Epic! Monster Quest: Hyper by buub0nik & sinoth
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I really wanted to like Epic! Monster Quest: Hyper. It promised a mouse controlled, real time roguelike with squad control. It has binaries compiled for every platform you could be reading this on, huge world maps with varied environments all meshed seamlessly together, a huge color palate that it employs well, multiple monster types, an inventory system, an in game help menu that explains everything out for you, and a really cool name.
Unfortunately what it also has is an insulting death screen that I saw way too much of. If I can ask one thing of developers it’s this: Don’t insult me for playing your game. Thank your players and do everything you can to encourage them to play again.
The first challenge of E!MQ:H was that it ran so fast that there was no way for me to swing my mouse over a charging enemy with my old man reaction times. Half the time we ended up dancing around each other as the monster would jump to where I was while I jumped to where they were, back and forth until I was insulted again in death. Then I discovered I could turn the speed all the way down, so I did, and that only helped me to die slower before the slap in the face. Then I discovered I didn’t need to click on my opponents, that my hero automatically attacked which meant all these deaths were unavoidable even if I hadn’t been spazzing around the field of battle. On my last game I lost more than half my health in mortal combat with a bunny, the most ill tempered rodent you had ever seen with huge teeth, which apparently did not drop anything, then I was finished off by a Yetti as I tried to limp my way back to town.
Unless you love 20 second games that end in over used memes I can not recommend this game. I’m willing to accept that it may just be me, so if there is anyone that had an experience with this game that lasted longer than a minute, I’d love to hear from you. If not I’d recommend to the developers that you reevaluate your balance issues, fix this game, and try not to fail so hard next time.
EDIT: I got to chat with sinoth who was very patient despite my scathing remarks about their weeks work. He gave me some pointers that would have changed the tenor this review and would help first time players. So I’m going to pass them on to you and hope that sinoth adds them to the readme in the future:
PLAYING FOR THE FIRST TIME:
Press the insert key to select your hero. The red arrow is your mouse pointer. When you start you have no weapons or armor so you’ll need to outfit your hero. Use the right mouse button to move your hero to the middle of the ring of ‘O’s. This is the outfitter. Then move your mouse to one of the ‘O’s and press ‘T’. Since this is your first game choose viking, heavy armor, and the axe. Then stand by the fountain to fill in the HP you just gained, and head for the wild.As you encounter monsters be sure to use your abilities. The viking can charge, which instantly brings you to melee distance, and can cleave, which hits all enemies around you. You can either get small drops of gold to “level up” at the shops or go straight for the boss in each area since that’s where the best gold drop is. As you get hurt return to the town and stand by the fountain to restore your health.
The area closest to the town is the easiest. Then as you get further from the town the regions you encounter will get progressively more difficult, so be sure to cash your gold in at the shops and recruit men in the tavern, equip them, heal them, and the battle will be joined.
If you prefer your roguelikes turn based you can pause the game with the backspace key and advance one turn at a time with the space or hold it down to progress time slowly.
Hopefully with this your experience will be better than mine. Sinoth also recommends downloading the latest version.
Knowing what I know now they could actually be one of the best games of the challenge this year. It was, unfortunately, so off the beaten path in it’s user experience, experimental as it were, and didn’t do enough to get new users up to speed that my first experience kinda sucked. But hopefully now your experience won’t suck, you can try this game as it was meant to be played. I take back my previous statement and do recommend this game.
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