Hmm. Could you please clarify so I can better understand what happened: you took the secret chest above the room shown on the image, then you cleared the room on the picture, then you somehow got outside but the camera keeps locked on the room, is that right?
I first heard about Haunted Lands from Alpha Beta Gamer's video covering this 4 hours after he released said video. I haven't stopped playing it for the past 3 days! I'd like to compile a review of excitement, constructive criticism and bug finds in no particular order. I haven't updated to the 1.02 version, keep in mind.
Each of the 4 playable characters feels potent and great to control. I immediately gravitated towards cowgirl but have completed the game with each character (Still working on beating the secret boss w/ each!) Whilst I originally disliked the gunners being incapable of healing, being able to respawn with up to 5 silver crosses definitely evens that out, and I've been happily surprised how many enemies the cross explosion can dispatch in a pinch (they're called "gunners" anyways, tanking hits is the last on my to-do list!) Beast being able to heal from dealing damage felt addicting and I personally run a pounce-oriented equipment set: Speaking of, the 2 cultists in the dragon lair? I didn't realize they were more than setpieces until I took a swipe for the heck of it, and I love that you put them there to compensate for the boss being bloodless, that decision made for some frantic chaos during the latter half when I was going for heals and trying not to die to the two minions. Speaking for additional characters, it would be interesting to see a divine-centric character, maybe a priest or paladin-esque motif. I'm genuinely curious to see what could be added to the roster! I saw one comment saying that they disliked how pressing up or down halts horizontal movement. As a keyboard player, this hasn't been an issue at all for me, and I would argue it makes lining up diagonal shots as a gunner much easier and consistent. For the other characters, it only effects beast (since sorceress can't attack midair) and negligably at that. I felt like the placement of checkpoints & quicksaves are very well done so far. There's been various times where I was nervous about dying and being sent to the last checkpoint, and others where I was happy for the safety net such as before bosses. Having a quicksave AND checkpoint actually made for some interesting decisions, such as when I entered the dragon lair as a veteran w/ a pre-activated retribution, but only 2 of my 5 starting crosses! Do I take the free damage or extra hits? If both options weren't available, that kind of critical thinkng wouldn't be present. I've managed to crash the game 3 times so far. The first two involve Beast's pounce on the first purple elite w/ the damage shield: the first time I pounced him when he spawned and crashed the game on contact. On a later playthrough, I had the idea to use the Beast's retribution for its basic attack to douse the shield, then immediately pounce - this led to a second crash, I think the shield came back up just in time. The third crash was during the secret boss: To avoid spoilers for those who haven't played, I used sorceress' chain lightning on the boss's spawned obstacle and crashed. Whilst these crashes definitely cost me some time (The third example, I had to replay starting from boneyard) they were easily avoidable once I knew of their existence. I hope they get patched, regardless. Enemies! I genuinely enjoy how damage works in this game. Excluding elites & bosses, I started counting shots early on and memorizing how much damage each foe can take, and since this seems consistent amongst each character it feels like a design choice in my novice eyes. A lack of damage randomness & clear indicators of sustained damage made keeping track of which enemies I could and couldn't engage so much better in the heat of the moment. If I couldn't see the gore a damaged foe had, it would be a lot harder to dispatch enemies and make target priority less reliable. Speaking of, I originally despised how the healers can tend one another, but found reliable strategies for each playable character (preemptive reloads w/ gunners so I can mag dump, Beast's pounce, and a 3-charge bomb into some follow-up shots w/ sorceress.) I think some people hate them because they're healers, not because they're designed poorly. They force target prioritization, that's for sure! In fact, the only enemy I have legitimate criticism for is the (current) final boss in the Dragon's Lair. In the last phase specifically, when the dragon coats the whole ground in flame (from claw to claw in one breath,) I've yet to find any method of avoiding damage as the Gunners. This got me killed quite a few times mere shots from victory. The attack just felt a little cheap, especially in the fleeting moments before defeating such a foe. Of course, I'm aware I could be missing some knowledge to reliably dodge it, and bringing the bat wings for a double jump could theoretically remedy this (Haven't tested this yet.) The attack doesn't feel bad with the Beast or Sorceress due to Pounce & Levitate, but as I said before, how do Gunners dodge it with their lack of mobility options? Overall, I can't wait to see what else you have in store and was shocked this was a free product. Everything about the game, from character design, level geography and even checkpoint placement felt spot-on for me to make for an experience that was equally rewarding and unforgiving. It reminds me of classic consoles and developer mentalities such as the Dark Souls franchise: each damage taken is meaningful, every shot an opportunity. Each mistake feels like my own, and experience is half the battle. I have never wanted to speedrun a game faster than this.
Perhaps, in the Haunted Lands, each hunt can be an expression of oneself. With your relics in hand, take up your trade's tools of war - Survival is for the quick, cunning, and ruthless. You may not succeed on your first attempt - or your first several dozen - but with persistence comes perfection.
Wow, thanks for this huge feedback! Glad that you liked the game.
The crash caused by pounce on shielded elite, that you mentioned, is already fixed in version 1.0.2. The other bug with chain lightning I'll definitely look into.
I was wondering if players would be able to discover small non-obvious things like healing opportunity on the final boss for the beast. Kudos for figuring it out.
I assure you that every attack of the final boss is avoidable. Final phase is tricky indeed, but it's possible for every character to beat it without taking any damage.
Thank you for responding! I'm glad and grateful this game seems active both from developer and player activity. I have been hesitant to stray towards the claws on the sides during the final boss fight, I might try that next run. There's so much room for player expression with the content already presented, and I'm excited to see how this game evolves from here.
Here's my first video of Haunted Lands. Thank you for this awesome game. Wish it was a bit easier (like more checkpoints) because I've been replaying some parts quite some times.
I think there should definitely be a save point in the crypt after three floors of arena fights. Just near the health altar. Counting that there is also a little starting segment on the graveyard after you defeated Overseer it's very tiresome to complete all these areas again if you fail near that huge statue of cobra.
There's an infinite loop potential when trying to land from a jump but the player character is still in an overhang wall the landing animation never players and the game is stuck.
I got this one error while clawing up the pink barrier person before they deployed the barrier.
Not sure that someone mentioned it already but I think I found a bug. Changed reloading button from V to D but reloading function stayed on a V button. At the same time charged special attack works on a D button.
Really rough that shortcuts opened don't remain when you retreat… Thought I was making progress when I opened a shortcut back to my car! Unfortunately, no :C
I can confirm it works on Linux with Wine. I must say that I never liked old DOS games' looks, because of the color palette, especially because I was into Amiga, but I have to admit that this game looks really nice. Somebody has a great talent for pixel art and great knowledge how to use colors to make the atmophere. I'm seriously impressed.
The only thing stopping this from being absolute perfection is the controls. Pushing up stops you in your tracks - and its extremely difficult to avoid that happening while jumping around or trying to outmaneuver the enemies. ESPECIALLY with a gamepad.
Trying to move to escape enemies and coincidentally nudged up? Complete stop. Dead.
Trying to jump over something but touched up? Drop like a brick into the enemy. Dead.
Trying to use the Mage's levitate but brushed up? Not levitating anymore! Dead.
What would seem to eliminate this would be:
Allow looking up while moving without it stopping you.
Disable looking up while jumping/levitating (you can't attack while jumping anyway so it serves no purpose except to make you drop and get killed).
Be able to jump at any point of attack animation (like you can with teleport).
Being able to jump much earlier at end of teleport animation.
Being able to shoot while moving and jumping would be awesome, but I appreciate the game has probably been designed around this so it might unbalanced the game.
The interaction between levitation and up/down control is indeed an oversight and will be fixed.
Pressing up/down during the jump should not stop your horizontal movement unless you let go of left/right movement control, but in this situation pressing up/down doesn't matter at all, you'll drop down in place anyway. There might be a problem specific to a gamepad control, I'll look into it.
first being the precision to make specific landings while dodging on either stages and bosses (The dragon boss difficulty is absurd, you require chirurgical precision to not land on the fire, and the fire last too much for being fire on paviment), the chaman demons healing enemies just makes things more tedious than fun, since they end up healing themselves and you have to either rush towards waves of enemies in order to hit them, which risks to get multiple hits.
second is about the control response, as it seems that it has a delay of 1 second to repeat the same command (Such as dodge or jump), while the bosses' response is almost immediately (Like the hand boss or the whip ghouls) and during a dodge you have no response until you finish the animation.
the game is good, but this things kinda ruin it for me, since is absuredly hard, is hard for the sake of being hard, not for the sake of challenging, take for example Bloodstain, it has enough difficulty for casuals and hardcores to play it and have fun, but this game almost rivals with the difficulty of Ninja Gaiden 3 of NES.
6/10, rework this aspects cuz the punishment shouldn't come from not being milimetrically accurate or just spawn enemies for the sake of spawning enemies... but by mixing patterns and failing to read the opponent's movement (Like jumping when the enemy is shooting a straight projectile) (The A. I. should outsmart the player and not the game should put absurd situations).
The moment I booted the game it fot deleted by Avira and quarantined and was labeled as a Drop.win32.RegStartupUserProfile.45613 threat on the Exe file.
Just a heads up for others and a call for people to look into it.
I really hope it's a false positive cuz the game look really good and fun.
Yeah, unfortunately this can happen because the game doesn't contain paid certificate for AV clients. All you can do is make sure that the suspicious file is sent to your AV provider for proper analysis so they can unflag it. Or restore quarantined file if you don't want to wait and trust me (I don't say that you should, it's up to you).
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And one more camera problem here.
Never seen this one. Did something specific cause this?
Not sure. Played as sorceress. Encountered it two times.
Okay, thanks again.
BTW - I stuck here again, now as sorceress. ^_^ Indeed check-point just after the third arena, near (or even instead) health altar would help a lot.
Stuck where exactly?
I broke something hitting through the wall here.
One more bug/glitch found.
Camera locked on this room after I took a secret up above and cleared this room (god knows how many tries it took...).
Hmm. Could you please clarify so I can better understand what happened: you took the secret chest above the room shown on the image, then you cleared the room on the picture, then you somehow got outside but the camera keeps locked on the room, is that right?
Yep. It wasn't difficult to get outside - just a pounce attack with double jump.
I see. Thanks reporting these problems.
I first heard about Haunted Lands from Alpha Beta Gamer's video covering this 4 hours after he released said video. I haven't stopped playing it for the past 3 days! I'd like to compile a review of excitement, constructive criticism and bug finds in no particular order.
I haven't updated to the 1.02 version, keep in mind.
Each of the 4 playable characters feels potent and great to control. I immediately gravitated towards cowgirl but have completed the game with each character (Still working on beating the secret boss w/ each!) Whilst I originally disliked the gunners being incapable of healing, being able to respawn with up to 5 silver crosses definitely evens that out, and I've been happily surprised how many enemies the cross explosion can dispatch in a pinch (they're called "gunners" anyways, tanking hits is the last on my to-do list!) Beast being able to heal from dealing damage felt addicting and I personally run a pounce-oriented equipment set: Speaking of, the 2 cultists in the dragon lair? I didn't realize they were more than setpieces until I took a swipe for the heck of it, and I love that you put them there to compensate for the boss being bloodless, that decision made for some frantic chaos during the latter half when I was going for heals and trying not to die to the two minions. Speaking for additional characters, it would be interesting to see a divine-centric character, maybe a priest or paladin-esque motif. I'm genuinely curious to see what could be added to the roster!
I saw one comment saying that they disliked how pressing up or down halts horizontal movement. As a keyboard player, this hasn't been an issue at all for me, and I would argue it makes lining up diagonal shots as a gunner much easier and consistent. For the other characters, it only effects beast (since sorceress can't attack midair) and negligably at that.
I felt like the placement of checkpoints & quicksaves are very well done so far. There's been various times where I was nervous about dying and being sent to the last checkpoint, and others where I was happy for the safety net such as before bosses. Having a quicksave AND checkpoint actually made for some interesting decisions, such as when I entered the dragon lair as a veteran w/ a pre-activated retribution, but only 2 of my 5 starting crosses! Do I take the free damage or extra hits? If both options weren't available, that kind of critical thinkng wouldn't be present.
I've managed to crash the game 3 times so far. The first two involve Beast's pounce on the first purple elite w/ the damage shield: the first time I pounced him when he spawned and crashed the game on contact. On a later playthrough, I had the idea to use the Beast's retribution for its basic attack to douse the shield, then immediately pounce - this led to a second crash, I think the shield came back up just in time. The third crash was during the secret boss: To avoid spoilers for those who haven't played, I used sorceress' chain lightning on the boss's spawned obstacle and crashed. Whilst these crashes definitely cost me some time (The third example, I had to replay starting from boneyard) they were easily avoidable once I knew of their existence. I hope they get patched, regardless.
Enemies! I genuinely enjoy how damage works in this game. Excluding elites & bosses, I started counting shots early on and memorizing how much damage each foe can take, and since this seems consistent amongst each character it feels like a design choice in my novice eyes. A lack of damage randomness & clear indicators of sustained damage made keeping track of which enemies I could and couldn't engage so much better in the heat of the moment. If I couldn't see the gore a damaged foe had, it would be a lot harder to dispatch enemies and make target priority less reliable. Speaking of, I originally despised how the healers can tend one another, but found reliable strategies for each playable character (preemptive reloads w/ gunners so I can mag dump, Beast's pounce, and a 3-charge bomb into some follow-up shots w/ sorceress.) I think some people hate them because they're healers, not because they're designed poorly. They force target prioritization, that's for sure! In fact, the only enemy I have legitimate criticism for is the (current) final boss in the Dragon's Lair. In the last phase specifically, when the dragon coats the whole ground in flame (from claw to claw in one breath,) I've yet to find any method of avoiding damage as the Gunners. This got me killed quite a few times mere shots from victory. The attack just felt a little cheap, especially in the fleeting moments before defeating such a foe. Of course, I'm aware I could be missing some knowledge to reliably dodge it, and bringing the bat wings for a double jump could theoretically remedy this (Haven't tested this yet.) The attack doesn't feel bad with the Beast or Sorceress due to Pounce & Levitate, but as I said before, how do Gunners dodge it with their lack of mobility options?
Overall, I can't wait to see what else you have in store and was shocked this was a free product. Everything about the game, from character design, level geography and even checkpoint placement felt spot-on for me to make for an experience that was equally rewarding and unforgiving. It reminds me of classic consoles and developer mentalities such as the Dark Souls franchise: each damage taken is meaningful, every shot an opportunity. Each mistake feels like my own, and experience is half the battle. I have never wanted to speedrun a game faster than this.
Perhaps, in the Haunted Lands, each hunt can be an expression of oneself. With your relics in hand, take up your trade's tools of war - Survival is for the quick, cunning, and ruthless. You may not succeed on your first attempt - or your first several dozen - but with persistence comes perfection.
Wow, thanks for this huge feedback! Glad that you liked the game.
The crash caused by pounce on shielded elite, that you mentioned, is already fixed in version 1.0.2. The other bug with chain lightning I'll definitely look into.
I was wondering if players would be able to discover small non-obvious things like healing opportunity on the final boss for the beast. Kudos for figuring it out.
I assure you that every attack of the final boss is avoidable. Final phase is tricky indeed, but it's possible for every character to beat it without taking any damage.
Thank you for responding! I'm glad and grateful this game seems active both from developer and player activity. I have been hesitant to stray towards the claws on the sides during the final boss fight, I might try that next run. There's so much room for player expression with the content already presented, and I'm excited to see how this game evolves from here.
I think there should definitely be a save point in the crypt after three floors of arena fights. Just near the health altar. Counting that there is also a little starting segment on the graveyard after you defeated Overseer it's very tiresome to complete all these areas again if you fail near that huge statue of cobra.
Very fun so far, been chipping away at the stages. The hand as the lizard was quite hard but fun.
A couple of issues in 1.0.1 I encountered:
Hi, thanks for reporting this issues. Can you please show an example of the area with infinite loop?
This area as the lizard doing a jump will get stuck trying to cross it.
And this area the camera doesn't pan down where it goes to the maggot spawners.
Yes, this is not how it's supposed to work, will be fixing this asap.
Much obliged for the fixes!
Found another issue spot, the mage can teleport into the red zone and sort of falls off screen somewhere.
Awesome game! Can you please add v-sync? Thanks!
If nothing goes wrong, I'll add it in the next version.
Not sure that someone mentioned it already but I think I found a bug. Changed reloading button from V to D but reloading function stayed on a V button. At the same time charged special attack works on a D button.
Yeah, it's a bug. Thanks for reporting, I will fix it in the next version.
Really rough that shortcuts opened don't remain when you retreat… Thought I was making progress when I opened a shortcut back to my car! Unfortunately, no :C
It should remain. Pressing left/right on mission map screen changes starting level.
I can confirm it works on Linux with Wine. I must say that I never liked old DOS games' looks, because of the color palette, especially because I was into Amiga, but I have to admit that this game looks really nice. Somebody has a great talent for pixel art and great knowledge how to use colors to make the atmophere. I'm seriously impressed.
The only thing stopping this from being absolute perfection is the controls. Pushing up stops you in your tracks - and its extremely difficult to avoid that happening while jumping around or trying to outmaneuver the enemies. ESPECIALLY with a gamepad.
What would seem to eliminate this would be:
Being able to shoot while moving and jumping would be awesome, but I appreciate the game has probably been designed around this so it might unbalanced the game.
Hi, thanks for the feedback.
The interaction between levitation and up/down control is indeed an oversight and will be fixed.
Pressing up/down during the jump should not stop your horizontal movement unless you let go of left/right movement control, but in this situation pressing up/down doesn't matter at all, you'll drop down in place anyway. There might be a problem specific to a gamepad control, I'll look into it.
Hmm interesting, then could be the gamepad, its a D-Pad (not thumb stick), maybe it cant register up+left at the same time.
The up/down during jump thing tho would be awesome, I'm sure that will save me a good number of deaths.
I have 2 issues with this game...
first being the precision to make specific landings while dodging on either stages and bosses (The dragon boss difficulty is absurd, you require chirurgical precision to not land on the fire, and the fire last too much for being fire on paviment), the chaman demons healing enemies just makes things more tedious than fun, since they end up healing themselves and you have to either rush towards waves of enemies in order to hit them, which risks to get multiple hits.
second is about the control response, as it seems that it has a delay of 1 second to repeat the same command (Such as dodge or jump), while the bosses' response is almost immediately (Like the hand boss or the whip ghouls) and during a dodge you have no response until you finish the animation.
the game is good, but this things kinda ruin it for me, since is absuredly hard, is hard for the sake of being hard, not for the sake of challenging, take for example Bloodstain, it has enough difficulty for casuals and hardcores to play it and have fun, but this game almost rivals with the difficulty of Ninja Gaiden 3 of NES.
6/10, rework this aspects cuz the punishment shouldn't come from not being milimetrically accurate or just spawn enemies for the sake of spawning enemies... but by mixing patterns and failing to read the opponent's movement (Like jumping when the enemy is shooting a straight projectile) (The A. I. should outsmart the player and not the game should put absurd situations).
If you notice a surge of new players downloading the game, blame us! :p
Thank you for covering the game!
thanks for all the light you're shedding on those remakes!
Just discovered this and Episode Alpha. Awesome games really. They definitely have some kind of Lovecraftian style which I love. Congrats!
The moment I booted the game it fot deleted by Avira and quarantined and was labeled as a Drop.win32.RegStartupUserProfile.45613 threat on the Exe file.
Just a heads up for others and a call for people to look into it.
I really hope it's a false positive cuz the game look really good and fun.
Yeah, unfortunately this can happen because the game doesn't contain paid certificate for AV clients. All you can do is make sure that the suspicious file is sent to your AV provider for proper analysis so they can unflag it. Or restore quarantined file if you don't want to wait and trust me (I don't say that you should, it's up to you).
If you want more detailed answer, here's article from game engine developer: https://help.yoyogames.com/hc/en-us/articles/360031016592-What-to-do-if-your-gam...
OMG this game is really amazing!
congratulations for you great Work, I really loved this game :)
Thank you!
This game look so nice! A Mac version in progress or not?
Unfortunately I don't have access to a Mac and therefore won't be able to create a version for that platform.
IS THIS GAME SOOO COOOL OR WUUUT!!!