Demonarch

To be honest, I was skeptical about how fun the game would be, but enjoyed watching you work on stream. Now, I've finally given the demo a chance! (v1.29)

Good: 

I wanted to play the tutorial level again to figure out what I could do differently. (And to find that darn secret! Haven't yet...)

You bill this in the stream as an "RTS", and I was skeptical just watching the stream about how much strategy it has. But there were enough potential decision points that felt meaningful to think, "Yeah, I see where this is going."

In any tutorial, you have the tension of what to explicitly tell the player and what they should figure out on their own. The food mechanic felt good here. At first, I thought you had to throw meat at the demons when they got hungry. But then discovered the demons will walk up to you to eat.

However, one thing feels strange. I can walk into a empty house, and see that there's no meat. But demons destroying that house will give meat for...reasons. This is counter-intuitive. Not sure if this needs to be explained explicitly.

To add:

List of keys and controls somewhere. Some other comment mentioned the tab key does something? I never figured out how to sprint, or even knew it was an option until reading other comments.

A pause button. Due to prior gaming experience, I figured Esc would display it, but it's not obvious for a new gamer.

Problems:

In the very starting house, I had a problem opening the door! It's not clear that you need to walk up closer to the door, then left-click. (I tried right-clicking without being close enough, left-clicking without being close enough, walking up to the door and pressing space bar, and walking up to the door and right-clicking before figuring it out.)  Maybe the dialog could include the word "left-click" somewhere.

Imagine someone walks out the door, summons their first demon...then makes a sharp right. It's a large area with almost no resources and is the opposite direction of the goal!  The demon(s) will quickly get hungry, and it's hard to recover.

The sleep mechanic. On stream, you'd mentioned you want the player to explore the map. But the sleep mechanic almost directly discourages exploration. It feels like I have  to stand still and do nothing for 30 seconds every 2 minutes. An idea is that only combat causes demons to become tired (or, simple walking around doesn't increase tiredness so quickly).

The combination of limited food and sleep is an additional damper on exploration. The tutorial encourages the algorithm "If the demons are not tired, beeline towards the next source of meat or portal. If the demons are tired, stay in place and don't do anything." It feels like there's not very much time to explore.

Both times I played, I "destroyed" the keep, but it was confusing to see the end game screen. The first time, demons were banging on the door, without obvious progress. I walked around the keep, got sort of close to the item, and then got the victory condition. The front wall of the keep was still standing.

The second time, I was not very close the keep, chasing around some archers. It went to the victory screen after they all died (I think?). I don't remember if I had collected the reward item in the keep or not. Then, some enemies spawned or respawned 30 seconds after being in the victory screen.

When I get time, will try to reproduce these.

A suggestion here: as the keep is "killed", pause all other action, and point the camera on the keep. As the keep crumbles, the player will know "Oh, I did it...and what is that special item in there?" Afterwards, switch back and let the player grab the "prize".

Hi so since you aren't streaming right now I don't know where to submit a bug but when i charge at a person using tab while they are getting attacked by a pig demon i get thrown across the map. Also another small thing is that the sword of the guy coming to exile me from my house clips through the door. Also if i am walking through a door while the house gets destroyed i get stuck into a wall for a coupe seconds. Thanks

Has potential but is basically unplayable as is.

1. No indicators of any sort (bars for demon conditions, sprint tiredness).

2. Items usually just get destroyed by the demons before you get them, and no indicator of what they do if you do get them (this mechanic seems intentional but is not user friendly).

3. Sprint arbitrarily runs out for no good reason, which is punishing to the user.

4. Food is a precious resource yet there really generally isn't enough of it and the carry limit is pointless. This is set up like a strategy/management game but you have no way of getting extra resources in some cases.

5. Summoning is very buggy, often the words will not appear.

6. Demons are way too uncontrollable. If some are tired you have to stop or they will die yet another demon might see something to chase and go really far away.

7. Sleeping is not a player friendly mechanic. You have to sit still for about a minute doing nothing hoping your other demons don't get angry for waiting. I recommend maybe having some different resources other than food that you can gather and balance instead of this.

8. Generally games should be designed where if the player makes good choices they are rewarded, and there is a way to make such good choices to win perfectly (or easily at least). As is, you can be easily frustrated by events that feel outside of your control. Recommend shifting the game format to challenging you to make choices about management rather than be in a constant lack of everything and have the demons freak out.

9. Suggest giving the player character a couple of abilities to influence outcomes. If you have demons trying to rest and one villager is running around would be better to just kill them with the player and let the demons rest.

10. Demons could level up or at least have their statuses restored by destroying things to remove the poverty mechanic.

Definitely an interesting concept. Had me thinking "is this what it's like to be a parent?" the whole time. Very solid demo. Great work!

A couple of the bigger things:

1. Definitely add more tutorial elements. Maybe pause the game and have a short tutorial overlay appear to show some main helpful tips. Then "click" to continue. You do a good job with this through gameplay. Figuring out what you do with meat when your first demon gets hungry, etc. The only thing I really wanted with this regard would be a short description of the items you pick up. A couple are pretty intuitive (like boots with springs on the bottom), but it would be nice to have something pop up saying "Boots of Jumping-Really-Forkin-High: Makes you jump higher". It would even be pretty cool to see the items in the pause menu. Maybe silhouettes of the possible items you could collect. Then the art fills in when you collect it. And you can hover to get a description. This might also make the player "intuitively" feel like there is permanence to the items they collect, for replayability.

2. It feels like there isn't much the player actually does. I was collecting meat and summoning demons. Then just standing around waiting for them to destroy stuff. Maybe include some subtle "control" for the player. Nothing to overpower the chaotic feeling of the game, because that's what makes the game awesome and hilarious. An example would be something like a "rally call". When one of your demons is sleepy, you get the option to hit a button and rally your demons for nap time. Maybe a whistle. Then all your demons recall to your location and go to sleep, whether they are exhausted or not. This would be a good way to get your demons set on the same clock. I found there were many times I had to wait for a demon to sleep while other demons were standing around like "let's go man, what's the holdup?". Still allows the game to feel chaotic, but gives the player slightly more control. But I wouldn't allow this mechanic at all times, otherwise it could be abused to control the hoard's movement. Only allow it when at least 1 demon is in the exhaustion state.

Great game though! Feel free to bounce ideas off me any time. I was helping a guy in our East Lansing office design a game before I moved out here to our headquarters.

Glad to have demo'd this today at PAX! Cant wait to get my hands on the full version. The interesting concept and design pulled me in right away!

Well User335 Here's my take on the game so far.

Finding and remembering where the portals are seems to be key before starting havoc and completing a mission. Because of this, what will stop the player from Looking around every nook and cranny for items? Perhaps a locked door where you have to find the key, or setting up guards restricting access protecting something valuable, or have guards chase you away if you get too close would be a good way to go.

Good dialogue. Can quickly exhaust it but hey this is a demo more stuff will be coming soon, and I'm looking forward to it. :)

This game has potential.

The dialogue with characters was very cool. As a player, I didn't feel like I could do much. The goals are shown when hitting escape, or pause I think? I was confused at first what needed to happen. I was able to easily take down the castle. I assume you'll be adding multiple levels. I saw some problems with animations but I don't think that's a deal breaker. I was very surprised by the dialogue with characters. You had them say some awesome stuff and that really shocked me.

How do I enter the hellcarrot cheat code on 1.10? Are there any other cheat codes?