Concerns about monotony of Solomon game
I have been playing Solomon's Keep for last few days and I had an issue with dozing off during gameplay while I am doing one hour challenge. Luckily, I solved that problem by listening to some Cuphead ost and finish the game on time. After completing the game, I have realized that the overall tone of Solomon games have been very monotonous and it may become quite a problem with the new SKHD. I know you have realized that issue a bit and made new quest, different monster, new layouts, and etc to make SKHD less monotonous. However, I feel that it is still not enough to solve it. Here are my suggestions for designs of SKHD to make the game more engaging on each run:
1. Less grey, more color. The overall tone of the keep has been grey and I felt that is what made the game very monotonous aesthetically. Of course, I am not suggesting we put some sunshine and neon signs in the keep. What I am suggesting is that it would be more appropriate to have some sort of different tones for few floors of the keep. For example, some floor could have Cherenkov-ish blue tone with blue glowing skeletons and zombies, Toxic green tone with bunch of vermins and putrid monsters, Hellish orange tone with demons and burning skeletons, and Arcane purple tone with ether monsters and abominations. There are various ways to make a creepy necromancer's keep with more colors. I recommend to fiddle around with RGB to find interesting color that could also fit with the creepiness of the Dork Lord.
2. More stimulating music: Don't get me wrong, I really love the music of Solomon franchise in general. I just felt that the song was pretty monotonous enough to put me into sleep (possibly because of listening to the same 1 minute length of music for hours). I understand it is difficult for you to deal with this problem but if you want SKHD to be perfect like I do, I believe you will need to find a way to get more stimulating music for the game.
3. Faster player: I always felt that the player was too slow compared to the map size. It is really painful to clear each floor not because the monster was difficult or anything, but because it takes so long to find every single loot and monsters in each floor (of course RNG can f*** me up too). There should be some sort of running or sprinting mechanism like Diablo 2 has so that players can explore the map much faster....... Or you can just make them as Gordon Freeman.
4. Sub-dungeons: Sub dungeons are good way to make playtime longer without increasing the volume of the main dungeon. In SKHD's case, there can be some arcane rifts, demonic portal, ancient pre-war secret lab, sewer, meat processing plant (for zombies), or even a portal to Rainbowland. I expect you have already thought about that idea but I wish you could just make theses sub-dungeons more unique than just another grey room with more skeletons.
5. God system: I don't think you really need this system at all but would be nice to have as a some sort of DLC or something. God system has various unique gods that has different personality. If you do something that the god likes, you gain more piety which grants more powerful abilities and gifts. If you do something that the god dislikes, you get punished and even be excommunicated. It is pretty much a very powerful perk with great penalty. Just because you are a mage or necromancer, does not mean you are an atheist.
Keep the good work on RwK and boneyard beta stuff but hopefully, this helps in anyway to make SKHD better.
:-bd
Comments
2. Music has also been a factor of iPhone 1's memory. If you've tried Solomon Dark, there's more music there, and if you look at the Solomon's Keep Greenlight video , there's even more music there.
3. SKHD is actually going to feature a somewhat faster player. The "rush" skill is being tossed in favor of perks and item effects, so it's necessary to start with a faster player.
4. This is already planned for.
5. KeepHD will have perks, similar to Boneyard, to mix that stuff up. But it also has a few different features I won't announce yet, in case they change or turn out to be a bad idea. The general gist of SKHD is to be Keep, but with a lot more. There's randomized quests as well, since a proper dark lord has to kidnap pet kittens and virgins and stuff just to keep his reputation up.
BUT: One important feature of Keep that will stay is that it will always be designed to be a "short" game. Winnable in an hour. The only difference is going to be that if you want to take longer and see more, you will have that option.
Good thing the game doesn't have a sci-fi setting. Otherwise, Solomon would face a serious robot problem.
Solomon specialized all his skill points into undead+demons+vermin+black magic with none of that sissy purple ether stuff, or any of that pathetically slow fire stuff, or any of that girly air magic, and especially none of that "playing life on easy mode" cold magic.
Though in HD, I have some plans to change Gauntlet Mode to be more interesting, it might be necessary to descend into Hell just to double check that Solomon hasn't managed to take over the place.
They're pretty different. Sirmin would look down on you. Solomon would look down on you from the rim of his pit as the scorpions pick all the flesh from your bones.