Bay 12 Games Forum

^This. Can't wait for online multiplayer (apparently the dev is looking at ways of implementing it. He's worried it'll make the game too long. It's usually 20-60mins a game, so you can usually fit one in on a long lunch-break).

I'm not that good at it, but it's quick and fun. I can even recommend paying the few dollars for the extra races, not so much for the different starts, tech paths or number of opponents, but because the graphics are so damn cute.

If it ever gets different map types, sizes and has a slight re-balance pass (navigation ships are probably a bit too good right now), I'll be playing this forever. It's already pretty good as is, even if I can't get a decent score to save myself.

It's got a tiny 3.5mb footprint on your phone anyway (60mb on SD), so you may as well have a copy of it on there permanently.

Quick update for stuff I missed for Soul Knight: There's combat pets. I don't know if there's any difference between them, but I've got the cat, pig and robot so far. They're just free mini-npc helpers. You can still hire NPCs, pets do almost no damage, but free is good. I've got an idea the robot might have a ranged attack while the others are melee only.

There's bows in the game too. Charge 'em up for more damage, representing you pulling the string back further. There's a perk to speed up charging time too. Kind of changes your playstyle from run'n'gun to cover-sniping. Feels good. There's magic staffs too, which tend to be shotgun'ish or multi-directional weapons with elemental effects. Burn, poison, freeze etc. There's tonnes of other stuff, but they're just off the top pf my head on the big groupings I missed.

There's a crate you can buy in your base upgrades, which means you'll always start with another low-end weapon. I thought it was single-use, but after you've bought it (1000 ingame thingies, like the pets) you'll always have it. Makes it easier to decide on character build perk choices, and you'll never be stuck with just the starter pistol. Shotties, better pistols and assault rifles in it for the most part, but they're useful for the first few floors. Random, but it gets you going if the RNG is screwing you on weapon crates and shops.

There's also a safe that gives you a few coins to start with (handy for early floor purchases, even 2-4 gold can make the difference), and a book that ups your critical chance (I'm not sure, but that might be the melee looking stat on characters and weapons. The last one. More is better and there's a perk for criticals being piercing shots as well).

Oh, and the Wizard character is awesome. A little squishy, hopeless in melee, but amazingly useful. Chain lightning FTW! It's like you've got a good spare ammo-less weapon at all times, and it's the perfect opener to any fight. They might have to tweak the cooldown a bit, because you can often use it 2-4 times per room (whereas the knight might only get 1-2 uses of dual wield. Then again, he scales with the weapons used and the lightning doesn't. Dual wield is far better for bosses too).

There's statues/shrines that you can worship at too. I don't know what they all do, but the Knight one gives you an occasional free NPC melee helper randomly for one room (they don't stick around, but they do respawn in other random rooms), the Assassin one (or was it rogue?) lets you fling a fan of knives every once in a while, the Elf one gives you a whole room radius blast effect when you use your special (only 2'ish damage, but it might be nice on the rogue or wizard character) and the Magician one gives 4 free homing projectiles per special use (do unto others as they have done unto you). There's a fair few, and they're about the cost of an NPC hire for the buff they give.

Oh yeah, there's chest mimics too. It scares the crap out of you the first time, and they're pretty tough (and in a small room with no cover). Shoot lots. Keep shooting. Don't stop shooting. And hope your armour can take the damage. Evil bastard mimics.

Character upgrades seem to go: +1 armour, +1 health, +20 max energy, -cooldown(?), +skill time/damage(?). Not sure on the order of the last two. But the Knight's dual wield burst lasts long enough to get through two waves in a room, and who doesn't want more chain-lightning damage to soften everything up into 1-2 shot range? Even the +20 energy is great for the Paladin (who's huge limitation is ammo). It makes it slightly easier, but I got to the second boss with only the first upgrade on the Knight, and still haven't gotten further with them all on him now. I'm pretty bad at taking cover

Weapons seem to go white, green(>?), blue(<?) orange, red for "order of rarity". Probably. There may have been a yellow in there too. Reverse Wonderboy II health order or something for weapon rarity? A rainbow of killy fun. This doesn't actually give you any idea of its power or usefulness, but I tend to pick up or buy most things until I know what they are. Try them in a room or two if you don't know. You can always swap back afterwards. Thank god for a universal ammo pool. You can actually use whatever you find (though not necessarily all the time. Just mostly, if you like it).


My sad progression (there's only three full levels so far):
Got to 2-5 and died on the big robot boss with the knight character. Had a frost sword and a nasty laser. Was using a splitter cannon before then (think the flak cannon secondary fire from Unreal Tournament) but couldn't resist the freezing effect. Dual wielding twin frost swords was too cool to pass up. Damn near killed him with it too.
Did it again with a sniper rifle and a big homing rocket launcher. Died again......
Got there again, with a Shotgun Pro (tight spread shotty) and a Glacier (freeze on crit sniper rifle, 48% crit with my perks) and killed him. But died to the last few bullets bouncing around. Grrrrrr. I might record an EveryPlay thing so others can feel my pain


I'll add more features as I find them.




A couple of youTube vids of early gameplay (I play way more riskily than this):

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6M5uFcMweBs (yep, there's a tutorial)

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KKpNDsv010o   (this one's up to the first boss, though there's the Grand Magician instead of the Knight sometimes as well)

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lxyk4kBLxh0   (seems to be on bluestacks/NOX, so movement isn't great, but there's a bit of melee gameplay with a pitchfork)

Soul Knight is a roguelite twin-stick shooter similar to Enter the Gungeon and Nuclear Throne, but on Android and with auto-aim. Don't let this fool you though, it's still pretty damn hard. Currently in Early Access, so there'll be improvements and content additions, but it seems feature complete from a gameplay perspective. And it's pretty damn good too.

It uses a room mechanic similar to EtG, rather than the open playfield of NT. Every few levels are themed (first level group is knights and wizards, second is skellies, etc) with a boss to kill at the end of each lot. It's all RPG/medieval themed overall, but with guns. Lots of guns. About 120 in all.

There's plenty of character choices, a few for collectable currency, a few for real money. They've all got different stats, health, armour (regenning health), energy max (your ammo pool) and their own "special" that's on a cooldown. The knight dual wields for burst firepower, the rogue dodge rolls, the magician lightning bolts stuff, the vampire creates bat swarms and life-leeches, etc.

There's a levelling system (permanent health/stat upgrades) before a run paid with collectable currency, and an ingame level-up perk after every few levels cleared. Stuff like better accuracy, more health potion drops, melee weapons reflecting bullets (yeah, there's melee in it too), immune to traps, immune to fire/explosions, wider lasers, cheaper store prices, etc. There's quite a few, all with varying usefulness to make a character build from. You get 1 choice from 3 ala NT's levelling system, so there is some decisions in the matter.

The guns are fun with a wide variety available. You can only carry two at a time, so choices must be made. They all run on "energy" as a basic ammo pool, with stronger guns using more energy per shot. There's plenty of zero energy use weapons around, including your basic starter weapon and backup melee punching, so you're never *that* constrained by it. You get a bit more energy after each room is cleared, there's energy potions, and the starter knight character has a good energy pool anyway. So let 'er rip. There's everything from basic pistols, to shotguns, to swords, to smgs/assault rifles, up to multibarrel rocket launchers, gas grenades, death beams, lock-on missiles and charge-up bubble blowers. I've only had about 6 runs, but I've found some fun stuff to use every time and haven't ever felt a lack of choices in them. The further you go, the better the found and bought guns get (I had heaps of options by level 2-2, some pretty powerful).

The graphics are in good pixel-art'ish style, the sound is great with a good up-tempo soundtrack, and it seems to be a good all-round product. Controls are tight and responsive, movement is fast and fluid, and enemies and room layouts are varied enough to not be boring. No real grind or hoops to jump through (you can grind if you want, but it's not a barrier to progression or content) and it seems pretty fair and free overall. Most importantly for a roguelite twin-stick shooter, the weapons are great and abundant and the enemies are tough enough to need them. So give it a go, Early Access or not. It's a really good game, and I'm glad there's some decent stuff like this coming out on mobile these days. I'd happily play it on PC right now, so that should give you an idea of how far along in development it already is (and how fun it is to play).

Oh, it's also a surprisingly moddable game as well. There's a few .txt files that let you edit pretty much everything.

"names.txt" is the main one, letting you edit everything from hiring costs (for cheating purposes) to cargo/building prices (for differing economies) to AI use of units (may crash game, but have a fiddle for different era's and unit types).

It's all pretty easy to read and understand. Way easier than DF modding due to its brevity. I don't know of any mods actually made by anyone, but I've always wanted to have a crack at making an Australian one just to see if it would work. May be a bit weird due to mechanics->nations->history and the time period, but so's vanilla Colonization in some ways. Sort of an alt-history, the Great Australian Revolution.

Doom Warriors - Tap crawler is what you get if you combine the dungeon exploration mechanics of Gumballs & Dungeons with a tap based "shooter". Honestly, I'm still not sure I like it. But I'm going to mention it because I tend to like everything Doom orientated.

You couldn't really stream this game and explain what's happening on your side of the screen. Because what's going on would appear from the outside to be you having an epileptic fit, thrashing away at your screen as quickly as possible, while swearing sometimes. It's innovative, I'll give them that.

For everything that you thought "fuck that" about the whole Pokemon-Go walking around thing, this'll probably still get your heartrate going, even as you sit on your arse. And in theory, should void your phone's warranty due to basic screen abuse after a bit too.

It's kinda cool. Worthwhile playing for a tiny bit, preferably with someone else filming you for the lols. You probably wouldn't look as ambulatory on a tablet, but on a phone with double thumb tapping and your tongue slightly hanging out, it's golden.


There's weapons with AoEs, perks and roguelite progression systems, risk/reward on map exploration and "worthwhile" progression, but the basic combat mechanic is dumb as shit. Possibly in a good way. Or in an RSI inducing one in any case. It's not hard to explain, but you have to play it to understand why it's dumb and cool at the same time.

Give it a burl, just for giggles on game design.



((you'll never know when you should be using your bigger weapons, but it's Doom related. So probably as often as possible. I'm not sure if there's a strategy there, but I wish there was. One of this title's few big downfalls, even as a very simple game. But hey, I played it for about 20 mins. There's probably a "thingy" or a "feeling" for ammo consumption and the use thereof you'll get on extended play of it. But even knowing a 1-3/1-6/2-4/3-6/3-9/whatever monsters *before* the encounter would make it a better game))

((There's no fucking exit button. This is a crime. If you're going to make a game and want people to respect you, put in an exit button in your app. Or get tossed in the bin as someone that doesn't create "a whole program". It doesn't show that you're still working on it, or that we're committed to the functioning of it, end the fucking program so we don't have to task-kill it as a nuisance, and we'll come back to it happily. I honestly don't care if you skipped the last sections of your game development course. You released your game on the playStore, there's IAPs in it, so how's about you learn how to deallocate resources and give an exit button to the user hey? Just to look half-way professional.
/rant))

But back to my usual thing on phones. Roguelikes/lites. These all deserve more than a quick paragraph, but meh. Try 'em out and give 'em one yourself.

Cardinal Quest 2 is a light hearted little romp through a few areas killing bandits for reasons (haven't quite finished chapter 1, died at boss area) with a nice little stat and cooldown based skill system, a bit of randomish loot and some nice maps. Grabbing whatevers from houses is a Zelda bonus, but it's fun. Simple skill tree, simple items, very Pixel Dungeon-like, but better in many ways. Nice interface, easy enough character unlocks, is fun.


Caves (roguelike) is another goody. It's got a bit of roguelite progression due to you keeping your gold/emeralds and starting item blueprints, a fair amount of customization for your starting character due to choosing stats, items and weapons/armour choices all being available straight away, with further permanent progression available longterm as well. The goal? I'm not sure. Get more gold, more loot, and kill stuff. I like the aesthetic, I like being able to mine out walls to set up strategic areas from the get-go, and I love being able to either invest previous gubbins into a run or be given real options from the start even without this. I'm surprised I don't see more people lauding this as an amazing roguelike.


WazHack is a side scrolling roguelike with great graphics, an easy/complicated interface, and more "normal" roguelike systems. Yep, everything from completely unidentified potions/scrolls/weapons/armour/gems, right down to the floor level 2 cursed Amulet of Strangulation (and you not bothering to pet-check it first). It's semi-shareware (try it out to 300 foot depth with any character, but it's $1 per character-group "unlock" to actually play the game beyond that. Once unlocked, use those character-types as much as you want), but I've got an idea that this might be worth it for a couple of the more interesting ones to play. Very Nethackish, but with lightsourced 3d'ish graphics all in a 2d side-on perspective. Weird, Waz, but probably wonderful.

Yeah, some of the buffs/debuffs seem counterintuitive, ending up on the wrong side of the screen than you'd expect. I have no idea if they're doing what I think they should be doing and it's a graphics bug, or if they really are helping the enemy.

Found a chest with 1000 soulstones in one run and decided to unlock the necromancer. Wow. Having barrier and shield as your class item "thingy", as well as scouting/PIE/Dex, makes things go much more smoothly. It's not necessarily easier or more powerful, but it's way less random at the beginning.

Could we get a list of each classes expected "thingies" going too? There doesn't seem to be much on the wiki in the actual jobs page.

Like Priest: Overheal/Rest, PIE/Str but for the ones you don't start with. Gives an idea of what you might like to try next.

Necro is Scouting/Barrier/Shield, PIE/Dex, starts w/ Dark Sphere(Int)/Summon Zombie(PIE)/Sacrifice(-2 barrier, extend buffs)/Wait. Not bad as soon as you grab another PIE or Dex skill. Starting with free move zombies gives a really good building block for a run, and barrier/shield items give you the breathing room to find stuff.

Any suggestions on what class to unlock next?

I hadn't mentioned this in the pocket games thread, because I wasn't sure if it was too basic or too unfinished enough for basic consumption yet. I rather enjoyed it.

You can get some ridiculous combos of skills going that'll 1-2 turn most things, with free actions and status effect chains all keeping stuff immobile for you. Until you don't and you die. I forget where I got up to, but it was way past the ancient knight. I may have just suicided because it was like an endless dungeon at that point, me being virtually unkillable (or rather, everything else being easily killable) and having lucked out on such a good item/skill set that it was almost impossible to upgrade. Was still quite fun.

If you like ohNussy's style of games, I implore you to try out DeckDeDungeon2. It is seriously the best deck builder I've ever played. Same bad translations, but you'll get used to what everything does after a bit. Persist with it and all that card text becomes second nature (kind of). If you liked the internally synergistic combos in BuriedBornes, DDD2 cranks that up to 11 and rips the knob off. Great art, nice and free (within 3-5 days of playing you'll have everything you need card-wise) and god damn, the combos........ Cool "altered dungeons" too, so you'll have to learn to play a few styles of deck, there's no optimum deck for all dungeons. It's a little buggy, but still very worthwhile a look.

(Note that DDD2 takes a fair bit of space on your phone, ~250mb, and the first few loads take a while, but it's worth it.)


Huh. Weird. I can't find DDD2 on the playStore anymore. Part 1 is there (completely different game), but part 2 has disappeared. So has DeckDeFantasy, which I used to be able to see, but not d/l (Japanese only release at present). Maybe they ran out of server cash due to the online component?