GameClub Sword of Fargoal (by Fargoal, LLC)

I only have one friend with an iPhone (I do have more than one friend, though... honest!) but I did convince him to buy the game. He mentioned on chat a few minutes ago that he's worried that the game will get too hard; he likes that it doesn't penalize exploration like Rogue does.

I agree (which is why I mentioned no hunger plzkthx), because exploring Sword of Fargoal's levels is so rewarding, what with all the hidden extra sections of the levels and so on. It makes grinding through the game a lot of fun to always be finding new sections without worrying about starving to death.

Anyway, love the game (maybe even more than I love Rogue Touch... please don't tell CommanderData!) and I hope you have fun with the updates!

 

Don't forget about in game purchases. Perhaps you could buy an additional item or spell, and it will become available (randomly of course) in your quest.

Or, you could pay some guy to bring the sword to level 10 for you

 

He could be there standing next to you when you enter Level 1... he'll say "Pssst, buddy. I'll go down and bring the sword up 10 levels for you if you give me 10,000 gold." He'd be like a specialized temple. You grind, grind grind, explore down a ways, come back with gold for him. Then when you give him 10,000 gold, he says "Wish me luck!" and disappears.

When you get down to the level past the deepest one you've descended to, you find his corpse, and a note that says "To Do List: 1: Scam money from naive adventurer. (DONE) 2: Pretend to get sword. 3: Profit."

 

If there was a way to resurrect dead characters, then I would play again (and recommend the game to my friends).

The penalty could easily be a loss of all gold on the dead character, 1-5 levels lost (depending on the floor you're resurrecting on), and half of your items and spells removed (at random).

Until then...

 

A lot of the Japanese-designed Roguelikes do this: they offer a way to store items and gold in a vault, but remove all your items and gold from your person when you die. But you don't lose anything more than the XP between your current level minimum and the next level you were going for. Shiren The Wanderer and Izuna for DS are like this.

I don't personally like those games as much as Western Roguelikes, but if you're looking for that experience, you could try there.

EDIT: I'd be happy with a corpse-looting system whereby all the items and gold you had when you died are spread out on the level you died in. That way, if you die on Level 10, when you get to Level 10 the next time, you can find all your lost loot. This is more helpful in a game that's more traditionally Roguelike because of the reliance on items and their management. But it could help a little here.

I'd propose a ghost/ghoul on the level in which you died previously. It'd have 1/2 your Max HP when you died, have 3/4 your old strength, and be worth XP equal to 1/4 what you had when you died, and would appear on the level you died on. Kill it, and you get 1/4 of your old XP back, plus one item you had when you died (at random). A great challenge that has a great reward.

 

Hey guys, we just went on sale for $2.99... we're aiming to get in on the New Years Blowout thingy at http://www.newyearappblowout.com/ , but if we don't make it in time, it's still on for cheap so grab it!

Our pre-Christmas sale got all messed up because of the updates backlog, so hopefully this makes up for it.

OK, back to working on the new potions...

 

Paid full price this morning and I just put the game down to see that its 3 dollars cheaper... I regret nothing

2 questions though
What do you do with the hero slots that died? Is their anyway to remove them?
How long does an average game take?

 

Hey Videotape,

Sorry you missed the sale, but those are nice words about no regrets! Any old slot (character) you don't want to save you can click on the name and then the little (X) and delete him or her so you can use it for another. We allow the saving of old quests because we will be allowing for future leaderboards and other possible features with favorite characters, so save any of them you may wish, and re-use the quest slots for others.

Thanks again for the comments!

-- Jeff McCord

 

Thanks so much. I am glad people feel the game is worth it.

The dead guy slot can be removed... there's a little (X) next to the player on the right. Just click that and they are deleted.

The average game? I really couldn't say how long it takes, heh. As long as you make it last I guess. And with the next update... that will be even harder to predict.

EDIT: Actually, feel free to delete any character that dies... their stats are already saved invisibly to you when they die or when you complete the game... so yes, when we have the online leaderboard stuff later, those saves will all be automagically imported for you.

 

At a high level, I'd suggest design a user interface that makes it easier to navigate and access a collection of items. If you get this right then you won't be as sensitive to adding items over time. I'm not saying you want hundreds of items but if you get the right navigation UI then you will be able to scale to more items over time.

Here are two approaches that come to mind:

1 - ready screen

have an active equipment screen where you can ready a subset of your items: ie weapon, 1 armor,1 shield, 6 usable items, 6 spells) at a time. Tweak these numbers as desired.

Then you can change your characters load-out at any time and in each slot you could choose from a list which you can present in the order of strength (and maybe filter by element or something).

The ready screen would be a new option on the top level menu (at the bottom) and it changes the contents of the spells and items menus.

Alternatively you can have an "ready" option at the bottom of items and spells.

2 - quick slots

Give the user 4 quick slots on the right side (under where the suggested command is) where you can drag items/spells that you want to use quickly.

Then on the left you could add a couple more items in the menu to let you directly go to potions/tools/etc.

 

Played it a few times, and won it on my 5th attempt or so. My thoughts:

1. Definitely worth the full price and then some. I'm not sure how long it took me to beat, but probably 15-20 hours. Add in the several hours of previous attempts, and you'll get plenty of bang for your buck.

2. Graphics and controls are great. It's basically a virtual joystick like dropship or ZombieAttack which definitely seems to be the best system for dungeon crawlers. Only difficulties I had were sometimes it would not go back to the zoomed out view after a fight (I would have to double tap), and I had trouble sometimes tapping to run when it was zoomed out, probably because you have to be a pretty precise with your tap, and if it's just a hallway, that's a small target.

3. I had to go to level 21 then back up to 20 to get to the sword floor. I tried going down every stair I could find in level 19 and looking for any kind of hidden door/etc, but no luck. I think someone else in this thread had the same problem. I am not sure if that's just part of the random level generator, but it was pretty confusing.

4. I also lost my sword on the way back up, but to an assassin. He did warp away, and he's pseudo-invisible, so I thought I was a goner, but fortunately I found him on the same level, and after teleporting away twice, he stayed put.

5. Some of the levels are massive! I found the first few levels to be really easy, and after dying a few times, they did start to get a bit repetitive. I'm not a fan of "grinding" aka killing monsters just to gain levels, but I definitely felt the need to do that. It seemed that if your character level was not at least at the same number as the dungeon level you were on then you didn't stand much of a chance for long without some creative spell casting.

6. I agree healing rate while standing on temple should be much faster. On the later levels, I would actually just put the phone down for a while and do something else to let myself heal.

7. I wouldn't add a lot of new features to the game, since like Rogue Touch, this is a loving port of a classic 80's game. It'd be like adding zombies to pac man (actually that sounds kinda awesome, bad analogy). Point being, is that in my opinion you already have a full featured game, and should just mostly fix any bugs or major frustrations (constantly teleporting mage sounds awful). Maybe adding some kind of roguelike training setting where you can save, and the levels are only one room would make the game even more accessible. Although in general I agree that a save feature defeats a major draw of the roguelikes.

8. If you enjoyed this game, you really need to get Rogue Touch (and vise versa). Hopefully the SoF guys will team up with Commander Data and create some kind of bastardized step child of these two awesome games.

 

Couple Questions before Purchasing.

What is the point of these "rougelike" games? (Never played any..)
Are there quests? Or you just walk around the dungeon?
Do you level up/buy items?

Basically what makes them. or in this case, Sword of Fargoal fun?

 

The only quest is to retrieve the sword. The game is mainly about exploring the dungeon levels, each of which typically consists of at least one area, usually 2-4, connected either by holes in the wall or stairs on levels above or below. You'll find scrolls (spells), cash (used currently only for sacrifice at a temple for experience points), and you'll level up and increase your hit points and attack skill, find enchant scrolls to power up your sword, etc. That's a description of SoF specifically mind you; typical Roguelikes are more complex, but this does an excellent job of distilling it down to its essence and prodicing a great dungeon crawling experience.

 

Ok, thanks for breaking it down for me.

Still undecided but def. a contender.

 

Hey. I was scrolling through the app store and I happened to find this game. It looks very interesting and $3 is a good price. I have 2 questions though.

1. Even if I don't play many dungeon crawlers, will it still appeal to me?
2. Is it too hard or too easy?

Thanks.

 

The first question is kind of hard to answer. It really depends on what tickles your fancy. SoF is a top-down OpenGL-based dungeon crawler that simplifies the genre to such a degree that you can really just concentrate on playing and exploring without having to fuss much with more in-depth things like large inventories with loads of different items, huge spell lists, complex controls, etc. While there are still small inventories of both items and spells it works intuitively, bumping your last used items or most recently acquired items to the top, and all duplicate items are stacked. Plus, there aren't a wide variety of items or spells, so it's not hard to go through them to find what you want. Plus, the smart button on the top right is a stroke of genius and really streamlines gameplay. What it boils down to is that it lets you focus more on exploration and battles and not the more mechanical aspects of your typical RPG or Roguelike.

Boiled down, it removes the tedium from the genre, but at the expense of complexity and depth. However, that is exactly what makes it work; being designed the way it is, you tend not to expect it to be deep or complex, and it maintains that degree of simplicity rendering it an enjoyable experience that focuses only on what's most important about it, yet doesn't feel shallow.

If that sounds appealing to you, then the answer is yes.

To the second question, it will take a little bit to "get" the game -- that is, learn the different inhabitants of the dungeon, their attacks and relative strengths, plus your own strength, and what the various spells do, the various aspects of the dungeons, how the controls work, etc. Once you get the hang of it though it very quickly becomes second nature, as everything is very intuitively laid out and implemented. How easy or difficult it is then becomes a question of how good you are at it. There isn't a very steep learning curve, and if you're diligent about exploring every nook and cranny so as to get the most benefit out of each floor, you should have no trouble.

For me personally, I died only once the first time I played, but had gained enough insight into the game to be able to plunge as far as I wanted to go without much problem. I actually do find it a little easy, though once you retrieve the sword, keeping it becomes a real challenge if you're not careful -- that's really the hard part right now. I do know Paul is working on some balance changes that seek to make it a little more challenging, yet still balanced, which I think will be a good thing, as it really is just a bit too easy right now, at least on the trip down.

But the replay value here is immense. All dungeons are randomly generated (pre-generated when you start a new game, so you can travel up and down floors, unlike most Roguelikes) There's a lot to explore, and while you can become proficient quite rapidly, it takes longer to really discover everything the game has to offer.

Obviously, my recommendation is to buy it. I love it, and it's one of my favourite games on the platform, getting more play time than anything else right now, even after all the time it's been out (bought it first day). This sale price just makes it much more attractive. It's worth the full price and then some, so I think everyone would be terribly remiss if they didn't take advantage of the discount.

 

Whoa. Thanks guys. Bought.

 

My name's Kepa and I approve of this game.