I would very much appreciate your help testing the new version of Blight of the Immortals. It’s a little rough around the edges, but I think it’s great to have community feedback very early.
Please login using your Google Account for now. We don’t have internal accounts at this stage.
I have a short video tutorial for the beta. It should outline the core mechanics and provide enough info to get started. You can view it from the main menu.
The online store allows you to spend hero coins to buy new cards for your collection. At the moment you can buy any number of cards and your coin balance will go negative. Feel free to buy as many cards as you like, but there are still a few heroes with no art or powers. Buying coins via paypal is disabled for now.
Beta 2 will end 1st August with a database reset. Your account, collection, and highscores will be deleted and we’ll start fresh.
Multiplayer has been disabled until Beta 3 in August.
Your feedback is very much welcomed:
What was most confusing about the game?
Were you able to make interesting decisions or was the only course of action obvious?
Were there so many variables that deciding a strategy was impossible?
The first area that comes to my mind is user interface:
The game seems too click-intensive for me: You need 5 clicks to move one unit (and as far as i can see, you can only order individual units, not stacks of units): 2 to select, 1 for Move Button, 1 on target, 1 on Save.
With a stack of units it is a pain to see which unit goes where and when it will arrive. When on a detail view of one unit i can not easily switch to the detail view of the next unit in the stack, but i have to close the detail, select the stack again and select the next unit i want.
Coordinating attacks with units of differing speeds is difficult (that does not have to be bad): Can dwarves and elves assault at the same time? Don’t the elves always outrujn the dwarves…
I would like the detail view to open on the side of the screen, not in the centre obstructing the view of the map. Also with the first click on a city/unit/stack the detail view should open (saving a click…)
Next area is general concept:
So while the artwork is really nice, the general handling feels clunky to me and puts me off from investing more time in this game.
I don’t get the card concept: It actually breaks my immersion, as a deck of cards has imho nothing to do in a computer game of army management. I like deckbuilding boardgames actually, but it feels artificial to me in this context.
Sorry for being so negative, hope it helps nevertheless.
Thanks for the feedback, not too negative at all, I need to hear it otherwise I can’t fix it!
I will work on improving the clickiness of the game. Right now there is one more click than NP because I didn’t want to have a move button on the selection menu this time.
If you “swipe” on a unit in the “other units section” you will find a button that says “gather” to create combined stacks to form an army.
This should be improved with gathering and army building.
You can move the main panel to the side just like in NP, but there is a bug at the moment where the card hand stays in the middle.
I really like deck building games too, and I was hoping to add some of that high level strategic thinking. The heroes you choose to put in your deck can really make a big difference to the way a mission plays out. I hope it adds a whole new dimension to the game so its not just an army management game.
Thanks for being so open and replying quickly, that’s awesome!
If you “swipe” on a unit in the “other units section” you will find a
button that says “gather” to create combined stacks to form an army.
What exactly do you mean by this? How do i “swipe” on a PC?
I really like deck building games too, and I was hoping to add some of that high level strategic thinking. The heroes you choose to put in your deck can really make a big difference to the way a mission plays out. I hope it adds a whole new dimension to the game so its not just an army management game.
I get the intention, it does not work for me though, at least yet. For me it would be more natural, if a city let’s you create certain kinds of units and heroes. If i see the deck as a Anti-Zombie-Taskforce that i use and build up from mission to mission, i slowly get there. And this Taskforce is slowly arriving at the scene of the mission. But still, why would i represent those as playing cards?
This might come down to a simple matter of taste, so don’t take this too seriously, it might actually click with other players.
Wow, that’s the best hidden control i have seen in quite some time… i would never have found those buttons on intuition alone. So i have to disagree with you here, i don’t like this hiding of buttons at all.
Another minor thing: The cards are Turned a few degrees to the left. While that looks pleasing it also leads to not beeing able to read the unit description without clicking the card… hence more unnecessary clicking here.
Haha yes! But I hope in time it will be as natural as right-clicking on things so see a context menu. (in fact that will be my fall back, to have a little button on there that will bring up a menu with extra controls.)
Hello, first post here as a new player (since 2 days).
Is it the right topic to list little suggestions about the game’s interface or mechanics?
As a new player I’m beginning with the tutorial, “The First Encounter”, made it a couple of time already. There is no “Skip” button on the tutorial layer when starting this mission, is it intended?
Hello @Blackzep! Yes, thanks for trying the game. Please send me any feedback you might have.
I only just implemented the click through tutorial on Monday and Tuesday this week. I was thinking that I would only allow a player to play First Encounter once, but I guess in hindsight having a button that lets you simply close the tutorial might be better.
What did you think of it? I really hate tutorials so I tried to make it very short. I just wanted explain the absolute bare minimum then get out of the way. Were you able to work out how to move units around and cast powers fairly easily? Did you watch the video as well or just jump right into the game?
I hate tutorials too when they are too long or just runing through several chapter.
I’ve found this one well balanced, I had to play it three time before (I hope) I’ve fully understand the game’s concepts. Since “Ironwood River” seems to be richer (more villages, no Dwarves city to start, Ents) I guess the tutorial should stay open for everyone to familiarize. I’ve seen it more as the first map (board?) of the game than one of these “childish” tutorials that nobody plays
I did watch the video first, it’s ok.
I’ve achieved to move units and cast power. As a desktop player I guess the mechanic to move units could be better. Or did I miss something? Actually I have to select unit, clic “Move”, chose a square or set a path then clic “Save”. (to be honest first game I’ve try to move like in Civ)
About the spell casting I’ve encoutered a “bug”: When units are gathered I can’t see in the party window when they are ready to cast again, I have to fully break the group then close the party window and clic any unit on the square to have a list where the “bolt” icon appears if powers are ready.
I’ve just uploaded a new version of blight with better move commands. You can now simply left click to select units and right click will give them a move command.
Later today I will fix the issue with grouped units and not being able to see if their power is ready.
Just created my account: ok
Launched the tutorial to test the right clic move: really great
Another feedback I could have is about the way to gather units.
I guess the “sliding” way to do it is great on mobile or tablets (I don’t use both) but it feels uncomfortable on desktop. Drag and drop on the “party” window could be an idea for desktop?
Yes, I knew that the sliding thing would be controversial.
I actually did already implement dragging and dropping. It was more easy than I thought it would be, but it didn’t work on mobile at all and my first preference is to just have one way of doing everything. I think the sliding thing can be cool, just needs a bit more polish I think.
Yes I understand and at the same time I guess drag and drop is way too old fashioned for mobile and tablets
What I feel uncomfortable on desktop is to hold the mouse button and do the whole slide with it. Maybe it could activate alone after few pixels slided? Just slide enough with mouse to activate the animation.
In massive armies finding individual heroes/units is difficult so I think an option to make them alphabetical order or just have them be that by default. You may have to move the number of units after the unit name to make this easier.
Also to make using abilities easier would be when you click on a unit to use the ability have their picture/ ability button pop out on the side instead of having to scroll up to find it.
Last one I can think of right now is the ability to unmerge unit stacks unless you feel this would be unbalanced or is part of the risk vs. reward part of merging.
This is also in a suggestions thread if you want to pin it or something where everyone can pool their suggestions
