Bug fix release for Hoplite

Hoplite 2.3.1 has been released for Android and will be available for iOS in about a week.

Just a few bug fixes this time.

• Fixed a bug where you could be offered shield upgrades that had already been taken
• Fixed a bug preventing incremental achievements syncing correctly (Google Play only)
• Fixed a bug preventing achievements unlocked before v2.3 from syncing (iOS only)

Leaderboards and balance changes for Hoplite

I'm happy to announce that Hoplite 2.3 is now available.

You can grab it for Android at Google Play or Amazon and for iOS at iTunes

Here is a mostly complete list of what has changed:

iOS only

• Game Center integration: unlocks and achievements synced between devices.
• Performance improvements, especially loading time.

Google Play only

• Google Play Games integration: unlocks and achievements synced between devices.
• Added missing xxxhdpi support (for some new devices like the LG G3)

Balance/Gameplay

• Demons now die if they are knocked "through" magma instead of landing on the other side.  This does not affect the player (or bombs) so you can still fly over magma using Reaction & Might Bash.
• Using recall on stairs will now trigger descending to the next depth
• Shielding Bash split into two levels, each with a cost of 1.  Level one blocks a single attack and level two blocks all attacks.
• Cooldowns are no longer decremented when Swift Leap is used.
• Surge now restores 100 energy instead of all energy.
• Protection removed from the game.  Flawless now unlocks Shielding Bash II
• Demon cooldowns no longer decrease while they're stunned
• Hephaestus now offers upgrades of your current prayers with higher priority - ie. if you have Shielding Bash, you'll be offered Shielding Bash II (if unlocked)
• Patience has increased chance to be found
• Winged Sandals increases Leap range by 1 (from 2) and cost reduced to 1 (from 2)
• Leap Strike cost reduce to 1 (from 2)
• Wizard Beam cost increase to 1 (from 0)
• (Greater) Energy now costs 0/1/1/1 for 120/135/150/160 total energy and is capped at four levels.
• (Greater) Bloodlust now costs 1/1/1/1 for 6/9/12/15 bonus energy and is capped at four levels.
• Sacrifice cost reduced to 0 (from 1) for the following prayers:
• Sweeping Bash
• Greater Sweeping Bash
• Spinning Bash
• Recall
• Follow
• Plant Spear
• Slashing Lunge
• Sword Lunge
• The number and type of demons has been adjusted in the lower depths to increase the difficulty beyond where it used to hit a plateau.

Other

• New Achievement "Hoplite Master" for consecutive wins with unique prayers.  You can check prayers made in the current streak under the "Prayers" menu.
• Minor graphical changes to show when wizards and demolitionists are able to shoot and when player has Wizard Beam.
• Fixes/improvements to animation/sfx timing
• Lots of bug fixes

Hoplite 2.3 progress II

I've finished up the last of what I wanted to get done before releasing 2.3 including a bunch of play testing with each prayer.  Unless any major issues come up, it should be available in about a week or so.

If you want to try it now, sign up for the beta

Changes from beta build 78 to 81

• Max Energy/Bloodlust cost and gains reduced
• Protection removed
• Flawless achievement now unlocks Shielding Bash II
• demon cooldowns no longer decrease while they're stunned
• Hephaestus now offers upgrades of your current prayers with higher priority
• fixed bug using Reaction and Shielding Bash together
• spelling/description mistakes
• minor graphical fixes/improvements for timing of animations/sfx

iOS

• fixed double achievement pop-ups
• fixed error reporting in iOS 6

android

• xxxhdpi support

Hoplite 2.3 progress

I've been playing a lot of Hoplite recently.

The main tasks for the next version were supposed to be adding support for Google Play Games and Game Center.  I finished doing that a while ago now but decided to make some quick balance changes before releasing it and, well, I'm still making balance changes.

Thanks for all the feedback and suggestions that have been coming in.  There have been some great ones, which really helps.

Basically, I've been focusing on making the less popular prayers more appealing, toning down some of the really overpowered builds and trying to improve the "late game" as I am continually surprised to see how far some people are able to get.

There are a couple more things I'm still looking at changing but version 2.3 won't be too far off now.

Changes in build 78 (released today)

• Hades Altars scraped - I just didn't find them fun.
• "Unique prayer streak" bonus scraped - the idea seemed fairly unpopular and I agree there are some major flaws with it.  The game still tracks these streaks, though, for the awarding of a new achievement - "Hoplite Master"
• Some minor graphical changes - you can now see when wizards and demolitionists are able to shoot and a couple of other small things.

A few other ideas have been and gone too.  What I've settled on to replace the Altars of Hades is simply tweaking the current game so that the difficulty no longer hits a peak and stops getting harder.  

The number and type of demons has been adjusted in the later depths instead of simply throwing more and more in to keep the difficulty going up.

There have also been several tweaks to various prayers - see below.  The change to Swift Leap doesn't look like much but it is a big nerf to builds that combined this with Shielding Bash and Wizard Beam, which was causing the most balance issues in the late game.

Changes since 2.2.4

Android only:

• Google Play Games integration
• Unlocks and achievements synced between devices

iOS only:

• Game Center integration
• Unlocks and achievements synced between devices
• Improved performance, especially loading time (thanks to roboVM improvements.)  This has also fixed an issue where older devices would sometimes not be able to load the game at all.
• Fixed the error reporting system.  Why did no one tell me this stopped working!? ;)

All platforms:

• More bug fixes.
• New Achievement - "Hoplite Master" for consecutive wins with unique prayers.
• Minor graphical changes to show when wizards and demolitionists are able to shoot and when player has Wizard Beam.
• Using recall on stairs will now trigger descending to the next depth
• Shielding Bash split into two levels, each with a cost of 1.  Level one blocks a single attack and level two blocks all attacks.
• Cooldowns are no longer decremented when Swift Leap is used.
• Surge now restores 100 energy instead of all energy.
• Protection and Patience have increased chance to be found
• Protection only lasts for the turn you are hit and cost reduced to 0 (from 1)
• Demons now die if they are knocked "through" magma instead of landing on the other side.  This does not affect the player (or bombs) so you can still fly over magma using Reaction & Might Bash.
• Winged Sandals increases Leap range by 1 (from 2) and cost reduced to 1 (from 2)
• Leap Strike cost reduce to 1 (from 2)
• Wizard Beam cost increase to 1 (from 0)
• All levels of Greater Energy have cost reduced to 2
• Sacrifice cost reduced to 0 (from 1) for the following prayers:
• Sweeping Bash
• Greater Sweeping Bash
• Spinning Bash
• Recall
• Follow
• Plant Spear
• Slashing Lunge
• Sword Lunge

Beta Access (now iOS too)

If you'd like to play the beta version, see here

New movement options for Hoplite

A couple of new options for movement have been added in version 2.2.4 (released today for Android and soon for iOS)

Moving to distant tiles while demons are nearby now requires confirmation by default (by tapping a second time on the same tile.)

"Swipe to move" is just about exactly as it sounds.  I've become quite a fan of this myself as it gives a decent boost to accuracy on a small screen without really taking anything away.

"Fat finger mode" requires you to confirm every tile tap while demons are around just like moving to distant tiles.  You can have "swipe to move" enabled at the same time to cut down on some of the extra tapping required.

Long press to inspect has also been moved to a separate button.

Gameplay changes in 2.2.4

• "Plant Spear" cost reduced to 1
• "Pacifist" achievement is harder, requiring you to go an extra depth without killing

Other changes in 2.2.4

The tutorial has had a minor revamp.  I've tried to simplify it, cutting out blocks of text and replacing it with animations.

Lots of bugs fixed.

Hoplite News

Happy New Year!

The iOS release of Hoplite has been going very well.  Thank you all so much for playing the game, telling your friends and tweeting about it.

Some recent Hoplite features/reviews:

Pocket Tactics - With your shield or on it
Indie Game Enthusiast - iOS Spotlight
Hoplite on German radio

Version 2.2.1 is under way and the beta is now available.  See the beta testing page for more details (Android only)

Changes so far:

• fixed bug causing game to keep going after player won or died
• fixed crash if game is paused immediately after giving an achievement
• fixed crash on quitting game if google play service killed

iHoplite

I'm happy to report that Hoplite was submitted to the iTunes app store for review a few days ago.

This version features new graphics by @ShroomArts.  Big thanks to ShroomArts!

Hoplite v2.2 for Android will also be released shortly.

In the meantime, checkout the Hoplite promo video.

Hoplite Beta Recap

It can be a bit hard to find and organise posts over in the testing community so I thought I'd post a recap of changes so far in the 2.1 beta

Features:

• Achievements/unlock system
• Sound/Music

Altars/Upgrades:

• New upgrades (available after completing achievements): 
• Plant Spear: Throwing your spear into the ground stuns adjacent monsters
• Leap Strike: Allows leaping onto demons, crushing them
• Wizard Beam: Throw is replaced by a wizard beam
• Swift Leap: Gain an additional free action after leaping
• Protection: Become temporarily invulnerable after taking damage
• Greater Sweeping Bash: Affects targets in a cone
• New altars of Athena and Hephaestus 

General gameplay:

• Archers will now always attempt to stay in range of the player
• Bashing demons into the edges of the map or the altar now kills them instead of just stunning
• The proportion of swordsmen is reduced at deeper depths
• Demon starting locations are now less "unfair" (each depth has at least one safe first move)
• Prayers can no longer be cancelled after seeing the options
• Scoring has been reworked to be more transparent
• Turn count bonus is only awarded if escaping with the Fleece.
• Bonus = 1 + 10 / sqrt(turn count)

Balance:

• Restoration effect can only occur once per depth.  Cost reduced to 1
• Patience cost reduced to 0
• All levels of Bloodlust have cost increase by 1
• Shielding Bash cost increased to 2

Stabbing and Lunging

A lot of people have been asking me recently to explain how Stab and Lunge work.  I thought I'd try something in the latest beta release (opt in here) to try and make these mechanics easier to understand.

Tiles that would be affected by a Stab or Lunge are now highlighted in red while targeting a move (holding your finger down) as in the screenshots below.  The tile highlighted blue indicates the player's location after the move.

I'd be interested to know what people think of the change, especially if you were unsure of the mechanics beforehand.

Other changes in 2.0.3:

• You can now tap on a monster to show which tiles it can attack
• Better checking and handling of bad save files
• Fixed repeated button tapping issues
• Fixed spelling mistakes
• Fixed wizards firing two turns in a row
• More hints added

Hoplite 2.0.1 (now 2.0.2)

Hoplite 2.0.1 is now available to anyone that has opted-in for early releases. (Go here if you'd like to do that now)  Assuming nothing goes wrong, I'll make it available to everyone else in around 12 hours or so.

Thanks for all the feedback, bug reports and spelling corrections.

Finish any games in progress before updating or your progress will be lost!

• Fixed crash when throwing spear with recall after reloading saved game 
• Fixed crash if device does not support in-app billing
• Better stalemate detection and resolution options
• Fixed spelling mistakes
• More tutorial hints added
• Device no longer kept awake at main menu screens

Edit:  v2.0.2 has now been released to production. 

Hoplite 2.0

Six months after the initial 7DRL release, Hoplite 2.0 is here.

The highlights:

• New abilities and balance changes
• Scoring and highscores
• Descend below depth 16
• Lots of user interface/graphics/animation updates and tweaks
• New tutorial
• Save/resume games automatically when the app is closed 

A note on Hoplite Premium:  This a once time purchase via Google play in-app billing.  Travelling below depth 16 requires premium as well as most new abilities.  It is still possible to win the game without it.

For those keen, here is an incomplete list of gameplay changes with some of my reasoning.

Abilities

• Throw and Bash no longer require energy.  I wanted to make these two abilities more appealing.
• Bash now has a cooldown while Throw has no cost other than losing the lunge ability until you retrieve your spear.
• Energy regen for Leap is now a flat +10 when moving into a tile with an adjacent monster instead of being dependent on the number of adjacent monsters.  Originally, I wanted to reward the player for moving into "risky" locations but the old system didn't achieve this and was overly complex.
• Regeneration, Surge (and the new Agility upgrade) now proc on three turns with consecutive kills instead of three kills in a single turn.  These abilities feel much less random now and reward the player for thinking ahead.
• Knocking a bomb into a monsters now gives you credit for the kill.
• Waiting (skipping turns) is no longer possible without taking an upgrade.  I find not having Wait results in more interesting choices and gameplay.  Bash can be used as a substitute for waiting making it more useful.
• Altar upgrades may now require a sacrifice (reduction of max and current health.)  This has made it easier to balance upgrades and results in an interesting trade-off between more powerful abilities and having a higher HP pool and hence more effective healing.
• Taking multiple levels of the same upgrade tends to increase the sacrifice required.
• Premium allows higher levels of repeatable updates, ie. Throw III (for a greater sacrifice) 
• All altars now offer increased max health (Fortitude)
• Bloodlust: now gives +5 per level instead of +2 but only counts kills caused by you and requires sacrifices at higher levels.

Monsters

• Slimes are gone.  I found them uninteresting and tedious to kill.
• Archer and Wizard AI has been tweaked making them more deterministic.

Beta Access

Anyone interested in testing beta releases can opt in here.  After opting in, your app will be updated to the latest release through Google play.  You can also opt out at any time.

The Hoplite 2.0 beta is currently live.  Thank you to the people who have reported bugs.