Party-based RPG with base management 'Zoria: Age of Shattering' now has a Linux demo available

I just went to add it to my wishlist and, lo and behold! it was already there! (But the Prologue wasn't, so I added that instead.) :D

This looked cool and there was a demo available, so I checked it out. Quite possible I missed something because it seemed kinda brief, but after a few combats I wasn't able to open some doors they had around the place. Still, looked like a fun game, and I do love some RPGs. Will keep tabs on this. Hopefully it won't just be another steam-exclusive. If it comes to GOG or even Itch, I may pick it up. And with a demo on Itch, it will hopefully appear there at least.

Hey everyone,

This is one of the developers of Zoria: Age of Shattering. First, a thank you to Liam for the post, we're quite a small team so it's rather hard to be everywhere at once.

To answer the raised issues:

-

QuoteQuite possible I missed something because it seemed kinda brief, but after a few combats I wasn't able to open some doors they had around the place.

Well, the demo is about 2 hours long so probably something went wrong. We would love to know where exactly did you get stuck, maybe it's a bug or maybe a design flaw if it was not obvious enough what the next step is.

-

QuoteBut the Prologue wasn't, so I added that instead.

There will be surprises for people that played the demo, that's for sure, it's not just a repack of this demo, we're adding some interesting (we say) stuff to it.

Any other questions or issues, we'll check the forum out as much as possible, or you can try directly on our Discord channel. If you encounter any issues, would be great to hear about it, the sooner we know, the sooner we can fix them. We try to cover the time-zones as best as possible, but since there's only 3 of us, there may be some delay in answers sometimes.

Thank you,
Stefan

Thanks Stefan. Certainly looks interesting. I'll keep an eye on it!

Hey folks, is anyone else having trouble with the "Like" button here? It vanished. Can't like anything anymore

Quoting: BrazilianGamerHey folks, is anyone else having trouble with the "Like" button here? It vanished. Can't like anything anymore

No, whenever I see its not there, I always realize I'm not logged in... :D

I have too much of a TRPG backlog to get this anytime soon, but I might check out the demo over the weekend :)

Quoting: BrazilianGamerHey folks, is anyone else having trouble with the "Like" button here? It vanished. Can't like anything anymore

No problem here. Maybe you have an ad-blocker that’s being overzealous?

Quoting: BrazilianGamerHey folks, is anyone else having trouble with the "Like" button here? It vanished. Can't like anything anymore

It's gone for me as well.

Quoting: NeLeSHey everyone,
Well, the demo is about 2 hours long so probably something went wrong. We would love to know where exactly did you get stuck, maybe it's a bug or maybe a design flaw if it was not obvious enough what the next step is.

Thank you,
Stefan

It felt a bit strange when I came into the dungeon and faced off with three grunts, who apparently held a captured scout. I figured once I defeated those it was possible to recruit / free the scout, but nothing happened. We were still two after, and I saw nobody else around (and trying to figure out what to do next, I went to every nook and cranny both inside the dungeon and in the starting map area). Presumably the scout would be able to open those doors that required Engineering.

Other than that it seemed like a fun game, and it would be interesting to check it out. Will try the demo again later and see if I get further then. Would be nice if it was possible to switch between "I" and "C" without first closing "I" -- if that makes sense. If I had the inventory screen up and hit the C key, nothing happened.

At times the camera would also zoom in very near (probably due to ridges in the land), which made it a bit hard to see, and it was a little awkward to use the mouse right button to re-orientate the camera. But maybe there are more keys for that which I didn't happen to press.

Does the "King's AoE defence" or some such named skill not do anything in the demo btw? I picked it, but it was always greyed out during combat, despite the other chap being inside the dotted down AoE.

I hope you plan to release it on GOG, though, because if it's another Steam/Humble bundle release, I won't be able/willing to buy it. That thing will not be allowed on my computer.

Yep, that was the mistake. Didn't notice the scout in the cage. Well hidden. Had another go this evening, and certainly spent a lot more than two hours on it (as in 5-6 hours). Fun game. Bit frustrating to lack an indoors/local map, though, as I kept going back to places I had been several times. Easy to get confused when moving the camera around to see better and then "okay, where the hell was I going", haha, after a detour. The world map looked big, but I didn't see something about where we actually were, so it was a bit confusing.

Skellies behind the locked door wiped the floor with us, though. No chance whatsoever. Tried different things, but it felt impossible. They do more damage with one attack than I did with two, most of the time. And they do heavy AoE damage while we have nothing of the sort. And since we get bunched up at the start of combat, that's a rather steep uphill battle when outnumbered as well. The most lucky try was taking down two skellies, and barely scratching the big fella.

But overall I had fun with it.

How big is the demo compared to what is planned for the whole game?

PS: I really hope you plan to have more saveslots than 4. As in... no limit.And a way to identify them, either with typing in a name ourselves, or the game putting in something automatically beyond just a date and time.


Last edited by Pangaea on 10 April 2020 at 4:12 am UTC

Hey everyone,

Thank you all for your comments and feedback. To answer a few issues discussed here:

QuoteAt times the camera would also zoom in very near (probably due to ridges in the land), which made it a bit hard to see, and it was a little awkward to use the mouse right button to re-orientate the camera. But maybe there are more keys for that which I didn't happen to press.

Camera is still a work in progress, we're always looking for ways to make it better, so there will be improvements as the game progresses.

QuoteDoes the "King's AoE defence" or some such named skill not do anything in the demo btw? I picked it, but it was always greyed out during combat, despite the other chap being inside the dotted down AoE.

Every class has a unique resource, that builds up as you perform actions during combat and some abilities require that resource to be used. This mechanic replaces the "cooldown" and insures players don't limit to 1-2 strongest abilities and use their resources wisely. So, some abilities, for all classes, become available after some time, after performing a few attacks. In this case I think you're talking about King's Resolve, that costs 25 Loyalty. Loyalty is generated by "Attack" (+20 Loyalty) and "Vanquish thy foe"(+30 Loyalty). So, after 1 "Vanquish thy foe" or 2 "Attack" you should have built up enough resources to use ""King's Resolve". This may seem tedious and slow at first, but as the encounters become more complexit helps balance the combat and push a tactical approach to each move.

QuoteI hope you plan to release it on GOG, though, because if it's another Steam/Humble bundle release, I won't be able/willing to buy it. That thing will not be allowed on my computer.

As a developer I can tell you one universal truth - we would release it on everything including a smart fridge if we could. More markets = more sales, and for an indie developer sales are almost never "good enough" :). Exclusive releases only happen because of money involved, and as bad as it may be in some cases (I'm certainly not a fan), some small developers actually rely on that money to make the game. Big developers have no excuse whatsoever, but that's another discussion.

With that said, we will release on all platforms we can, including consoles, and any store that will have us - keep in mind GOG selects its releases, and many developers are being turned down by them, so it's not a matter of whether we want to, but whether they will accept us. What can keep us from releasing at the same time, or at all, on certain platforms / stores is the amount of work involved, since we're a very small team, or their process of accepting releases - GOG (as a store) and PlayStation (as a platform) are the hardest, Nintendo Switch is the hardest to port to because of the limitations.

Short answer - we'll do our best, we want to make the game available everywhere we can, when it's finally complete.

Regarding difficulty, we made some improvements to AI in the latest patch and still analyzing whether this inadvertently pushed the difficulty level higher that we would want it. In this case there probably will be a small patch to fix this specific issue. The packs that gave you trouble are harder than the rest, but should have been defeated within 1-2 saves, max, as long as all points are spent and all abilities are unlocked to about level 5 - that should be easily achieved by that time. We'll look into this issue.

Thank you all again for your feedback,
Stefan

Quoting: inlinuxdude

Quoting: BrazilianGamerHey folks, is anyone else having trouble with the "Like" button here? It vanished. Can't like anything anymore

No, whenever I see its not there, I always realize I'm not logged in... :D

I was logged in. But it's back

Quoting: SalvatosI have too much of a TRPG backlog to get this anytime soon, but I might check out the demo over the weekend :)

Quoting: BrazilianGamerHey folks, is anyone else having trouble with the "Like" button here? It vanished. Can't like anything anymore

No problem here. Maybe you have an ad-blocker that’s being overzealous?

Well, I accessed the site on my phone and I don't use adblockers on it. But the button is back

Quoting: Phlebiac

Quoting: BrazilianGamerHey folks, is anyone else having trouble with the "Like" button here? It vanished. Can't like anything anymore

It's gone for me as well.

It's back now pal 👍

Quoting: NeLeSHey everyone,

Thank you all for your comments and feedback. To answer a few issues discussed here:

Regarding difficulty, we made some improvements to AI in the latest patch and still analyzing whether this inadvertently pushed the difficulty level higher that we would want it. In this case there probably will be a small patch to fix this specific issue. The packs that gave you trouble are harder than the rest, but should have been defeated within 1-2 saves, max, as long as all points are spent and all abilities are unlocked to about level 5 - that should be easily achieved by that time. We'll look into this issue.

Thank you all again for your feedback,
Stefan

Thank you for the thorough reply, Stefan. Unfortunately not the first time I've heard this about GOG's process, and I've seen some uproars in the forum about games they rejected. Really hope they accept you, however, as I only buy DRM Free games these days, and steam and its sidekick Humble is not an option (I miss the good old Humble Bundle). Alternatively, it would be cool to be able to get it directly from you guys, but I don't know how expensive or resource intensive such solutions are. I know RimWorld does it, so I bought it there. Win-win. They get 100% of the money (I hear GOG and Steam has a 30% take), while I get it DRM free.

Regarding the quote above... Yikes! They completely wiped the floor with me, and I tried 4 or 5 times, not being close a single time. Some in my group were level 7 at the time, and I had spent all points on skills and attributes, having invested many points into stamina to increase the life pool. Even in combat before this one, the mage would sometimes die outright when the enemies attacked, without being able to get her turn. Enemies seem to often target the weak foes like the mage, so she'd often go down fast. The Taunt ability was very useful in that regard (but obviously not if I don't get a turn to use it before she dies). However, in this particular fight the odds were too stacked against us, and generally two people would be dead more or less off the bat, and trying to take down 4-5 skellies was impossible.

I liked the flow in combat, though, and that it hopefully won't be too overly complex. I prefer RTwP in RPGs of this sort because combat is more fluid and typically faster (despite often heavily used Pause, like in the Baldur's Gate and Pillars of Eternity games). Turn-based games sometimes take very, very long to slog through simple combat, which is one of the things I didn't like all that much with Wasteland 2.

And I suppose that at some point characters will have more than 2 AP, so it would for instance be possible to move and also do a 2 AP attack.

Incidentally, this was one of the challenges I had with the skellies behind that two-orb door. We are bunched up at the start of combat. I tried to trigger it in different ways, but we are generally always bunched up, which often has the consequence of needing to move to attack, because somebody else are in the way (no line of sight). The skellies have some ranged attacks as well, so they don't really need to get face to face. But once they are, they will hit us twice. I can try to hit them twice back, or I can try to heal or put up a buff. And then there are 4-5 of them, each able to hit us twice, and each attack does more damage than we often deal out with two attacks. And they have AoE. So yeah... that was rather difficult.

Maybe I'm still doing things wrong, but I do use many of the abilities, like trying to pin down somebody and so forth. I'm new to the game ofc and hadn't even heard about it before. But perhaps that is good feedback anyway. Playtesters and the like probably know everything inside and out :P

For those with a GOG account, please put in a vote here:
https://www.gog.com/wishlist/games/zoria_age_of_shattering



(GOG and formatting.. well. I tried )


Last edited by Pangaea on 10 April 2020 at 11:12 pm UTC

Thank you so much for your thorough response and details Pangaea, they are of great help.

Regarding DRM - we'll find a way. Would be awesome to be on GoG, thank you for your support, but no matter the outcome, we will find a way for everyone who want to play the game, to be able to do so on their terms.

Regarding the skeletons encounter - well, judging from your description, apparently you did all things right. And we are surely not supposed to be the judges of how well a player does in combat - we did these encounters so many times, any encounter should be easy for us, but we don't want a game with only one good approach. So yeah, we'll take a good critical look a the difficulty of some encounters. We like a good challenge, but not to the point where only one or two solutions are available - that's making the player do what you want, exclusively, and we're not fans of that.

Regarding combat in general - we're trying to strike a balance - we feel some absolutely great titles suffer from sluggish combat, just as you mentioned, for even the most simple encounters. But we're not great fans of RTwP either, so we're going for a middle ground, Turn Based but faster, more fluid, sacrificing some complexity in favor of faster encounters. The combat as it is we feel it's in between JRPG simplicity and DnD super-complexity, allowing it to feel snappy, fluid but not boring. We're exploring some more abilities that take advantage of available mechanics: line of sight with destroyable elements in the environment,and even abilities that pop-up temporary barriers, positional bonuses (100% critical chance for attacks from behind), and some other ideas, but won't go too far with combos and such.

More than 2AP ... hmmm ... interesting idea ... yeah, sure, but it will cost. Keep in mind the game has a base, and base management. I'm quite sure it will involve some building upgrades at some point to be able to unlock all the goodies :) This DEMO is technically a mission - you set up your party (choose your followers from the available - not wounded and recovering) and go on a mission. The party changes with each mission (or not, depending on choice and availability). So upgrading the characters will be a matter of XP gained, but also facilities that provide upgrades to players.

Pre-combat positioning is being considered for a while now - we just haven't reached a final design - whether it will be generally available or available as a passive on certain classes - or an upgrade to the commander (the only character always on the mission).

Thank you again for your awesome feedback,
Stefan

I like it a lot, I'll certainly watch the progress. Good work!

Some unassorted comments:
- Only because of Stefan's explanation above I got the special ressurces. Now I only need to find a way to reenable the healing skill that worked - so far - only once : )
- A windowed mode would be nice
- I thought I was at the end of the demo, until Pangaea wrote about his problems with the skeletons. A dungeon map would be highly appreciated, it is clear that I missed something
- Is there a way to see open quests or recheck the quest items? blargh, I completely missed <C>. call me stupid...
- Even with my lowly intel integrated something the game looks nice and is playable with reasonable speed. Great!


Last edited by daishord on 12 April 2020 at 1:18 pm UTC