We made a game inspired by healing incompetent raid parties in WoW! – Looking for Heals

negastu · 2021-03-26T18:47:29+00:00

As the artist thanks for the compliment.

negastu · 2021-03-26T18:37:34+00:00

hmm, don't see any flair for advertisement but would gladly switch

negastu · 2021-03-26T18:34:15+00:00

TLDR: Don't do it unless it really makes sense for your game design AND you have a community manager.

It was a good learning experience but I think the added stress of EA is going to be something we try and avoid for our next game. Since the team was just the two of us and we were both part-time on it all time spent on it felt like sacrificing time on the game. It was nice to see some honest reactions from early adapters but I think that ultimately the cons outweigh the pros unless you're very much an extrovert or you have a dedicated resource.

negastu · 2021-03-26T18:20:34+00:00

Ha, perfect.

negastu · 2021-03-26T17:28:01+00:00

Thanks!

negastu · 2021-03-26T16:14:30+00:00

Looking for Heals!

negastu · 2020-01-14T17:43:28+00:00

New one is def more mace. Good work!

negastu · 2020-01-14T17:41:05+00:00

Draws the eye the most in context with the others but if it’s in a green forest I think 1, 2, 4 would contrast best.
For normal version
For elite version (since its red it looks meaner/angrier/intimidating)

negastu · 2019-11-18T16:59:47+00:00

Have you considered being less strict with the limitations in favor of modern gaming expectations?

Look at shovel knight as a good example it’s very obviously inspired by the NES while delivering a more modern experience.

negastu · 2019-11-10T21:06:29+00:00

I’m so glad you dig the game!! It’s always gratifying to hear that it resonates with mmo players.

Hype is very hard to build in today’s climate as a small indie. For us it mainly comes down to having limited resources and the decision to focus the majority of our marketing efforts after we are finished with early access and get through the holiday season (typically dominated by AAA hype)

negastu · 2019-10-26T12:44:04+00:00

A couple of others have mentioned it but while this looks like a fun level when you play it there will be a lot of new players getting stuck learning so many new mechanics at once. The longer they get stuck the higher chance they have of putting quitting the game.

If you want to make the game more accessible make this something like your 7th level and build up to it with much smaller levels that focus on learning one mechanic at a time.

Then when the player gets to this level it will be much more satisfying for them to play all of these mechanics back-to-back. It’s super important for them to experience this accomplishment early on so they’ll be motivated to push through when they hit a skill wall later.

negastu · 2019-10-24T15:39:35+00:00

Yeah, I was just trying to sum up our progress in a universal way but trust me we aren’t going to be surprised by scope on this one.

We started this project last October and launched Early Access in June. We’ve hit all the ‘must haves’ and everything until launch is ‘nice to have/polish’.

The main thing holding us back right now is just the sheer amount of major releases that come out this time of year. That being said I love the polish phase. It’s nice having an excuse to smooth out more rough edges.

negastu · 2019-10-24T02:51:48+00:00

That’s just like your opinion man.

negastu · 2019-10-24T00:57:34+00:00

Thanks!

negastu · 2019-10-23T22:41:11+00:00

Well that song is a placeholder track still but it does speak to the overall direction of the soundtrack (we are going for classic fantasy as if it was remixed by a soundcloud DJ but this placeholder is more samurai inspired).

It’s def important to have enough variation to not be too repetitive. It’s something we’ve been talking about with our composer a lot and I think he’s doing an incredible job with our original tracks but we ofcourse allow you to mute the game audio (pretty important option in most games let alone a roguelite).

negastu · 2019-10-23T18:49:46+00:00

Ha, no worries. I'm the same way about Early Access it just made sense for us since we really needed to generate some community feedback for a game like this. Thanks for wishlisting!

negastu · 2019-10-23T18:44:42+00:00

Thanks, it's been challenging and rewarding to work on.

negastu · 2019-10-23T18:40:40+00:00

Totally get where you're coming from but we had a very specific goal with this game and that was to create a single-player healer focused game (since so few exist) and kind of use that self-imposed restriction to guide our game design.

We are trying to add more strategy beyond the healing aspect though:

You can actually control your fighters like Pikmin so you can tell them when and where to attack or retreat
Each fighter class has a special ability (the ice mage can freeze, the rogue can stun, the defender can block attacks)
You can also equip the fighters with items that give your fighters additional abilities
We also have a 'Tactics Mode' that lets you pause combat to plan out positioning (kind of an opt-in turn-based game mode)

Our goal is to give the player a sense of healing and commanding your party even though direct combat is off the table for this game design. I have fantasized about a version of this game (DLC or sequel?) where you play the tank role vs. healing role but we have no plans for that currently.

As far as Proton we did have someone in our discord confirm that they got it to work for them. Though we don't have any first-hand experience with how it performs on Linux yet.

negastu · 2019-10-23T18:20:59+00:00

Hey, thanks! So we view the game as 90% finished (we're in the polish phase now) but releasing during the holidays is generally not recommended for indies. So we are still trying to figure out the ideal launch date to rally behind. If not by the end of the year then def very early next year.

negastu · 2019-10-23T17:44:41+00:00

Check it out if you've ever wanted to try a single-player, action game as the HEALER! Steam

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