Here's an old roguelike standard: clicking yourself should pass the turn. Also no diagonal numpad movement despite VI keys working? Probably a bug? Rebinding them would be nice to (I typically play with qweadzxc with mouse for aiming or long distance movement).
If you have a tile selected on the screen and double click end turn, you attempt to move to that tile.
yeah, it's a very niche card -- i added the effect as a nice thematic way to trigger bombs & figured there might as well be a card for it, too. but i don't know what purpose it has yet :)
Great game. But the fact that you can't double click when there is rubble visible means it's often either a rubble-removal-simulator or a tile-based-walking-simulator... I guess a quick fix would be to just remove all the rubble from the game, at the moment it's 1% a nice detail, 1% a ventriloquist target and 98% annoying. It also can spawn on top of an item and you don't see that.
More minor points:
- There should be a "really hit yourself?" prompt for damaging cards
- There is a bug if you use ditto after you just used snipe, turns the screen white as if you died
- If you target yourself with bind and you get damaged it causes an infinite loop. (It times out and everything works fine afterwards, though. Or was it because I moved and ended the turn?)
- You should be able to end the turn using mouse, instead of having to find the key "e"
- At the moment, 5 card decks seem to be the best, or at least are more comfortable to play. I think it would be better if you could "equip" 2 or 3 cards so that you always draw them, so that every deck has some predictability.
- auto-targeting would help make the controls less clunky
Really good calls, all around! Thanks for playing!
I like all of your ideas for controls -- auto-targeting, and "really hit yourself?", and an end turn button.
Rubble needs fixing. i guess i didn't think through the implications when i added it.
ty for the bug reports!
Now, the idea of equipping cards is kinda neat, though a bigger change. I'm curious -- what 5 card decks are you building? what's the dank strats? what decks would you like to build if you had equippable cards?
I'll see if I have some time in the next couple days for bugfixes.
In the beginning I usually throw out cards until I have only 3 strikes, sprint and run left. It’s able to deal with everything on the first level in a quick and effective manner. Then I look at books, but use keyboard walking to leave them behind for later, until I think I have the basis for a good deck, and enough fountains to switch to it.
firebolt, octave, elegant, run, vault
was the first deck that got me to glumgraymore. It can’t defeat him, though. This deck was kind of optimized to make encounters in the dungeon quick and simple.
Later I managed to get
tea, ditto, lifesteal, snipe, blink
but the snipe-ditto bug made me start over. Fights against spider mages can also be lengthy, not sure if this deck would even defeat glumgraymore.
Another one I got was
fireball, octave, elegant, bind, exert
but I accidentally one-shot myself (should have seen that coming, haha).
There is exert instead of run, because you sometimes have to jump over one-tile walls to proceed to the next level.
It also takes less clicks/keypresses than run.
Finally, I used
ventriloquist, knockout, firebolt, exert, icebolt
and won. Icebolt was there to make fighting spider mages quicker, and could be replaced with something else. It was kind of underwhelming to defeat glumgreymore with knockout, some day I’ll try it again with a deck using bind or lifesteal instead.
Other ideas: two steadfast, two tea, some movement and some attack could give you infinite energy and infinite cards, I think. It’s six cards, though.
Some deck with two upgraded clarity darts could spam infinite clarity darts, though they can be resisted.
Lotus ends on your turn, so you can attack, and just use lotus again. Maybe clouds would still damage you, idk.
Those seemed op to me, so I didn’t use them.
Of course there are many other possible decks, I’m usually trying to play some kind of wizard.
The thing is, if I’m always drawing the same five cards, it kind of misses the point of having cards rather than skills. But right now, if there just was a greater minimum deck size, it would just make the gameplay more clunky for me. You are also kind of punished for having a bigger deck, as fountains become less likely to remove the card you want to remove.
Equipping cards is just some idea that would preserve some of the comfort of using a five card deck. If then the dungeon would require more versatility than a 5 card deck can offer, there would be a good reason to accept the randomness of a bigger deck.
I didn’t really think about what kind of deck exactly I would use with card equips, I would probably still use 5 card decks until the game really requires more versatility than that.
But it’s ok as it is, even with 5 card decks there is a deckbuilding aspect. This was just some idea.
Other stuff I just remembered:
“pulverize”, I think, couldn’t target walls when I tried it. Maybe I just wasn’t close enough. But I could target a monster to discard it.
not sure if “with feeling” works, but maybe you just need to pay the energy cost of the next card twice, in which case it’s just ditto but worse.
of course some kind of saving feature would be good
I think it would be better if the effect of shift was reversed, so you walk by default when pressing a direction key. While you are targeting, you can’t walk anyway.
Yo this is the best thing I've read all year. I'd basically read anything you have to say about strats for this game -- you're probably the best in the world right now ^_^;. I spent a lot of time coming up with cards & playstyles that I thought would be fun -- it was super exciting to hear that some of them work actually, and even more exciting to hear you describe some that I had never found.
I'm for sure going to find some time to work on this, at least to fix the bugs, this weekend. (and add saving / loading so you don't have to keep the tab open!)
With regards to larger changes, we're tossing a few ideas around over here, but nothing's leapt out as the right way to go just yet. Some thoughts:
* First, it's not out of the question to remove the deckbuilding and replace it with modular skill progression, where you'd pick up a set of 3-5 skills, which would be available at every turn (maybe with cooldown??). I think that still gets at some of the fun roguelike aspects, where early decisions matter for later play. Doubling down on the upgrades could help to make wonkier builds viable or preferred in some runs -- for example, a card/skill that gets good only after it's been upgraded a few times.
This idea is not my favorite, just because I kinda like cards.
* Next, ideas of equipable cards are very interesting. I think this is something we could introduce, for example as an artifact, even if it doesn't become a core component of the game.
* Finally, one balancing lever to pull could be the size of the levels. I don't want to force the player to make a decision at every pack, but it sounds like making the levels smaller could push you to pick up cards before you had enough information to build a perfect setup. I'm really curious to hear what you think about this. Would it work? Would it be too cramping?
Another way to make the levels effectively smaller would be to ramp up the difficulty of the baddies more quickly as the player gets farther from the starting point on each level. This'll be much harder to implement well, but I think it's better overall: you'll be rewarded for careful play in the early game by access to more cards.
If you’re fixing some stuff, I would start with the rubble, at least if taking it out is as easy as I imagine it.
Thoughts about thoughts:
Your ideas for turning it into skills sound good. Cooldowns and more upgrades could also be applied if you keep the concept of cards. It’s your choice what kind of game this should be.
If you want decks bigger than the amount of cards you draw each turn to be better, also consider different general mechanisms about cards. Maybe don’t discard the unused cards in your hand at the end of the turn. And/or draw less cards.
Having to look at and evaluate 5 new cards every turn in this kind of roguelike might be a bit too much. Card equip is just one of the ideas for that.
About smaller and effectively smaller levels: Considering that I often finish all my deckbuilding on the second level, these do sound like good ideas, if you keep the current game mechanisms.
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Here's an old roguelike standard: clicking yourself should pass the turn. Also no diagonal numpad movement despite VI keys working? Probably a bug? Rebinding them would be nice to (I typically play with qweadzxc with mouse for aiming or long distance movement).
If you have a tile selected on the screen and double click end turn, you attempt to move to that tile.
needs an adjustable screen size but otherwise pretty good.
Wow, this had a lot of great updates!
Only bug I know atm is that immolate gives the wrong effect, namely mark
Fixed! thanks.
immolate is sort of useless -- it just counters the enemy healing. but at least it works!
Oh, right. Well, it could suppress healing, in addition… but even then I’m not sure if I’d use it, lol.
yeah, it's a very niche card -- i added the effect as a nice thematic way to trigger bombs & figured there might as well be a card for it, too. but i don't know what purpose it has yet :)
Great game. But the fact that you can't double click when there is rubble visible means it's often either a rubble-removal-simulator or a tile-based-walking-simulator... I guess a quick fix would be to just remove all the rubble from the game, at the moment it's 1% a nice detail, 1% a ventriloquist target and 98% annoying. It also can spawn on top of an item and you don't see that.
More minor points:
- There should be a "really hit yourself?" prompt for damaging cards
- There is a bug if you use ditto after you just used snipe, turns the screen white as if you died
- If you target yourself with bind and you get damaged it causes an infinite loop. (It times out and everything works fine afterwards, though. Or was it because I moved and ended the turn?)
- You should be able to end the turn using mouse, instead of having to find the key "e"
- At the moment, 5 card decks seem to be the best, or at least are more comfortable to play. I think it would be better if you could "equip" 2 or 3 cards so that you always draw them, so that every deck has some predictability.
- auto-targeting would help make the controls less clunky
Really good calls, all around! Thanks for playing!
I like all of your ideas for controls -- auto-targeting, and "really hit yourself?", and an end turn button.
Rubble needs fixing. i guess i didn't think through the implications when i added it.
ty for the bug reports!
Now, the idea of equipping cards is kinda neat, though a bigger change. I'm curious -- what 5 card decks are you building? what's the dank strats? what decks would you like to build if you had equippable cards?
I'll see if I have some time in the next couple days for bugfixes.
You’re welcome. Thank you for this great game!
About five cards decks:
In the beginning I usually throw out cards until I have only 3 strikes, sprint and run left. It’s able to deal with everything on the first level in a quick and effective manner. Then I look at books, but use keyboard walking to leave them behind for later, until I think I have the basis for a good deck, and enough fountains to switch to it.
firebolt, octave, elegant, run, vault
was the first deck that got me to glumgraymore. It can’t defeat him, though. This deck was kind of optimized to make encounters in the dungeon quick and simple.
Later I managed to get
tea, ditto, lifesteal, snipe, blink
but the snipe-ditto bug made me start over. Fights against spider mages can also be lengthy, not sure if this deck would even defeat glumgraymore.
Another one I got was
fireball, octave, elegant, bind, exert
but I accidentally one-shot myself (should have seen that coming, haha). There is exert instead of run, because you sometimes have to jump over one-tile walls to proceed to the next level. It also takes less clicks/keypresses than run.
Finally, I used
ventriloquist, knockout, firebolt, exert, icebolt
and won. Icebolt was there to make fighting spider mages quicker, and could be replaced with something else. It was kind of underwhelming to defeat glumgreymore with knockout, some day I’ll try it again with a deck using bind or lifesteal instead.
Other ideas: two steadfast, two tea, some movement and some attack could give you infinite energy and infinite cards, I think. It’s six cards, though. Some deck with two upgraded clarity darts could spam infinite clarity darts, though they can be resisted. Lotus ends on your turn, so you can attack, and just use lotus again. Maybe clouds would still damage you, idk.
Those seemed op to me, so I didn’t use them.
Of course there are many other possible decks, I’m usually trying to play some kind of wizard.
The thing is, if I’m always drawing the same five cards, it kind of misses the point of having cards rather than skills. But right now, if there just was a greater minimum deck size, it would just make the gameplay more clunky for me. You are also kind of punished for having a bigger deck, as fountains become less likely to remove the card you want to remove.
Equipping cards is just some idea that would preserve some of the comfort of using a five card deck. If then the dungeon would require more versatility than a 5 card deck can offer, there would be a good reason to accept the randomness of a bigger deck.
I didn’t really think about what kind of deck exactly I would use with card equips, I would probably still use 5 card decks until the game really requires more versatility than that.
But it’s ok as it is, even with 5 card decks there is a deckbuilding aspect. This was just some idea.
Other stuff I just remembered:
“pulverize”, I think, couldn’t target walls when I tried it. Maybe I just wasn’t close enough. But I could target a monster to discard it.
not sure if “with feeling” works, but maybe you just need to pay the energy cost of the next card twice, in which case it’s just ditto but worse.
of course some kind of saving feature would be good
I think it would be better if the effect of shift was reversed, so you walk by default when pressing a direction key. While you are targeting, you can’t walk anyway.
Yo this is the best thing I've read all year. I'd basically read anything you have to say about strats for this game -- you're probably the best in the world right now ^_^;. I spent a lot of time coming up with cards & playstyles that I thought would be fun -- it was super exciting to hear that some of them work actually, and even more exciting to hear you describe some that I had never found.
I'm for sure going to find some time to work on this, at least to fix the bugs, this weekend. (and add saving / loading so you don't have to keep the tab open!)
With regards to larger changes, we're tossing a few ideas around over here, but nothing's leapt out as the right way to go just yet. Some thoughts:
* First, it's not out of the question to remove the deckbuilding and replace it with modular skill progression, where you'd pick up a set of 3-5 skills, which would be available at every turn (maybe with cooldown??). I think that still gets at some of the fun roguelike aspects, where early decisions matter for later play. Doubling down on the upgrades could help to make wonkier builds viable or preferred in some runs -- for example, a card/skill that gets good only after it's been upgraded a few times.
This idea is not my favorite, just because I kinda like cards.
* Next, ideas of equipable cards are very interesting. I think this is something we could introduce, for example as an artifact, even if it doesn't become a core component of the game.
* Finally, one balancing lever to pull could be the size of the levels. I don't want to force the player to make a decision at every pack, but it sounds like making the levels smaller could push you to pick up cards before you had enough information to build a perfect setup. I'm really curious to hear what you think about this. Would it work? Would it be too cramping?
Another way to make the levels effectively smaller would be to ramp up the difficulty of the baddies more quickly as the player gets farther from the starting point on each level. This'll be much harder to implement well, but I think it's better overall: you'll be rewarded for careful play in the early game by access to more cards.
lmk what you think!
That’s all nice to hear. :)
If you’re fixing some stuff, I would start with the rubble, at least if taking it out is as easy as I imagine it.
Thoughts about thoughts:
Your ideas for turning it into skills sound good. Cooldowns and more upgrades could also be applied if you keep the concept of cards. It’s your choice what kind of game this should be.
If you want decks bigger than the amount of cards you draw each turn to be better, also consider different general mechanisms about cards. Maybe don’t discard the unused cards in your hand at the end of the turn. And/or draw less cards.
Having to look at and evaluate 5 new cards every turn in this kind of roguelike might be a bit too much. Card equip is just one of the ideas for that.
About smaller and effectively smaller levels: Considering that I often finish all my deckbuilding on the second level, these do sound like good ideas, if you keep the current game mechanisms.
I just pressed enter because I was trying to learn the controls, and I kept switching maps and eventually "won" with no real effort. Likely a bug
oh -- added that when testing the ending -- more of a cheat code than a bug
fixed! thanks.