Daemonica impressions
 

Hi all,

I work for the company that published Daemonica and I'm very interested in hearing what you think of the game (good and bad).

I look forward to hearing from you.

Jeff

Welcome to the forums Jeff. I'm always happy to see a developer or publisher looking for feedback from the gamers. It shows dedication to making a product we will enjoy.

At first I glossed over Deamonica previews wrongfully assuming it was another Diablo clone but the press given to the game from the adventure community has really sparked my interest. I have not had a chance to play the demo yet but I hope to get to it this weekend. I'm looking forward to checking this one out.

...bysmitty

DL'd the demo and am installing tonight! Intriguing looking title.

Hi, Jeff.

Yes, welcome to AG. :) If our Hints forum is any indication, quite a few people are playing the game, so hopefully they'll wander by and see your thread.

I said most of what I thought in my AG preview, but haven't had the chance to check out the final version yet. The game is definitely a nice change of pace, though. Not every game needs to reinvent the wheel, of course, but I can honestly say I've never played a game quite like Daemonica before. And that's not something I can say about a lot of games, so that's worth something. :)

I enjoyed it. I'm actually kind of embarassed that my review gets cited one of the lowest scoring ones :frown:.

Thanks everyone for your kind words.

There's a new demo on our website. This demo has no time limit and allows you to play (and complete) Act I of the game.

Robert, you can always change your score ;)

Welcome Jeff! Please stick around. I love the fact that a fair amount of game developers are part of this community. I really loved Daemonica and would be glad to give you some comments. But first of all, give my compliments to the whole team.

First, the good:
* I loved the immersion of the voice acting and writing. Somehow I prefer games that are only partly voice acted. It makes it more of a big thing when you do get spoken lines. It was always fun to get to another narrated screen, it gave me a sense of accomplishment. This was in a very large part to the great quality of the writing and the voice actor!
* The game was oozing with atmosphere. The music was very nice, especially the music of the main menu. I'm a composer myself and the quality of the music can make or break a game for me. Again, the writers did an outstanding job for the atmosphere as well.
* The journal was perfect. Having some notes on the characters and what you need to do is something I like a lot, and is sadly missing or inadequate in many games.
* I really enjoyed the part of the ending where it tells what happens to the characters. It gave me flashbacks to Fallout, but in a good way.

What could be improved:
* Most of the time I liked the herb gathering, but there should have been more herbs. Often I needed absolutely every herb of a specific type on the map to make the potion I needed to continue, so I would keep running back and forward searching the map, until it became more of a bother than a pleasure.
* The love affear between the player and you-know-who could have benefitted from some more dialogue. For example, there was some foreshadowing that you-know-who was a reincarnation of some woman in the player's past, but that never got explained adequately.
* Sometimes an NPC would keep giving me the same dialogue each time you speak with him or her. This was very apparent with the witch. Instead of repeating the lengthy introduction conversation I think a simple "This character has nothing more to say to you at the moment." would be more elegant.

Anyway, I really enjoyed the game and I'm looking forward to your next one!

Does anybody know if Farepoynt's voice actor was British or American?

That's a random question. Sorry about that. Now I need to go and find out if "herbs" genuinely was pronounced as "'erbs" in Medieval England :D...

I can't speak for medieval England, but the "h" in herbs should be silent...at least in America it is. I had an English(British) professor when I was in college, and I remember her pronouncing the "h" though, so maybe it's an American English thing.

Well, the modern pronunciation in British English would be with an aspirated "h". I'm not sure about the fourteenth century, though (kind of embarassing given that I was studying this period a couple of terms ago).

Ahh. Hmm. According to the Oxford English Dictionary the "h" was mute until the 19th Century. So congratulations to the developers :).

Just downloaded the demo tonight. Will report back this week.

EvilMulder: Thanks for the feedback. There will be a walkthrough coming soon but in the meantime I've attached a herb location map. I don't consider this a spoiler as nothing in the way of story is given away.

Note that herbs spawn at different location for each act. The map indicates all possible locations an herb can grow throughout the game.

RLacey: For what's it worth the actor who voiced Farepoynt is Canadian.

The screenshots remind me of a Twinsens Adventure style.

Not impressed with the demo.

Needed to be a lot better, shame really :/
 

.. in a Tinderbox with a crippled cameraman :pan:

The Good
First of all, kudos for the excellent atmosphere! Very dark and moody, loved it. :D Even came quite close to the feel I got in the original Diablo, which was the most .... err, atmospheric (?? LOL) game I've ever played.

So the voice actor's Canadian, eh? That would explain why I at first felt his accent was a little weird. But I got used to it, and it was very cool after that. I feel his narration is a big part in establishing the mood.

The Bad
I absolutely hated the walking/navigation. If the story weren't so interesting, I would've stopped playing a long time ago just because of this. :shifty: Sorry if I keep comparing to Diablo, but it's really annoying that Nicholas doesn't keep walking in the same direction if I keep my mouse button held down. Especially when I'm moving towards the bottom of the screen, I have to click once per second to keep moving.
And the unclickable trees and buildings are also annoying, I often have to change perspective just so I can click somewhere so he can keep walking. Having keyboard control of his walking would've helped.
Also, I found it annoying that Nicholas can't automatically go to the place I mark on the map (with the green cross).

I didn't like having to look around for (new) people, especially after I got all the map markers. Of course, this wouldn't've have been so bad if the navigation were better... :P

I didn't particularly mind the load times, but I think save time was much longer than I would've expected.

After drinking the Soulgreep, and Nicholas starts speaking, I didn't like how the hover translation of his words disappear way before he's finished speaking.

Finally, the reason I created this account to post here. 'Crashing'.
I'm stuck in the end of Act 2. I have H's body, knows he was cut to death, have found his birthday, and he's definitely greedy. So I drink the Soulgreep, go to "death by weapon" room, but no matter which altar I go to first, Nicholas will start his incantation, and then stop. But there aren't any options for me to choose. I can't click anything except move the camera. So I have to jump out to windows to force the game to close. I've tried many times, and tried talking to everyone again. Read the walkthrough, didn't miss out on anything. It just 'crashes' there.
So Jeff, any ideas on what I can do? If there's no solution, or there's no patch coming out soon, I'm going to have to delete the game. Which would be a pity, considering I really wanna know what happens/happened.

I've done it right after posting :( Game bugged out when trying to get the wine from the table, from the maid .. no dialogue option & to start over & have to find all those scattered herbs .. no thanks :/ Ah those Canadians ..

Actually, that's not really a bug. She's won't help you out with giving you her master's wine unless you help her out first (with Simon).

Athios, thank you for your feedback. I'm sorry it's taken so long to write back but preparing for e3 is keeping me quite busy.

We are working on a patch that will address some of your points (navigation, font size, herb placement/spawning, etc...) but this is the first I've heard of this crash. Can you use the ESC key?

Perhaps email me offline - [email protected] so we can get to the bottom of this, and hopefully get a fix into the upcoming patch.