The Damned By: BVD Story After years of training, through blood sweat and tears you are finally ready to become a Master of Geomancy. You have come to the shrine of the ancient manticore to begin your initiation into the society of the Master Sorcerers. But before you are able to begin the initiation spell sequence you are interrupted by a ghostly voice. "Youuu muuust paaay" You recognise the source of the voice to be a death elemental, an old acquaintance of your's. You also remember that you have a hefty loan to pay back in the form of your life, so rather than giving up your soul you decide that its best to leave the shrine and return later. As you are about to leave you notice the previously inanimate statues at the entrance move and two giant cockroaches crawl out of the manticore's mouth, this may be harder than you anticipated... Spoiler: Screenshot Epilogue Leaving to a sufficient distance you cast a healing beacon and purge yourself from the cockroach slime and any other diseases that you may have acquired from that unpleasant encounter. As you are resting you are approached by three wizards, they congratulate you on how well you escaped their initiation trial saying that in all their years they have never seen such mastery of geomancy and offer you a place in their ranks. You agree. Spoiler: Notes When I got the idea for this map I did not expect it to turn out as strategically challenging as this - I was initially making it for the design rather than gameplay. But I am not very surprised as almost any map with geomancers will require a lot of strategic thinking, knowing the ai's behaviour also helps. The only downside is the roulette's chance of killing you, but this is an important factor in the strategy - the more characters are alive the less chance that you are hit, nevertheless rng can get a bit annoying and ot even got the the point where I lost eight games in a row because roulette hit me twice first thing in the first round - if my math is correct the chance of that happening is 1/48 ie 0.0208333333333333 so lets hope everyone dont get this kind of luck. Feedback is appreciated as always.
Gave it a try, got to the victory square with the Pawns and Roaches safely at a distance with rocks and acid between them and my Geomancer, 3 turns left before Doom activates, but lost to a Roulette. There's already been two MMs now that had a map Death Elementals with way too much annoying RNG and it's just made me so tired of the whole idea of Death Elementals in strategy maps. If you get lucky the Death Elemental just kills the Roaches for you, if you're unlucky you die. I'm sure there's a certain strategy that is optimal but it just doesn't matter when there's a Death Elemental that randomly throws around Roulettes and you have no counterplay to it, no way to heal the damage or otherwise prevent it. It isn't fun or interesting to play around, it's just there and sometimes it randomly kills you and sometimes it does not. All you can really do is Teleport it or put Acid under it but neither of those matter to Roulette. As it is I just don't like this scenario, there's been a lot of scenario submissions with Death Elementals lately and just seeing one immediately puts me off playing it. As for the map itself, the off-center object in the middle of the shrine is somewhat confusing, it looks like it should be blocking or difficult terrain, I'd suggest using a Portal instead. The screen that's using door tiles also looks a bit weird, but I don't know if the game has any better tiles for the purpose so I guess it's fine.
I could just remove the death elemental but then a. the scenario gets too easy and b. the whole map makes no sense. I know roulette is annoying and I talked about it in the notes at the end of the op so rather than criticising the death elemental some feedback on how to improve would be nice.
Victory squares that's just for the player should be red insread of yellow. Ways to make death elementals more fair might be to add lots more characters or add a friendly healer. Maybe a muscle zombie intead of the death elemental?
Some people are stupid and MM might be the first thing they play, because MM's unlock in a backward fashion (newest to oldest) I'd rather not confuse a newer player with what the red tiles mean, unless I make them blue in which case it is important for the player to understand. I think adding more enemies makes it too hard for newer players and like I said before I just like the death elemental figure because it suits the theme of the story like time ticking down, although I guess a Muscle Zombie is a good idea even though it doesnt really suit the theme as much. Thanks for the ideas nevertheless. Key: v2 = Muscle Zombie (changed tag to noKillPoints) | v3 = more cockroaches with death elemental Again, some feedback would be nice, but for reference I have tested both versions already: win - loss ratio | v2 = 3-0 (no need for luck - its just very easy) | v3 = 1-3 (I just used the same strategy as I did in v1 and it works just as well for 5 Roaches as 2) Ideas: I could prevent the Guardians from respawning, this would make the map a LOT easier though maybe a bit too much. Edit: Decided to make a v4 without the Guardians respawning, also I forgot to post the map files so here they all are. Also for reference win - loss v4 = 2-3 but I got very unlucky in the three losses - two were even due to a double roulette death so its up to you if you count them. My current favourite is v3 just because I like the challenge and it requires a lot of strategy to win with the roulette death chance lowered by a lot, but for newer players I think v4 is the best map so I am mainly looking for feedback on that one (though all are appreciated if you have time).
Played V3 once for a win and V4 twice for narrow losses (things like the pawns drawing brutal, etc.). Not my favourite level from you, BVD. It's very, very straightforward - move diagonally, skirt around the pawn, hope it doesn't draw moves, hope you don't get rouletted, and into the end zone. You could tighten up the lanes and add a couple of thematic allies, something weak but with a little control, even a bash? The geos have trogs, after all, so it's not so far fetched that he might have a couple of kobold attendants or something. Then the stress comes from losing useful allies to the roulettes. Is there a way that only the geo can trigger the endzone VP? It's like the MM with Stafford and the ogre, which is interesting because you have to work out what to do with the ogre as well. If it was just Stafford racing across the bridge for the VP, that level would be pretty boring.
