Aztlan Dreams released!

[LP]

We have just released our latest game title Aztlan Dreams. It is a turn-based puzzle role-playing strategy where you use magic spells and conquer terrain to defeat enemy wizards.

The story is about the heroes that in the times of great cataclysm enter the tournament made by Mayan Gods in the dream world to find the location of arcane city of Aztlan, where a Holy Owl plaits the future of the mankind.

Screenshots:
http://img183.imageshack.us/img183/5197/screen00kk3.th.png (http://img183.imageshack.us/my.php?image=screen00kk3.png) http://img185.imageshack.us/img185/7439/screen01gm2.th.png (http://img185.imageshack.us/my.php?image=screen01gm2.png) http://img407.imageshack.us/img407/5451/screen02hm3.th.png (http://img407.imageshack.us/my.php?image=screen02hm3.png) http://img176.imageshack.us/img176/6500/screen05pw1.th.png (http://img176.imageshack.us/my.php?image=screen05pw1.png)

The demo is located at:
http://www.ixchels.net/download/AztlanDemoSetup.exe

Official web site:
http://www.ixchels.net

[Traveler]

Awesome!
I see you're also working on Wicked Defense 2 now, and that the first version is now available for free. How did sales go, did they meet your expectations?

Bumped to news as well...

[LP]

Btw, if this has never been mentioned, if you look at the front page without logging in, the HTML tags don't work (in any announcement posts) - they show up untouched. I've modified my post back to BB tags - it now appears garbled on front page if seen unlogged.

As for the sales of Wicked Defense - they were okay, although still below our expectations mainly of the great boom of tower defense games, unlucky choices we made and piracy - thanks to the Russian guys that happen to visit Afterwarp forums.

[farcodev_]

cool and clean game, good work lifepower ! :D

[czar]

Looks very slick.

Good luck with sales.

[LP]

Thanks! :) Any negative critics though? Those who have played it, is there anything you don't like, etc.?

By the way, the game was developed in Turbo Delphi + Asphyre 5, with Flash + Paint Shop Pro used for the artwork. It took us more than a year to finish (as we started developing it in the end of 2007) with the most complex part being the game logic and spells.

Game AI was also one of the most difficult tasks. Insane AI with "multicore support" enabled in Config utility on Quad Core machine gives a real challenge even to the developers (except on the first two tutorial scenarios).

We have done thousands of tests of this game and there are still little quirks concerning the spells and their effects.

There are also 10 cheat codes and 1 in the demo (as you may guess, to specify human controls for "Nadia" character). :D

[De-Panther]

Looks very well made.
I'll play it in the first opertunity.


Yarron made you some sounds for this game?

[czar]

HI Lifepower,

I have installed and played the game. Graphically and musically it really is superb. Super job.

However, there are aspects that found confusing. I hadn't identified myself with the avatar so was confused in the various pre-game screen as to what to do and where to look. The team selection screen I basically got out of by luck as I was not really understanding what I was looking at.

The path screen does not seem to be obvious in the sense that I did not have a clue why I was viewing this screen. I didn't know if clicking on "stay on this cell" was a good thing or not. My suggestion would be to skip this screen in the first go and go straight to a battle.

Then I moved onto the game itself.
I tried to read all the texts in order to figure out what to do but I was excited to start so after reading enough to think, yeah yeah I know what is going on I went to the game screen. There I discovered I no idea what I was doing. I was clicking on random cells sometimes hearing noise sometimes there would a shift in colour, the enemy certainly seemed to be steadily gaining ground but I wasn't sure how to follow there example.

After a few minutes I gave up.

I haven't had any experience with these types of games so the gameplay was alien to me and I think that is partly my issue. I would suggest that you need to lead the player by the hand for the first 5 moves or something like that. Or a hint button, which cell to click on. Until the player gets used to the concept and works out what the objective is.

Visually the games looks awesome but for me the learning curve is quite steep and if I was trying this game out to buy it then I would be put off.

I hope this information can be of help to you in the manner in which it is intended, i.e. make the game more approachable to the casual gamer, and not a criticism on your hard work.

[LP]

Czar, thanks for the detailed report, this is a really helpful feedback!

Now getting back on finishing Wicked Defense 2. :D