Talented
Talented is an arcade rouguelite shoot 'em up with randomly generated skill trees. Survive 20 nights and beat the dungeon to unlock all four classes, each with unique Talent packages and abilities. Level up the class core abilities, and search the Talent tree for in game upgrades.
Send a hail of arrows, conjure powerful spells or call upon an army of snails to hold back the demons. The possibilities are endless.
- Use WASD/Arrow Keys to shoot
- Use 1/2/3/4 to use abilities
- Click on talents to purchase them
- Use > and < to speed up and slow down the game (when Mastery Level 1 is unlocked!)
Development log
- Talented 0.10 Moves to SteamOct 31, 2023
- Devlog #41 - Full Steam AheadOct 15, 2023
- Devlog #40 - Go BigSep 29, 2023
- Devlog #39 - RechargingSep 15, 2023
- Devlog #38 - Setting The ToneSep 02, 2023
- Devlog #37 - Home StretchAug 04, 2023
- Talented 0.9.26 - Nature's BountyJul 18, 2023
- Devlog #36 - Life and DeathJun 11, 2023
Comments
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Love this game!
just like that i can't see
Please respond if you will.
Why is the place were I shoot black?
I played this a few tears back abd thr music is embedded in my.mind
A simple, fun, addictive little game. Thanks for making this! What's your next project?
really cool idea!
Hey!
I've played the game (and still playing it) and tried a few different builds. The game is so fun and addicting, but I think the RNG in the skill tree is the most important factor deciding if the player can win or not.
And also there is a little difference between vertical and horizontal lanes in terms of distance and this imo causes an unfair difference when enemies spawn more in vertical lanes than in horizontal lanes.
The warrior class is weak and not that fun to play. Especially considering the fact that you can't move to get closer to enemies.
Btw the game is fun and I highly recommend it.
Does the complete game have an endless mode?
i DID IT AGAIN!
managed to make it run out of memory again! i got a casual 1200 levels in one burst of xp!
i see this as beating the patch.
take that, balancing!
I SHANT BE STOPPED FINDING RIDICULOUS STUFF TO PATCH!
I had an integer overflow with the wizard I think, I went up to like level 255 and then I went back to 1
What I did was, I had:
So what happened was, due to 1 I could spam 2, which meant all my other skills had basically 0 cooldown. And then by spamming 3, I could make the individual xp orbs big enough to completely fill up the paths.
The number 1 strategy right now is probably mage while focussing on XP. The reason is, that it creates a snowball effect. The more "simple interests" you have, the more XP you get, meaning you can get even more the next turn.
You may think, you get more experience but in return for that you do less damage. But that's not true, because due to the more experience, you can easily catch up the damage. And, where it becomes really good, is when you have the ability that means level ups increase damage. If you have the ability where each level up increases damage by 1, and you have 8 simple interests at the start, then you get a default +8 damage.
Nevermind, it's actually when you have:
At that point, because I can spam backtrack I can spam other spells too. And because of the mana regeneration, I can do this indefinitely.
I was literally just spamming 1, 2, 3 and 4 as fast as I could while spinning around and didn't even see a single enemy for the entire round because I was just instantly killing everything.
Very fun game.
So I've registered specifically to leave some tips to other players on how to beat Mastery 25 with all characters.
Archer is currently the weakest class even though before the last patch it was the strongest one. Usually the archer dies on day 3 (and sometimes even day 1) if you're unlucky with talents. Your best bet is to get an early piercing. Second best is, surprisingly, the ring talent which apps all stats. Third best is double strike. After getting any of those and some damage/attach speed talents you should be fine.
Wizard is broken with the right talents. Currently orb build is the best. If you manage to get blazing orbs early, the explosions will carry you through the first half of the game, and later you'll become invincible.
Warrior is well-rounded and doesn't need any specific talents as its attack is a huge splash. Just focus on attack damage and attack speed.
Summoner was the weakest previously, but now it's pretty okay. Still needs the right talents to survive. Early on you need to find either +50% HP for summons or spectral summons. Then you need the talent which gives +10% summon speed on every lifesteal and get lifesteal as high as possible.
Great game well done!
Thank you so much!
The wizard has a weird bug where when orb speed increases too much the radius of the orbs orbit begins to tighten, which means on late rounds where you get loads of xp the rare talent that increases orb speed on each level up can pull in your orbs so close to the wizard that they can barely hit enemies in time, really hurts orb builds in the late game. I'm also sure this wasn't an effect of that one gain orbs ability that pulls the orbs in as i didnt have it this run.
Thanks for the report! It's on our list to fix.
Bug reports like this are really useful to us, we have a channel on our discord that is the perfect place for them if you find more.
Uh, I got an integer overflow with the wizard.
I got so much experience on night 17 I got negative talents. I am now stuck on level one, unable to level up anymore in proceeding nights or learn any more talents.
I had echomancy, double exp ability and the proc ability on level perk. The ability on level perk has been rate limited and is now preventing the game from crashing, but the combination, along with aoe damage like frostnova, allowed a loop of leveling up multiple times, triggering frostnova and killing onscreen enemies, and also triggering double exp, wherein echomancy triggers it again, causing a burst of experience and level ups.
At least this time the error didn't crash the game and I still finished the run.
Seems the XP economy is too strong even after our hotfix. Good to hear the performance issues are fixed though.
We're hard at work on the next update now - so this might go unresolved for a little while. Glad you were able to finish your run!
I feel like the game is too easy at the beginning so you loose interest in it before it gets hard, archer is way better than the other characters, and pls add Endless mode. :)
It's true that the earlier mastery levels are balanced to be quite easy. This is to ensure even players new to this kind of game have a shot at being Talented!
Even given that we think the game should be a bit more challenging from the start, so we'll be shipping some nerfs to some of the more broken strategies (looking at you Archer) in 0.10.
Endless mode is on our Steam Roadmap! So you can expect to see that in an future Steam Update.
Thanks for the feedback!
I've tested the warrior quite a lot, and have to say, it's way weaker than the other classes. Because:
1. The most viable build I've found is stacking attack speed and finding The Impaler + Health and getting the 'every second hit is a hit in opposite direction' talent. And even then I'm not garanteed to win the run.
2. Health Regen build sounds nice, but are not possible (as far as I've found). Health regen takes a LONG time to get low enough to be useful, even with the Stone Skin talent, and by then, you're always overwhelmed. With a strike/attack speed build, health regen is useless. Love the theme... but it really anti-synergizes met all the other abilities and a lot of perks. I'd say health regen needs to start lower, or needs to get 10% every time instead of 5%, or... some better talents? O, and the biggest problem: no XP when being hit, except for the talent, that only gives 25% (so you need to find 4 of them? - Impossible). Would love to see that talent be at least 50% XP on hit, and something more, to be able to get a 'get hit and win' build possible. Maybe some more synergy with parry?
3. I'd love to try Parry, but the node just doesn't spawn very often? For me, at least. Most of the board is full of other things. Parry is only usefull when you have loads of it - I've never managed to get it above 10-20%. Also, the talents that boost it are very weak. 5% extra parry when on a combo? Meh, sould be 10% or higher, imo. 10% extra when 50% health? That's nice, but how do you use that effectively? The idea of parry is great, but it falls to the same problem of Health Regen: it gives no immediate benefit (and you need that to survive), and takes too long to get going to be worth it against increasing waves.
4. The rest of the abilities are fine, except that earthquake and whirlwind (while I love the theme of it) are pretty weak. They usually miss and don't do anything your sword can do. Why not make earthquake screen-wide? It doesn't do damage.
5. The knockback-talent (5 damage with 1 meter knockback) is another one that feels bad. You need 15 knockback-nodes before it even does anything. If this is your first talent, forget about the run.
At the end: Warrior already has trouble getting XP (so you can't build fast), and health regen is very difficult to build on. Parry doesn't actually ever show up on the board. Most builds of the warrior don't sync with each other, so getting health regen when there's only 'attack' talents, or vice versa, feels pretty bad, while the other classes all have things that work together well.
Maybe streamline? Or buff a whole load of talents that have to do with parry, regen and knockback. Maybe even incorporate the 'XP on hit' with regular health regen nodes? All in all the warrior is cool, because he's very different from the others, but really needs some more power.
Thank you so much for the feedback! We'll take the time to read this carefully. Most in depth and dynamic discussion happens over on the Discord if you're interested in bringing up these points over there.
The orbiting arrows mechanic on the Archer is feels frustrating because it essentially "misses" the enemy I was trying to hit. For example, try shooting an enemy that's getting close. If the arrow orbits instead of being a standard shot, it's very likely the enemy will get through and hit you. (Orbiting arrows seem to be very unlikely to hit a target in the direction you're facing.) This has resulted in many cases where enemies get through.
Not sure what the best approach would be here, but that skill should definitely not negate my normal shot when it randomly goes off. I've had it go off a couple of times in a row, and that's pretty devastating. Maybe the orbiting arrow can be an extra arrow in addition to the normal one you fire?
I'm also not sure if I've just really unlucky, but coming back since sometime under version 0.8, I don't think I've been able to get further than night 5 or 6 with the Archer. Max level, and Mastery is at 19. I've tried different load-outs, but the outcome is pretty much the same thing each time. No matter what skills I pick up, even under best-case scenario talent trees, there just end up being too many enemies around day 5 to keep up with. The best run I've had gave me piercing shots and 3-hit mechanic on about the 3rd day, but even that wasn't enough.
I'm not sure what else to try with the Archer. The only thing that really seems to matter early on is attack speed, and unless the talent tree is loaded with it, I just die.
It’s impressive to get to mastery 18! The late masteries have definitely gotten harder this update, and earlier ones are easier. It’s something we need to adjust again - happy to chat about what might make it more achievable if you want to message us on the discord server! https://discord.gg/D6t8DKYyys
wizard is still underpowered :(
Really?
I find it overpowered, its early game is somewhat weaker, but its potential is literally exponential.
If anything, the warrior is really weak. It's gimmick is its combo abilities, but its nature as a close range fighter meant to tank hits for rage works against this.
Vortech Research (improve experience growth for every loot) might be a tad overpowered. Got it along with Shrink Ray and loot duplication, and cooldown reduction after every crit, and I now have a 100% crit rate and fire 20 shots per second even before I start collecting gumballs.
After spending all that, my attack delay is now displaying as 0.00, my range is over 14, and my attacks pierce 10 enemies. I’m wondering if it’ll crash on night 20 the moment I start firing.
Update: didn’t crash, but it slowed down massively. By the end of night 20, I was level 1211.
Crashed on night 20. Probably the experience doubling problem that others have mentioned.
Thanks for the feedback again! I’ll note down all of this. If you want to chat with us more/ be involved we have a discord server! https://discord.gg/D6t8DKYyys
Achievement unlocked: beat night 20 without touching a key or getting hit.
Lots of burning earthen orbs, orbs give more experience, orb speed on level up, random ability on level up, and abilities to both get an orb and atomize orbs.
Nothing got through the wall of fast orbs, though it was a close thing a few times when the orb wall moved inwards as the secondary effect of the gain-orb ability.
I also had shot speed on level up and shot damage on level up, which I had lots of fun using on earlier nights, but I wanted to see if I could get through the last night without firing.
I managed to crash the game in the skill tree. Day 19 of a Magician run, tons of levels thanks to interest skills, Enlightenment epic for extra vision on the skill tree, many many magic hats to jump to random places on the tree. I think I had about half the entire tree visible. Then I bought the D6 and the game crashed with an 'Out of Memory Error'.
Thanks for the feedback. Unfortunately it's an issue we've had a lot of reports of now - we're working on a hot fix for it!
Hello, ran into the memory problem again.
Playing as the wizard, had the double experience ability, faster orbs on level perk and proc ability on level perk.
When there are a lot of experience points on screen and you just got a burst of experience and you level up, there's a chance of you doubling the incoming experience points, which causes you to level up, which can trigger you doubling the onscreen experience again, which causes you to level up...
This loop also grows exponentially as each level up requirement seems to grow linearly (if at all) whilst the experience comes in multiplicatively.
Thank you for reporting these! We're looking at getting a fix in the coming days so it stops hindering your amazing runs.
Got a new error message this time!
Similar circumstances as previously.
For a fix, might I suggest that the knowledge is power ability doubles the experience gain STAT instead of the experience orbs on screen for a few seconds?
This way the game doesn't have to spend resources trying to render so many particle effects and can just double a number somewhere in the backend.
That is assuming the error isn't just caused by an integer overflow.
Ran into a bug: the path to the Experience Up in the center of the screen doesn’t actually function, and those points don’t act connected.
Thanks for all the feedback, will add the bug to our list!
Another great wizard run. Atomize to make lots of orbs, burning orbs, more experience from orb kills, lots of cooldown reduction, the double-experience ability, and the reduce-other-cooldowns ability. And then orb speed on level up, magic on level up, and more damage on level up.
By the end of night 20 I had 60 damage per shot.
Just finished a wizard run with 38 damage per shot on the last night, along with more than a dozen orbs orbiting. I got a skill that adds one damage for each level up, and the ability to double and immediately collect all experience orbs.
I managed to crash the game by running out of memory with the wizard.
I had a lot of flaming earthen orbs, the frost nova and double experience abilities. I also had several of the trigger ability on level up perk.
This is the result.
What a ridiculous run! Sorry that happened, we'll look into fixing this! thanks for letting us know : )
I had the same out of memory bug with the wizard. I think the cooldown reduction formula needs to be changed - 99% cooldown reduction is a bit too ridiculous!
what a waste.. crashed due to d6
Sorry that happened! We must have missed this when testing. We'll look into it, thanks for letting us know
nooo. i had an amazing run but the d6 crashed me cus i had the extra light perk!
already thought of a fix.
instead of reloading all talents when the d6 is bought, instead load in a talent to swap to for every talent generated, so that when d6 is bought its not a MASSIVE lagspike!
Really fun game, but I noticed that the wizard's orbs sometimes bugs out and doesn't start orbiting from the start of the night. I suspect this might be due to having too many of them?
I noticed this issue in several of my runs where I had a few base orbs with the flaming orbs perk and with using the atomize ability a few times the night prior.
You're absolutely right! We've got a fix for the orbs ready and will be adding it to the next update, which will be coming very soon!
Really cool game but went on faaaarrrrr too long imo. it was really neat but way too easy and it was the same thing for so so long
Thanks for the feedback! We have some changes coming to game pace in the next update. It should feel a lot faster then.
We will also be introducing more talents, abilities and enemies which should add more variety.
can you add a standalone version?
It's something we're looking into! More on that soon.
i really dont hate this game, its fun, but the.. noticible difficulty differences are super obvious, classes like the archer or warrior easily out-class the wizard and necromancer at higher level
The update coming soon definitely addresses some of these issues! Its a work in progress for sure.
i cant with this zoom, its so jank
I'll take a look at the zoom functionality for next update! Thanks for the feedback
i hate crawlers they make me want to eat my eyeballs and dropkick my monitor into the stratosphere at seven times the speed of light and shoot the main menu button with a tomahawk nuclear cruise missile
They'll be slowing down a lot next update! Also thanks for the new weapon idea
Well then, I'm stuck.
Very annoying bug with a fix coming soon! I'm almost certain it will be an invisible connection rather than completely impossible to connect though!