KickStarter Underworld Ascendant is a disaster

[BEvers]

The game looked too good to pass up, so I've started playing it myself. First side mission was "kill three rippers and loot their ripper pomes". This mission was implemented in the following way: every time I opened a chest, I would first see the random loot spawn in. Then, after a few seconds, a ripper pome would teleport in as sort of a late arrival. When I picked up the first pome, the quest log showed quest complete, 3/3 pomes looted. Took less than 5 minutes

 

[Zep Zepo]

Max Heap

So in your play through, how many monster types did you come across if you can recall?

Zep--

I didn't rag on anyone, I made the mature decision to base my views on facts and a released game. Doesn't make you less of an asshat.

Apology accepted.

Zep--

 

[Curratum]

The game looked too good to pass up, so I've started playing it myself. First side mission was "kill three rippers and loot their ripper pomes". This mission was implemented in the following way: every time I opened a chest, I would first see the random loot spawn in. Then, after a few seconds, a ripper pome would teleport in as sort of a late arrival. When I picked up the first pome, the quest log showed quest complete, 3/3 pomes looted. Took less than 5 minutes

What the hell sort of a metric is TwoRunestone? :D

 

[BEvers]

It means casting a spell that uses two runestones; each cast increases your mission score, so it's good to spam spells even if you don't need them. Presumably they will start showing a ThreeRunestone stat at some point

 

[Zombra]

what the fuck is a ripper pome

 

[BEvers]

what the fuck is a ripper pome

I rather like that cute little face they drew on it

 

[Curratum]

But the slugs don't really eat anything, do they, now? This is probably leftover "dungeon ecology" flavor text.

 

[The Bishop]

4 years for a tech demo? 16 for a real game I assume?

I assume they didn't actually spent 4 years in active development. They did some mucking around with the engine before starting to look for a publisher, which took them months if not years. Somebody posted here about one of the developers being involved in some other game in the meantime I believe? Anyway, nothing about this game indicates that it spent more than several months in production.

 

[Max Heap]

Max Heap

So in your play through, how many monster types did you come across if you can recall?

Zep--

let's see, there was...

Regular skeleton (with and without head)
Skeleton Archer
Skeleton in chainmail
Big bad skeleton with evil helmet
shadow skeleton
big bad shadow skeleton - i'm not making this up by the way - with evil red eyes and evil helmet (those were only around the last boss - i believe the helmet was a shrunken version of the goofy helmets in the very first alpha)
Outcasts (those ninja types)
Reapers
Ghosts (eidolons?)
Lichs (float around like the ghosts, but got a skirt on)
Slugs (don't do anything)
those floating mana jellies (dont do anything either)
Lizardman warriors/archers (some of them have blue, some have green spikes on their helmet)
Lizard wizard
the last boss which i believe was a lich with a different upper body
those bone pillars, though those dont do much but fire overpowered spells at you
Those alien brain things


In other words, the game has around 8-10 characters and a shit ton of relatively cheap variations.
That was my guess earlier in the thread (couple weeks before release) too.
They probably stopped making character models around 7 months prior, when the first videos of the eidolon were released.

They might have made goatmen too, but those ended up as statues only.

 

[Max Heap]

But the slugs don't really eat anything, do they, now? This is probably leftover "dungeon ecology" flavor text.

I haven't even tried that out (oh boy I thought I'd use that for muh creeaaaaative solutions!)
But what I have tried out is setting arrows on fire, which they showed on twitter.
Doesn't work in the final version.

Another thing that was basically cut was enemies tripping over.
Which isn't much of a surprise with this mess of an environmental geometry.

 

[BEvers]

That becomes extra apparent as one of Cabirus last sentences is a cut version of something he says right in the beginning.

I'm only two hours in, but I already got that impression a couple of times - bits of Cabirus's voice acting sounded like they'd been re-spliced, with his cadence suddenly changing mid-sentence.

 

[Gord]

But the slugs don't really eat anything, do they, now? This is probably leftover "dungeon ecology" flavor text.

Oh, they do. That thing works as advertised. It's just pretty much useles, but it still works.

Meaning - I've yet to find any place where feeding them looked like a useful/viable approach to solving some problem.
Guess the flaming goo might be used to kill enemies, but that's so random and clunky, why bother?

 

[Curratum]

But the slugs don't really eat anything, do they, now? This is probably leftover "dungeon ecology" flavor text.

Oh, they do. That thing works as advertised. It's just pretty much useles, but it still works.

Color me impressed! Can they actually find the items in the environment or do you have to feed them to the slugs?

 

[Gord]

Color me impressed! Can they actually find the items in the environment or do you have to feed them to the slugs?

So far I've not seen slugs near any of these items. But if I dropped them, they closed in on them pretty quickly. If that may occur naturally, I don't know.
But I'm only in the first "proper" level, so far (Upper Erebus). Don't think I will play that much further, it's too pointless currently.

Edit:
Speaking of useles things - I've placed this animat-leftover in one of these machines and it flooded the area. All the creatures there continued doing their thing completely unfazed, just under water.

 

[Max Heap]

But the slugs don't really eat anything, do they, now? This is probably leftover "dungeon ecology" flavor text.

Oh, they do. That thing works as advertised. It's just pretty much useles, but it still works.

Meaning - I've yet to find any place where feeding them looked like a useful/viable approach to solving some problem.
Guess the flaming goo might be used to kill enemies, but that's so random and clunky, why bother?

I know I have literally only once used that to kill an enemy. And only because the opportunity was there and I couldn't be assed to engage in the broken melee combat.
Why broken? Well, I believe I mentioned that the framerate ain't too good.
And if that's the case and you swing at an enemy your hit most likely won't register.


Oh yeah and you can completely ignore this water flooding mechanic.
It's useless. And the one time you actually need it (lowering the water in the Arcaneum to get a key) of course it doesn't work, because yes even that is broken.

 

[Curratum]

Assuming media people got their keys on launch day, do you think we will be able to see some non-sponsored reviews next week? This is going to be a gas!

 

[BEvers]

I returned to the mission board and immediately got the same ripper pomes side quest I'd just done. So I can confirm that side quests are repeatable.

 

[Gord]

The ripper pomes quest in Upper Erebus is probably the quickest way to increase the mission counter and unlock the second area. There are often 3 to be found right after the entrance area, it seems.

 

[Zep Zepo]

Assuming media people got their keys on launch day, do you think we will be able to see some non-sponsored reviews next week?

They will kid glove it. After all, these are INDUSTRY VETERANS, THE UNTOUCHABLES, THE SAVIOURS OF GAMING.

If they shit on this to hard, they might lose the chance to interview Waldo Spectrum about System Cock 3 in the future. (Who has also been "working" on his game the last 4 years and has nothing to show for it. Still in the design phase he said recently...LOL)

Zep--

 

[Curratum]

What a fucking bunch of assclowns. I need to go to bed and this made me so mad, I need a drink first. I had forgotten Spector and OS have their grubby hands on SS3.

 

[Infinitron]

I assume they didn't actually spent 4 years in active development. They did some mucking around with the engine before starting to look for a publisher, which took them months if not years. Somebody posted here about one of the developers being involved in some other game in the meantime I believe? Anyway, nothing about this game indicates that it spent more than several months in production.

Here's my take. OtherSide mucked around with the engine and released the initial prototype in November 2015, just eight months after the Kickstarter. At the time that was pretty promising - we thought they were on the right track.

I guess what they were hoping is that this would be enough to land them a publishing deal, but it wasn't. So they....just kept on working on the game on their own, trying to bring it to an advanced enough stage where a publisher would finally bite. Because the team was small, this took a very long time (21 months from prototype to pre-alpha, which is when the 505 Games publishing deal was announced).

We know that a lot of time during those 21 months was spent (fruitlessly) trying to nail down the game's art direction, something that would have been important for getting a publisher onboard. But it would be interesting to know what else happened during that period. Because this game really does make more sense if you discard those 21 months and count just the 8 months from Kickstarter to prototype and the 15 from pre-alpha to release.

For people who want to look into this, my newspost history might be useful: https://rpgcodex.net/tags.php?id=1514

 

[glass blackbird]

Somebody is claiming that Steam granted him a refund with 8 hours played

https://steamcommunity.com/app/692840/discussions/0/3020122487778165959/?ctp=2#c3020122487780245073

I bet the Kickstarter backers wish they could get one too

This is just a sidenote, but:

Steam's "2 hour" limit can't override existing consumer protections where you live. If you've decent laws in your country/state/ethnic protectorate, quote them back to the fuckers, and you'll get your refund regardless of Steam's entirely non-enforcable rules.

Also if you put in an explanation in your ticket as opposed to just filing a refund request I've found they often grant it anyway. Especially with trainwrecks like this, where it's pretty obvious that you'd want your money back.

Or say that the game seemed to crash but was running in the background--how the fuck they gonna prove that ain't true?

 

[Gord]

By their own words, a lot of time was also spend on physics and environmental interaction.
Considering that there's not that much to see of that in the released game, I guess they have scrapped a lot, or just didn't get it to work right.

 

[glass blackbird]

At some point during development (probably right after they became aware that there was no chance they could make their save-system work, let alone finish a proper dungeon crawler in the next few years), they seem to have decided to use all the work done so far for a game based around randomized missions in non-persistant levels. A little bit of rogue-like mechanics, which are all the rage right now, right?
Unfortunately, the game doesn't really support it all that well. To make that idea work, they would have needed a very different approach right from the start.

I have said earlier that once in a while you can get a glimpse of something greater behind the mess that UA currently is. The ideas they had for the magic system e.g. are actually interesting. A properly executed system like that quoted by BEvers would be quite cool.

Some of the maps, when finished according to their (presumable) initial design vision (filled with the respective inhabitants and integrated into a proper interconected persistent world) might have been good, too. That would have likely taken them at least another 6-12 months, however.

Even the weird thing where they couldn't get level statuses saved... You can work around that if you know it in advance. Think about Dark Souls--a game I'm not a huge fan of, but a good example of doing this. When you rest at a save point the world resets, but you'll still have your shortcuts and keys and can get around quicker as a result, right? So you don't have to redo all the puzzles a second time or redo areas you don't want to. They could have very easily done this with simply having some switches or locked doors near the start of a level that you can't open until the end, etc etc. So as you explore a level you open up more of it permanently and the monsters etc resetting isnt a problem. But they didn't do that because one of the programmers, I'm sure, was Really Trying to make saving work right up until the end when they gave up.

Of course, they also decided to make you run the same level 20 times or whatever the fuck so who knows, all of this is retarded and awful

 

[ShaggyMoose]

At least I only backed one of UA and SS3. Turns out it might have been the wrong one, but maybe neither will be the best choice. Surely you can't fuck up a remake as badly as this?