Bevontule - Pre-Alpha Demo
 

The pre-alpha demo for the tactical turnbased RPG Bevontule has been made available on IndieDB.

Thanks daveyd!

More information.

Developer of Bevontule here! Would love to answer any questions or hear any feedback about the demo or general game itself!

I'll download this tonight and give feedback, LLLC…okay downloading the 800 MB demo now.

Okay, are there any stats or anything? I've got 3 guys in a field and we fought some creatures and talked to a couple dudes. Someone found gloves. How do I equip these?

Is there a way to save progress? I don't see a save key or option in the menu. Probably won't play 3-5 hours straight.

Oops, missed that tab opens up the menus. So I can equip my gloves if I find them the next time I play. Got killed by a group of dudes guarding a bridge. Looked like one dude and it was 5 with a cleric that never runs out of spells. My guys have to take a round to drink potions, but the cleric cast a spell in every single round. He must have been 10th level to my 1…which is fine. I wasn't supposed to tackle the bridge yet and got wiped.

Went to the caves instead and got wiped out there too. Two of the characters have almost no armor and wimpy weapons. They average less than 15 damage on most hits and get hit for 25+ by almost anything. You're typically outnumbered, the creatures move farther than the party, they give status effects like blind and poison and your party is level 1. Was the demo to encourage or discourage folks from playing? I tried giving one guy the armor from the soldier dude, but equipment disappears if you take it off; at least if it was stuff from before the demo starts. I was able to equip and unequip the carapace.

This isn't to say that you can't win out there. You probably need to fight wolves and spiders before moving on. Should I try to grab several of the gold mushrooms in the cave and then head to town? I found several that I could just run past the spiders, but I got greedy. I noticed that I can level up, but can't spend any of my skill points. I'm assuming the skills don't exist, except for what you put on the dudes in the beginning.

Gonna try one more time, by turning around and heading into town instead of trying to fight. Maybe I can steal some better equipment because these dudes have no chance against the beasties with what they're using. Nobody has a bow, which is what anyone would use against creatures with a ranged attack. Monster ranged attack 25-40, my thrown dagger 5-9.

Well, went to town but there is almost nothing to interact with there. A chest or two with a little money, but no merchants, no trainers, no skill increases, no trading between party members, an almost non-existent inventory system, etc.

Did you folks post this at RPGCodex? Most people here aren't into testing and providing good feedback, so I'd suggest posting over there too if you haven't already. You'd probably have 30 folks testing and replying over there already. A warning though; the language over there can be harsh. Just ignore it.

Hey crpgnut, thanks for downloading and trying our game and thanks for the detailed feedback as well as the suggestion to check out RPGCodex (honestly didn't know these places existed so thanks again!)

As for your points:

The demo follows a fairly strict progression and while being open-ended, you'll need to do a little bit of grinding before you delve into other areas. I would recommend getting to lvl 2 or 3 before heading into the cave. As you surmised, the dudes on the bridge are not to be trifled with too early (at least they warned you though! :) You can see enemy levels below their portraits on the top-left side of the screen when in battle. As the game is still relatively early in development, we need to add indicators to enemies on the field so that their level can be ascertained quickly without having to go into battle with stronger foes and get wiped.

Basic attacks are generally weaker, but there are many, many skills that can help to give you an advantage over enemies. In particular, several of Bodom (the damage-dealer)'s skills do far more than 15 damage. Enemies are strong, I will admit, but there are lots of ways to get around this. Did you use the taunt skill, in particular? The guy with the shield and sword is more of a tank character and can usually absorb way more damage than the others. Positioning is very crucial in this game as is the utilization of combos, which are when characters use successive skills against the same target. There is also a battle tutorial video in the title screen that shows some of this as well :)

Each character has access to 5 different skills. In the actual game there will be a skill system and skill-point based progression, but for the demo, we wanted to give the player access to a wider variety of those skills.

I'm not sure what you mean by this. Can you elaborate a little more? If equipment is disappearing, this is obviously a bug and a situation we want to fix! :)

There are lots of chests and NPCs scattered around the village. There are also three shops that can be found toward the center of the village and are marked on the minimap with gray 'dialogue/shop' icons. There are also over 50 or so items to be found in the game as well, running the gamut from consumable items, weapons, armor and equipment, and accessories that boost attributes or provide status immunities.

Again, thanks for the feedback and you have given me a nice list of things that we could make more apparent. Thanks again for the recommendation on RPGCodex. I have pretty thick skin, so I think I can handle whatever they've got. Thanks again and take care.

Maybe where I went wasn't a village? It was several houses and a field and I tried opening every door. I was able to talk to a lady about thistle, is this the right map? There is no doubt I could have missed something as I was up past my bedtime testing this ;)

As far as armor, I tried to take off the tank's armor and give it to the DPS dude. When I did this, the armor disappeared completely. My tank couldn't put it on anymore and my DPS dude didn't have the option to wear it either.

I find the DPS dude dies in a couple hits and he has to be very close to hit at all. Even if I lead with the tank, the monsters focus 100% on the DPS dude till he is down. Then they head for the healer and then they fight the tank last. Since the monsters have greater movement, in most cases, than humans my DPS dude can't attack and then move far enough out of range.