Depth of Extinction - turn-based roguelike RPG set in a flooded world

[Alienman]

Never ?
As far as i can tell, it's still there.

Gamepage is there, but from what I see only soundtrack can be bought currently.

Was looking through my wish list and noticed this too. Can't find any info about it on their forum either. Odd.

 

[Jinn]

Guess they decided to take their game away from everyone?

 

[Tigranes]

Jesus. These guys can burn for all I care. Removing a game from a customer's library cuz of a negative review is simply beyond the pale.

Except... that's not exactly what they did, and the whole hooplah is around how people made this exact misunderstanding, isn't it?

From a quick read, it seems like the dude got an alpha/beta key from a third party site, played an hour and left negative review, the dev thought this guy was basically a beta tester.

Still is colossally retarded to actually revoke the key, but the dev apologised and returned the key the next day. Not really worth raging about. Someone did something very stupid, apologised & reversed it.

 

[Jinn]

Still is colossally retarded to actually revoke the key, but the dev apologised and returned the key the next day. Not really worth raging about. Someone did something very stupid, apologised & reversed it.

Absolutely this. The whole thing is stupid, but it was a mistake and an apology was made. It's still very interesting why the game has suddenly disappeared from their store page. Did they decide it wasn't ready to go out to the public after all?

 

[newtmonkey]

Tigranes
Don't just skim that article. If you look into it, he didn't buy it from a third party site, he bought it straight from the dev on Itch.io, with promise from the developer that beta keys would be converted to full keys.

His key was converted to a Steam key, he played the final version for a hour and didn't like it, and left a negative but polite review.

If it was as you described, it wouldn't be such a big deal (it's not such a big deal anyway).

 

[Tigranes]

newtmonkey True. I did read the article (until it started going into Psychology 101), but I confused the third party bit. Anyway, it's sad how the guy does a dumb thing and now a game he worked years on is basically poisoned water.

 

[newtmonkey]

Tigranes

It's true, but people have recovered from worse. He was clearly too immature to do this, but I think he's probably aged 15 years in a month now. Maybe he'll get hired at a studio and do some good work there and then try again.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

Game also seems to be back on Steam.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

From discord:

Mike (Dev)Last Friday at 7:00 PM
getting super close to having the new build ready. there is a LOT of new stuff and I think i am going to make a video to highlight it all. should be updating the beta build today if anyone wants to give it a whirl.
new thing being added to 48.7 builds is scaling difficulty and removing the "zone" map chooser in favor of having only one list of available objectives. this makes it more clear what options you have to choose from. Also, doing objectives in "older" zones will not be putting you against weaker enemies. The difficulty now scales up based on your team.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

https://hofstudios.itch.io/doe/devlog/60773/winter-update-is-live

Winter Update Is Live!
Depth of Extinction » Devlog
1
18 hours ago by HOF Studios (@hofstudios)
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The long awaited Build 48 is finally ready! I’ve put some thought into how I think people might react to this update but am looking forward to hearing more detailed feedback on the changes and if you think they have improved on the game’s shortcomings without compromising what you liked about it.

• If you didn’t like the game at all when it launched or you were turned off on it for some other reason, then this update is probably not changing your mind.
• If you were on the fence about the game and just thought thought it was repetitive or imbalanced or too easy, then maybe you could give it another try. I’ve worked on addressing this feedback and even though I don’t think the game is perfect, i do think it has improved from launch.

If you are one of those people who would prefer to get the high level summary of the update or see the visuals, then this video is for you. For more details, please read on!

The first thing to mention are the New Maps we have added to the game. There are three new ones that each add slightly different dimensions and are introduced as you progress through the game.

I’ve also added some new level tilesets that you’ll see in later areas. They are the Cultist “Temple” and the Android “Citadel” and they definitely have a different look that the current tilesets. I don’t have a significant amount of new cover or environment items added to the game yet though. Look for that in a future update.

I’ve also completely removed the “Zone Chooser” from the game in favor of just listing the currently available objectives for you to choose from across zones. Only one objective of a type will be available at a time from now on, so you won’t see more than one “Find Sub” at a time, for instance. The concept of choosing the objective based on difficulty is also gone from the game. This has been replaced by difficulty that scales with the current team. Objectives will have a difficulty floor however, so it is possible to undertake an objective that is too hard but not one that is too easy. Enemies will scale up to roughly match your level.

To make the game more accessible to new players, we have added a “casual” mode. The first time you play the new version of DOE, you will be asked which difficulty mode you want: Casual or Classic. Classic will be basically the current version of the game (with the other changes in Build 48) while Casual will have a few differences:

• You will have the option to retry any mission where you failed (team wiped out), aborted or even lost a character.
• Characters will have a higher “base” health value than the enemies, allowing you to take a few more hits.
• The difficulty will ramp up just a little more slowly

Casual mode is primarily aimed at players who want to experience a slightly easier version of the game and not have to deal with permadeath (unless they want to).

The speed of the game has also been greatly increased. I have gone through each aspect of the tactical component of the game to remove any extra delays and reduce the time things take to execute (like changing the turn and firing). I also have completely revamped the character movement system so that the movement speed can be tuned by the player in the settings. The default speed is significantly higher than the previous defaults. The “cinematic” system also had a setting added to let players control how long the camera delays over items of interest last. Hopefully this solves a lot of the battle pacing issues. These changes are complete rewrites to the character movement system, so I won’t be surprised to hear about a few bugs. I’ll be posting a patch soon with bug fixes, so please let me know if you see anything weird. Videos appreciated.

Another big change: enemy pods are now triggered based on their visible range from player characters. This means that instead of enemy pods activating as soon as you see them, they will only activate when you either attack them, move into their visible range or fire at another enemy within their visible range. Enemies in rooms are also activated by overwatching or reloading at a door.

Since you can “see” enemies before their pod gets activated and attacks you, I have also added a new HUD element to represent the enemy’s visual range. As long as you stay outside that area you won’t activate the pod. I feel like this is pretty experimental so I am definitely interested in feedback.

In addition to activating by “seeing” one of your characters, enemies can also activate if they “hear” you open a door, reload or fire your weapon, or if an enemy in a different pod is activated close by. Enemies can activate if one of these things happens within their audible range, even from another room, so be careful! Later enemies, like androids, have more advanced hearing and so have a larger audible range.

We’ve also beefed up the story with additional cutscenes and banter between characters. There are three more standalone cutscenes and several banter situations during the final mission of each story objective. This should flesh out the story a bit more.

The encounter system has been significantly upgraded, with the main change being new “task” encounters that charge the player with disarming bombs, hacking terminals or disabling a failing reactor as you travel across the maps. These mission types were available previously only as final missions on some side quests. A lot of players found them fun so we wanted to make them happen a bit more often! I also worked with the writers on reducing the number of repeating encounters and outcomes that made it look like things were duplicating.

Some smaller changes to encounters:

• “Class” options have a color coding
• Fewer “sub” battles
• “Go in loud” generally sets the alert level to high

One thing that did NOT change is the skill cool downs. I talked in the previous post about changing the cooldowns to “Uses” to give you a fixed number of skill uses per mission. This was actually implemented in a test branch and I did some playtesting with it but ultimately it seemed to negatively impact the initial difficulty and seemed kind of arbitrary. I settled for increasing some of the skill cooldowns and many of the new maps that are introduced later in the game don’t have the “rooms” breaking up the action any more so you can’t just spam end turn to reset them in many cases.

Other changes

• Status effects (fire, poison, regen, etc) damage and healing are triggered at the end of the turn rather than the beginning so you can’t spam end turn to fill health with regen, for instance.
• Constitution skill at 5 points is Mend rather than Regen
• Flip the Field multiplies movement by 1.5x rather than 2x
• Assault skill Close Combat only gives you 1 free shot per turn
• Boost Aim damage is split up amongst shots for multi shot weapons
• Higher tier items cost more and resell for less
• Max Dodge chance greatly reduced overall
• “Trap” missions (starting the mission in Evacuate Facility) and “High Alert” missions happen more often
• Hostages no longer have to be led back to the exit when the level is empty
• Reduce the frequency of voice barks
• Inventory filters by tier on equip screen and tier and type on merchant
• Evac notification no longer pops up but appears permanently on the side of the HUD
• Mechs can’t use cover

What’s next?

My goal is to try to deliver quarterly updates to the game throughout 2019. I am thinking some new objective types, classes, content and possibly even a new main quest? I am honestly not sure yet but all of this is being considered and when or if these things are available will probably depend on a variety of factors.

All I can say for sure is that the next update will include controller support. Let me know what else you want and I can definitely consider it.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

https://hofstudios.itch.io/doe/devlog/84471/update-controller-support-enemies-and-effects

Update: Controller Support, Enemies and Effects
Depth of Extinction » Devlog
3
3 days ago by HOF Studios (@hofstudios)
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Build 50 took me longer than I expected, but that was mainly because in addition to the controller support, I wanted to get in as much content and address as much feedback as possible.

Let’s go through everything that’s new:

Controller Support
This is the big one for Build 50. It’s a huge change and affected every menu in the game to some degree. If you have played DOE, then you know it has a lot of menus so that was no small task. The other goal was to not lose any functionality for mouse and keyboard PC players. I’d love to hear if you think I missed something!

I completely redesigned many menus to work better with the controller, and just because some of them needed it badly. The main ones to get an update:

• Created a “Main Menu” that opens on any screen when pressing the “start” or “settings” buttons on your gamepad. Mouse users can click the hamburger menu button or settings button to also bring it up.
• The “System” tab on the Main Menu has the new Save Slots. You can have up to 4 games of DOE going at once now. Or you can create copies or your game to save scumm. Up to you
• The save slots show your team, your current objective, your total time played on the save, the percent complete (based on the content objectives) and the percentage of unlockable items you have collected.

• The Objective Loadout screen was one of the most confusing in the game. It has now been completely redone and I think it’s much clearer for new players, but please let me know your thoughts.

On most of the other menus, i made at least some small changes or refinements. It’s hard to list them all.

Spoiler

Enemies Updated
The next big thing was addressing the feedback that the enemies were too similar. I went through almost every enemy in the game and made major changes to their sprites and armor to try to make them more distinctive.

I also added a few new enemies to try to add some additional challenge a bit earlier. For instance, in the Feral Android objectives (they start with the Skull of the First), you now fight pods withb a feral trooper and a Bomber. The Bomber is equipped with a grenade launcher which should be a problem for you on the platform missions where it’s easier to get your team bunched up on the catwalks.

A few other things:

• The enemy spawning was also tweaked some and bosses were changed around a bit. Hopefully this results in the game remaining challenging through the late game missions.
• Later bosses are now larger than the other characters.
• New enemy “intro” UI element

Effects update
Another big effort went into adding more in game effects. I touched four main areas: enemy death animations, weapon impact animations, new weapons (and a few updates to existing weapons) and new weapon effects.

Summary

• New Death Animations - killing an enemy with a poison or laser/plasma/electric weapon will trigger a custom death animation.
• Lighting Rifle Mk II is now an area of effect weapon (similar to the mini gun) and is upgraded to Tier 5. This weapon will not be available in stores but is now dropped by a new Feral Android boss appropriately named Charge.
• Cultist Weapons updated to look more poisonous. The top Cultist boss now has an area of effect poison weapon called the Slimer. The other weapons have been updated to have more appropriate visual effects.
• Impact animations - pretty much all the other weapons had at least some changes made to their imapct animations.

Map Updates
I was only able to get one small update into the maps. On the later “open” maps, the sub docking area is now always enclosed. Having this open lead to some scenarios where enemies spawned close enough to the player characters to immediately trigger. In later missions, this could result in starting with half your characters already significantly damaged. Now you will always have a chance to get ready before opening doors and potentially revealing enemies.

Smaller fixes
A few levels had a white floor that was pretty hard on the eyes and made the UI harder to see. I updated it to make it a bit darker. Grab a screenshot if you see more tilesets that you think need changes.

Loot containers were sometimes hard to spot so they now have a yellow pulsing halo similar to the loot drops.

What’s Next?
I’ll be transitioning right to working on Build 51 with the goal of delivering it to Steam/GOG/itch over the summer. This will be 100% content update and hopefully will deliver the “definitive” version of the game.

Some details on what is planned right now:

Subs

I have several big changes to Subs in progress, including removing the sub “health” mechanic (that no one seems to like). I don’t want to give out too much yet but I’ll be adding in some new “sub systems” that heal and revive characters. These can take damage in encounters and become less effective.

Injuries

I’ve heard numerous suggestions on adding a character injury system since (and before) launch. I have it prototyped and was tempted to include it in Build 50 but ultimately decided it needed more bake time.

Map Updates

I’m planning a larger map update for Build 51. The plan is to design larger rooms that fill multiple squares used by the current rooms. I’m also in progress on making some custom levels that can be tied to particular bosses.

Sound Effects

I’m also planning to go back over all the sound effects currently in the game, and also to add a lot more.

Music

People generally seem to really like the music used in the game. It’s great stuff by Kim Lightyear and Badass Wolf Shirt and I’m really happy with how it works in the game. That being said, the main criticism is of the loops I had made and that they are possibly too short. I’ll try to correct this in Build 51.

 

[Darth Canoli]

So, did everyone give up on this ?
Anyone played the latest version, seems they acknoledge the players feedbacks and made some changes for the better?

Update is 10 days old and the game is on sale :

Definitive Edition Available Now!We've spent the last six months almost completely overhauling the game, so much so that we are proud to say this is the "definitive" version of Depth of Extinction. There are several new enemies, a new character class, some new mechanics, lots of UI and tactical polish and we've squashed all of the annoying bugs (that we knew about at least).

If you only ever played the launch version (or maybe never played) then I think you will be pleasantly surprised by all the changes made since then.

Key Features

Removed the initiative system completely
Moved to the more familiar player/enemy turns with free switching between characters. This was not the original vision for the game but the feedback suggested this was what players preferred.

Added Stealth and Ambushes
Enemies now have a lower visible range to allow for positioning your troops before waking up a pod. Any characters on overwatch when the pod wakes up (if you fire on them or move into their visible range) should take shots at the enemies. If they take a shot, then they won't get to move until after the enemies make their move so it's another tactical decision to make.

Saboteur Class
Their primary skill is Sneak Attack which does extra damage if alert level is low. They are fun to play with if stealth is interesting to you.

More Mechs
They appear in the final area with different weapons and stats. There is a pretty good difficulty jump in the final area as well.

Shortened The Game
You could easily finish the 5 main story objectives in around 10 hrs. This used to be more like 20. The "top level" map where you navigated between the mission maps has been removed in favor of a more linear system. There are also many optional objectives to complete so the total play time is probably now around 30 hours.

Other Changes

The encounters on the map now show more details about what type of encounter it may be so you can better plan your route through the area. We also added many new encounter scripts.

When in Follow Mode, the followers will by default teleport to their location rather than having to walk

Completely rebuilt the tutorial to better reflect the actual game. It's no longer on rails but you have to finish each room to unlock the next one.

Very large overhaul to balancing and difficulty

Stop movement and refund actions if an enemy spotted even if on first ("green") action (previously only on second "orange" action)

Damaging a character in Overwatch will cancel the Overwatch

Added an "Enemy Detail" panel to the HUD when you are targeting an enemy or select one of your characters that shows their class, health and equipment - including remaining ammo and grenade uses.

Added a "Best Equipment" button to the inventory boxes to automatically equip the character with the best available weapons, armor and items. Nice to have if your team gets wiped or you want to quickly equip a rookie.

Sub damage and repair how has a sound effect and animation

What's Next?

The team has already begun work on another game and certainly many of the systems used in DOE will be re-used there and likely upgraded. A console version of the game is also in the final stages of approvals there so I expect we will be announcing a release date soon.

 

[Beowulf]

I dropped it shortly after release and before all this developer drama.
But I might give it a second chance.

 

[Darth Canoli]

It's on sale on itch.io too (-50% as well).

I couldn't resist for long.

• Interesting tactical battles, i like the "auto-follow" option where you only have to control the leader whenever there is no hostiles left in the room.
• The skills + class system (quite similar to Alvora/Horizon's Gate) is nice too.
• You get a full turn whenever you discover enemies (all your soldiers can act), might be a bit overpowered but i understand how the opposite might have been annoying as well
  
• Still, it becomes quite repetitive real fast without any strategic layer but the shop.
• Standard mode is easy, i'll probably restart on hard.
  
• I guess i can't complain for the price and it's good tactical combat.

 

[Infinitron]

Subaquatic turn-based strategy RPG Depth of Extinction is surfacing for Pre-Purchase on the Nintendo eShop and XBox One digital today at 10% off for a limited time. The Definitive Edition ups the ante with the addition of new enemies and maps along with tactical options like setting up ambushes, and using stealth to get the drop on enemies.

Release Dates
June 3 - XBox One - Pre-Order Now! https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/dep...
June 4 - Nintendo Switch™ - Pre-Purchase Now! https://www.nintendo.com/games/detail...
June 11 - PlayStation 4 - TBA

 

[Beowulf]

I decided to give it another try. Could be good after al those updates.
And what do you know - it's not.

I haven't played in a while, so I decided to agree to the option of playing the prologue. UI becomes inactive to LMB after the first cutscene and some tutorial hints.
Oh well, I guess I'll just go in, the game wasn't that hard to control, from what I remember.
Game is stuck on the AI turn in second or third mission.

Uninstall.exe.