Guild of Guardians: July’22 Demo

I had recently got demo access for Guild of Guardians July’22 playtesting.

I was told that the content in this demo is limited as the objective is to compare how it performs relative to the last playtest and obtain feedback from a wider audience of gamers. There won’t be any opportunity to test out NFT’s as the current focus for this playtest is on the gameplay aspect.

There was only touchscreen controls for now with options between “drag” or “ button controls. I play-tested the game on an iPhone XR.

I'd probably try on an iPad instead if I can use an Xbox controller with it. Here’s hoping for the Dev’s to add controller support in the next test build.

Gameplay Experience

At the start, the training stage was quiet straightforward and by the end of it I was able to understand most of the mechanics already. Its a very easy game to get into for people of all ages.

Even early in the game, we were able to obtain 4 heroes which is a full squad for a dungeon run. The challenge is how to manage switching between these heroes throughout each dungeon run. We were given a limit of 3 revives if any of the heroes die.

The more dungeons we clear out, the more Hero Shards we obtain. Getting 100 Hero Shards provides us with an opportunity to summon more heroes. Once you have 12 heroes, then you can merge them to get a new one of higher rarity.

For the demo, there are 3 worlds which we could try out. Requiem is a catacomb left by the tragedies of the Ancient War, Brimstone is an unruly realm of ash & fire and Frostmire is a land full of mysteries closed behind a veil of perilous snowstorms. Each world would have respective number of dungeons for players to clear out.

Clearing a dungeon doesn't take long to finish, it took about average of less than 5 minutes for each dungeon.

This level design was important as if its targeted as a mobile game, players would want to be able to pick up and play for short periods of time. The Dev's nailed it in terms of the dungeon run length.

Here’s my playthrough for the last dungeon in the Frostmire world:

Based on the gameplay video, you can see my favorite hero was Ferulia. This is mainly because of her having long-ranged attacks and an active ability to slow down or even stun enemies that stay too long in her web. It was fun seeing she was able to dodge most of the attacks from the enemies, it would be much harder to do so with melee heroes.

What I’m expecting in the future…

#1 Endgame PvP battles

A feature I'm most hoping for is related to the Directional Attacks and Dodge Mechanics in the game. As damage is only taken based on attack colliding with players, more experience players will be able to dodge attacks better and survive longer… This makes it a very good game to implement PvP battles.

In a PvE scenario, this would mean players would be learning the AI movements to dodge better only.

But if the Dev's decide to include PvP in the future, this is where it gets interesting... We can have an “endgame” where max level players would battle out PvP in tourneys or ranking leaderboards. Players would most probably fair better based on better max level item builds and dodging skills. I'm imagining something like Dark Souls 1v1 PvP's.

#2 Controller Support

The game already has touchscreen “button” controls. Hopefully, it would be pretty easy to just map this controls for external controller support.

I would really love to use an Xbox controller as control would be more precise. Also as the screen is no longer used for touch controls, this means more screen space to see the visuals!

I’m look forward to what the Dev’s will be building for the next phase. I’ll be sharing here if I get an opportunity to test the next one :)