consistency. So consider it a debugging tool for now!
I've been thinking about dialog length and I've come to the conclusion that having the dialogue play a little longer but unpausing the game a little sooner would work well. I'll make it so that people have ample time to read everything.
I'll tone down the screenshake and red flashes when you take damage. I wasn't aware of a bloodscreen effect in the editor, I'll definitely check it out, thanks!
The Blademaster shrinking is to make up for some weird visual things that happen when I use his spinning animation. I know it doesn't look very good, but to leave him normal-sized would make the entire screen get taken up by the wind effects. It's kind of a catch-22.
At first there was a split in paths you could take after beating the first boss, with the path on the right being a little secret. Problem was no one would go there, so I made it required. I might put in some dialogue or a hint to go right so it doesn't seem so weird.
Thanks for the bug report about the flyer helpers during the Harpy fight. Definitely a bug I'll fix.
on my screen i had to go to the very right side of the screen to make the camera move. i think you should play the map without a widescreen resolution once.
I have no idea why everyone is complaining about harpies. Map seemed to be super easy when playing single player. Was little bit harder with 2 players. I imagine it scales to complain-level when you play with 4?
Tho I did re-roll powerups to no end until I chose what I perceived as strongest choice..
(I've published an update that fixes almost all the issues that theUltragon brought to my attention, much thanks!)
Hey Funkyuser, I've found that there's a tough balance to strike between catering to widescreen vs non-widescreen monitors on things where you can't move the camera. I made sure that everything was reachable and playable on non-widescreen resolutions, but I agree it doesn't always feel natural when you have to click the very edge of the screen to continue. I'll try stretching those triggering zones a little.
Regarding the Harpy Cliffs, I think the issue is not that it's too difficult, but that the difficulty compared to the first part is so much higher. I published an update which lowered the damage of all the harpies and lessened the health on the tougher ones - hopefully that should help.
As far as the difficulty of the game goes, some people find it super easy and some find it frustratingly difficult. I'm thinking the best way to reconcile this is to keep the game at a lower level of difficulty so as to not scare away new players, but then to create a harder difficulty version (an Expert Mode) people can choose who want a challenge. Maybe if you beat the game on the normal difficulty, a message tells you to give Expert Mode a try, and there could be possibly an extended ending or (more likely) one extra dumb joke at the end.
Difficulty scales up (kinda) with more players. Right now each enemy deals +33% more damage to players for every additional person in the game over 1, but people become fairies and can help out when they die to compensate. I haven't played enough team games to know whether or not this is a good system, but if you have any feedback let me know!
Also, the most common negative feedback I've heard is about the red flash when you take damage. I've toned it down and made it only appear around the edges now, but if it's still too annoying I'll get rid of it 100%. Please let me know what you think!
Played the updated version with 4 players now. Attached the replay if you need visual feedback. Nevertheless here is some direct one:
hitfeedback is absolutely right now, not annoying anymore but still useful
we managed to get through the harpy passage without a wipe, but it was still very hard and especially the Tauren Bossfight with the overwhelmingly big force that is spawned really gave us a hard time. We barely managed to get through (with 1 person left)
the camera had hiccups at some points of the game, maybe the replay can give you clues about that (dont really remember where they were)
rerolling feels much more limited now, but I think you still should be able to reroll at every item you get, not just 2 rerolls in the whole game. I wouldn't mind if you then decrease the reroll amount to 1 per item drop. The current version is just too punishing for new players (like me who wasted its charges on the first weapon without being aware of its limitation)
I noticed that it's really hard to regenerate life if you are hit and dont have fitting skills. Health-Orbs are very rare and are only obtained after (semi-)bossfights, although you get the most damage from the normal minions. Maybe adding an active potion ability (with a similar cooldown to the grenade) would help there.
Playing with other players was generally harder than playing alone, but definitely more fun to do. The fairy mechanic is definitely a nice compromise for waiting to be respawned at the upcoming checkpoint, but rather felt boring without any abilities and the damage you did wasn't helpful for your teammates either. How about swapping the weapon for an active heal or shield ability? Being a fairy it would make more sense that you could support your allies than do damage to enemies.
Also the game ends right after defeating the forest boss without any given reason, is that supposed to be?
Wow, thanks for such great feedback and even attaching a replay - that's super helpful. I'll be looking forward to checking it out!
I've been meaning to add "Reroll tokens" as a rare drop from enemies (or maybe just bosses). I just haven't gotten around to it yet.
Right now fairies have an attack and also automatically regenerate nearby allies' Health. I think you're right, replacing the auto-regenerate with an active skill, and then maybe adding one more offensive skill, like an enemy debuff or something would be cool and give fairies a little more to do.
The game ends after defeating the forest boss because that's the last level I've finished making. I'll be adding more over the next month to try and get as much content in before the contest ends as possible. I should probably add a screen thanking players and letting them know more content is coming soon so that things don't end so abruptly.
Maybe I'll up the rate by which health powerups spawn. I don't want to up peoples' inherent Health regen too much since some items already do that (and I want them to feel special).
Thanks again for all your help, and especially for the replay!
Played with 4 players, as P1 my health bar was bugging out, with sometimes numbers mismatching bars height, sometimes jumping between values, and when 3 of my allies died it showed "1" no matter which value I had. Also every time someone died I got to see "you're now a fairy" message. Also fairies can go down the cliffs.
And yeah, games ending is too abrupt. Why not a big "END OF BETA, THANKS FOR TESTING, CHECK BACK LATER FOR CONTINUATION OF RAYNORS BIZZARE ADVENTURES".
.. and rename the map to "Raynors bizzare adventure".
Hey Ducky, thanks so much for that bug report. I fixed the "You have died" text and the improper healthbar numbers, and added a little bit of ending text to let people know that more content's coming.
And I'm not even joking when I say that I'll consider "Raynor's Bizarre Adventure" for the title. It's very fitting...
Wargirl, Moustro, and I played through what we've completed so far, giving our best "commentary" on the way. We also have the next level out, and it's an exciting one!
This was actually the very first time the three of us managed to Skype together. Crazy!
Alright, the game is finished! There are 8 levels, culminating in the best and most hilarious final boss battle you'll ever see! Think I'm joking, try it out - I dare ya!
We're pretty much in bug-fixing and general refinement mode now. Any nitpicky criticism or errors, typos or game-breaking bugs would be great to hear about. And I think you'll have fun playing the game too.
Now if you're horribly lazy and don't want to play through the first half of the game, choose the game variant titled "Testing" to start half-way through. Be warned though, level 5 is one of the tougher parts of the game. This obviously won't be a feature with the final release.
Also, you can now pick your hero in the lobby so more than one person can be the same character. Not much for logic and continuity, but people kept wanting to pick nova!
Also, you can now pick your hero in the lobby so more than one person can be the same character. Not much for logic and continuity, but people kept wanting to pick nova!
Hey thanks for the replay and the bug report, Ducky! That was very helpful.
Also, Death By Fantasy is officially finished until the contest is over! The last thing I added was "Hardcore" mode, which ramps up the difficulty tremendously. Enemies deal more damage, can withstand more damage, more of them spawn throughout the game, and of course the biggest challenge: death is permanent!
Death by Fantasy
battlenet://starcraft/map/1/262742
Created by rut
Terrain by Wargirl
Soundtrack by Moustro
Supports 1-4 Players
From the same team that brought you Airstrike comes a brand new and original entrant to the 2015 Rock the Cabinet contest: Death by Fantasy. Wargirl has brought some of her very best work, creating an ambitious and beautifully landscaped Fantasy setting for the game, and Moustro’s completely original soundtrack is worth a playthrough alone.
Death by Fantasy is an incredibly simple game to learn: no difficult opening menus, no frustrating UI or unnecessary complex controls. It is a rogue-like adventure game following Raynor and his crew’s infiltration of the world of Fantasy in order to assassinate the evil Hybrid Maar, who is in hiding somewhere on the planet. You will fight through aggressive orcs, overzealous elves, hostile wildlife, and anything under Maar's corrupting influence.
Throughout your search, you will receive a variety of upgrades, ranging from different guns for your primary attack to fantasy-themed accessories. Each upgrade is presented as a simple choice between two alternatives. These alternatives are chosen randomly on each playthrough, meaning no two games will look the same!
Want to play through the game with the long-ranged Railgun, using Corrosive grenades, Blink, a Flamethrower, and accessories geared toward upping your speed and DPS? Or maybe you’d prefer a playthrough with a Shotgun and stun grenades, using a lightning-powered sentry to cordon off dangerous areas and emphasizing survivability?
Give it a shot and let us know what you think!
Will you be able to defeat the legions of Orcs, Elves, and fantastical creatures who stand between you and your goal? Or will it be…DEATH BY FANTASY?
Definitely fun to play. The humor fits the title, the fighting mechanic is really nice and the item-system is a very good addition to it. The flow is fairly good, still some of the upcoming points could definitely make it better:
Some bugs I found:
Hey Ultragon, fantastic feedback - thanks!
Couple responses to your points:
There should be range indicators for all your weapons, I'll double check the shotgun and whatnot to make sure I didn't mess something up there.
I've heard from others the harpy cliffs are too hard for where they are in the game so far, so I'll rebalance that. I wanted to ramp up the pace of the game after the first level but it's looking like it's too much difficulty too fast.
The checkpoints are a tough point for me. I might add a checkpoint after the harpy cliffs before the orc village since it is pretty tough. I know no one wants to be "punished" for failure, but at the same time I don't want the game to be a walk in the park. So it's a fine line.
The re-rolling will be limited. It's only unlimited right now because the game's in testing stages and I want to make sure myself and others can try different things out with some consistency. So consider it a debugging tool for now!
I've been thinking about dialog length and I've come to the conclusion that having the dialogue play a little longer but unpausing the game a little sooner would work well. I'll make it so that people have ample time to read everything.
I'll tone down the screenshake and red flashes when you take damage. I wasn't aware of a bloodscreen effect in the editor, I'll definitely check it out, thanks!
The Blademaster shrinking is to make up for some weird visual things that happen when I use his spinning animation. I know it doesn't look very good, but to leave him normal-sized would make the entire screen get taken up by the wind effects. It's kind of a catch-22.
At first there was a split in paths you could take after beating the first boss, with the path on the right being a little secret. Problem was no one would go there, so I made it required. I might put in some dialogue or a hint to go right so it doesn't seem so weird.
Thanks for the bug report about the flyer helpers during the Harpy fight. Definitely a bug I'll fix.
Thanks for the feedback, I really appreciate it!
on my screen i had to go to the very right side of the screen to make the camera move. i think you should play the map without a widescreen resolution once.
I have no idea why everyone is complaining about harpies. Map seemed to be super easy when playing single player. Was little bit harder with 2 players. I imagine it scales to complain-level when you play with 4?
Tho I did re-roll powerups to no end until I chose what I perceived as strongest choice..
(I've published an update that fixes almost all the issues that theUltragon brought to my attention, much thanks!)
Hey Funkyuser, I've found that there's a tough balance to strike between catering to widescreen vs non-widescreen monitors on things where you can't move the camera. I made sure that everything was reachable and playable on non-widescreen resolutions, but I agree it doesn't always feel natural when you have to click the very edge of the screen to continue. I'll try stretching those triggering zones a little.
Regarding the Harpy Cliffs, I think the issue is not that it's too difficult, but that the difficulty compared to the first part is so much higher. I published an update which lowered the damage of all the harpies and lessened the health on the tougher ones - hopefully that should help.
As far as the difficulty of the game goes, some people find it super easy and some find it frustratingly difficult. I'm thinking the best way to reconcile this is to keep the game at a lower level of difficulty so as to not scare away new players, but then to create a harder difficulty version (an Expert Mode) people can choose who want a challenge. Maybe if you beat the game on the normal difficulty, a message tells you to give Expert Mode a try, and there could be possibly an extended ending or (more likely) one extra dumb joke at the end.
Difficulty scales up (kinda) with more players. Right now each enemy deals +33% more damage to players for every additional person in the game over 1, but people become fairies and can help out when they die to compensate. I haven't played enough team games to know whether or not this is a good system, but if you have any feedback let me know!
Also, the most common negative feedback I've heard is about the red flash when you take damage. I've toned it down and made it only appear around the edges now, but if it's still too annoying I'll get rid of it 100%. Please let me know what you think!
Played the updated version with 4 players now. Attached the replay if you need visual feedback. Nevertheless here is some direct one:
Playing with other players was generally harder than playing alone, but definitely more fun to do. The fairy mechanic is definitely a nice compromise for waiting to be respawned at the upcoming checkpoint, but rather felt boring without any abilities and the damage you did wasn't helpful for your teammates either. How about swapping the weapon for an active heal or shield ability? Being a fairy it would make more sense that you could support your allies than do damage to enemies.
Also the game ends right after defeating the forest boss without any given reason, is that supposed to be?
@TheUltragon: Go
Wow, thanks for such great feedback and even attaching a replay - that's super helpful. I'll be looking forward to checking it out!
I've been meaning to add "Reroll tokens" as a rare drop from enemies (or maybe just bosses). I just haven't gotten around to it yet.
Right now fairies have an attack and also automatically regenerate nearby allies' Health. I think you're right, replacing the auto-regenerate with an active skill, and then maybe adding one more offensive skill, like an enemy debuff or something would be cool and give fairies a little more to do.
The game ends after defeating the forest boss because that's the last level I've finished making. I'll be adding more over the next month to try and get as much content in before the contest ends as possible. I should probably add a screen thanking players and letting them know more content is coming soon so that things don't end so abruptly.
Maybe I'll up the rate by which health powerups spawn. I don't want to up peoples' inherent Health regen too much since some items already do that (and I want them to feel special).
Thanks again for all your help, and especially for the replay!
Played with 4 players, as P1 my health bar was bugging out, with sometimes numbers mismatching bars height, sometimes jumping between values, and when 3 of my allies died it showed "1" no matter which value I had. Also every time someone died I got to see "you're now a fairy" message. Also fairies can go down the cliffs.
And yeah, games ending is too abrupt. Why not a big "END OF BETA, THANKS FOR TESTING, CHECK BACK LATER FOR CONTINUATION OF RAYNORS BIZZARE ADVENTURES".
.. and rename the map to "Raynors bizzare adventure".
@DuckyTheDuck: Go
Hey Ducky, thanks so much for that bug report. I fixed the "You have died" text and the improper healthbar numbers, and added a little bit of ending text to let people know that more content's coming.
And I'm not even joking when I say that I'll consider "Raynor's Bizarre Adventure" for the title. It's very fitting...
I agree that a good name for it thank you guys for playing and giving feedback.
Marie T. Freeman If you're too busy to give your neighbor a helping hand, then you're just too darned busy. https://www.facebook.com/wargirlmaps.maps
Spread the love join DISCORD
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Wargirl, Moustro, and I played through what we've completed so far, giving our best "commentary" on the way. We also have the next level out, and it's an exciting one!
This was actually the very first time the three of us managed to Skype together. Crazy!
Alright, the game is finished! There are 8 levels, culminating in the best and most hilarious final boss battle you'll ever see! Think I'm joking, try it out - I dare ya!
We're pretty much in bug-fixing and general refinement mode now. Any nitpicky criticism or errors, typos or game-breaking bugs would be great to hear about. And I think you'll have fun playing the game too.
Now if you're horribly lazy and don't want to play through the first half of the game, choose the game variant titled "Testing" to start half-way through. Be warned though, level 5 is one of the tougher parts of the game. This obviously won't be a feature with the final release.
wonky camera angle
Also, one guy dropped during loading but he still had his tychus. We also had 2 toshes (no raynor).
@DuckyTheDuck: Go
Hey thanks for that, ducky. May I ask what player you were in this game? And if you could send me the replay that would be fantastic!
[email protected]
Gotta catch all those bugs!
Also, you can now pick your hero in the lobby so more than one person can be the same character. Not much for logic and continuity, but people kept wanting to pick nova!
I had completely missed that :<
dropbox replay link
Hey thanks for the replay and the bug report, Ducky! That was very helpful.
Also, Death By Fantasy is officially finished until the contest is over! The last thing I added was "Hardcore" mode, which ramps up the difficulty tremendously. Enemies deal more damage, can withstand more damage, more of them spawn throughout the game, and of course the biggest challenge: death is permanent!
Death By Fantasy has been uploaded to all servers!
Thanks so much to TheSkunk for putting together this awesome little trailer video!