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Tale of Crowley is a single player, single hero adventure based to follow a Metroidvania theme ( Metroid + Castlevania).
Metroidvania
Metroidvanias games usually feature non linear game play, clear/ unlock new areas by defeating bosses, claustrophobic enviroments, gates or areas closed that can be opened later with skills or items and short gameplays to favor to be re-played.
Objetive
Clear the 7 elemental chambers and find the Shadow
Features
1) Non Linear play
The game is designed in such way you can decide the order to clear certain chambers:
Fire Unlocks Water and Nature. Then Nature --> Light --> Darkness. and Water --> Earth --> Ether.
2) Each area has something
I focused in give on each chamber a different gameplay experience:
3) Skill packs System
You can pick 5 elemental spell packs (water, Fire, Earth, Nature, Light and buy 2 on the shop (Ether and Darkness), all of them gives 6 spells of the element picked.
You can get another spell pack by using level points gained with each level, or using a tome of retraining. If you want to visit many secret areas, you will need to shift spell packs
4) Skills propierties
7 spell packs x 6 spells each pack. 42 spells have been altered via stats and triggers to give a different experience. A) Skills that improves the hero and allow to obtain resources. Example: Entangling roots gives +10 wood each time casted. B) Skills that permanently reduce hero stats. Example Inmolation: cuts permanently -10 hp of the hero when casting. Starfall reduces mana permanently by 25 points. C) Skills that compensates other skills harming. Example: Inner fire: allows to recover 7 from the 10 hp points afer casting inmolation. D) Skills with aditional effects. Example: Carrion swarm spawns a bettle. Bettle gain skills in numbers. E) skills that improve. Example Frost nova improves levels when casting. Heal skills improves the healing amount considering the level of the hero 5-10-15-20. F) Skills that open doors. Only 7 skills one of each element do that. Example Flame Strike can open fire doors.
5) Optional areas to be unlocked
After a chamber is cleared, optional areas can be unlocked by casting certain elemental spells.
6) Score Ladderboard
A score ladderboard that allows you to track your kills, MC hero deaths, Chambers cleared, secret areas visited and score bonuses.
7) Small Map
I aimed for a small map to reduce walking disances to give a more fluid experience and encourage to visit again the same areas.
8) Re-visit areas
There many neutral buildings to make areas to be interesting to be re-visited such as fountains, custom shops, marketplaces, merc. camps and mines. Main Hero can mine gold from mines using the earth skill pack.
Blood Elf Priestess by Sindorei 300
Doomlord by NaserKingArthas
Blood Elf Mage & Azure Judicator Dragon by General Frank
Highborne Elf Hero by Flip95
Faceless one Mindflayer by Grendel
Ancient Sandlord by Maximal
Battle for Azeroth Sylvanas by kangyun
Black Legion Grand Admiral Johnwar
Neo Ranga Ost by Kuniaki Hashima
Changelog.
1.00 First upload, early phase.
1.01 Fixed many stuff, added score bonus system.
1.02 fixed many stuff, initial area with moon well, improved merc. camps. when hero dies, it loose 3 hp and 3 mp.
1.03 origin fix, changed hp units values, improved final cinematic.
Approved based on Mini Mapping Contest #20: Results
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Hello there. I just finished playing it and these are some suggestions or things I found odd:
Some things I'd like as a player:
Though I know there are potions you can buy to get mana and health, I'd really like to have a fountain (or something) in the camp to regen some. -> I know there are fountains and such but you can try some things like moon weel replenish spell or smth.
I'd like to have full MP when reviving.
Some shortcuts for spells don't match.
Since I have W3 on spanish I don't really know which door is supposed to be which element? So I kind of tried to see what's best but couldn't open all of them.
I'd add some more unit variations for mercenaries instead the common ones.
Respawning occures too quickly. Sometimes I died and I don't know what happened because the camara moves away way too fast.
Holy light can't be used on her.
Some things to consider:
Buying 2 health potions are less expensive than buying the great one and heal the same amount of HP.
I think immolation doesnt drain mp?
Each time I stroke a "score bonus", a tome of XP would be sitting waiting next to the ress stone.
When killing bosses the camara goes to respawn area in some cases, instead of the opening door.
When casting tranquility there is a green icon for spiked aura, this is important because 1 spell is left out. (I had to spend all the levels so the + for spell leveling dissapears to have the one that ones the door.)
When getting cloak of shadows one of the spell gets left behind. (screenshot 1)
I suppose the circle changes to yellow when you manage to open the door / completed the task. Don't know why these two changed to yellow. Was it because of all the levers? Update: finished playing don't know what all the levers did lol (screenshot 2).
The game ends too abrutly.
I really never spent wood.
Overall I like the idea, it was fun to play. It can be improved in many ways. I think the scale leveling is ok. Wasn't that hard nor too easy. Sometimes I did have to think before going.
I'd suggest some more custom spell for the bad guys, or some mechanics (specially the bosses). But it's good, I liked it!
Hi thanks a lot for the feedback! and for playing my map very very usefull,
an extention has been granted so I can use this time to improve further my map
Hello there. I just finished playing it and these are some suggestions or things I found odd:
Some things I'd like as a player:
Though I know there are potions you can buy to get mana and health, I'd really like to have a fountain (or something) in the camp to regen some. -> I know there are fountains and such but you can try some things like moon weel replenish spell or smth.
1-is not hard to figure out
white floor light
lava floor fire
ice or water, is water
rock chunks is... earth.
green grass door is nature.
violet portal if you were in the violet area full of portals is ether
the demonic door that goes for the dark area is the same that opens an optional dark area.
2- If you play games like Kirby, Metroid, Zelda, certain things are VERY VERY VERY HARD to figure out, either you figure out or google how to do it, this is the soul of such games. Figure out is a reward itself.
I had a beta tester and he didnt pointed it was hard to figure out the 7 chambers 7 elements stuff.
it does drain, I am kinda experimenting, since permanently cuts health, it stalls mana regen at higher levels, maybe gonna increase just a bit but not that much.
thats the idea of the score bonus,by getting a score bonus you get that free reward, if you click the circle it says as name score bonus.
probably I need to explain that more in hints...
When casting tranquility there is a green icon for spiked aura, this is important because 1 spell is left out. (I had to spend all the levels so the + for spell leveling dissapears to have the one that ones the door.)
I suppose the circle changes to yellow when you manage to open the door / completed the task. Don't know why these two changed to yellow. Was it because of all the levers? Update: finished playing don't know what all the levers did lol (screenshot 2).
Overall I like the idea, it was fun to play. It can be improved in many ways. I think the scale leveling is ok. Wasn't that hard nor too easy. Sometimes I did have to think before going.
Plot. Could improve it a bit. Why did we need to find our shadow? Was it mentioned somewhere that we have lost it?
Ending was looking too abruptly. Could be some game end short cinematic?
Gameplay. Beginning (fire area) was a bit hard and tedious, because you don't have too much hp and mp and gold, so you often have to go to the moonwell to heal. And after fire area it goes easier and easier. Like some of the late game areas mobs have like 300 hp which is less than in the very first area. Some tooltips, like boulder's one doesn't tell the damage. Other ones seems kinda useless, like immolation, cuz you as a ranged int hero need to go close to the enemies. So mostly i was using only light set.
Music sometimes breaks off abruptly. Some tracks feel a bit out of place.
Bugs/flaws. Overall, i had only bug with the divine shield, where its visual effects stays after it was used and after it expires and did randomly (?) casted by itself while it was on cooldown. (maybe somehow connected to the slow spell)
Also divine shield effect seems to be attached to the weapon, not to the origin point.
And some tooltip errors, like dark orb set item on the ground has tooltip of mana stone iirc.
Plot. Could improve it a bit. Why did we need to find our shadow? Was it mentioned somewhere that we have lost it?
Ending was looking too abruptly. Could be some game end short cinematic?
Gameplay. Beginning (fire area) was a bit hard and tedious, because you don't have too much hp and mp and gold, so you often have to go to the moonwell to heal. And after fire area it goes easier and easier. Like some of the late game areas mobs have like 300 hp which is less than in the very first area. Some tooltips, like boulder's one doesn't tell the damage. Other ones seems kinda useless, like immolation, cuz you as a ranged int hero need to go close to the enemies. So mostly i was using only light set.
Music sometimes breaks off abruptly. Some tracks feel a bit out of place.
Bugs/flaws. Overall, i had only bug with the divine shield, where its visual effects stays after it was used and after it expires and did randomly (?) casted by itself while it was on cooldown. (maybe somehow connected to the slow spell)
Also divine shield effect seems to be attached to the weapon, not to the origin point.
And some tooltip errors, like dark orb set item on the ground has tooltip of mana stone iirc.
1) is a cliche, a lot of games, have the shadow version, you have to defeat your shadow, prince of persia, the legend of zelda, metal mario, it was ment as cliche.
2) true thanks, gonna work on that.
3 there is no way to make custom music work properly in reforged version, I was studying the subjet and is not posible at some point music breaks and spawns custom human music., about the tracks, all of them are neo ranga ost, I got inspired to use such music.
and the idea is, is weird music that was the fun of it.
4) I am sad to inform that certain triggers have probabilistic bugs, in my version it doesnt bug, but it can happen a triggering overload and the last created effect is not deleted, is ugly but sometimes even most basic things fail.
is not casted by itself when is in cooldown, the skill has 2 parts, the casting part and the trigger part, after the cast, the trigger cast again and again many times.
the idea was to have an intermitent shield less overpowered than the original shield. gonna fix the origin.
Door-names mentioned on abilities vs the destructible do not match, leading to slight confusion.
Ghost (The enemy to north) didn't really scream "I'm super dangerous" so I looked at hp and went for it and all my units died, then noticed the details... Unsure on tips for improvement.
It wasn't super clear that you needed to stand on circles to open doors with abilities.
Spike-traps didn't really give you time to notice that "this is bad" because insta-kill. Maybe deal like 20% hp per 0.5 seconds instead?
I Hit all the levers in the water/ice area and didn't notice any reward... I felt like there should be one... I dunno, extremely minor thing I guess xD
One way of doing it to add some blocker-thing in the area behind the waygate that opens if all levers are hit.
Units:
Generally, having a few units was fun, but unit balance and specifically food-cost felt strange.
Footman, archer and similar should probably cost 1, having any 3-cost felt pretty worthless because no(?) unit cost 1 food.
Ghost has 700hp and deals 25 damage, 2 food, ranged (is probably op as is)
footman has 420 hp and 12 damage, 2 food, melee (feels bad to use, cannot tank and deals no damage)
Tauren has 575 hp, 20 damage, 4 food, melee (feels bad to use imo, increase hp or lower food-cost or both)
Could probably mention in intro that it's a good idea to recruit a few followers to assist you in your adventure.
Probably remove "hide in shadows" to "all units" to prevent it taking up space in your ability-card, it's not an important ability and it "damages" the play experience more than it does good by being useful.
Spells:
Immolate feels strange to lose 10 hp/cast (lowered to 3hp/cast). Should be semi-ultimate to cost that much imo.
On the other hand, chain lightning increases it and it's only "cost" for it is fairly high mana-cost.
Spelling corrections possible (fairly minor, stuff, but it improves the map by not distracting):
Light: Heal tooltip say "leve"-not "level"
Nature: Entagling Roots: "whiile" -> "while"
Frost Armor: "bufs" -> "buffs"
Slightly confusing to have to buy book to reset skills to swap spell-setup.
Took some time to figure out all the different abilities for all the different schools of spells, maybe move abilities to Q, W, E, R, D, F, G and try to keep "similar" spells on the same button, unsure on details, but maybe could improve?
Earthquake has too long cooldown imo, specially when you need it for door and you fail to walk to circle-of-power before casting it...
In the end, I kinda just went with Light and managed pretty damn well
Probably because swapping spell-sets was semi-annoying.
Suggestion on how to "solve" the spell-swapping is to have an item, spellbook-item that you cannot drop, that also gives some stats, increased per section cleared, or something like that. Or let it activate a Skill-reset-ability, but with a 5 minute cooldown or something.
Also: Due to bugs with specific unit events in Warcraft 3 version 1.31.1, this map does not work well with that version of WC3. Other versions are recommended.
Door-names mentioned on abilities vs the destructible do not match, leading to slight confusion.
Ghost (The enemy to north) didn't really scream "I'm super dangerous" so I looked at hp and went for it and all my units died, then noticed the details... Unsure on tips for improvement.
It wasn't super clear that you needed to stand on circles to open doors with abilities.
Spike-traps didn't really give you time to notice that "this is bad" because insta-kill. Maybe deal like 20% hp per 0.5 seconds instead?
I Hit all the levers in the water/ice area and didn't notice any reward... I felt like there should be one... I dunno, extremely minor thing I guess xD
One way of doing it to add some blocker-thing in the area behind the waygate that opens if all levers are hit.
Units:
Generally, having a few units was fun, but unit balance and specifically food-cost felt strange.
Footman, archer and similar should probably cost 1, having any 3-cost felt pretty worthless because no(?) unit cost 1 food.
Ghost has 700hp and deals 25 damage, 2 food, ranged (is probably op as is)
footman has 420 hp and 12 damage, 2 food, melee (feels bad to use, cannot tank and deals no damage)
Tauren has 575 hp, 20 damage, 4 food, melee (feels bad to use imo, increase hp or lower food-cost or both)
Could probably mention in intro that it's a good idea to recruit a few followers to assist you in your adventure.
Probably remove "hide in shadows" to "all units" to prevent it taking up space in your ability-card, it's not an important ability and it "damages" the play experience more than it does good by being useful.
Spells:
Immolate feels strange to lose 10 hp/cast (lowered to 3hp/cast). Should be semi-ultimate to cost that much imo.
On the other hand, chain lightning increases it and it's only "cost" for it is fairly high mana-cost.
Spelling corrections possible (fairly minor, stuff, but it improves the map by not distracting):
Light: Heal tooltip say "leve"-not "level"
Nature: Entagling Roots: "whiile" -> "while"
Frost Armor: "bufs" -> "buffs"
Slightly confusing to have to buy book to reset skills to swap spell-setup.
Took some time to figure out all the different abilities for all the different schools of spells, maybe move abilities to Q, W, E, R, D, F, G and try to keep "similar" spells on the same button, unsure on details, but maybe could improve?
Earthquake has too long cooldown imo, specially when you need it for door and you fail to walk to circle-of-power before casting it...
In the end, I kinda just went with Light and managed pretty damn well
Probably because swapping spell-sets was semi-annoying.
Suggestion on how to "solve" the spell-swapping is to have an item, spellbook-item that you cannot drop, that also gives some stats, increased per section cleared, or something like that. Or let it activate a Skill-reset-ability, but with a 5 minute cooldown or something.
Also: Due to bugs with specific unit events in Warcraft 3 version 1.31.1, this map does not work well with that version of WC3. Other versions are recommended.
thanks for the feedback, no updates till contest ends. lot of usefull info
It wasn't super clear that you needed to stand on circles to open doors with abilities.
In quest there is a hints area where I even explain how the trigger works.
you stand in the circle and cast the skill pointinge whenever you want.
and also in the screens I showed I am clearly casting tranquility in the yellow circle.
and btw metroidvanias games are never superclear in anything, go play majoras mask with no guide,
Spike-traps didn't really give you time to notice that "this is bad" because insta-kill. Maybe deal like 20% hp per 0.5 seconds instead?
you have no idea how fun is to me people dying with the spikes and the ghost, trap worked , muahahaha I am evil
I Hit all the levers in the water/ice area and didn't notice any reward...
2 levers activate the portal, if not portal wont be usefull, I could have put a floating text for that.
Could probably mention in intro that it's a good idea to recruit a few followers to assist you in your adventure.
I never played with followers I like solo with the hero
Or let it activate a Skill-reset-ability, meh I dunno, there is the melee tome of retraining that serves for that purpouse, and since you consume it it wont kill an item spot, and the teleport item needs to be undroppable or you can literally drop the item in the boss area and die and you cant win.
again thanks
classic, simple wc3 scenario with preplaced units, this style is underappreciated
unique idea with each hero ability granting a whole command hard worth of abilities with some modifications, use tome of retraining to reset, use of abilities to affect environment within this scheme
Bad:
divine shield is broken
Ghost unit one-shots you and (using divine shield) he can be pressured to flee into an area that breaks the game
gates that can be opened from abilities are not intuitive or clear enough in terms of UX
game is too difficult and takes too long
some ability and item tooltips don't match reality. For example, hood of cunning says it provides 5 int/agi but it only provides 4.
Summary: Game has potential but the ability scheme's UX is not executed well. Map has too much content and not enough polish. Serious pacing issues.
classic, simple wc3 scenario with preplaced units, this style is underappreciated
unique idea with each hero ability granting a whole command hard worth of abilities with some modifications, use tome of retraining to reset, use of abilities to affect environment within this scheme
that was the idea, in many games you get insta kill,
like dark souls prepare to die edition,
in wow if certain characters dont join the raid, boss wont fall , you must follow the recipe
the recipe here is sneak the boss.
Interesting issue to be studied and fixed, never tried that always used invisibility or wind walk
how it breaks the game? the boss wont return to the original point? I dont understand how the game can be broken that way.
btw already know how to fix that, just will put the boss trapped in some earth path blocked and it wont break.
I made this game so even someone like me can remember how to open the gates...
(in majoras mask couldnt remember the songs, and visual novel games tend to have hard puzzles when you have to do some numeric puzzles)
You know, this game was made so somebody so unskilled in games like me can win it.
I can not win dark souls, that game is impossible to me. but still is a great game,
cant win Dulahan boss on golden sun 2, I defeated it after a lot of level up training till 80
and a guy level 40 defeated it with a cool combo of summonings. copied that method third time I played.
I dont remember changing that item stats srl,
in fact I dont remember the reasons to do such stats changes... will study it, it may be different patchs issues, maybe the item has different stats in past
UX means??? user experience? I think more than UX, it needs more balance wich requires ton of beta test, still on it. warcraft 3 is still making changes in melee units balance.
I cant believe even such kindergarden basic GUI spell fails.
the add ability remove ability never fails...
is a very solid method.
it works for me. I tested it many times didnt have issues...
2 ideas, either is an incompatibility in newest versions
or while another trigger is in progress, like I dunno a skill or a bonus or whatever it overloads and makes interference and bugs trigger execution.
at this point probably I will just remove holy shield and try to think another spell for the light pack spell
thats the idea is an intermitent shield it turn on and off, that means it works good. I thought it was a good idea to not have a long holy shield but intermitent were there are gaps to be attacked by the enemy. instead of the 45 secs level 3 holy shield wich is a lot.
and btw, remember the hood of cunning
I touched nothing, the item is as preset in game, IDK why there is a tooltip problem....
it shouldnt, IDK.... :/
A credits list in the map thread description is required where the names of the resource (models, skins, icons, spells, sound etc.) authors are mentioned along with the specific resource. It would be a luxury to have links leading to the used resources. Credits in the Quest Log would be appreciated too.
A detailed changelog in the first post would be helpful to reviewers and notify fans about the newest implementations to your map.
Map thread tags are important. Please use those that fit and not more or none.
Cool music!
Sadly most of the door triggers do not work (e.g: Earth door 1 is initially off, begging the question of how it could ever work?). Would've been a nice touch if the Crowley model actually had no shadow (and easy to do 8).
What game version have you played it on? I used 1.30.4 and didn't encounter this.
Is any particular order you opened the main doors? By Earth door do you mean the rock chunks that can only be destroyed with Earthquake when standing on the circle of power near the chunks or do you mean the gate to the earth zone?
Mhhh my bad, i haven't unlocked the seal of earth.
I'd rate 3.5/5, it's a bit basic, but goes in the right direction.
The music is a nice touch, but the secrets aren't really that much of a secret.
Mhhh my bad, i haven't unlocked the seal of earth.
I'd rate 3.5/5, it's a bit basic, but goes in the right direction.
The music is a nice touch, but the secrets aren't really that much of a secret.
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Approved
![A]mun](/data/avatars/m/140/140771.jpg?1674379729){kind=avatar}
