WFTO Wednesday #58: The Crackpot & The Cook

WFTOWednesdayCroppedLightThe Crackpot & The Cook

Hey folks,

Today we venture into the fizzing, disorderly world of the Crackpot and his untold number of unstable – yet occasionally genius – concoctions.

 

Unit Spotlight: The Crackpot

Whilst many Gnarlings avoid the countless strange reagents that can be scavenged from the depths of the Underworld, there are a scant few that accidentally, or from misguided judgement, begin to experiment with the various effects these peculiar fungi, liquids and other ingredients have upon themselves. After generations of oft-lethal and regularly explosive experimentation a small sect of these creatures have come together to create a kind of sect that idolizes the maven genius of the Crackpots who have managed to twist and bend simple reagents into potions of immense power.

Crackpot

With the true mark of a visionary, the Crackpot mixes viscous with acrid, fetid with acerbic, and occasionally the living with the inanimate in order to innovate within his chosen line of work. And while a multitude potions have been perfected over countless years to be passed down through the many generations – each Crackpot quietly hopes to unlock the hidden mysteries yet to discovered within their trade. As a result the Crackpot will constantly ingest strange and unpredictable brews as they test their latest alchemical blends.

 

Potion Spotlight

Bottled Ice: This malty, glacial ooze flash freezes all units and defences in its area of effect, leaving them locked into icy sarcophagi for a brief period of uselessness.

Wisdom Juice: This genius draught is infused with the memories of its unfortunate reagents; packed full with the collective knowledge of a bunch of deceased critters, the Wisdom Juice potion transfers that experience directly to your own minions. The boost to your beasties’ expertise is well worth the occasional episode of gender confusion.

Spirit Workers: Some of the more advanced alchemical tonics can involve subtle notes of necromancy. Packed full of expired Imp viscera, the Spirit Workers potion plucks a squad of workers from the greedy claws of Death. These invincible and impetuous workers can only be summoned temporarily, but they’ll see to the needs of your dungeon with a frantic, unholy fervour.

 

We hope that this little teaser of upcoming content has piqued your interest, but alas, that concludes what we have to share this week. We’ll see you back here next Wednesday for an update on various Kickstarter-reward related things!

 

Until next time Underlord,

– WFTO Team

 

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30 Comments
  1. So, are these things the same race as the Gnarlings or what?

  2. Dont make to many Monsters… might get confusing! And not good when it comes to balance. Anyways, keep it coming!

    • There can not be enough different Monsters!

  3. I personally like there being many many different monsters, but I think they should be limited in some way by the current map, or maybe mutually exclusive so you just cant have “one of each” every time you play the game. Like you can go potions OR necromancers or something like that 😀
    That lets you add dozens of monsters without needing to compromise the ending result of any actual match becoming a never ending circus.

  4. Not sure about the design… Dunno seems like a zombie and a bit blah. Have you guys considered a big harness completely full of potions so you can hardly see the creature ? How’s this for the inspiration http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-q9c-p-0MhAs/T4NMLzF278I/AAAAAAAAADc/XoocdH3SuKQ/s1600/Labyrinth+Junk+Lady.jpg

    Also adding another female humanoid might be good!

  5. As another said, in the campaign, you will need to make sure that there are creature limitations on what the portals will attract.

    Secondly, did you forget the heroes ? Make good tough heroes…this game should be difficult and challenging…and so far barely any attention appears to be given to heroes…dwarves and juggernauts only so far…

  6. I’m a huge huge huge fan of the original
    DK series.
    It played beautifully because
    it was reasonably simple,
    but still fairly subtle.
    It wasn’t childish, the humour was
    Wonderfully dry and everything
    was well written. I think you could do with a
    proper copywriter getting involved.

  7. Worst one yet, are you guys going for a kids game?

  8. “Worst one yet” <<< This.
    The whole design of a unit, including abilities, looks like a product of some heavy,heavy smoking… and overall looks a little rushed and done in a hurry. quite sad.
    I for one do now want to see this creature, in its current state, crawling the depth of the underworld. Also, second the thought about heroes, give them "good" guys some love.

    And to toss some wood into the firepit, how would the idea of some diversity in the already existing creatures sound?
    Not talking of something heavy like different styles for the same units, for ex. a knight missing or having one shoulder damaged or several types of helmets for goblins, too much work there, no time for it. A little variance in the coloring of clothes or even slight difference in skin tones could work wonders on the feeling of clone army marching around.

  9. I really dislike the design of that creature… as mentioned before, it looks childish and awkward. Also I’m not sure what to make of this whole potions concept, mostly because I don’t really comprehend it, yet. I would really like to see a re-design of the “Crackpot” (including its silly name), as you’ve re-done several other creatures before, fortunately. Somehow, your initial design ideas are often reeeally not what I’d expect from a game like this. Although DK2 had those goofy cutscenes that tried to make some of the characters more endearing. If you’re going for that route, I cannot see this particular character winning my heart (nor my humour) at all.
    So much for that. I still think you’re doing great work overall. Best wishes!

  10. First of all great work on the game so far !! But yes what about the heroes, because we see a lot of monsters passing by, but their is almost no expanding in the heroes group ??

  11. I see you’re getting a fair amount of negative feedback, but I actually like the concept of this one a lot!

    “[…] a small sect of these creatures have come together to create a kind of sect […]” Proof-reading 😉

  12. Don’t even begin to start rubbishing a creature that has been created for this game, the work so far has been excellent to say the least. You can bury the idea of being able to remove and receive what creatures you would like in the game, if you simply don’t like them for aesthetic reasons then don’t build the room, and hinder your own strategy, don’t cry on here about it.

    • Who are you Ser, to deny people the right to voice their opinion?
      Without any offensive words, threats of suicide and violence, of cource, and of such I see none here.

      No one is having illusions of making any real impact on the game, well no one sane that is, its all up to the developers in the end.
      Unfortunately, no offense intended, but your post serves almost no purpose and states a very silly proposition.

      I hope you do realize that feedback is the hand of progress, especially negative one at that, for when all is good there is nothing to be done. While analyzing the negative responses gives a pretty good view of where more work or thought needs to be put into, if time allows.
      We all know its a race against clock with game development and people will start to rumble and rattle from time to time. Heres to hoping the dev’s will bear with us, from time to time)

      What is to be posted here then? “drooling” and “wooow”, “cooool” ?
      As satisfying as it is, it gives little to no feedback.
      If you simply accept everything that comes that’s good, that is also a way, but why bother with what others say then ?
      Ser, again no offense intended, but it is posts like this that should be avoided.
      Have a good day.

  13. Don’t really like the design, though maybe it’s because of that weird way he’s standing and how he’s sticking his tongue out. I was expecting a hunched goblinoid wearing over sized goggles and a singed lab coat or something to that effect.

    Also, what’s this about “The Cook”? I hope that’s not the Crackpot counterpart, I think a simple “Alchemist” or “Philosopher” would be a better direction.

  14. Love the design, the hippie drug user is fun, even more so if there is a chance his ‘potion/spells’ can go wrong and backfire due to over indulging.

    if their a sect of gnarling does that me we can choose what our gnarlings will evolve into? or will it be random generation based on rooms like DK2? p

  15. I think the Crackpot’s attracted through the portal with the Alchemy Lab.

  16. A lot of the fun in designing characters is knowing that there is no clear cut way for a design. Each person can look at a character in any game and ask “Why does he have that instead of this? Why is he that color? Does he really have to carry this?” When looking at the design of characters or anything for that matter, nobody really knows the actual affect it will have until it is witnessed moving with sound effects and in its natural setting. The joy I get from designing these characters is knowing a love/hate relationship will follow from the public. At the end of the day and all pieces are moving, we developers can sit back and say “See I told ya so.”

  17. wow, this actually seems kind of fun 🙂 I especially like the spirit imps as a favourite tactic of mine in dk1 was to find a good resource like gem blocks and just sit casting sight of evil and lightning bolting my friends imps so he had no gold 🙂

  18. Questionable monster design, pretty dissipating.

    Why don’t you introduce jelly man too? He can be a man made of just jelly. Similar to the bile demon, ability wise. Except jelly man just loves to eat jelly so he turned into a human jelly.

  19. Dis gnarly fella be trippin’ on Shrooms and LSD. (Y)

  20. lol thats pretty awesome 😀

    was just talking about drugs when i saw this 😛