I uploaded an early alpha demo for Beastmancer. Please try it and share your feedback.

Posted by Autarca on Mar 7th, 2017

Hi

It's been a while since my last article. As you probably know, the Steam Store Page for Beastmancer is up so I decided to stop promoting my game a bit in order to focus in finishing it. Sadly its not being enough, I wanted to have this game ready during March but I'll have to postpone its release. At my current stage I think I'll need between 2 and 3 months more before having a decent sized game. Of course, that doesn't change my plans, like I promised I uploaded an early alpha demo and I hope to convince you to download it and give me useful feedback while there's still time to make big changes and improvements to the game.

First version

The current alpha demo is only for Windows 64bit systems and its around 1.1 gb. I'm open to make builds for other systems if people ask for them. You can download the first version here: Win64 version

This demo has a few scenarios from the beginning of the game. Basic features like exploration, combat, inventory, crafting and dialogue are ready but the content is limited, that means there's only a limited number of monsters, special moves, effects, items and spells.

I also want you to know that the Saving and Loading features are not yet ready.

One of the places you can visit is the main and only hub of the game: the town of Nusquam. At the moment the town is pretty empty but there's a few stores. I hope to add much more NPCs, loot and in general more "life" to the scenario.

The demo can be finished in around 1 hour and a half (in my experience) but it can take a bit more if you decide to try and capture more monsters. At the beginning you start with a single monster (from a selection of three "starters") and you are also limited to deploy only one big monster or two small ones. You can increase the number of "slots" when your beastmancer levels up by adding points to your "Monster Control" perk.

What I hope to get from this demo

While I'm aware of several issues my main concern is the problems I can't notice as a dev. In the case of Nomad Fleet I couldn't detect the problems with the controls because I was already an expert in handling the game (as any dev that test their game constantly does), its these kind of issues I want to find and for that I need fresh eyes.

Known Issues

- Monster Stats page doesn't show the correct stats for monsters over level 1 (the correct stats are used during combat though).

- Combat camera doesn't get to its initial position after a battle (a minor annoyance).

- Western Road scenario has two roads leading to nowhere (its in my to-do list).

- Sea Priestess has too much hitpoints and a special attack without cooldown (I forgot to nerf her before uploading this version).

- Some grammar and spelling errors (don't worry I plan to hire edition and proofreading services for the final product).

There's also several things that can change like the moves selection for every monster, at the moment most monsters have only basic attacks and a few experimental moves.

Please be free to share any feedback you can think of. I'll be working hard to finish this game but there's still time to improve it.

Regards,

Jorge