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Fun concept, art could use some work
Thank you! Yeah, unfortunately I’m no artist, so art is definitely not my strong side. But an art upgrade is planned in the future (and at least some basic animations :)) - not something too big to be expected, but should better than the current state.
Theres a bug on my tablet where the menu buttons dont go away when playing the game and i cant pick up anything since the home button is in the way of the item pickup button and trying to press near it does nothing or actually pressing it presses the home button instead leaving me back on the homepage. Though aside from that this is good
Interesting, they should disappear automatically (and they do without issues for me). Can you please tell your phone model and Android version? Not sure where to start addressing the issue, but let’s try if I’ll be able to find any solution online.
Hello this is a minor bug I've found playing on android if you click the different tabs in the vinculopedia fairly quickly it will crash and reset the entrys.
Everything other than the vinculoedia is fine after the crash.
I’ve managed to reproduce the crash! Thank you! I’ll investigate it asap.
Amazing! Someone recommended this to me a couple months ago because I love bondage and roguelikes, but I'm not into furry stuff so I was too impatient to give it a real chance. I grabbed it again with the latest update (I was actually hoping there would be a human body option, lol) and ended up playing for seven hours straight! The sheer variety of creative enemies, mechanics, and situations you can randomly stumble upon is fantastic, and I love how rough the game treats the player: being pushed around by rams, lashed into a helpless puddle by a group of whippers, randomly blindfolded while you're trying to compare loot, getting squeezed into hilariously negative stamina, taking a little nap and waking up stripped and bound, etc. This is peak erotic bullying, and I love it! Filling out the Vinculopedia is a lot of fun. And it's hard! I'm really enjoying the actual struggle instead of having to play dumb to get dominated. I'll have to play more before I give any feedback because I'm too new and don't understand it all yet, but I'm definitely looking forward to more updates on this. Please keep up the good work. It's great stuff.
EDIT: I just thought of something. It'd be nice to have hints on how many additional parts of an entry are left to find. Like you don't know if an enemy has unique interactions if they find you sleeping until it happens, but trying to get caught sleeping by every enemy is quite a task. Or how many more of these guys do I need to beat to be able to see their stats? Just a little direction-giving for collection fanatics like myself would be appreciated.
Oh and there are some error messages that pop up when I look at a lot of Vinculopedia pages but they let me keep playing, so non-fatal. I tried to screenshot them but it just captured the title screen of the game. They're very common though, so probably easy to repro.
Thank you for the feedback! I really appreciate that!
Yeah, I’ve had an idea of option to have humans for a very long time - with ability to switch between “only furries”, “only humans” or “both” in Options. I’m almost done with “species” support, it’s just that we only have “fox” species for now. I just decided not to “delay” the release too much for more drawing that will most likely take a few weeks to a few months.
And yes, I’ve got a ticket to make it clear that something about the specific monster is not yet unlocked :) Just need to think how to make it look good (and I’m really bad at it :D).
Indeed, Windows sometimes doesn’t like taking screenshots of fullscreen apps. There are several ways to fix this issue. First of all you can take in-game screenshots by pressing F5, the screenshots will be saved in your game folder. It will also take into account “Censored in Screenshots” option. Second, you can switch fullscreen/windowed mode by pressing F11 - there won’t be problems taking screenshot using Windows tools this way. Or finally you can use some third-party app that works better with full-screen applications, I myself using Greenshot.
Indeed, sometimes there are error messages popping up. Most of them can be safely ignored, those are just reminders that there was some unexpected situation which was properly handled, but shouldn’t have happened in the first place :) However, sometimes something more serious may happen, which in case it was just a log about error - means that something went really wrong and the game recovered, potentially with some minor glitches. Unfortunately, there are a few more serious issues when the game just crashes :D But I really hope that the latest update addressed most of them at least by reducing them to minor glitches :)
Is it possible to make it sandbox or somthing like it caz i'll be happy and maybe others will too
While the game mechanics support sandbox elements (like building or destroying), the game itself (at least currently) is not very suitable for this kind of gameplay. However, I plan to implement at least some sandbox elements (rebuilding the settlement and some rudimentary crafting), though I’m not yet sure how much freedom those will offer - as they not only need “to be”, but they also need “to be fun” :) Currently this is not a priority task as in the current game design it’s rather a “cool additional feature” than the main game mechanics, but I’ll look if I can squeeze it somewhere earlier. Definitely not for the next couple of months though, still working on body shapes and poses.
By the way, in background I’m sketching two potential next projects both of which will have a much higher capacity for sandbox experience. Be it Vinculike 2 which would feature an open world, or Ergocraft (a 3D voxel game like Minetest or Subnautica). But both of those are for a relatively remote future, after completion of this project, which will definitely not be finished this year :)
Not dead right?
Yes, pretty alive! Almost there with a new big update - just needs a tiny bit more testing to call it “stable”.
awesome!
Not a bad game. Keep up the good work!
Thank you! :D
Could you adjust the UI to one side, so that I can have an easier time playing the game with one hand only? My other hand is occupied, for reasons, you know...
I’m afraid I’m catastrophically awful with UI design. I wonder which functions do you use most often? I tried to keep everything important in action at the right side, however I see that the “pause” button is on the left (and I personally use it quite often). If this is the issue - I can try moving it to the right side of the screen too.
Right now I’m trying to improve the UI (to have space to add skills and spells and more equipment slots) but it’s in early stage, so it’s the perfect time to apply other changes too :)
This seems good so far, looking forward to further additions!
Thank you! :D
30 days, i miss you buddy, btw i started making my game too
Ah, this time unfortunately I can’t say I was busy with a big task - September didn’t feel well and made very little progress unfortunately :( Now better, aiming to make some update soon :)
Super happy for you! It’s a really exciting hobby to have :) Just don’t start with something too big - one step at a time and it’ll work out!
to late my ADHD mind Is arleady working, btw i'm using godot, you?
I’m using Castle Game Engine :) Also free and open source but not as famous :)
cool
Can not wait for more stuff like the glue and resin, being encased and stuck like that is Amazing and was blown away when it happened.
Liquid latex, rubber, etc would be amazing as well... All in all Amazing graphics, amazing captures, 10/10
Oh, and whats the chance of adding WASD support for PC?
Thank you! :D
Hmmm… I didn’t think about adding more rubber/latex/glue things - but amorphous things aren’t too hard to draw, so makes good sense to add more in the future! Good idea!
I’m planning adding keyboard/controller/touchpad support, but not in the nearest future. Now focused on adding species/poses support. Maybe after that? Anyway, that won’t happen this month, and most likely not the next one either.
No worries at all, take all the time you need on the Keyboard support, im still having a blast either way and cant wait to see what you do, also the slow covering with the glue making you slower and slower is awesome as well. Slow progression bondage is the best hehe.
I'm glad the bug that allows a dozen girls to get trapped in one room has been fixed but the bug in question still effects me. I have a dozen girls stuck on one floor and the even tho the game puts a girl that fails to save them a floor down all the girls on the floor in question stays puts. This means I'm soft locked out of going past said floor due to the dozen gaurds.
Oh, indeed, the fix affects “new girls” but not the old ones. I’ll try to make a “debug option” to fix old girls (no pun intended!) as soon as possible (busy today, but maybe will manage in the evening). (You should have reported it earlier, I could have fixed it long ago :) I just didn’t realize this is something that indeed can happen)
Sorry for the delay. Took me a week to get to publish a new build - finally ready. To “rearrange” the prisoners on the level you need to:
What will happen:
This game is ridiculously addictive and I like it a lot.
I wanted to comment earlier, but had account issues. Well, what I would have written then would embarrass me now.
Now for actual feedback...
Maybe there should be a limit to the number of guards that can be on one floor. On my first save file, I got 6 girls stuck on floor 7, which meant that I had to face 6 guards before I could rescue them. Now that I properly understand the enemies and concepts like numinescence, it's not so scary anymore, but back then I felt like it was close to impossible. Especially since guards are noisy and tend to attract each other, forcing you to face multiple at once.
This game could also be called "The quest for good shoes". Do shoes really have to be obliterated when worn off? They can be manually fixed and they will drop in a broken state when broken due to an attack, so why not when worn off?
The controls are very rough, stealth attacks are extremely unreliable due to sometimes just not triggering and the character often rolling into the completely wrong direction or getting stuck on nothing, but I guess it's an early state of the game.
When I first played, I thought stealth was everything, any more than 3 noise being unplayable. You take damage for being exposed and/or not wearing shoes, but that amount wasn't too bad. I would still recommend new players to play like this, but once you get into the late tens, the damage from being exposed piles up and there are better options for stealth than being exposed(plus many enemies have numinescence vision). Now I think noise as high as 12 can be tolerable. Stealth is good and saves weapon durability, but if you know the enemies well enough, you can use some careful maneuvering or stamina for dodge rolls to take them out head-on.
That being said, if your noise is 1 or 0 and you can just rush through a corridor, instantly killing all enemies on the way, it's extremely satisfying.
Resting is currently very annoying, but a good way to level up, I guess. Also there seems to be a bug where sometimes all enemies will just stand in front of you and wait while you are resting. Kind of creepy, but beneficial.
Huge thank you! :) I’m very busy right now, I’ll try to reply in detail a bit later. In short: indeed, you’ve mentioned most of the issues that I really want to fix, I’ll try to be more specific in a few hours.
Horribly sorry for the delay. I’ll try to catch up now :)
Yes, this is not how it’s supposed to work. Currently a lot of systems are in “temporary” state, and several characters captured per level is one of those. My overall idea is that when a character is captured at a level where there is another prisoner - the heroine will be moved up a level, maybe more. This way “more than one prisoner per level” will be rather a fallback than a regular situation.
Actually, I guess it’s already time to implement this feature. That shouldn’t be hard.
Overall I wanted to be a “small but important micromanagement”. But eventually I absolutely agree - this feature is instead just annoying. I’ll change it asap.
Indeed, this is a very very annoying bug, or rather a set of bugs. I hope I’ve finally found the reason for “stuck on nothing” bug - it’s not too quick to fix it, but the fix itself hopefully will be relatively trivial. The map also should be much “smoother”, this will leave less places for the character to get stuck on - but this requires a bit different generation algorithm (I’ve got it planned, but first I want to make the basic gameplay systems right).
Yes, I’m aware of that. And not yet sure what to do with this issue. First the resting should be dangerous and “fully rested” next to impossible, and it works. Second, resting should be next to impossible on some levels, and it also works. But in the end on average instead of being fun - it’s rather annoying (because requires wasting a lot of time, instead of exploring a new map - fighting on an already explored one). I’m not yet sure how to fix this issue. Ideas are welcome :D
Yes, I know about this bug, but I couldn’t figure out how to fix it so far :)
Thanks again for your feedback!
(Now for your more recent posts…)
Now what's the best way to keep the feedback organized without an ever growing tree of threads? There's always a bit more to say~
My idea with the guards problem would be to have a maximum number per floor, maybe scaling based on floor size and just skip extra girls if too many, but dropping them a little deeper in also works.
Resting is not as annoying anymore since the addition of sleeping bags, I can reliably fully restore my stats on any level that has one, though it made me overconfident.
As for stuff related to the Wrapper update:
I do in fact roll up to the exit to camp when I have a sleeping bag. It consumes dozens of max stamina, but that doesn't matter since I can regain like 200 between reinforcements.
I found the debug menu by accident before, but I kinda don't wanna use it since my Vinculopedia is like 98% complete now and everything had been done organically so far.
In my experience I get like 1 catsuit, normal or loose for every 5 of every other item, so I guess I must be unlucky. But I don't see a reason to wear a loose catsuit, the stats are terrible... I would only wear it to test Living Suits. I guess it has higher def than the normal catsuit, but if the normal catsuit had 0% Def, that would be a buff anyway imo.
Unrelated feedback:
I would like my camp to be a bit more lively, but I don't wanna summon more girls and sacrifice them to the abyss just to get new camp music, plus it gets harder and harder to get them back out, since there's no way to rescue a girl without getting another stuck at least as deep... Is that an integral design decision? That one girl must always be stuck as deep as possible?
Are features like "Way to move girls back a few floors/flee from the dungeon(Like in The Enchanted Cave)" likely to be added?
Or a way to get a nice camp that acts as a display of the player's skill, rather than a monument of their repeated failure?
More reliable ways to execute sneak attacks? Like lock-on or lurking behind corners when an approaching enemy is known(Would probably makes Will-o-wisps a lot less scary)?
Personally for me the best way is through GitLab issues: https://gitlab.com/EugeneLoza/vinculike/-/issues - you’ll need an account there, but you can then easily comment on issues, start new ones and track their progress. E.g. you can see the two issues at the top I’ve added yesterday according to your feedback :) Note that some of your feedback hits already existing issues.
Oh, I don’t think that’ll work :D So far in “real game” I’ve managed to encounter only one sleeping bag, and while indeed they give a great “risk/reward” ratio, but still the risk is way too high (primarily because one has to put off a weapon, which will most likely be picked up by a Vacuum Cleaner in a few seconds of resting).
Indeed, but as I’ve mentioned, not all of the game systems are in-place yet. First of all now we’re lacking crafting and lift, which while more or less ok for “short game” but can become boring for longer sessions. That’s why I highly recommend starting from deeper levels :) Arghhh… I just need to add at least one boss monster and ability to unlock elevator endpoints. It’s not trivial but shouldn’t be too hard and it’s hurting at the moment :)
Yes, overall there will be one point where the girl can return from without getting captured. But it’s the very end-game, before the final boss. Also “missions” will also have “success” condition when all participants will return to the settlement on success. I really hope I’ll start making missions this year.
Ah, the Enchanted Cave was one of the core inspirations for this game :D No, my primary idea is that (almost) every run ends in capture (with a few exceptions I’ve mentioned above). However, I wanted ability to add “items storage between runs” and ability to send excess good items to the settlement. But that’s for later.
Yes, overall the whole game will be organized a bit differently. There will (hopefully) be a way to build the settlement - housing, crafting stations, training grounds. Also there will be originally girls to rescue in the dungeon, around 10, I guess. Also each heroine will have a different set of skills (now we just have XP - level), I want a more Skyrim-like skills system including crafting, cooking, etc. More experienced characters will be able to train less experienced ones. And eventually even fall in love with each other :)
I’m honestly not yet sure how to deal with stealth attack problems. I’ve mentioned fixing two bugs - and that should dramatically improve both rolls and stealth attacks. But will not fully remove their drawbacks. I guess let me fix those (hopefully I’ll fix “invisible wall” bug very soon, remaking the map generator will take more time unfortunately) and then we’ll see how to improve it.
Note that currently I indeed want to nerf this one https://gitlab.com/EugeneLoza/vinculike/-/issues/1320 — it is literally a boss level monster now, it should be just a regular one. It doesn’t need that much health or see the player almost at the end of the vision range.
Gitlab? Very well, I will use that in the future!
But I have to disagree about sleeping. Originally I assumed the best way to sleep was to find some secluded corner, take off most clothes and hope that nothing would find me for like a minute, but this was extremely unreliable, especially in later levels and then required me to make my way through the hordes of reinforcements to hunt down the vacuum to get my stuff back and then leave without losing all the stats I just regained, but this is just the wrong way.
If you sleep near the exit, you can take power naps between reinforcement waves, wake up, destroy the new wave, then go back to sleep. This would work in any room with excess weapons and shoes(you would lose the regained HP again if you can't put on shoes while destroying the reinforcement wave. Without weapons is doable, especially with wild amulet/sharp glasses, but can go terribly wrong) This would allow regeneration of 2-3 HP per nap, which sounds tedious, but it helped me get deeper than I would have otherwise.
But now the addition of sleeping bags has buffed this strategy tenfold, now due to the potency of the regeneration, shoes and weapons aren't necessary anymore, because the HP loss due to...gymnastics is negligible compared to the HP gain from sleeping.
PS: Is there a lore explanation for enemies that have improved vision for clothed targets? I get numinescence, but this is weird.
Hmmm, interesting! I’ll need to test this kind of resting - because patrols are exactly meant to discourage player from resting near the exit. And indeed finding a secluded corner should be the way to go. I’ll see how to fix that, at least one idea I wanted to experiment for quite some time - some patrols will “enter and leave”, so that the map will not get overran by monsters, and some organized monsters group can be avoided altogether.
Yes, it’s in the same numiniscence article (last two paragraphs), however, indeed the explanation is not good enough. I’ll need to work on it more (I have a lot of notes, now I need to sit down and put them all together into a human readable text :)). Plus right now both nude/dressed vision are not working exactly as they were supposed to - I want eventually to implement “proper sensory organs” both for player characters and monsters, but didn’t get to rework this feature yet.
What happened to you? Are you ok?
Hello there! Yeah, more or less fine. Working on characters species/poses and it goes very slowly. I’m almost sure it won’t be finished this week, however I hope to release a small update with a new monster or two somewhere soon.
that's cool! Can't wait to see it
Not bad, not bad.
i hope that conflict with Russia gonna end soon
Потому что у меня много друзей на Украине и меня эта "операция" порядком 3ае6ала
Thank you! :)
Благодарствую! :)
Дякую!
Так обов’язково треба додати редактор персонажа… я все “боюся” братися за цю справу (бо зле мені UI йде), але треба набратися сміливості й таки зробити :) Не так вже там й багато роботи, щоб кожен раз “відкладати на наступний тиждень”.
Додати переклади - планую, але не приоритезую. Тобто, на відміну від редактора персонажів - це десь так на “через рік”. Хоча, якщо мовний бар’єр заважає грати - то можна це “раніше” штовхнути :)
Nice
Thank you! :)
Long time no see
Yeah, Vinculopedia took me 3 times longer than I’ve expected :)
i'm learning to draw i can't wait give me 3-4 months and I will make some character for you
Amasing game, im enjoying it a lot. It took me a while to learn how to dodge properly. I do however experience a lot of crashes due to a acces violation. It seems to happen due to a clothing state while i hit (either when someting breaks and i try to hit something, or while wearing a piece of clothing (sleeves has crashed me a couple of times)).
Overal the game has great potential and im looking forward to seeing what you add next. Also i love the fact that you update regularly.
Stay safe, i hope the war ends soon.
Damn man, another update in only 2 days wtf. I just noticed. You have already fixed the crash it seems so great job man
Also i think a discord might be great for this (and your other projects aswell i geuss). It allows for easier bug reporting and could be a great place to get help/input if you need any. If you'd like i could set up a discord.
I’ve made the Discord server, let’s see how it goes :)
Huge thank you for the comment! :D
Yeah, indeed there was a bug that damage failed to calculate when player character had shoulders slot equipped, but no overwear. And I’m absolutely surprised you’ve managed to pinpoint it so accurately! Great job! I was myself struggling to find the reason for this crash for almost a week. So eventually had to do a few levels run in debugger to catch the crash with a stack trace.
Will there be a pregnancy system?
No, it is not planned in this game.
it's so nice to see this game develop so rapidly, I hope you're having fun with it! it's starting to get a bit hard to keep up with the updates tho :p
Thank you! :D Yeah, lot’s of fun :) The biggest challenge ahead - graphics upgrade :)
I love challenges and wish you the best of luck with your project!
I think I could help you a bit with the graphics part in the near future if you want to, I believe I'm capable enough to do some neat sprites ^^
Thank you! Sorry, my brain was slow yesterday and I didn’t manage to answer :) Yeah, that would be wonderful. I’ve had on my to-do list “to investigate AI generated 32x32 sprites” :D But of course not a single AI can handle the task of “keeping the style consistent”.
So, what my biggest problem now is - how to approach the tiles/sprites on a concept level. I’ve got a huge bunch of 32x32 bit tiles from RL Tiles, but they seem too “detailed” for me. The current game uses them and I’ve had to blur them dramatically to avoid dispersing attention too much. Though, of course, they look by far better than anything I could draw myself. So, I would be much more happier with something more “flat” and better scalable (as tiles are usually 3x smaller than they were supposed to be in RL Tiles context like Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup).
Another issue - I still don’t have a good idea if the objects in-game (player character, monsters, items, etc) should be top-down view (like in Unexplored: it makes more sense in top-down view of the map) or front-view (as they’re now, and in the majority of roguelikes: it makes graphic more consistent and informative, e.g. including change of wardrobe, but will create a lot of question in making animations) or directional-front-view (as usually in RPGMaker games, looks like way too much work, especially with the changing wardrobe).
Summing it up, I’d be extremely glad to use some help here (I can’t draw like at all, and I don’t even have a good taste :D). However, there is one important thing I must mention: the project is Free and Open Source, and most likely will stay like that (it will, just to satisfy “never say never” :D). And while it offers a lot of freedom (free as in Freedom!), it also imposes one limitation: it also needs to use open-licensed assets. I.e. assets licensed under CC-BY-SA or GPL or a similar copyleft license. Note that this licenses may allow for “unexpected” art properties (the art can be legally extracted from the game/repository by anyone, including commercial use, and used as long as they follow the license, the two mentioned above require giving a proper credit to the Author among some other limitations). So if that’s ok for you, let’s try this way :D
If not - don’t worry. While for now this art will not be able to included in the “official” game, it still can be added to the game as a separate standalone game variant (Fork) or as a mod. The game was made with “extensibility support” in mind, so making graphical overhauls or mods for it should not be a hard task. Even now one can easily tinker with graphics or monsters/items information in data folder, it just needs a bit of time to get used to editing files XML format (I do it in notepad++, but it can be done even easier in a specialized editor).
There are still some limitations on what the game can handle (e.g. there is still no way to change species/gender of the hero character, no easy way to add tilesets, etc.), but I think I already have a good idea how to solve this problem in a relatively simple way, so that items/monsters/tilesets can be easily added without changing one big file with records or editing one large texture.
I'd be more than glad you help you out ^^ don't worry about replying later - I don't visit this site too often anyway :P
that's one thing AI might never be able to draw things consistently
I hopeI do know a little bit about drawing and animating - decent, but I'd like you to judge my style first
I have some ideas on how to draw the sprites, I like sideview characters because it allows some neat things that other persectve don't, and I don't really mind what license them pixels have, I just don't care much- one last thing, you don't draw that bad! it's good! keep it up and you'll be drawing pretty neat stuff :3
about programming, I'm sadly not an expert :,) but I can write a broken C++ Hello World program, tho!
if you could contact me through a different platform that'd bre great - I'm almost always on Discord so hmu if you want to
Yeah, sure Discord would be fine. Let’s see what we can do :) eugeneloza#1285
After coming back to the newest version of the game, now with the knowledge on how to pick up items, I really enjoy this game! It's giving me this feeling of constantly wanting to play more and more even tho I said "ok last try" 3 captures ago :D
Looking forward to see this game development
Thank you so much for the kind words! That’s the thing that gives hobby devs wings!
What is the GNU General Public License v3.0 (GPL)?
It’s a free-and-open-source license that (in simple words) allows to do “anything” with the game (even commercial use), as long as the changes to the code are published in open under the same license.
Assets for the game (pictures, music, sounds, etc.) are also free (and open source if possible), but as many of those came from different sources, they have different license - license.txt in every folder tells about the authors and license that applies to the appropriate assets.
So, technically this allows anyone to change/modify the game as much as one wants, as long as the terms of GPLv3 or any appropriate license for the assets are followed.
The most convenient way to is to “fork” https://gitlab.com/EugeneLoza/vinculike - and modify the code (Pascal is a verbose language, relatively easy to learn, especially if a person already knows how to program; many learned it at school or at university). On Desktop some changes can be made even without the necessity to do any coding or making a build - just tinker with contents in “data” folder as much as one likes. E.g. this file contains information on all items in the game: https://gitlab.com/EugeneLoza/vinculike/-/blob/grandmaster/data/character/itemdata.xml More complex manipulations (or changing something in Android build) will require “Rebuilding” the game - it’s relatively easy on Desktop, more complicated for Android. I have on my to-do list to add proper instructions how to, but if anyone wants those faster, ping me and I’ll prioritize this :)
thanks
This game is becoming epic
Thank you! :D
I don't seem to be able to pick up items in the newest version, unless I am doing it wrong, the how to play section says to click at them but it does nothing for me. I am on Windows 11, I tried restarting the game but it didn't help.
However the game seems very interesting, and I love the idea that the character gets captured instead of dying, very cool!
Huge thank you for trying Vinculike! :D
I’ve just tried the build from the site and picking up items seems to work fine for me in Windows 10.
Maybe you’re trying to click in the wrong place? You need to “step over” the item and click on the item name (in the bottom-right corner: this is “items on the ground”) to pick it up and equip: https://imgur.com/8Ql018g
There is no regular “inventory” in the game yet. The heroine can carry only the items she has equipped, at least for now. So, e.g. if she has an item in that slot, she will unequip it to equip a new one.
However if there are bondage items equipped (highlighted in purple color) - they can’t be unequipped that easily, press on names of those items in top-right corner to try struggle out of them. Some items (like bondage mittens or wrist bars) also prevent from equipping anything.
Ohh, I am silly yeah I was clicking on the item in the map, not on the name of it haha. Thank you for your help
Yeah, the game lacks a tutorial badly :D I really need to make at least some overlay to show how to work with UI.
I've come with a few suggestions:
- Perhaps the descent into another level upon clicking the set of stairs could come with a confirmation message like "Proceed to next level?". I've faced a few situations where I've accidentally clicked on the stairs and went to the next level without actually fully exploring the current level that I was in.
- Maybe add a "screen panning" feature that allows you to move the screen without moving your character, for situations when you want to look around without zooming out.
Good progress so far, following this project with a close eye!
Thank you! :D
1 - Yes, exactly. I’m still in the middle of rework how map objects work (e.g. traps are now still “monsters” :D) - and one of the critical issues is to fix that bug with going down the level without confirmation. It’s very annoying, I know.
2 - Yes, I thought a lot about screen panning. That’s not hard - it’ll just need to rework Pause UI a bit. I guess adding panning there would be the best option - as it should be “active pause” to asses the situation and give orders, especially when there will be missions with multiple characters simultaneously.
Nice to hear about the missions things. I don't know if you're working on these too but maybe also:
- A transparent menu screen while resting to see when something is going to attack you, because having the enemy get the first hit on you while the resting screen abruptly shuts off, feels a little unfair to me to be honest. At least it should offer you a chance to dash away before the enemy's first attack lands on you. The rest icon imo should also be more lit up than the others so that players get to know that there is a button that you can press there which appears exclusively when you pause the game.
- The ability to see your character's overall statistics, so that I can see the total Damage Absorption value on my character if needed.
- A way to see how much time is left in either equipping/unequipping/repairing or attacking an enemy, like a circle timer that runs out or fills up around the character's in-game marker.
- The character when dashing also gets stuck on level geometry way too often, leading to runs being completely thrown away. Maybe any way to make the dash "Slippery" wherein it just slides along walls (as if it doesn't have any friction) may help with this issue.
Yes, most of those are planned! :)
Resting UI should be reworked significantly, I hate that button. However, the core idea is that resting is extremely dangerous, even on a clean level. Though, I’m not sure yet if this will be fun enough. I guess immediately starting pause mode when the heroine is attacked would be a better option for now. I’ll fix that in next update.
About UIs - yes, I need to rework them properly. All of those are planned.
Yes, I’m aware of this dashing bug (it hurts both dashing and stealth attacks). I’m not yet sure why it happens, but eventually I’ll need to investigate it, because it’s very annoying.
needs work but is okay. sometime crash when going to next level. sometimes there is erros in start where it has 2 characters
Thank you for your report!
Can you please specify a bit more about those issues?
What is the OS you are using? Is it Windows, Linux or Android? What version?
Crash when going to the next level - I’ll investigate that. How often does that happen? How the crash manifests - you have some error message shown on screen or the game just closes or freezes?
Errors in start with 2 characters - does this happen on level “zero” or on deeper levels? On level zero (the settlement) - it’s intended. Every character rescued from the dungeon goes to the settlement and you can chose which one to control from Pause menu, there can be many of them. Other characters don’t have AI right now, but in future you’ll be able to take more than 1 character on some missions.
windows 11. crash happen once during first time playing. just froze. 2 character error happen when going to another level. 1 character move. other did not. maybe duplicate character image
Huge thank you for the reply!
Yes, freezes indeed happen, extremely rarely on my end - but maybe there is something that can “make them more frequent”? I’m aware of those, but I couldn’t track down the reason yet. You may track the status of the issue here : https://gitlab.com/EugeneLoza/vinculike/-/issues/178 (re-reading the ticket I noticed that it may be not related issue, so created a separate one for freezes when generating “regular maps”: https://gitlab.com/EugeneLoza/vinculike/-/issues/232 - Maybe you can confirm it happened on one of the “upper levels”? (like level 1-5, not 6-10 and deeper))
Yes, indeed that bug with duplicate character also happened to me once. But as I was doing stress testing at that time, I thought it may have been a reason of some crash. You confirm that this may happen during a “normal playthrough”. I’ll prioritize to investigate this ticket: https://gitlab.com/EugeneLoza/vinculike/-/issues/195 - and yes, you can switch between characters on current level through Pause menu, just as you would do in the settlement. She is just not properly set as “captured” for some reason.
In future there should be missions where you would be able to have several charters and switch between them. But that will be later (when I’ll make AI for companions).
Another problem is that your save game is now a bit glitched - there is no way you can extract that character from that level, you can only leave another in her place. You can “workaround” that by going into Options form Main Menu - you’ll have 3 red buttons on the very bottom and press “End Current Run”. This will set all characters not in the settlement as “captured” and start a new run. You should be able to rescue all of those without any issues later.
Will there be male version in the future?
Yes, I plan to add males in the future. However, most likely - in relatively distant future :) It will require a lot of drawing. So first I want to have all “subsystems” in place that would define “what exactly sprites are needed” (different species, poses, facial expressions) and “how they should be organized”.
Very fun gameplay ideas. The item durability theme and rescue mechanic add a sexy spin to the roguelike elements.
The dodge roll feels very fun to use and I love the whole system of avoiding slow attacks through clever positioning. I think the player's own attack should also have some sort of indication of how long it's going to take, it can feel a bit awkward timing it.
The whole idea of having to choose which item to use without having an explicit inventory makes the game more fun in my opinion, but it is a bit punishing if you lose your weapon. Being able to carry a backup weapon or a smaller side-weapon might help the player feel a bit more in control.
I really like the semi-3D look of the dungeon, I thought it was very neat even in the progress previews. Some animated effect for when the attacks hit might be nice, but that's the only major visual cue that I think is missing.
Wishing you the best of luck with continued development. There are a lot of very interesting things this game does and I would love to see them all developed further.
Huge thank you for your feedback!
Yeah, losing the weapon is the biggest trouble Player can get into, and it’s kinda semi-random. There will be a limited inventory a bit later - I’m still unsure how I want it though, but the idea to be able to store one (maybe only small) weapon is really cool, I like it, thank you!
I’m working on introducing a better feedback for player’s actions now - I already see it’s a big issue for most players. But it requires quite a big refactor: right now the “actions” were “pushed” just to make them work. One of the consequences is that to have a different action for Player character I had to use a “debug” action which doesn’t support visual feedback (and also prevents ability to have multiple different actions choices, e.g. heavy attack or quick attack). And also it will almost immediately add more diverse enemies attacks and traps mechanics. Hopefully I’ll be all fixed soon.
cant open it
Hello! Thank you for the report! Can you please specify a bit more the issue?
Which OS do you use (Windows 64, Linux 64, Android)? What is the error message if any? You can’t extract the game, or the game crashes when you try to open it?
Note, there is a known bug on Windows systems, you shouldn’t put the game in folder that contains non-ASCII characters in case your user name also contains non-ASCII characters (e.g. in this situation putting the game on Desktop will hit the both conditions for a crash, put it somewhere into D:\Downloads\ or something like that).
thanks
Finally, a rogue-like I like!
Combat are a bit confusing (old version, I don’t know if it changed).
I like the way the map looks. Nice retro-3D looking.
I think it’s going the right direction.
Thank you! :)
Combat is, unfortunately, still a bit (significantly) confusing due to the absence of tutorial which is my horrible flaw. The biggest issue is absence of visual feedback that Player has performed the attack and can evade safely. But this is a prototype version after all…
So the main logic is that the character can attack and make a step back just in time to avoid monster’s attack (red/green/blue slimes). This way when getting into the rhythm player can avoid any damage very often. If too many enemies are around a dodge roll is usually safer as it gets away from danger quicker, but it uses vigor, so it’s not always an option to do it too often.
In future it’ll be changed a bit, and higher level characters will be faster in combat (which may determine it’s outcome completely). But in the current version it’s simple: Hit, retreat, hit, retreat.
I can't download it from android
Hi! Can you please tell what exactly problem are you experiencing? Some error message? If you are getting some vague “package parsing error” or “app not installed” can you please tell your Android version?
For me it downloads and works without errors.
Now works too for me
Perfect!
Hello there! Did you manage to install the game? If not, can you please tell me what exactly doesn’t work or which error message you get?
oh sorry mb
oh sorry mb
now work
This Game look cool
Thank you! :)
Neat little game. I think there are some balance issues still it is a tad bit getting better along the way, but when you die once it seems might either start over or bum rush each stairs since you get agroed instantly by slimes before equipping things. Nice little roguelike for few minute spurts though.
I would recommend either your respawning on a "prison floor" that has some basic stuff or making the slimes a little less aggressive or aware. Also some image outside of text noting that you are hitting like the monsters have.
I will say cheers on progress I down loaded when first posted and it is improving, so hope to see where goes. It is a nice little time killer and I know at this point you have the means to make better the way you have fixed things thus far I can tell you have something that can be fun in small bites or longer when completed.
Thank you!
I’m working on this feature just right now :D The characters will get captured instead and next character will have to go down to the rescue :)
Doesn't let me download on android.
I’ve just checked and could download it from both of my Android devices (5 and 11), it installs well and runs. Can you please specify what error message you are getting or maybe some additional information is shown on the screen?
Also note that if you can download, but can’t install the game - you need to allow installation of third-party APKs in your phone Settings. Your phone will usually prompt you to with a clear message when you click the downloaded file.
"there was a problem parsing the package" it said
Very weird. Can you please tell your Android version? It should work with Android 4.2 and above, but I don’t have device older than 5.0 to test. Previous game ran fine on Android 4.2.2.
Android version 12
Thank you! There seems to be an issue that may be related. Investigating.
Thank you for reporting the issue and testing the fix! Michalis, author of Castle Game Engine, has fixed it and the new build is available!
Also you got discord?
Yes, eugeneloza#1285
Yeah installing it from my phone download folder it starts the installation process but then says "app not installed" without elaboration.
Then tried installing it over usb with android studio and it seemed to work fine weirdly enough? I don't understand why
Indeed, very weird. Can you please tell your Android OS version?
Edit: there may be a bug with Android version 12, investigating.
I’ve just published a build with a fix for Android 12 installation (thanks to Deathcomes18 for reporting and testing it and Michalis Kamburelis for fixing it :)), can you please check if it helps with your issue:?
abdl content?
If DuckDuckGo expands this acronym correctly, then no. Currently only cartoon nudity.
Bummer
There's not too much but it's interesting and I like the art, background music and how the maps look (but the generation it's a bit weird, but I think it's ok right now), pretty nice :)
Thank you! Yes, the map generation will be fixed ASAP, because it’s extremely confusing.
played a bit it seems combat is a bit hit or miss atm with the blue slimes really being hard to hit also noticed the auto pathing sometimes moves
where i dont wanna go sometimes dont know what causes it
Thank you!
Yeah, I wanted to keep blue slimes as small enemies for some future boss spawns, but indeed it’s better to rework/remove them for now as they cause more annoyance. I’ll do that in the next update.
Pahtfinding is not very good because the map generation algorithm is not good - it’s not always clear where it’s possible to go and where not. I’ll need to fix that ASAP. But unfortunately that’s not for the next update.
Fixed blue slime issue, release ready :)