SotM iPad and Android Prototype First-Look

Hello fellow Sentinels Fans! As you know, Handelabra Games is hard at work on the iPad and Android tablet version of Sentinels of the Multiverse. Because we love the game as much as you do, we’d love to hear some feedback on our first prototype!

We’re putting up a demo video to get some feedback from fans who know the game and are likely to play the digital version once it’s released. We are not looking for wide media coverage at this point and this is a non-public video. Please only share the link with folks you think might be interested in giving feedback.

As far as feedback, we’d like to hear anything and everything. What you like, what you don’t, what’s missing, etc. This is a first prototype/proof of concept so treat it as such; it is not necessarily representative of the final product.

Below you’ll find the link to the non-public YouTube video showing the progression of a single turn. It’s the Freedom 5 vs Baron Blade at Megalopolis!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdPkln6fnyc

We’re happy to answer any questions you may have here in the thread, or you can send us feedback directly from here. Please understand that there may be some topics where we say “we’re not talking about that just yet.” It’s nothing personal!

Thanks!

First post! I'll be chiming in here with responses too. =)

Will there be any crossover with Sidekick?

For example, if I own the card game and sidekick, and a friend of mine owns the digital version, would we be able to play together?

I would really like that, because I don't like having programs shuffle cards or roll dice for me.  I tend to dislike electronic card games because of that.  If I could do my own cards and input them and have that work with this game I think that would be super cool.

Don't know how feasible that would be, just curious.

As for the demo, it looks super cool.  If the background was due to it being in Megalopolis (I assume so) I love that touch.

Will the game automatically resolve timing conflicts, or have the players choose?

Lastly I'd like to call Shenanigans on Wraith just playing Razor Ordinance with Impromptu Invention in her hand.  What was she thinking?

OK, real last question:  Do you plan on having decks be playable by AI?  I would think that would be really tricky with all the nuances and combo's possible.

Also if you have multiple players playing on different devices and Visionary puts Twist the Ether on someone would the target of Twist the Ether get to choose the damage type and amount, or Visionary?

That last question is not serious.  We all know Visionary gets to choose.

Your video was awesome and I think you are doing great.  Any chance that this will be shown or on demo at Pax East?

This is pretty exciting. Glad to see it looks like the card game, rather than doing weird Agricola-esque things.

I noticed that it was all core set cards. Can you tell us the sitch on expansions?

Also, please give a way to speed up animation. Thank you!

The current plan is for the first release to mirror the enhanced edition content, expansions will then follow, likely in the order they came out in the physical game.

thanks for taking a look!

what an interesting idea! we haven't considered it before now but we'll definitely put it on the list of things to think about. you are correct that it would be quite an undertaking, for instance, sidekick doesn't currently have ANY real game logic in it, and it knows nothing about cards that aren't targets. No promises, but it's a cool idea.

As for the demo, it looks super cool.  If the background was due to it being in Megalopolis (I assume so) I love that touch.Will the game automatically resolve timing conflicts, or have the players choose?

this is an open discussion currently so we're not gonna go into detail right now.

Lastly I'd like to call Shenanigans on Wraith just playing Razor Ordinance with Impromptu Invention in her hand.  What was she thinking? OK, real last question:  Do you plan on having decks be playable by AI?  I would think that would be really tricky with all the nuances and combo's possible.

an AI is not currently planned for the first release. 

Also if you have multiple players playing on different devices and Visionary puts Twist the Ether on someone would the target of Twist the Ether get to choose the damage type and amount, or Visionary?That last question is not serious.  We all know Visionary gets to choose.Your video was awesome and I think you are doing great.  Any chance that this will be shown or on demo at Pax East?

[/quote]

Finger's crossed on a PAX showing! 

SO COOL!

More in-depth feedback later ...

Tachyon had Pushing the Limits and Fleet of Foot in her hand as well. Along with Legacy having Inspiring Presence, which combined with Galvanize and Flak Cannon would of yielded the same result. However more damage would of been produced with Tachyon Playing Accelerated Assualt because of it, along with Wraith's Razor Ordinance.

On a more important note, I noticed both Play and use a Power phases had a skip option, where the Draw phase did not. Did I miss something or is it not in there yet?

It looks really awesome though!

Fantastic proof of concept. Very excited about this.

Are there plans for a non-tablet version of the app?

so just to address "strategy" for a sec - All moves in the demo were chosen because of thier utility in showing different damage type, while whittling the mobile defense platform down to removal NOT because they were neccessarily the best choice. this is a proof of concept first.

(in other words, please stop making fun of how badly we were playing the game, it's all scripted  )

edit to add:

it also only plays cards whose effects we have already built 

As a first up, it looks good. Looking forward to see more and how it progresses.

eventually yes! This first release is targeted at iPads and Android tablets for several reasons but (for a slight peak behind the curtain) we are building the game in Unity which will allow us to bring it to just about any platform you can imagine. But we need to execute it well here first before setting our sites on additional releases.

I'll mention here - MigrantP will also be responding and he and I have different areas of expertise so if it seems like I skip someone's, it's likely because I think he'll catch you.

If it means anything, both AZ and Bunker played the cards I would have played.

It's not in there yet, but good catch. This prototype demo is not a complete representation of what the game will be, but a snapshot of the direction we're going in terms of UI and flow. Skipping the draw is an interesting one - you almost always want to draw, but there are cases where you definitely don't want to. Ideally we'll streamline it so that you only get presented with a skip option if it could make reasonable sense to want one; otherwise you just get your card and the game moves on. Of course that would be configurable, in case you're the kind of player who wants complete control.

I don’t think you need to bring up all the hero targets each time you do damage. Most of the time you are hitting villain targets. My suggestionn only put up villain targets with a small button that would let yoy choose a hero.

Also, some indication of highest/lowest hp might be nice.

Yup, when you play the game you are fighting the villain "in the environment!" We'll be taking care to bring the sights and sounds (perhaps not smells) of all the environments to life. The Megalopolis you see in the video is a placeholder, in order to get the idea across. We're definitely going to make it look cool and fit in with how we see and imagine Megalopolis from the cards.

Unity has technopathy. This thing can just be willed into existence. That should help your timeline for PAX.

Good ideas. We are going to be doing that, but it's not there at this point yet. That's along the same lines as the skip button in terms of streamlining the game and presenting choices that make sense.

You would think so, but Bee Bot keeps exploding at the most inopportune times!

It looks really awesome but there was one thing I did miss. I couldn't tell that the mobile defense platform was there, or how much health it had during the gameplay. I know showing every single target in your quick view in the top right could get ridiculous (Matriarch, Chairman, or Voss) but will there be a way to look at the different play areas during your turn? That way I can see what minions and equipments are out before choosing my cards. I would assume so, but I didn't see that.

Also, I love the fact that the heroes and villain are all in different parts of the environment, very thematic.

Actually, one other quick thing. It sounds like this would be playable only with other people, or is it set up for one person to control all the hero decks, I haven't heard about this project before now so I don't know.

It's not shown in the video, but you can tap on any portrait in the top right and see that play area immediately. We're also experimenting with other ways to make sure you have all the information you need during your turn.

Any chance of environment effect animations? Would be sick to see a kracken tenticle explode from a wall or something when it hits the board. That would be rediculous

Yes, and have hero faces turn blue with oxygen leak, horrible scarring from Fire in the Biosphere, Velociraptors ripping bloody limbs off. . .

I'm down with this.

So here's the not-so-short answer on multi-player as it currently stands (and I can't stress enough that this is a work in progress and no final decisions have been made):

Through the natural course of development, we will be building pass & play first (the game playing on a single device, with either 1 or multiple people participating). Depending on several factors, we will likely begin work on network multiplayer during the same time, or shortly afterwards. Since the lion's share of that work is "behind the scenes" so to speak, if we feel that the pass and play version is working well, we would consider releasing it with local play only. This allows us to get the game into player's hands as quickly as we can, without having to wait for us to completely bughunt the network code first. Some of you may know that Pandemic recently went this route and, while some definitely felt let down by that decision, it's allowed the game to begin building the audience that they will need to keep it going (on the digital side).

It would also give us a much larger group of testers if we then released the network play as "open beta" from within the app. The digital card game Solforge has done this and it seems to be working well for them.

again - none of this is final decision. Our main goal is to faithfully bring the game to digital first. how it will be released, and what features will be included in that are things that we are still actively working on. Thanks for the question!

When I play, I enjoy both being able to follow what other players are doing and being able to think about what I'm going to do at the same time. That requires both seeing the other players' actions while being able to simultaneously seeing my own options.

In a pass and play game and/or with a single screen, doing this sort of thing is going to be quite difficult.

At a table, we can see all of the cards in play and sometimes people with play with open hands. Even in a G+ hangout or over Skype, we will usually play either with a spreadsheet that shows what is in play and/or with a camera pointed at the board setup.

As much fun as I think the pictures of the background and the cool effects of moving around from one player to another are, they don't seem to facilitate being able to see more than one deck/play area at a time.

I can get behind that thinking, with multiplayer. As long as it happens, I'm happy.

It's looking reasonably polished for the state of development it's in. Still on track for Spring 2014?

We understand this, and are planning to include an "overview" mode where you can see things in a bit more traditional way. The tricky part there is that a typical game of Sentinels can easily have way too much happening to show everything all at once, even on an iPad screen. We'll be iterating on that idea though because we think it's important to have, especially for experienced players. The "cool" view will be the default, but you'll be able to play it the game in the overview mode instead if you like, and switch between them at any time.

Spring 2014 is still our goal.

In the computer game Artemis, there are different views for different stations on a starship bridge. One of the available views is 'Observer', which is great for letting people watching the game see an action-packed first-person view of what's in front of the ship.

If the electronic version of Sentinels of the Multiverse were similar -- a series of views that are connected into a server -- than a spare tablet could have the overview view, while each hero had their own view.

That looks pretty great, just one thing; Tachyon had a Fleet of Foot AND a Pushing the limits in her hand. Why on Earth did she ignore BOTH of them and play SUCKER PUNCH INSTEAD!?

You didn't read the thread first, did you? It was explained.

I thought you guys were kidding at first, nerding out about what cards the demo played, but the more you keep doing it, the more I wonder. ;)  What cards they played isn't important, of course.

I agree that having an overview setting will be helpful.  The demo only focused on the current player's turn, and every time it swooshed away from a player, I felt a tug because I wanted to see what card they'd drawn and how it fit in with their other cards, but the demo was moving too quickly for that.

I don't know if this is a widely-held opinion, but while I loved how the view swooshed around the Megalopolis building, I wished there was actually a 3D figure of my character standing on the roof when the view stopped at my position.  The way it is now, the view would swoosh to the new 3D position, but there's nothing actually there.  If it's just cards, then changing 3D perspective doesn't really add much.

I think overall, it looks great.  Far better than I expected.

I'm really impressed--I really like the layout of the app, especially with the target hp counters in the corner.

However, I'd also like to have an option to either speed up or skip the hero transition animations and/or sound effects.  While they're cool to look at, I can see them getting repetitive after 20 or so games.  I do appreciate the different sound effects based on damage type:  fire sounds different from melee sounds different from projectile.  Very nice!

Lateralis, I'm pretty sure Spiff is hacking into our chat room.

I'd like to echo what Spiff said, and say that -- given that I HAVE all the sets and friends to play with regularly -- I'd PROBABLY only be interested in PURCHASING this if it had online multiplayer; perhaps a lobby-system or friend list, even?

The other thing is making sure that the more nuanced rules are followed correctly; as simple as SotM is on face value, there are some odd interactions in it, and -- from an OCD standpoint -- it would really irk me if any of them were NOT followed correctly. Including, but not limited to, the fact that heroes choose in all instances of ambiguity, like multiple targets being tied for highest and/or lowest and/or second-highest/lowest (it is possible for all heroes to simultaneously fall into all of those categories), timing conflicts with the new ruling on that (Imbued Fire vs. Twist the Ether, etc.), redirections interacting with damage buffs and reductions, Fixed Point in general (especially with heroes who can break it, like Omnitron-X, Mr. Fixer, and the Naturalist), etc.

Also chaining plays and powers; Argent Adept and the Scholar can get pretty convoluted pretty quickly, with cards like Don't Dismiss Anything and Vernal Sonata.

Paranoia aside, though, it looks great! I'll keep my eye on it!

Random non-structured thought dump!

First thing I noticed was the music, I've heard it somewhere before and I immediately wanted an option to turn it off (yeah yeah, I'm sure you have sound controls in there but for some reason it really irked me).

I would like to have seen a multiple damaging effect (hero choice), just to see how it plays out.

If you're making this "pass and play" how are you handling card draws for others? e.g. Fleet of Foot. Do you have to pass the pad around, while it waits for some sort of OK sign to move on to the next person? Does it just display what each person drew on their turn?

There was no effect to show that everybody gained a hit point when Motivational Charge was used (it did happen though), I would like to see both a plus and a minus when people gain or lose HP.

I think the discard pile is too far off screen, I would prefered it below the deck as there is screen space available there. With multiple effects that allow you to dig something out of your trash you don't want to spend time trying to select the tiny bit of the screen to look through your trash. Tachyon in particular always wants to know what's in the trash (an automated burst count for her would be awesome!)

Can you look at someone else's hand during your turn? I would like to know if Fanatic is going to play End of Days before I play Impromtu Invention!

Hmmm, on a similar note, do you get to look at your hand before the first villain turn?

Is there any way you can make the HP numbers on the cards change? I don't want to have to look at the cards to see what is out and they look at the top right to see how much HP everything has... wait you did that with the Mobile Defense Platform so it is possible.

I didn't like the fact that you couldn't see all targets in play in the top right summary, if you are going to use that then put everything that has HP on there. I don't want to think I can hit Baron Blade and then find out when I select my power that the MDP wasn't quiet as dead as the previous player thought it was.

Also, is there a way to choose a different power if you misclick? (mistouch just sounds wrong)

The nemesis bonus was not applied when Legacy took a hit

Baron Blade's trash read 0s at the start of his second turn, and 2 at the end, it should have read 2 the whole way through (first turn Slash & Burn and a destroyed platform).

I also noticed that the text on Pushing the Limits is not up to date (and Sonic Vortex now that I look back at it).

EDIT:

Don't walk away thinking I was disappointed in it, it looks awesome and will be happy to buy it if/when a multiplatform/multiplayer aspect is added!

A few ideas.

If it does get to a multiplayer mode, you could let players Flag a card they would like others to know they have, and have that show up where others could see.

As for using it with sidekick, you could create a crossover app where you could type in card names of cards you drew, and have that relay into the other game.  I have no clue how that would work (or if it would not) but you could pick your hero, and the deck would be known on all devices that were not running sidekick.  You would need to be able to input cards drawn or played and then have prompts come back when others interacted with you.

Actually that would take some major changes to Sidekick to make it work.

first watch through I'm sold i'll line up for your to take my money

Just wanted to ask ... Are the damage types all going to have different sound effects?

will there be the ability to make your own decks in the app?

On a silly note:

Will we be able to choose "fluffy bunny damage" for Mr. Fixer? There are some people who would be disappointed if they couldn't

I liked the differnt effects for the damage types. That was a nice touch.

However, I'm not a fan of the 3D background as it seems it would slow the game down with rendering when it's not integral to the gameplay. An otion for a fixed background would be apprecairted.

Also, what version of iOs will we need for this? I've only got an iPAD v1 so if it's IOs7 (which I'm guessing it will be), I will be a poor panda.

I like the 3D background. The issue I have is that with the way the background currently is, everything feels isolated and far away from each other. It doesn't feel like a team of heroes is in an epic showdown. It feels kind of like each hero is just taking turns fighting the villain one on one.

This appears very interesting to me.  I would love to see this on my recently purchased Wii U, as it has been stated this year during GDC that the Unity3D engine has been made available for Wii U.  However, given that it requires a devkit, I'm sure this would have an XBox 360 and/or PSVita release well before Wii U, given they can be developed without devkits.

this is a good thought. we are definitely exploring some sort of voting in situations where the players would choose from several options.

stock music from Soundtrack Pro. definitel not final, definitely able to disable in the real game.

I would like to have seen a multiple damaging effect (hero choice), just to see how it plays out.If you're making this "pass and play" how are you handling card draws for others? e.g. Fleet of Foot. Do you have to pass the pad around, while it waits for some sort of OK sign to move on to the next person? Does it just display what each person drew on their turn?There was no effect to show that everybody gained a hit point when Motivational Charge was used (it did happen though), I would like to see both a plus and a minus when people gain or lose HP.I think the discard pile is too far off screen, I would prefered it below the deck as there is screen space available there. With multiple effects that allow you to dig something out of your trash you don't want to spend time trying to select the tiny bit of the screen to look through your trash. Tachyon in particular always wants to know what's in the trash (an automated burst count for her would be awesome!)Can you look at someone else's hand during your turn? I would like to know if Fanatic is going to play End of Days before I play Impromtu Invention!Hmmm, on a similar note, do you get to look at your hand before the first villain turn?Is there any way you can make the HP numbers on the cards change? I don't want to have to look at the cards to see what is out and they look at the top right to see how much HP everything has… wait you did that with the Mobile Defense Platform so it is possible.

most of these fall into the polish area and we have considered many of them. just know that we will keep a note of all of this as we move forward.

I didn't like the fact that you couldn't see all targets in play in the top right summary, if you are going to use that then put everything that has HP on there. I don't want to think I can hit Baron Blade and then find out when I select my power that the MDP wasn't quiet as dead as the previous player thought it was.Also, is there a way to choose a different power if you misclick? (mistouch just sounds wrong)

there isn't yet but we'd likely follow typical touch interaction standards. ie, touching outside of the target list, or on some sort of cancel button would take you back to the "select power" phase.

  The nemesis bonus was not applied when Legacy took a hitBaron Blade's trash read 0s at the start of his second turn, and 2 at the end, it should have read 2 the whole way through (first turn Slash & Burn and a destroyed platform).I also noticed that the text on Pushing the Limits is not up to date (and Sonic Vortex now that I look back at it). EDIT:Don't walk away thinking I was disappointed in it, it looks awesome and will be happy to buy it if/when a multiplatform/multiplayer aspect is added!

While we're not locked to a minimum OS officially (on either iOS or Android), supporting older versions of either is not a stated priority. It will really depend on what features we use and how those are supported by the Unity engine. It's very possible that we'll support older versions, we just cant say how far back at this point.

thanks for the feedback. The trick is that we have to balance the two issues of "feels like a coherent team" with "each character really needs their own dedicated area to spread out" but we'll definitely explore this more. Plus, each environment will probably have it's own feel as well.

once we've had success on tablets, we'll consider the next platform. Unity supports all the next gen consoles so nothing is off limits for now.

It would be awsome if there were some way to view other peoples games, like you could download a "log" so to speak and step through games people have uploaded. That would be really slick

Pretty good stuff. I was a little bit bothered by the speed at which it was playing; animation is fine and all, but sometimes, you just want cards in, cards out, no more fancy-schmancy stuff. Any option for simplified, faster play?

I want to go to there!

Okay, my brain is in giddiness overload now. Tomorrow I'll post actual, hopefully constructive feedback. Today I will just watch the video a few more times before going to work.

Love the work we are seeing in this video.

I have two comments that pull in different directions but I still offer them to be considered.

1. I'd like the digital media to help clarify the text and the action. There have been tons of comments about ways to change the text on the cards with icons, I'm not trying to reignite that. I am saying that as a card does its actions it would be great to have the text highlighted as it happens. i.e. Card says "Draw 2 cards"? Great, then highlight that part while drawing 2 cards. Card does 1 melee damage? Great, then highlight that part as the explosion goes off. And so on.

2. I'd like to see the art on the cards featured more. There could be a way that at times there is a close-up or pan across a picture. This can do a lot to give a sense of motion and life. Look at how it made The Civil War documentary come to life. This version has nice explosions but I think the art in the game can do more.

One extra comment: I'd like to see the damage done give a clearer result in the numbers. Like if AZ does 1 cold damage, then a big frozen "1" is part of the attack graphic, as well as the targets HP being reduced by 1.

Thanks for asking and listening to feedback and I can't wait to play it!

I'll second this. Part of the fun of Sentinels is building up some big attack numbers. Showcase that. When someone pulls off a 20+ damage attack, BOOM! Let them see how awesome they were.

Question: do you plan on having effects actually change the cards? For example, if you have a +1 damage, would the number on the card actually change, or would it stay the same with a +1 modifier somewhere?

We definitely have plans for making these sorts of things more visible. Showing an attack building bigger and bigger as the various effects begin to stack would be great.

this is still a work in progress. the tangled web of effects that can happen can be confusing to keep track of and having a computer that can do it for you makes this a lot easier for sure. The idea of embedding it right in the card text is an interesting one.

We definitely want to do some dynamic things with the cards. The cards you see in the demo video are actually being built up from pieces with art & text resources; they are not just scanned images or anything like that. One simple thing is to actually put in the H values, so you won't ever actually see H show up in the game. We'll be looking for things like that where the digital platform can accomplish useful things not possible on cardboard.

Another case where dynamic cards would be helpful would be for Nightmist, as when the cards check for other card's magic value, the text end up rather akward.  While the text cannot be fixed before taking into account the magic value, it can be simplified after obtaining the magic value.

One simple thing is to actually put in the H values, so you won't ever actually see H show up in the game.

Be careful with that.  Could cause confusion when a card has different values in different games with no obvious explanation.  My first thought would be "I found a bug in the app".

Overlaying a watermarked H with the value would be a simple solution for that.

Or do something like what the MMO's do (thinking Guildwars). Have anything that can (or does) change in a different color.

For example, a card could say:

Deal 2 projectile damage.

But if Imbued Fire was in play, the card could say:

Deal 3 fire damage. -With "3" and "fire" colored red.

Okay, let me give this a shot. I'm still a bit euphoric from repeated viewing of the demo, so keep that in mind.

I love the decision to have the background be graphically (and, I'm assuming, auditorily) representative of the environment. Switching points of view for each character is a nice touch, too. It would be nice to see an image of your hero, and possibly those in your current field of vision, just to complete the scene. And, of course, the villain.

As a purist, I would prefer to have the original text on the cards remain even when damage or other effects are modified. However, the addition of the final modified value for clarification would be awesome, maybe with a strikethrough (but still legible) version of the original text. For instance, if Mister Fixer had Grease Monkey Fist in play (+1 damage), was currently buffed by Legacy's Galvanize power (+1 damage), and Ra had Imbued Fire in play (all hero damage changed to Fire), then Mister Fixer's Strike power could read something like "Power: Mr. Fixer deals 1 target [s]1[/s] 3 [s]melee[/s] fire damage." Or something. I think it would be helpful for the "non-grizzled Sentinels veteran" crowd to see how the cards actually work, not just what effect they will have on this turn. I weep at the hypothetical tragedy of a new player looking at Wrathful Retribution and thinking, "Wow, I can do 9 damage to the bad guy this turn. I should totally play this card now!"

The villain victory condition text is great (and necessary!) to have. Are there plans to include a bookkeeping line for specific heroes? Like a Stealth counter for original Wraith, a "burst cards in trash" counter for Tachyon, etc. There seems to be enough real estate below the hero cards to fit something in.

That's all I have for now. I'll go back to drying the drool out of my keyboard. Darn this thread!

I kind of like the idea of having the tokens chow up in the app.  So, when you have a buff to damage you'll have a big bar across the top of your Hero card that reads "Damage dealt +1".  Maybe a combination of the two would be best?  You could have the status bars showing the various effects your hero has (Damage Dealt +1, Damage received -1, All damage is Fire maybe stacked on the top of the card) and then have the text noticeably changed whether by color change or a strikethrough.  That way the card is already reading the proper numbers so you don't have to do any math but you also know WHY its changed.

I'm already really excited about the Android version of the game. I really like that you're using the card graphics from the game, as this will make things easier for those of us who will be playing both.

A couple of thoughts though; 

I'm seeing as lot of flashy movements and visualizations. It will be important that these do not influence the flow of the game. It's actually a very good idea to allow the player to turn them off entirely. Especially if there's any chance they could bog down weaker and older tablets.

The second thought is that everyone is definitely going to want access to the expansions. (At least the older ones.)