Project Kobold's Tale
Project Kobold's Tale is my first attempt at a metroidvania style game, with melee combat and an experimental spell casting system inspired by games like Dragon Marked for Death, Helldivers, and Magicka.
Keyboard and Gamepad are supported.
You play as a kobold in cave full of dangerous enemies. As this is a prototype, and a work in progress, some features, visuals and audio may be incomplete.
Any and all feedback is appreciated, as well as any donations to support Project Kobold's Tale's development!
Thank you, and enjoy the game~
Follow my dev on Trello
Come say hi and chat on my Discord server
Download
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Development log
- small visual update!Feb 16, 2024
- Autosaves, Havens and CheckpointsOct 14, 2023
- 7/12/23 update Time DilationJul 12, 2023
- 7/9/23 updateJul 09, 2023
- dev update : scrapping my weapon workflowApr 11, 2023
- Shiny Rocks updateMar 16, 2023
- Rapid fire updatesMar 12, 2023
- Boss update and gamepad controls fixedFeb 27, 2023
Comments
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I love it! I love the combat and boss fight. The only thing is, I would let the player have dash before thier first combat because with out the dodge its very hard to not be hit by enemies because you get stuck in a attack animation. Other than that I really like it! keep it up!
Just played through the whole thing and I loved it so much!! I have a kobold character who is also a sword-slinging spellslinger and I've always imagined like, a metroidvania where you do exactly this?? This is literally kinda like my dream game lol, I loved it!
The movement is super fluid, there's really good variety with the combos (I love the inclusion of aerial attacks) and the spells are great. It's a lot of fun to punch out the combos to prepare them and then the payout of casting them feels really great too.
And the sword boss felt extremely well designed? I won on my first try but it was by the skin of my teeth.
This such a cool project and I really really hope you continue to work on it. I'd love to playtest this so much. This is gonna be the most kobold game of all time, I can feel it :D
Heya, thanks so much for playing and leaving a comment!
Life's been getting in the way, but I do intend to continue work on this~
I've got lots of things to implement whenever I'm up to working on this project some more, working on a proper title screen and 'cut scene' art style, more enemies, more animation updates, and story!
First of all: The game is great! I looove the comination of melee combat + spell casting, I love the "incantation" of the magic, the combos, the visuals are also very nice, especially the attack animations!
But here some additional feedback in no particular order:
That jumping atk is very useful vs bosses especially when they are floating but it seems OP, I am torn how to deal with it... :/
personally I would find it reaally cool (I think, I am not sure how it would actually play out) if there were some incantations similar to 'homing', with more combinations, and possibly not even able to be prepared?
Btw the system of preparing spells is I think quite well designed, it is not a big hassle for normal combat but you can also use it if you are well versed in combat itself. Combos would be also cool like first freezing the enemy and then shocking him, that would require quick switching! <3
In general this game seems super promising, is even right now very fun and fluid to play (even or maybe because of jump-atk-exploit^^"), and is pretty!
please continue working on this and all the best on developing it! very cool game <3
Heya, thank you so much for playing PKT and leaving feedback! and thanks for finding that bug! I'll look into that, probably just a poorly sized trigger.
as for the jump heavy, I am planning to completely revamp it. instead of being a quick circular attack, its going to be a slow, heavy downward slash that bounces you up. Light air attacks also bounce you up, but the bounce gets weaker each time, until after 3 bounces, the 4th one wont bounce you.
The new heavy attack will not only bounce you higher than a light attack, but it will not care how many light air bounces you did beforehand. The current air heavy is ooold, and definitely very unbalanced.
it seems you also discovered the bug that happens if you die while using the heal xD
still trying to figure that one out
I Hope you finish this because it is very fun and I love how the game looks and the animations look wonderful. Keep up the good work <3
Thank you so much for trying my game, and for the words of encouragement! I'll do my best~
I really hope you have the will to see this through, there just aren't enough excellent games out there featuring non-human characters, but this is shaping up to be one of them.
I have to give special credit to the sense of flow the animation has, the lovely palette used for the aesthetic which is reminiscent of some of the best platformers I've seen (not too over-saturated), the sprites and tiles themselves, and the general feel of the game. That last one is so incredibly important and you've nailed it.
As someone who's had a little experience with this? The best advice I could offer is to be wary of feature creep. It doesn't matter if you have the best systems and mechanics in the world if your level design and aesthetics don't hold it up. I think it's important to be able to diversify your content with fun mazes, puzzles, traps, and so on; And with enough diversity of tiles that it doesn't get repetitive. I've fallen into the pitfall of concentrating too much on mechanics before, so... I just wanted to share that.
Mind you, I'm not saying you're doing that! It's just... If there's a piece of advice I wish someone had offered me? That'd be it.
It really is an excellent demo though!
What else did I want to say?
Oh! For a project that sort of started off as yours did, and grew in a similar way, it might be worth checking out Frogatto for inspiration. I suspect you've likely played it already, but just in case... It's always fun to see how these things come together.
I think that's about everything. I can definitely see greatness here. I think this is going to be an incredible project, so do keep at it! I see you had a setback with your approach to weapons and I know that can be disheartening but, like I said, you've got something very good going on here. And kobolds to boot!
I do think you've got the chops to pull this off, though. Controls really are so important and I've rarely seen them nailed this early on in a project's development.
Very, very good.
Thank you so much for the kind words, taking the time to play my game, and for writing feedback!
I'm still learning alot when it comes to animation and programming, and still trying to claw my way back from burnout. You are totally right about feature creep though, that is an important thing to keep in mind, and perhaps I should focus more on creating more content with the features I have. I have alot of passion for this project, and definitely want to see it through.
I actually have not played Frogatto, but I'll definitely check it out now, thanks for the recommendation!
I created an account just to leave my feedback. This game is looking fun and I really wish this game to succeed. Although, maybe I'm a bit biased since I just enjoy kobolds.
Things I've enjoyed in the game:
- Overall game feel: It is fun just running around doing things, which is a necessary component for a good game. Also, I really enjoyed its atmosphere. Really hope it gets expanded;
- Character sprites: Even if the new ones aren't completely finished, they look really nice. I especially like the flowy-tail;
- Combat/Combos: I really enjoy the light attack / heavy attack combos. Really makes the combat feel dynamic;
- Dash: Its implementation is just great. I really enjoyed its fluidity. Love the Dash into Jump thing. I think it would be pretty nice if dashes were in some way implemented into the combo system, maybe something so the character wouldn't come into an immediate stop with a light attack.
- Enemies: They were fun. It's nice to see enemies requiring strategy / exploiting their weaknesses.
Things that weren't really detrimental to the experience, but a fix would be welcome:
- Air attacks: Yeah, they feel unintentially overpowered since you can just spam them. The light Space tap into pressing both J+K combo destroys almost all enemies;
- Platforming: A couple of platforms are just a tiny bit out of reach. Like in the floor-spike room. It seems like it's possible to just jump there, but it isn't, which makes it a little bit frustrating;
- Jump collision: This isn't anything major, but I thought I'd let you know. If you barely reach the platform, it is possible to make an additional jump while "hugging" that platform. This allows getting into unintended places like getting back to the starting location after getting the dash;
- The last boss: Maybe a bit better telegraphing. It felt unfair that its paths to the next attack starting position were really sudden and still dealt damage. Although it may just be my impatience with wanting to deal as much damage as possible in between its attacks;
- Enemies falling into spikes: It just feels a bit weird to see mana orbs and coins just lying in the spikes. I'm sure that you're already working on it, but I thought I'd bring that up.
To conclude, this game is really great! I am no game developer, and heck, this is my first time reviewing a game, so take my opinion somewhat lightly. I really wish to see this game getting developed and would definitely consider buying it after it was finished. ✨
Hey thanks playing, and taking the time and effort to give lots of feedback!
The air attacks are definitely a bit unbalanced, I haven't gotten around to fixing them yet because I'm holding off until I get at least rough animations done. I plan to change air combat quite a bit, you'll bounce up a bit when you light attack an enemy in the air, allowing for air combos, and I have some ideas for various directional air heavy attacks, but nothing set in stone yet.
As for the jump collision, did you do this by pressing away from the wall/ledge and pressing jump while up against it? If so, theys intentional, there is super metroid style wall jumping in the game right now. However if it wasn't that, I'll definitely have to look into it.
Also, the boss shouldn't be doing damage on the way back to its idle position, I had fixed that previously but I think a recent change unintentionally brought it back, will fix~
At the moment, I am a solo dev doing most aspects of development myself, but I eventually plan to get a Patreon going, and explore hiring others to help with the games development!
Thanks again for playing, and showing interest in my project!
Really nice.
Im not sure what level of completion you are considering everything to be at so I will approach it from a very late beta perspective since it seems pretty polished.
Great pacing and level design, I could have used a bit more level art just for navigation (assuming it's gonna be metroid level design with backtracking). Overall it felt good to navigate and move around in.
The character controller felt great. Sword combat was intuitive and fun but lacked a bit of meat (I felt you could be more generous with the screen effects like having more things trigger a shake or flash in general).
Magic... I felt like the magic gave the illusion of choice ie. fire was a requirement for defeating major enemies (I think weaknesses are good but I'd like to have more choice). The spells felt good and right outside of the boss fight but it just felt like I was having to re-apply the fire spell more than I was able to use it (Skill Issue :>) ). overall juice/feel on the magic seemed right but mechanically I didn't feel it fit with the souls-like systems and fast-paced boss mechanics.
On the topic of game feel/juice felt it was very well done, the dash and heavy attack feel great to use. The mana gain from orbs felt like it could use a bit more feedback (maybe lerp the bar size up or something) and melee hits felt like they could use a bit more of an impact feel.
Bugs/Quirks:
- Can't drop down through those platforms until you finish with the little float down thing.
- Heal particle effect gets stuck on
- Major enemies and unlocking the dash don't save unless you sit at a bonfire (probably not a bug but it felt wrong)
- You sometimes need to leave the bonfire trigger and re-enter it to save
Overall good job, I'm looking forward to future updates.
Hey, thanks for playing, and for the detailed feedback! I consider the game to be in an early prototype phase, but I also try to make things as bug free as possible and do alot of playtesting myself.
Really glad you enjoyed the melee combat, thats where most of my recent focus has been. Trying to get the combat in general to feel better. I'm still exploring options and trying to get magic to feel better to use and be more balanced. One thing I'm going to try soon is adding a 2-hit mechanic to losing your spell. So, the first time you are hit your spell bauble in the top left cracks, and if you are hit while its cracked, then you lose the spell. You can fix the cracks by not getting hit for a while, or simply by casting a reinforce spell (probably full circle, JKLI, or east-south-west-north face buttons in that or reverse order will work, it will just instantly reinforce your spell bauble, you wont have to manually cast this spell, and of course it wont overwrite whatever spell you have prepared. You can maybe also cast this when your bauble is not cracked to make add some armor to it, so you can take 3 hits before it breaks).
In the future I'd also like to have a much wider variety of enemies in an area. Not everything will be weak exclusively weak to one element, but some enemies will require more interaction with the elemental system (i.e. an enemy with a wooden shield that blocks and parries your melee, but you can get rid of the shield with fire.)
As for that float down thing on through-platforms, are you talking about it feeling like there is a cushion effect when you land from the air? If so, thats a bug in my psuedo physics script that I'm still trying to figure out... sort of a consequence of a previous bug fix I did. Will definitely work that out at some point, and/or implement code that allows you to just hold down + jump to continuously fall through platforms.
as for major unlocks and such not saving automatically, atm yea, that is intentional. I haven't yet put in the time to figure out what a good balance for difficulty and quality of life would be for a checkpoint system. Like... should I make a checkpoint/soft save when you get one of these that you can choose to respawn at instead of your last save if you die? Do I make that the default behaviour and treat it as an auto save slot that can be loaded from the title screen?? Theres a few ways to do it, and I dont know what will fit best yet.
I'm not entirely happy with the heal visuals atm, and I still need to make a player animation for it, so I haven't any bugs with it yet, but I'm aware of a couple now
In any case, thanks again for playing and providing feedback! I try to update often, and write devblogs whenever its something significant!
as far as the save thing goes I am programed by from soft but I think it's nice to not be put in a position where you have to do a major enemy or a tutorial twice. I don't think you need to save any other data at that point but the significant unlocks. (I believe metroid works this way as well).
The spell crack sounds like it will help a lot. Unless there is somehow a way to make it not a hold and do a combo thing but instead just hold and cast or just do a combo (if that is articulated in a way that makes any sense) but I assume that would go against your vision for the spell mechanic.
Love the feel soo far.. This is really good. There's nothing really bad to say.. I had to take a little time to get used to the key layout.. at first it felt odd until i realized all the attacks are also on the right hand side.. Anything I noticed you probably already know about.. The down slopes.. sometimes they'd be fluid and sometimes the cc would bounce down it, *im sure ur aware* but thats a nit pick.. excellent stuff.. the only critique i would have is i feel like having to stop to go down the openings was kinda a flow turn off.. unless theres a slide/dash move or something that would interfere I would allow the player to just pass thru while moving.. (with the s+space addition.. anywho. im rambling.. well done.. i'll keep an eye on this one..
luck may have it just released my first movement proof of concept.. its a kinematic controller with a few caveats. oh and a vehicle controller.. trying to get a firm grasp on melding the two before i move on to refining it any farther.. since im going to use enemy types and their behaviours as a basis to go off..
i posted it a few posts above urs in the UnityDiscord :)
happy dev'ing
Hey, thanks for giving it a try and leaving feedback!
Slopes have been the bane of my existence. I've been slowly making changes here and there to handle cases like that, but I've still got some weird inconsistencies like that.
The keyboard layout is divisive! I plan to implement live remapping, and an alternate keyboard layout that switches the hands, but the current layout was made so that the widest variety of keyboards could use it (laptops often have tiny or no arrow keys, no numpads is a common thing, and Mac keyboard layouts are missing some common keys you might use on windows...)
The game is made for controller first, but I've put alot of work into making keyboard controls just as good, since most people play testing tend to use keyboard.
before I swapped over to a kinematic character controller i worked on a custom character controller for about 8 months.. Slopes also worked me over real good.. In the end the best solution I found was also probably the most straightforward..
private void ApplyGravity() // before Move() { if (myCC.isGrounded && generatedGravity < playerSettings.desiredGravity) { generatedGravity = playerSettings.desiredGravity; } generatedGravity += playerSettings.desiredGravity * Time.deltaTime; }Can't say It'd be even useful for you but I figured why not offer..
I constantly apply my own gravity ( generatedGravity ) at all times. And before that if the player is grounded I set it to a constant value..
This seemed to work out well for me after playing with the values to get something that glided down and up the ramps smoothly.
Then of course, this doesn't affect my jumping as I cancel out my Y velocity before I do..
Funny enough, I'm also using a kinematic rigidbody character controller, with raycast based collision detection and psuedo-physics
Also it it possible to download the game to PC? The character is cute, like a little dragon =^^=
Thanks~
A windows build has been uploaded!
But my PS4 joystick doesn't work, even with DS4 app. Only keyboard, even though it works with other games.
I was also having trouble with DS4, I only tested a couple days ago... not sure whats going on there, but I'll try and look into it. My Old wired xbox360 controller finally died, which is what I had been using to test before.
Hey so, I managed to fix this issue in my end. Its caused by a well known issue with DS4 where it provides double inputs (one of the HID controller and one from DS4). You can solve this by installing HIDHide from the settings tab in DS4 Windows.
In the future I may implement a solution within my game that can get the vendor ID of whatever controller you're using and ban duplicate inputs from controllers with the same ID, but I'll have to learn a few new things to make that work. In any case, installing HIDHide made my PS4 controller work perfectly.
cool game, last boss took me a few tries, looking forward to the full game!
Thanks so much for giving it a full playthrough!
Good game! :)
Thanks~!