Monday Screenshot 3/9
There was a question in the past about whether Solomon's Keep would just feature wizards again. The answer is an emphatic no! The game will ship with four character classes, and if the game does well, an eventual expansion pack will add more (I have skill trees laid out for Druid, Priest, Samurai, and Assassin).
Of special note: There are no idiotically confident, wisecracking heroes in Solomon's Keep. Solomon's reputation is huge, and everyone goes into the keep knowing that their death is the most likely outcome! Character portraits will reflect this awful reality.
The Wizard's story is the same as iOS Keep-- it's your final exam.
The Paladin received a dream/revelation/sign that this was his mission.
The Rogue has been offered the option to storm Solomon's Keep or be hanged.
The Necromancer is Solomon's former apprentice who hopes to assume ownership of the Keep.
Comments
Btw I just realized that games from Get Set Games looks a lot like the old "tabletop figurines" style in classic Keep and Boneyard. So, y'know, if you wanna recreate that feel with the new 3D models maybe you can learn something from 'em!
I kinda regret the amount of flexibility the wizard has in old keep. It's causing problems because the wizards have about 70 skills, but there's not 70 skills one can add to a Paladin or Rogue without ending up with tons of redundancy. As a result, I might end up breaking wizards out into a couple characters, just to balance the skill system better. The downside of that is that it'll break spell welding completely.
And darn, that video won't play for me. But I have pretty bad internet for streaming HD stuff.
On that same subject, that's also why I push the random skill picks... I assume most people have played Torchlight. In Torchlight you see levelup descriptions that (exaggerated) say "Adds .00000003% damage to all attacks." They HAVE to do that, because a player could just pick that same skill for 20 levels in a row, and if they make the number excitingly large, they get far overpowered players. When I do the random skills, I can say "Doubles attack damage" or "Doubles the area of effect" and I don't have to worry about a player picking that skill over and over again until they are the ArchAvengingAngelOfDoom by level 8.
But I don't mind players being overpowered--for a bit. I think the ideal fun of a game is, you levelup and suddenly, wow! Everything has changed! For a while, at least. My goal is for every levelup to change how you play in a large way; You can go from a guy who has one measly magic missile that has to play the whole game fleeing backwards-- until you suddenly get one point in More Missiles and your whole play-style changes into the aggressor.
And if your random rolls allow you to become the ArchAvengingAngelOfDoom, that's rare enough to be a fun and exciting treat.
Archer=Archer + Sneakiness skill tree
Assassin would be in an expansion pack, if the game does well enough to warrant an expansion pack. Ideally I'd have 8 classes when it's all said and done.
I want to save all my skill points until I get to the later point and then spend all of them at once like Solomon so I can fight fire with fire, or death with death. Isn't that the story of Solomon?
In the first case, I have to take into account the person who is going to do NOTHING but levelup Magic Missile and thus if the levelup effect is profound, they become the unstoppable conquering machine by level 3. I do want people to sometimes be unstoppable conquering machines, but not every single time!
That said, I'm putting in a few things that give a little more control for people who want to guide their destiny more closely.