Hi guys. :)
Someone in a King of Dragon Pass thread on another forum posted a link to this site a few days ago, and at five dollars I couldn't resist!
I've just been messing around with it for a couple of hours, and while it was fun in the beginning I ran into some issues pretty quickly, and I thought it might be useful to write down my first impressions while they're still fresh in my memory...keeping in mind that I do realize this is more of a 'rough draft' than a finished game at this point, so it's not my intention to be overly critical.
My first game didn't last long due to the crash bug when my second hero died, but other than that I didn't have any problems. (Though I was slightly worried when I noticed my charismatic, diplomatic heroes were somehow popping out cold-hearted, bloodthirsty children, I was interested in seeing whether any of the future events would reflect that...)
Anyway, it was after I downloaded the fixed version that the fun started to dry up. The first, and most major issue was (what I assume is a bug) where I stopped getting events early on. I'm not 100% sure but I believe the one where I tried to follow the captive frost giant's backtrail (and failed) was the last one I got.
Without events the game became a grind of just hiring soldiers and clicking on hex after hex trying to trigger something interesting. All of my original heroes were replaced with their (this time well-adjusted) children and grandchildren by the time I found anything at all, and in this case it was just a couple of what looked like villages or camps that just gave me a message about finding 'default_site' whenever I went there, and I finally gave up without really accomplishing anything and came here.
From skimming the other threads I know you're already aware that exploring is kind of...not fun, so I won't spend too long complaining here other than just to say that I agree with the general consensus - if this is supposed to be the meat of the game and the main way to make things happen, it needs a lot more substance and interactivity, preferably with a little strategy thrown in. Nothing underlines the lack of all that quite like clicking on hex after hex without any decisions to make in the meantime...not that the choices even currently seem to have much effect, but they're at least a nice distraction.
There were a few other, comparatively minor things I was thinking could use some balancing or tweaking, or I was just curious about the direction you planned to go with them, but right now this is the big issue for me, and I imagine for anyone else trying to get into the game right now.
If it's a bug causing the events to stop (it's so late now or I'd play a couple more games just to make sure it's a recurring one) I guess it's possible it was introduced in the latest patch, and I just hope it's an easy one to fix.
And I know this post was primarily negative and I'm sorry for that - problems aside, the truth is I'm incredibly excited about this game, as for years now I've been dying for someone to make any game even remotely close to KoDP in style. I think this one has a lot of potential and I can't wait to see where you go with it.
