pantyfire wrote:

Tempy wrote:

The gameplay hook is that it's a difficult but compelling roguelike. The combat twist lies in the fact that attacks deal health and sanity damage. Sanity damage can cause people to be scarred with ailments which usually add negatives such as a propensity to steal items, harm others, or be afraid of certain enemy types, as well as other things.

You grab a party and go into a dungeon, which you have to explore. As you push further, the light goes out. As the light goes out you suffer more damage, take sanity damage over time, but your chance for critical damage increases. You also need to pack curatives, food, and sometimes camping equipment. Finishing a dungeon increases your levels and nets you loot that lets you upgrade your settlement so you can foray further. 

Your crew toe the line between indispensable and collateral to your ultimate goal, as you may mismanage them into a position where they're so afflicted with problems that you may as well suicide them, or they are so high levelled that they won't partake in the quests you're currently doing.

Combat is class based, with your crew all doing different things that are largely based on the positions that you put them in. Lots of status effect stacking, manipulating your positions and the enemy positions with abilities, and doing your best to turn stacked numbers in your favour. 

Essentially it's 2D XCOM style roguelike, but with a sanity mechanic woven through it. I don't know where the Match Three thing was coming from.

Thanks.
I did say it looks like those match 3 [crawlers] minus the match 3 aspect.
You set a party of different aspected and coloured allies, healer brawler, ranged etc... then you go into the dungeon, you meet a screen of foes. Select the one you are strong against to attack and then match gems on the board, that determines the attack strength. Then the foes have their turn to attack you, repeat...
So not too dissimilar by the looks of it but just without the match 3 gems type of thing was what I was getting at.

Right ok, I get you! Nah this is based on the type of RPGs that inspired the crawlers. But it's still an RPG, so there's more granular gameplay decisions in battle. Every move you make is you trying to minimise the risk you expose your party to.

The disposable nature of your team is new to me in an rpg or xcom type

Hello

I'm loving it, best £5 I have spent on a game for donkeys

Donkey's ages

Always take someone who can heal. You pick characters and their skills based on their position, which the game will handily summarise for you by the size of their pips. Like any RPG you want a good mix of stuff. Healer, Support/Debuff/DoT dealer, Tank, DPS all that stuff. Certain people are better in certain areas than other (bleed is useless against skeletons, blight is useless against toxic enemies and stuff.

You really just learn as you go along. The tutorial is largely fine for teaching you the most important stuff: Damage over Time stacks and is very lethal, you can miss very easily, critical damage hurst, everything will kill you if you push your luck.

I'd advised a team like - Plague Doctor, Vestal, Bounty Hunter, Crusader, in that order as a good solid comp, but reddit and the DD wiki have lots of guides for picking good teams. They won't help you understand them if you don't really understand the game though, and that takes patience and practice, and a bunch of reading what your skills do. 

Plague Doctor for example has a great skill that targets the back line which stuns an enemy, shuffles them to the front, and clears all the corpses. You can use that to push the enemy's protected backline to the front so your tank and DPS can execute them. Stuns are useful but they make it harder to stun next turn, weak enemies that deal sanity damage are 100x more lethal than those that cause health damage, because its very hard early on to heal sanity damage in a dungeon. 

Keep in mind smart combos like the Highwayman, Bounty Hunter and Arbalest who all interact with the 'mark' status effect. You can use that to nuke down people down quick sharp. Probably wouldn't run all three together though as you'd likely need a tank as two of those roles are squishy.

Always make sure you upgrade the caravan first cos a village overflowing with fresh recruits is better than one full of dead heroes.

Also upgrade weapons first. Damage out is better than resisting damage in.

Cheers Temps really helpful. Will have another blast.

And tempy's tips are spot on

Tempy wrote:

Also for non-DD folk, Data Wing is supposed to be ace (my phone doesn't support it)

Data Wing is indeed great

Another shout out for Data Wing. Excellent.

hylian_elf wrote:

Simogo games are 99p for limited time only. Go get them all!!!

I haven't played many of theirs but Beat Sneak Bandit is the best iOS game ever made.

Yep.

Sailors Dream looks good, visual novel I think. Haven't played it yet myself. 

Bumpy Road and Kosmo Spin aren't all that, but they're only 99p!

Split is decent.

Currently ploughing through Iron Marines, a decent wee RTS. Think Cannon Fodder.

Do you spend anything in any games post purchase, disc included?