Trying the game again in better conditions. Overall I like the base very much but something is not clicking (yet). It would be about situating myself on the board and seeing the elements interacting with each others.
Also it's more personal, but nowadays I like more modern/minimalistic/sober designs for such dense games. I don't think it's incompatible with having a style and identity (thinking more of the AAA japanese approach than the typical occidental open world game for exemple).
I'll be happy to retry the game in the future.
Things I like :
Sound Design
Screen / Phases transitions
Fluidity of Action
Visual Effects (simple but effective so far)
The whole randomisation theme
Things I'd like to see :
A smaller HUD/Interface, or a slider to reduce its size. I think it could serve the game aesthetics, make it more sober and serious
A more sharp and serious looking main font
Less different fonts so the game elements are more quickly acquired visually, partitioned, and don't clash between each others
Better card "hitbox" when they're in your hand so the hovering put them forth more smoothly
Better visual separation of the card Title and Type
More distinct frames for different card Types
Not sure the mouse wheel to display a fixed frame of hovered card is nice. I'd like to just hover cards and have them being zoomed a bit so I can see them better. If I have to right click it would be to really admire the card and contemplate it for a long time, or think hard
Maybe having the active card and the discarded card piles facing each other and being differentiated would help me better situating myself. Would allow for less mouse traveling too when countering a spell for example
I agree with your comments about having a more sober design, but I'm meeting my limitations here since I'm very untalented when it comes to art and overall UI design. While I understand that something cleaner would be better, it's very hard for me to pull off, so I rather spending my time improving the mechanics and gameplay loop for now and maybe revisit the idea of giving the game a fresh coat of pain at a later point.
I will try to implement adjustable HUD sizes in the future, things might be a bit too big since my eyesight is not great and also I spend most of the time deving on a smaller screen that I should, so I might've overcompensated for this fact. Again UI design is not one of my fortes, so this might take a while to be implemented.
I'm in absolute shambles about the font because this is the "new and improved" font. Finding and choosing the right font is a Sisyphean task for me, I'm open to suggestions if you have any.
I've tried hover to zoom before but it ends up being too chaotic since you end up zooming stuff you didn't meant to half of the time.
Regarding the other visual changes you suggested and the repositioning of the graveyard and stack, I will keep them in mind and see what I can do to improve those aspects in the future.
If the HUD thing becomes a real block later in development, there's always the possibility on finding a freelancer with a portfolio meeting your design choices. You provide him a screenshot or two, and ask him to tailor it (using keywords like I did to you). You're right on focusing on gameplay so far tho, card games are for brain players first and eye players come later.
If font is something you hear several times, I'd suggest going for less fat characters, and a tiny less round. And again playing with their size relative to their frame. Then try to see concordant aspects of each different fonts if you still mix many.
This for exemple : Bottom description is almost as big as the big Action font. The bottom font could maybe pass if lower size to begin with. But the Action font has characters not parallel (check the T and B). Makes it cartoony and fun. Your game is supposed to be entertaining, not the font. When you enter in game it's a big clash between all of them. The card description looks ok so far compared to the rest. If you can't lower the size of that, you would need to redo the card design to have more vertical space. Totally doable if you make your dungeon interface less big.
Don't know if you remember but to me your game reminds me a lot of Monster Train for some reason. I don't like (while appreciating and respecting) the artstyle. But it's a bit cleaner and partitioned to me. On top of my head I'd say take inspiration from Artifact, FORCED SHOWDOWN. Slay the Spire might not be a great candidate. (Edit : and simply modern AAA game with minimal interface, without going soulless. Get references from Japanese AAA)
this seems like the kind of game that requires a lot of time to properly judge, so I'll only give some first impressions
I like the concept of being able to make your own cards, but the process of doing so is pretty clunky. it wasn't immediately clear to me where the 'fast forward' button will go: does it skip from e.g. active effect 1 to passive effect 1 or somewhere else? sometimes it seems to do nothing
something I'll suggest is having the components of cards be loot pieces that you can get throughout a run. you might find a 'Draw two cards' component or a '5 HP' or something like that. selecting things from full lists doesn't feel too good
UX in general is a bit poopy I'd say. progressing or skipping through all the various phases in-game gets tedious. sometimes I accidentally skip past the attack phase and so fail to hit anything
art's pretty good. no idea how possible this is but this would be a great game to embed one of those image-generating AIs into. so you can type a prompt to get a card image matching whatever stats and name you put on it
The process of making cards will be reworked to provide a much better UX, the current format of dropdown lists was just a quick way of having it up and running but it will be worked into something much smoother and friendlier for sure. To answer your question, the green buttons on that screen are just confirm buttons, so you "lock-in" abilities when you click them, the catch is that you also need to lock in the activation timing for it to be added to the card, or skip that ability altogether if you leave it as -N/A-. Also minions only have access to 1 active ability, so that's why you skip directly to Passives after confirming the first active ability.
As I mentioned in Edengrall's dev comment, the mechanic of having each ability be a drop that you then use to craft is how it originally worked and how it still works in Adventure mode. I made it more accessible by just giving the user every ability as an option but this will likely change to having access to a random pool of abilities as you enter each forge. In fact, behind the scenes whenever you enter a forge in Castle Raid mode, the game gives you one of each crafting stone so you have access to all the abilities and timings.
UX for combat is a real piece of work, I'm doing my best to improve it with each update, next one will remove having to enter "Start of combat" and then press space again to enter "Attack" and instead just making you go straight to attack if no triggers automatically happen at the start of combat.
I would love to embed that sort of image generation to complement the "randomness" concept I'm going for, but doing so is just completely unviable and far beyond my abilities. At any rate, modding of images is extremely easy only requiring you to drop your images on a each of the 6 colors' folders, so at least there's that.
They don't need to have abilities, as long as you set both an ATK and a RES and give the card a name, you can craft that no problem. In fact, this is arguably one of the most OP things you can craft at the moment. Maybe you encountered a bug or maybe you were missing one of the aforementioned parameters.
I was thinking about a way to limit the card making without removing it to make the game more balanced.
Remove the upgrade gems, and the effects of intelligence (you should just replace the stats for a relic system) and give the player card cores and runes. Each character starts with a different relic and an affinity for a monster type (Wizard -> Elementals) and so on
The card core comes with the card type (spell or monster), the type, attack, defense and a few rune slots.
The runes contain the card effects, you can get a rune of [Draw 1] to make the draw 1 card effects, or the rune of [Pierce] that can be applied to a monster and make it deal damage through a blocker for example.
Replace the luck events for Rune shops that sell the cores and runes for crafting.
Make the hero level limit the maximum power level of his deck, each card core and rune will have a power cost just to slot in the deck, also let the player see the power level of enemy decks in the map, this way you can increase the power level of both player and enemies slowly to keep the game more balanced. If the card type is one which your hero has affinity for the power cost of the card is reduced by 20% (A Wizard can host stronger elementals)
Give each creature type a built in feature found in all card cores of that type, like Elementals all can trigger a rune at the end of your turn and Milling runes have lower power cost on them, while Accursed can trigger a rune by having you pay 1 HP or by going to the graveyard. With this you can give an identity to each creature type.
First of all, thanks for taking the time to leave two different comments!
Card making is a core aspect of what I think can separate the game and make it different enough from other similar titles, so I wanna tread carefully about tweaking the mechanic.
The original way it worked (and the way it still works for "Adventure mode" is basically what you are suggesting, every ability comes in a gem, including trigger times, and atk/res. The reason I enabled every ability to be usable in the roguelike mode is to give the users more of an idea of what can be done with the mechanic. In the future the entire system will be remade for it to be less clunky since selecting each thing from a small dropdown list clearly isn't very appealing or intuitive. Upcoming versions will likely include some sort of variation on the forge not only visually but also giving you access to a small pool of randomized effects you can use as to not overwhelm the player with 50 effects at once.
Separation of effects by card color/type is already a feature (which is similar to what you suggested) but it is toggled off at the moment (Altho still toggleable in Adventure mode) because there aren't enough effects for every of the 6 colors to have enough variety. More effects will be coming in the future and once those are added I might allow the segregation of effects by color again but adding effects means having to teach the AI how to use them effectively and since that's very time consuming, this will come later down the road.
Regarding more keywords being implemented, you bet they will be very soon. The only reason keywords for entering the battlefield of milling aren't there is because I literally made the entire mechanic from the ground up 8 hours before posting the demo. I wanted to make an early post but realized not having keywords at all was going to be a point of severe scrutiny, so I did what I could. I'm surprised it turned out as well as it did considering it didn't exist at all the morning the Demoday started. Also fyi pierce already exists as a mechanic exactly as you described it.
Your idea of the relics is interesting but I think it might be a bit too far from the concept I have in mind and reworking things to fit such system would be too costly timewise.
A different relic/equipment system is being worked on however. These pieces of equipment will offer benefits to facilitate or encourage certain playstyles such as making your burn spells deal extra damage if you control no minions, or giving you extra mana at the start of the combat at the cost of losing access to your graveyard.
Regarding balance, I understand your skepticism. But the philosophy that I had in mind when first designing the current system is that there is fun to be had making overpowered, over the top cards that can only be kept in check by other cards that are also powerful. I understand however that this is very dangerous since it might lead to players reaching higher floors unprepared and losing in a frustrating fashion against a strong enemy. Balance is very much a work in progress so I'll be tweaking it as I continue to dev.
I'm not sure I agree with the luck events being a bad thing to have since I feel they give a nice break to the time consuming and more brain taxing combat. I've heard feedback asking for even less combat and more alternatives to moving up the castle, for example. Either way, I'll keep your opinion in mind.
Lastly, the wizard ability gets better once you upgrade it in the menu since you can skip combat while also getting loot from the floor.
That was a long post, but thanks again for your comments and your time!
Looks really nice, specially the main menu UI, also I like how it is being made with mods in mind, modding is love, modding is life, ok now for feedback
The game is MGT without lands which makes it a better game already, I just think it is weird to have mechs in the wizard deck
-Use more Keywords, example: Mech Bruiser "When this minion enters the battlefield, deal 2 damage to any target -> Mech Bruiser: "Summon: deal 2 (icon for damage type) to any target", there are many more things that can become keywords
-On the first zone the game is very fun, but starts getting very unbalanced later on, you can get killed by burn damage very easily if the enemy has a burn deck, and you can get some very east wins if the enemy only has high cost cards and is unnable to do anything in the first 2 turns
-The idea of creating cards is very nice, but is extremely easy to exploit and I don't think it is possible to make the game balanced if this stays part of the core gameplay
-I really dislike the luck events, I think the game would be better if luck events and the luck stat were both removed
-The wizard ability is useless, In roguelite games like these you should never skip a combat, a better skill would be something like Clairvoyance: allows you to see the enemy deck before battle
I tried to get it working on a weak-spec computer, which did not work. But it runs really well on a decent-spec computer.
The main menu UI is beautiful, and I like the simultaneous-transition fading. In general, the graphics are very nice and pretty.
The game seems incredibly polished. Is this a commercial project? It really feels like it.
I do not really like experience systems too much, but many players like them, so that is just a personal preference.
Is there any tutorial? I have just selected the game mode that is not a work in progress according to the description, and I have a bunch of cards in front of me (I picked the first class, the warrior). Will you add a tutorial, maybe with hits? I do not see any "question mark button" that I can click on, or similar, which might have been nice. I think I messed up and accidentally pressed a key on the keyboard to advance to "Main2", but I am also using two computers at the moment.
I like the explanation when you hover over a card. In Magic: The Gathering, the printed cards, the explanations have to be included in the whole card, but here you can instead just read the explanation to the left. A tutorial with the explanation of the basics would still have been nice. Then again, the battle rules are fairly straight-forward, especially if you already know M:TG. So a tutorial might not be necessary.
Nit: Description of "High-quality Crafting Gem": "requiered" -> "required". Do you plan to run an automated spell checker on your texts? I know that Linux has programs like "aspell": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Aspell
In the first battle I had, I believe I had something like 4 "action"/"mana" points. In the second battle, I started with 1, and got to 2 somehow. I do not understand how or why. Oh, now I am at 3. Does it increase every turn? So, instead of playing lands like in M:TG, it just goes up automatically? Seems like a decent approach. Oh, it is called "Mana". For the first few battles, could you use the pop-up for the mana orb to show a text like "Mana: Mana is used to summon minions or cast spells. Mana is replenished at the start of each turn. Each turn, the maximum amount of mana increases." ?
Nit: Could it also make sense to have the mana symbol in the mana orb be the same as the mana costs on the cards? Just to make it more consistent and let the player visually identify it as the same resource? Though this might be superfluous or very minor.
Will this support multiplayer? I have no idea about the business model, market, competing games in this genre, or the depth or longevity and balance of the gameplay, for this game. I am not really into these types of games, and I do not think I would play M:TG-likes in multiplayer, though I do not mind playing a bit of M:TG-likes. Card games like this can be very popular in multiplayer, I think. A major streamer streamed quite a bit of a computer game version of a major card game a few weeks ago (he might still be doing it), and there seemed to be lots of players involved.
The music is good, I think, but can get a bit repetitive over time. Will you add more tracks?
When the level up screen comes, it tells me to press 'C'. Most of the game can be played with a mouse, I would guess. Will you support touch input? Controllers? Mobile platforms? I do not know how much screen real estate there is on mobile or tablets, so may or may not be a good idea, though I imagine you have already looked into it or have plans to look into it.
Nit: When a minion is exhausted, its portrait becomes grayscale. This is probably good enough as-is, but I feel like a slightly more visually distinctive indication might be good as well. I feel a bit like I have to look more closely than a quick glance to see if a minion is exhausted (in M:TG, cards (in the physical tabletop game, at least) are turned 90 degrees to signify exhaustion). Though, it may just be me that has not gotten used to the game yet.
The first few combats were more or less trivial and a bit boring, but good for learning the game.
The first boss was more or less straight-forward and easy.
Crafting seems bugged. Unless I am misunderstanding something. I can only select for "Active Effect 1". If I click the green buttons with two arrows, I can instead only select for "Passive Effect 1". I tried to increase the number of gems I am spending, but that did not help. I do not understand what I am doing wrong, or if it is bugged. Or is it just not implemented yet? It seems nice and advanced, I must admit. Can I craft non-minion spells? Oh, it is just me that did not understand the UI. I had to select one of the items before pressing the green button. I do not think it is major, but I think it might be useful to improve this UI a bit. Maybe "indent"/"move slight to the right" 'Active Effect 1 Timing' and 'Active Effect 2', such that they visually look to be hierarchically under 'Active Effect 1'? And do the same with the passive sub-items with 'Passive Effect 1' at the top of the "hierarchy"? I am not certain. I apparently cannot "rewind" when selecting effects, just reset it all, however, I believe implementing rewinding would be algorithmically complex. I have implemented something similar in a non-game application once successfully, and while it can be done, a previous programmer failed at doing it, and I cleaned up and fixed it and implemented a slightly involved algorithm for it in his place. Is probably alright as is.
Crafting, continued: Oh, I have to click the white arrows at the portrait to change whether it is a minion or a spell. Is there any way to change the type to something different than "Beast"? Can I change the portrait?
I spent 10 high-quality crafting gems to craft a minion that had 10/10, and which dealt piercing damage (damage beyond the blocker's health goes to the opposing player). The crafting said the card would end up with a mana cost of 3-4 mana, and I lucked out and got a mana cost of 3 mana. Should there be a maximum on how many high-quality crafting gems you can use? Or is the potential OP-ness and brokenness part of the game?
Bug (I think): In the broken card I crafted, it kept its 10/10, but it does not include its "piercing" ability. I could be wrong, but I think a "raw" 10/10 card without that passive ability cost less than the estimated 3-4 mana, maybe 2-3 mana.
I wonder if in-game healing-focused decks is OP for any long dungeon-run, for if you have a lot of healing, healing potions do not seem necessary.
The AI after the first boss is afraid to attack me after I got my 10/10 minion out on the field. Even without its special ability. Of course, I am also not attacking with it currently.
It seems like it would be nice with a lot over actions that happened, like some online board games have. For instance Board Game Arena has a log in the sidebar with player actions and events: https://en.boardgamearena.com/ . But, that is also a multiplayer game.
I think I encountered a significant UI issue (and maybe a battle-gets-stuck bug). I might have run into a bug, where the opponent should have been making a move, but did not. And the "end turn" button was red, and pressing it did nothing, and none of my cards were highlighted. That might mean that the game is stuck there. But, further than that, I went into the "Settings" during the combat, and selected "return to menu", and I ended up at the menu. And I then thought that I could continue the game. But, clicking "Load adventure" shows nothing. I cannot see anywhere to "Continue" my run. And clicking "Castle Raid" again only seems like it wants to start a new run. Did my run get deleted?? Or not saved? I have attached a screenshot of the possibly "stuck-during-battle" state. I tried to search for logs, see below.
Overall, the game seems like a really well-polished and high-quality commercial game. Though, I try to stay clear of these sort of genres of games, since they seem slightly addiction-inducing to me, which I personally dislike. Though there are much worse kinds of games out there. I have no idea about the game's gameplay balance, since I did not get far enough into it. The first really long-lasting battle ended in the above possibly-stuck state. Forging seems really interesting.
Where do I find the logs for the game if I want to send you any logs the game might have generated? I tried looking in AppData/LocalLow, since it is a Unity game, but did not find your game there.
First of all, thank you so much for taking the time to play and write an in-depth comment!
Regarding the lower spec computer, yeah, there might be some limitations and/or performance issues on weaker machines, I didn't get to test on a weak computer. I might need to optimize a lot in the future to solve that.
Thanks for the comments about the UI, it still needs work but it is getting there.
I'm a solodev, so while I do plan on releasing it commercially if I get the game to a passable enough state, I don't know if it could be considered a "commercial project" just yet.
Tutorials will be coming at some point, and I know it is very necessary, I just haven't gotten around to giving newer players a nice explanation of all the complicated mechanics.
I'm glad you liked the hover to explain keywords mechanic because I kinda just made that from scratch on the same day the demo released so the fact it works as well as it does it's a miracle.
I didn't know about this spell checker, thank you very much for the link I'll look into it!
You start at 1 mana and get 1 mana per turn, so it's simplified from the MTG land system.
Changing the UI for the mana is on the plans, yeah. I'll make it into something more intuitive.
I gave up on implementing multiplayer because this was a learning project and the resulting code is a bit too whack. Sorry :c.
The music will almost completely be replaced and improved on in future iterations.
You don't have to press C you can also click the inventory button on top, so you can play with only the mouse.
I've received this sort of feedback before, so yeah, I'm already working on adding something more obvious to show your card is exhausted.
First couple of combats will be slightly rebalanced to make it less tedious, that's also already in the plans.
The crafting will be replaced with a way more user friendly, the bug with piercing might be a thing or maybe you just didn't click the confirm arrow for that ability, I'll test that out. Also regarding skipping the second active, that's because Minions can only have 1 active, if you create spells you can use both actives. Also it looks a bit overpowered, but the game gets harder as you progress so the idea is that you kinda need the OP cards. And yeah, rewinding would be hard to implement, and since I'm eventually going to replace the way you craft entirely, I just didn't spend time doing that.
You can't change the type of card or image you are creating, but I'll keep your comment in mind!
Healing potions are great for other classes or for saving your ass against hard enemies since you can use them in battle.
The event history might be hard to implement, but I have thought about adding it, yeah.
The last part is in fact a bug, I thought shit had been resolved already but looks like it hasn't, so I'll keep working on it.
Castle raid does have a "save and then pick back up" feature, if you quick or die the run is over. Eventually I'll allow the player to continue the game but there's no saving at the moment. The load button is reserved for the other mode.
Thanks for trying again and getting it to work! I'll be watching your video now!
Edit:
I just watched the video, thanks for being so thorough with reading stuff while playing.
You encountered a couple of bugs that I think might have been related to running on wine, particularly the time you targeted your opponent but the minion took the damage instead, that's not a mechanic, the cursor was just selecting something different and that might be because of Wine.
I also spotted some other issues I have to take care of so it was helpful to watch.
I think the game got particularly long for you because you played with the Full Control option, if you ever play it again I'd recommend staying in 2 or 3 since the game will always stop if you have any action you can take, and that speeds up the overall experience quite a bit.
As you demonstrated, a more organic tutorial is required and I'm working on it, so yeah your grievances are justified. Unfortunately there's no saving in that game mode so your run is over once you quit or die.
The only mechanic I wish you had noticed is the Variant mechanic. When you get a new card with the same artwork as a previously owned card, you can choose all of your copies with that art to have either the previous effect, or the new effect you just got.
At any rate, thanks again for playing and for the feedback!
I'm happy the recording was helpful, and thanks for clarifying some things. Shame about no save, but the next time I play, I should be able to get there much quicker.
The only mechanic I wish you had noticed is the Variant mechanic. When you get a new card with the same artwork as a previously owned card, you can choose all of your copies with that art to have either the previous effect, or the new effect you just got.
Interesting. I will keep that in mind the next time I play.
Hey Fullen! I played a lot of your game in my free time.
I successfully finished 14 runs, and I am pretty sure 10 of those were in a row.
I encountered some bugs: chains that involve things happening when cards get discarded and player gains health seem to get stuck i.e. everything gets animated, but the chain doesn't resolve, and the game makes a clicking sound at a constant loop (I think it's the health gaining sound). I got some screenshots when that happens:
Here's another bug situation:
Enemy cast a spell to gain life, and during my priority I cast my spell which gives me life, and sends minion on top of the deck. After the minion was removed, the game got stuck just like in the bug above. here's screenshot:
Let's talk a bit about balance, because there is none and that's not necessary a bad thing, but it might give you some ideas.
I tried multiple builds and strategies, and I am sure I found the most broken ones.
Example number 1:
Cards like that make the enemy not play any more, because every time they get a new card, they must get rid of it before they have the opportunity to use it. It's a pretty safe way to play.
Example 2:
It's nice to win when the enemy cannot do anything, but what is more even broken is winning before they even get to play! At some point after many successful runs the enemies got pretty strong. Their cards get better, their decks grow in size, and they get much more health. Not a problem. Let me introduce you cards, ad strategy that wins every time before my enemy plays a single card:
I think the last boss had 35 cards in his deck. I calculated I could remove over 80 before his first turn, so it really doesn't matter how big and strong he is, there are even more strategies to make it even more abusive, but there was no need. I basically just remove his cards whenever I play cards, and I can just play 0 cost cards, and stack the same effects on multiple cards.
The only way I though of how it could be countered is if in my enemies starting hand was a card costing 0-1 mana which could take control of my minion. I could counter that by having those kind of cards myself, but that edge case never happened, so I did not need to play it that safe.
Fixing it?
I don't think you should be completely rebalancing the game around bullshit strategies, because coming up with them is what makes it interesting. At this point I feel like I won the whole game, because I found that one strategy that always wins, but I got ideas how you could prolong the fun:
You should reward players for trying out different things instead of having them play over and over what works. You could do that with some sort of achievement system that would force players to come up with different strategies. To make that work, you would need to have the player be able to adjust the difficulty instead of keep increasing it until only the broken builds work. Have an achievement for getting 30 max mana, or 50 health, winning in x number off turns, getting a minion with x resistance and so on.
With that said, if you do want to balance the game, then I got some ideas.
Misc Feedback
At some point it became a chore to open card packs, especially when you must search for specific new cards whenever you want to add them to your deck. I think it would be nice to have an option of instantly choosing which cards you want to add to your deck from the "card opening pack" screen.
Other Bugs
At some point I tried adding mods. Making a new one did not work for me (probably to do with wine and linux), but adding images to the existing anime mod seemed to work. The only problem I noticed was how some pictures appeared zoomed in in shop:
Another minor bug is how the text saying "upgrades available" shows up even when everything is maxed out (I had over 1k of each resource, but no screenshots).
Help
At some point I changed my resolution, and went from fullscreen to windowed mode, and that completely broke the game for me (Wine on Linux). I tried searching for where the save with start up resolution and window mode is located to manually edit it, but had no luck. The only saves I found were in AppData/LocalLow/Fullen Games/Card Artisan
Is there somewhere else where you keep your saves? Deleting that folder did not seem to make any difference, which means the game is probably going to be broken for me the next DD if I don't manage to reset it back to how it was.
Man, I'm both extremely flattered you played this much and horrified because the sheer amount of improvements that I've been making from this version is crazy, so I hope you didn't get fed up with the game by the time the new and improved version comes around.
First to address the bugs you shared on your screenshots. I BELIEVE these should ALL be fixed with the next patch since I completely remade the chain resolution logic in order to precisely fix the problems you outlined which I couldn't get fixed by the DD49 release, however, I'll double check with this specific gamestate to see if it's working correctly or not.
The new system also allows for a "Super fast mode" that makes turns go by in an instant, so for veteran players like you it will make future runs way more enjoyable.
I'll address other suggestions and comments in no particular order but I think you'll be happy to hear that most of the things you suggested are coming soon!
First the "Finding the broken strategy" part. In part, I did want players to create broken decks and two-card combos, and there is a small bit of work put in place to prevent it from being TOO easy to achieve, but not that much really. Future updates will feature achievements as you mentioned to push players to try different things, but it will also provide increased challenge on higher difficulties (For example after winning 4 or 5 runs, bosses will have access to tools and logic to stop infinite combos specifically). This should force you to build a more robust deck that doesn't rely on a single infinite combo to win harder runs.
Edit2: Another way to incentivize the player to try different strategies will be the upcoming Equipment system that will give you unique items that modify combat. For example, items that make it so your direct damage spells deal additional damage if your deck doesn't contain any minions. I believe that if the player obtains such an item, they'll have a reason to want to try out such a build either in their current run or on future runs. I'm working on the foundations for this mechanic right now, so if everything goes well it should be running in 2 or 3 weeks with 50 different pieces of equipment planned for the first batch.
Additionally, one feature that I'm heavily debating if I want to add or not (And will probably include an optional toggle at the start of every run) Is limited crafting abilities at the forge. So what effects you have available when crafting will be limited and randomly selected. A higher Intelligence will give you a bigger pool of effects to use at every forge. This should completely eliminate the problem, but it might also eliminate the fun of doing these broken combos, so I'll have to test it a bunch to see if it's a good idea to include it or not.
Regarding adding cards from the pack to the deck, I was actually fiddling with that idea and will probably implement it for the next dd.
Regarding the issue of "upgrades available" still showing after maxxing your upgrades, I'm not gonna lie, I never expected someone to go this far with the demo so I didn't even test this scenario, needless to say, I'm extremely flattered you played it this much.
Edit: I forgot to mention, the problem with not being able to create mods is 100% because of wine since the way I create the file and folders is very windows oriented, I'm not surprised it doesn't work, however a workaround, for now, would be either doing what you did or just cloning the anime mod folder instead of modifying the content of the original so you can have multiple mods at a time (I believe this should work). Also I'll look into the merchant bug.
Regarding your problem with resolution, the options are saved as player prefs, so they are saved in the registry, I have no clue how that would work on Wine, but instead of trying to fix that mess, I can just do a build for you that fixes the settings on startup of the game. Additionally, since you played this much I'd be more than happy to give you some dev builds with the new improvements once I polish some minor issues the current development build has. If you are interested in either of those, feel free to join this discord server and I can send you the special builds there. https://discord.gg/QxyuB8t7
(Also if you don't use Discord which would be understandable lemme know and we can talk through some other platform).
It looks like you got some good ideas. The equipment does sound interesting. If you are worried about removing fun from the game by putting limitations on players, I think that could be easily fixed, by just adding different game modes that have limited number of crafts, card abilities that must be found and so on.
Another bug I found, but forgot to mention is how crafting minion cards which add x/x for each card in graveyards get crafted with no abilities.
the options are saved as player prefs, so they are saved in the registry
Damn, I was hoping for just a file I could locate and delete, so I would be ready for DD50.
I think I played enough this DD. I will get back to you on DD50 if my wine resolution problem persists between different Card Artisan builds. Ideally I would play a linux version <wink wink>.
I forgot to mention, I also tried the other game mode with 3d first person gameplay. I got to level 9 if I remember correctly. I know many features are missing, so it's hard to judge it, but I did not find it fun. By the way, I unlocked all illustration, and the number was bugged (it was something like 113 out of 112, so just off by one error I assume).
That's understandable, friend. Thank you for all the feedback!
I'll try to include a Linux and Mac version for the next DD but can't promise anything since I don't have a way of testing either version. At the very least I'll include some optional .exe file that fixes the resolution on boot for you.
Works great on Proton. Had a very easy run until towards the end. I hadn't really added too many new cards and so I got completely screwed by that gravekeeper card. Seems solid, I don't what else to say as I'm not much of a card game player.
Comments
Trying the game again in better conditions. Overall I like the base very much but something is not clicking (yet). It would be about situating myself on the board and seeing the elements interacting with each others.
Also it's more personal, but nowadays I like more modern/minimalistic/sober designs for such dense games. I don't think it's incompatible with having a style and identity (thinking more of the AAA japanese approach than the typical occidental open world game for exemple).
I'll be happy to retry the game in the future.
Things I like :
Things I'd like to see :
Thanks for playing and leaving a comment, fren.
I agree with your comments about having a more sober design, but I'm meeting my limitations here since I'm very untalented when it comes to art and overall UI design. While I understand that something cleaner would be better, it's very hard for me to pull off, so I rather spending my time improving the mechanics and gameplay loop for now and maybe revisit the idea of giving the game a fresh coat of pain at a later point.
I will try to implement adjustable HUD sizes in the future, things might be a bit too big since my eyesight is not great and also I spend most of the time deving on a smaller screen that I should, so I might've overcompensated for this fact. Again UI design is not one of my fortes, so this might take a while to be implemented.
I'm in absolute shambles about the font because this is the "new and improved" font. Finding and choosing the right font is a Sisyphean task for me, I'm open to suggestions if you have any.
I've tried hover to zoom before but it ends up being too chaotic since you end up zooming stuff you didn't meant to half of the time.
Regarding the other visual changes you suggested and the repositioning of the graveyard and stack, I will keep them in mind and see what I can do to improve those aspects in the future.
Thanks for your feedback!
If the HUD thing becomes a real block later in development, there's always the possibility on finding a freelancer with a portfolio meeting your design choices. You provide him a screenshot or two, and ask him to tailor it (using keywords like I did to you). You're right on focusing on gameplay so far tho, card games are for brain players first and eye players come later.
If font is something you hear several times, I'd suggest going for less fat characters, and a tiny less round. And again playing with their size relative to their frame. Then try to see concordant aspects of each different fonts if you still mix many.
This for exemple : Bottom description is almost as big as the big Action font. The bottom font could maybe pass if lower size to begin with. But the Action font has characters not parallel (check the T and B). Makes it cartoony and fun. Your game is supposed to be entertaining, not the font. When you enter in game it's a big clash between all of them. The card description looks ok so far compared to the rest. If you can't lower the size of that, you would need to redo the card design to have more vertical space. Totally doable if you make your dungeon interface less big.
Don't know if you remember but to me your game reminds me a lot of Monster Train for some reason. I don't like (while appreciating and respecting) the artstyle. But it's a bit cleaner and partitioned to me. On top of my head I'd say take inspiration from Artifact, FORCED SHOWDOWN. Slay the Spire might not be a great candidate. (Edit : and simply modern AAA game with minimal interface, without going soulless. Get references from Japanese AAA)
Only my opinion, see what you can do as you go.
this seems like the kind of game that requires a lot of time to properly judge, so I'll only give some first impressions
I like the concept of being able to make your own cards, but the process of doing so is pretty clunky. it wasn't immediately clear to me where the 'fast forward' button will go: does it skip from e.g. active effect 1 to passive effect 1 or somewhere else? sometimes it seems to do nothing
something I'll suggest is having the components of cards be loot pieces that you can get throughout a run. you might find a 'Draw two cards' component or a '5 HP' or something like that. selecting things from full lists doesn't feel too good
UX in general is a bit poopy I'd say. progressing or skipping through all the various phases in-game gets tedious. sometimes I accidentally skip past the attack phase and so fail to hit anything
art's pretty good. no idea how possible this is but this would be a great game to embed one of those image-generating AIs into. so you can type a prompt to get a card image matching whatever stats and name you put on it
Hello fren, thanks for your comment!
The process of making cards will be reworked to provide a much better UX, the current format of dropdown lists was just a quick way of having it up and running but it will be worked into something much smoother and friendlier for sure. To answer your question, the green buttons on that screen are just confirm buttons, so you "lock-in" abilities when you click them, the catch is that you also need to lock in the activation timing for it to be added to the card, or skip that ability altogether if you leave it as -N/A-. Also minions only have access to 1 active ability, so that's why you skip directly to Passives after confirming the first active ability.
As I mentioned in Edengrall's dev comment, the mechanic of having each ability be a drop that you then use to craft is how it originally worked and how it still works in Adventure mode. I made it more accessible by just giving the user every ability as an option but this will likely change to having access to a random pool of abilities as you enter each forge. In fact, behind the scenes whenever you enter a forge in Castle Raid mode, the game gives you one of each crafting stone so you have access to all the abilities and timings.
UX for combat is a real piece of work, I'm doing my best to improve it with each update, next one will remove having to enter "Start of combat" and then press space again to enter "Attack" and instead just making you go straight to attack if no triggers automatically happen at the start of combat.
I would love to embed that sort of image generation to complement the "randomness" concept I'm going for, but doing so is just completely unviable and far beyond my abilities. At any rate, modding of images is extremely easy only requiring you to drop your images on a each of the 6 colors' folders, so at least there's that.
Thanks for your feedback and your time!
"only requiring you to drop your images on a each of the 6 colors' folders"
ooh that could work well.
do minions have to have an ability? I believe I tried making a Big Stats Card with no ability and couldn't do it for some reason
They don't need to have abilities, as long as you set both an ATK and a RES and give the card a name, you can craft that no problem. In fact, this is arguably one of the most OP things you can craft at the moment. Maybe you encountered a bug or maybe you were missing one of the aforementioned parameters.
I was thinking about a way to limit the card making without removing it to make the game more balanced.
Remove the upgrade gems, and the effects of intelligence (you should just replace the stats for a relic system) and give the player card cores and runes. Each character starts with a different relic and an affinity for a monster type (Wizard -> Elementals) and so on
The card core comes with the card type (spell or monster), the type, attack, defense and a few rune slots.
The runes contain the card effects, you can get a rune of [Draw 1] to make the draw 1 card effects, or the rune of [Pierce] that can be applied to a monster and make it deal damage through a blocker for example.
Replace the luck events for Rune shops that sell the cores and runes for crafting.
Make the hero level limit the maximum power level of his deck, each card core and rune will have a power cost just to slot in the deck, also let the player see the power level of enemy decks in the map, this way you can increase the power level of both player and enemies slowly to keep the game more balanced. If the card type is one which your hero has affinity for the power cost of the card is reduced by 20% (A Wizard can host stronger elementals)
Give each creature type a built in feature found in all card cores of that type, like Elementals all can trigger a rune at the end of your turn and Milling runes have lower power cost on them, while Accursed can trigger a rune by having you pay 1 HP or by going to the graveyard. With this you can give an identity to each creature type.
First of all, thanks for taking the time to leave two different comments!
Card making is a core aspect of what I think can separate the game and make it different enough from other similar titles, so I wanna tread carefully about tweaking the mechanic.
The original way it worked (and the way it still works for "Adventure mode" is basically what you are suggesting, every ability comes in a gem, including trigger times, and atk/res. The reason I enabled every ability to be usable in the roguelike mode is to give the users more of an idea of what can be done with the mechanic. In the future the entire system will be remade for it to be less clunky since selecting each thing from a small dropdown list clearly isn't very appealing or intuitive. Upcoming versions will likely include some sort of variation on the forge not only visually but also giving you access to a small pool of randomized effects you can use as to not overwhelm the player with 50 effects at once.
Separation of effects by card color/type is already a feature (which is similar to what you suggested) but it is toggled off at the moment (Altho still toggleable in Adventure mode) because there aren't enough effects for every of the 6 colors to have enough variety. More effects will be coming in the future and once those are added I might allow the segregation of effects by color again but adding effects means having to teach the AI how to use them effectively and since that's very time consuming, this will come later down the road.
Regarding more keywords being implemented, you bet they will be very soon. The only reason keywords for entering the battlefield of milling aren't there is because I literally made the entire mechanic from the ground up 8 hours before posting the demo. I wanted to make an early post but realized not having keywords at all was going to be a point of severe scrutiny, so I did what I could. I'm surprised it turned out as well as it did considering it didn't exist at all the morning the Demoday started. Also fyi pierce already exists as a mechanic exactly as you described it.
Your idea of the relics is interesting but I think it might be a bit too far from the concept I have in mind and reworking things to fit such system would be too costly timewise.
A different relic/equipment system is being worked on however. These pieces of equipment will offer benefits to facilitate or encourage certain playstyles such as making your burn spells deal extra damage if you control no minions, or giving you extra mana at the start of the combat at the cost of losing access to your graveyard.
Regarding balance, I understand your skepticism. But the philosophy that I had in mind when first designing the current system is that there is fun to be had making overpowered, over the top cards that can only be kept in check by other cards that are also powerful. I understand however that this is very dangerous since it might lead to players reaching higher floors unprepared and losing in a frustrating fashion against a strong enemy. Balance is very much a work in progress so I'll be tweaking it as I continue to dev.
I'm not sure I agree with the luck events being a bad thing to have since I feel they give a nice break to the time consuming and more brain taxing combat. I've heard feedback asking for even less combat and more alternatives to moving up the castle, for example. Either way, I'll keep your opinion in mind.
Lastly, the wizard ability gets better once you upgrade it in the menu since you can skip combat while also getting loot from the floor.
That was a long post, but thanks again for your comments and your time!
Looks really nice, specially the main menu UI, also I like how it is being made with mods in mind, modding is love, modding is life, ok now for feedback
The game is MGT without lands which makes it a better game already, I just think it is weird to have mechs in the wizard deck
-Use more Keywords, example: Mech Bruiser "When this minion enters the battlefield, deal 2 damage to any target -> Mech Bruiser: "Summon: deal 2 (icon for damage type) to any target", there are many more things that can become keywords
-On the first zone the game is very fun, but starts getting very unbalanced later on, you can get killed by burn damage very easily if the enemy has a burn deck, and you can get some very east wins if the enemy only has high cost cards and is unnable to do anything in the first 2 turns
-The idea of creating cards is very nice, but is extremely easy to exploit and I don't think it is possible to make the game balanced if this stays part of the core gameplay
-I really dislike the luck events, I think the game would be better if luck events and the luck stat were both removed
-The wizard ability is useless, In roguelite games like these you should never skip a combat, a better skill would be something like Clairvoyance: allows you to see the enemy deck before battle
Overall very good and has a lot of potential
I tried to get it working on a weak-spec computer, which did not work. But it runs really well on a decent-spec computer.
The main menu UI is beautiful, and I like the simultaneous-transition fading. In general, the graphics are very nice and pretty.
The game seems incredibly polished. Is this a commercial project? It really feels like it.
I do not really like experience systems too much, but many players like them, so that is just a personal preference.
Is there any tutorial? I have just selected the game mode that is not a work in progress according to the description, and I have a bunch of cards in front of me (I picked the first class, the warrior). Will you add a tutorial, maybe with hits? I do not see any "question mark button" that I can click on, or similar, which might have been nice. I think I messed up and accidentally pressed a key on the keyboard to advance to "Main2", but I am also using two computers at the moment.
I like the explanation when you hover over a card. In Magic: The Gathering, the printed cards, the explanations have to be included in the whole card, but here you can instead just read the explanation to the left. A tutorial with the explanation of the basics would still have been nice. Then again, the battle rules are fairly straight-forward, especially if you already know M:TG. So a tutorial might not be necessary.
Nit: Description of "High-quality Crafting Gem": "requiered" -> "required". Do you plan to run an automated spell checker on your texts? I know that Linux has programs like "aspell": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Aspell
In the first battle I had, I believe I had something like 4 "action"/"mana" points. In the second battle, I started with 1, and got to 2 somehow. I do not understand how or why. Oh, now I am at 3. Does it increase every turn? So, instead of playing lands like in M:TG, it just goes up automatically? Seems like a decent approach. Oh, it is called "Mana". For the first few battles, could you use the pop-up for the mana orb to show a text like "Mana: Mana is used to summon minions or cast spells. Mana is replenished at the start of each turn. Each turn, the maximum amount of mana increases." ?
Nit: Could it also make sense to have the mana symbol in the mana orb be the same as the mana costs on the cards? Just to make it more consistent and let the player visually identify it as the same resource? Though this might be superfluous or very minor.
Will this support multiplayer? I have no idea about the business model, market, competing games in this genre, or the depth or longevity and balance of the gameplay, for this game. I am not really into these types of games, and I do not think I would play M:TG-likes in multiplayer, though I do not mind playing a bit of M:TG-likes. Card games like this can be very popular in multiplayer, I think. A major streamer streamed quite a bit of a computer game version of a major card game a few weeks ago (he might still be doing it), and there seemed to be lots of players involved.
The music is good, I think, but can get a bit repetitive over time. Will you add more tracks?
When the level up screen comes, it tells me to press 'C'. Most of the game can be played with a mouse, I would guess. Will you support touch input? Controllers? Mobile platforms? I do not know how much screen real estate there is on mobile or tablets, so may or may not be a good idea, though I imagine you have already looked into it or have plans to look into it.
Nit: When a minion is exhausted, its portrait becomes grayscale. This is probably good enough as-is, but I feel like a slightly more visually distinctive indication might be good as well. I feel a bit like I have to look more closely than a quick glance to see if a minion is exhausted (in M:TG, cards (in the physical tabletop game, at least) are turned 90 degrees to signify exhaustion). Though, it may just be me that has not gotten used to the game yet.
The first few combats were more or less trivial and a bit boring, but good for learning the game.
The first boss was more or less straight-forward and easy.
Crafting seems bugged. Unless I am misunderstanding something. I can only select for "Active Effect 1". If I click the green buttons with two arrows, I can instead only select for "Passive Effect 1". I tried to increase the number of gems I am spending, but that did not help. I do not understand what I am doing wrong, or if it is bugged. Or is it just not implemented yet? It seems nice and advanced, I must admit. Can I craft non-minion spells? Oh, it is just me that did not understand the UI. I had to select one of the items before pressing the green button. I do not think it is major, but I think it might be useful to improve this UI a bit. Maybe "indent"/"move slight to the right" 'Active Effect 1 Timing' and 'Active Effect 2', such that they visually look to be hierarchically under 'Active Effect 1'? And do the same with the passive sub-items with 'Passive Effect 1' at the top of the "hierarchy"? I am not certain. I apparently cannot "rewind" when selecting effects, just reset it all, however, I believe implementing rewinding would be algorithmically complex. I have implemented something similar in a non-game application once successfully, and while it can be done, a previous programmer failed at doing it, and I cleaned up and fixed it and implemented a slightly involved algorithm for it in his place. Is probably alright as is.
Crafting, continued: Oh, I have to click the white arrows at the portrait to change whether it is a minion or a spell. Is there any way to change the type to something different than "Beast"? Can I change the portrait?
I spent 10 high-quality crafting gems to craft a minion that had 10/10, and which dealt piercing damage (damage beyond the blocker's health goes to the opposing player). The crafting said the card would end up with a mana cost of 3-4 mana, and I lucked out and got a mana cost of 3 mana. Should there be a maximum on how many high-quality crafting gems you can use? Or is the potential OP-ness and brokenness part of the game?
Bug (I think): In the broken card I crafted, it kept its 10/10, but it does not include its "piercing" ability. I could be wrong, but I think a "raw" 10/10 card without that passive ability cost less than the estimated 3-4 mana, maybe 2-3 mana.
I wonder if in-game healing-focused decks is OP for any long dungeon-run, for if you have a lot of healing, healing potions do not seem necessary.
The AI after the first boss is afraid to attack me after I got my 10/10 minion out on the field. Even without its special ability. Of course, I am also not attacking with it currently.
It seems like it would be nice with a lot over actions that happened, like some online board games have. For instance Board Game Arena has a log in the sidebar with player actions and events: https://en.boardgamearena.com/ . But, that is also a multiplayer game.
I think I encountered a significant UI issue (and maybe a battle-gets-stuck bug). I might have run into a bug, where the opponent should have been making a move, but did not. And the "end turn" button was red, and pressing it did nothing, and none of my cards were highlighted. That might mean that the game is stuck there. But, further than that, I went into the "Settings" during the combat, and selected "return to menu", and I ended up at the menu. And I then thought that I could continue the game. But, clicking "Load adventure" shows nothing. I cannot see anywhere to "Continue" my run. And clicking "Castle Raid" again only seems like it wants to start a new run. Did my run get deleted?? Or not saved? I have attached a screenshot of the possibly "stuck-during-battle" state. I tried to search for logs, see below.
Overall, the game seems like a really well-polished and high-quality commercial game. Though, I try to stay clear of these sort of genres of games, since they seem slightly addiction-inducing to me, which I personally dislike. Though there are much worse kinds of games out there. I have no idea about the game's gameplay balance, since I did not get far enough into it. The first really long-lasting battle ended in the above possibly-stuck state. Forging seems really interesting.
Where do I find the logs for the game if I want to send you any logs the game might have generated? I tried looking in AppData/LocalLow, since it is a Unity game, but did not find your game there.
First of all, thank you so much for taking the time to play and write an in-depth comment!
Regarding the lower spec computer, yeah, there might be some limitations and/or performance issues on weaker machines, I didn't get to test on a weak computer. I might need to optimize a lot in the future to solve that.
Thanks for the comments about the UI, it still needs work but it is getting there.
I'm a solodev, so while I do plan on releasing it commercially if I get the game to a passable enough state, I don't know if it could be considered a "commercial project" just yet.
Tutorials will be coming at some point, and I know it is very necessary, I just haven't gotten around to giving newer players a nice explanation of all the complicated mechanics.
I'm glad you liked the hover to explain keywords mechanic because I kinda just made that from scratch on the same day the demo released so the fact it works as well as it does it's a miracle.
I didn't know about this spell checker, thank you very much for the link I'll look into it!
You start at 1 mana and get 1 mana per turn, so it's simplified from the MTG land system.
Changing the UI for the mana is on the plans, yeah. I'll make it into something more intuitive.
I gave up on implementing multiplayer because this was a learning project and the resulting code is a bit too whack. Sorry :c.
The music will almost completely be replaced and improved on in future iterations.
You don't have to press C you can also click the inventory button on top, so you can play with only the mouse.
I've received this sort of feedback before, so yeah, I'm already working on adding something more obvious to show your card is exhausted.
First couple of combats will be slightly rebalanced to make it less tedious, that's also already in the plans.
The crafting will be replaced with a way more user friendly, the bug with piercing might be a thing or maybe you just didn't click the confirm arrow for that ability, I'll test that out. Also regarding skipping the second active, that's because Minions can only have 1 active, if you create spells you can use both actives. Also it looks a bit overpowered, but the game gets harder as you progress so the idea is that you kinda need the OP cards. And yeah, rewinding would be hard to implement, and since I'm eventually going to replace the way you craft entirely, I just didn't spend time doing that.
You can't change the type of card or image you are creating, but I'll keep your comment in mind!
Healing potions are great for other classes or for saving your ass against hard enemies since you can use them in battle.
The event history might be hard to implement, but I have thought about adding it, yeah.
The last part is in fact a bug, I thought shit had been resolved already but looks like it hasn't, so I'll keep working on it.
Castle raid does have a "save and then pick back up" feature, if you quick or die the run is over. Eventually I'll allow the player to continue the game but there's no saving at the moment. The load button is reserved for the other mode.
I get a "File CRC error" when trying to extract the RAR on Linux. Does anyone else get this error?
I got it working with:
Hey, just a heads up I tried playing your game with Wine. It launched, but menu buttons did not work, sorry.
I got t to work on Wine, I just needed to make sure I would not alt+Tab.
Here's my recording:
https://mega.nz/file/bJ9khYwC#MKkXcV7dF0su3RVsHPa_p4fmmcMUBG18bzqRppBGNiU
It's a good game, and I intend to play it more in future.
By the way, I linked the ui link you wanted in your stream chat, but I think you were gone already. Let me know if you got it.
Thanks for trying again and getting it to work!
I'll be watching your video now!
Edit:
I just watched the video, thanks for being so thorough with reading stuff while playing.
You encountered a couple of bugs that I think might have been related to running on wine, particularly the time you targeted your opponent but the minion took the damage instead, that's not a mechanic, the cursor was just selecting something different and that might be because of Wine.
I also spotted some other issues I have to take care of so it was helpful to watch.
I think the game got particularly long for you because you played with the Full Control option, if you ever play it again I'd recommend staying in 2 or 3 since the game will always stop if you have any action you can take, and that speeds up the overall experience quite a bit.
As you demonstrated, a more organic tutorial is required and I'm working on it, so yeah your grievances are justified. Unfortunately there's no saving in that game mode so your run is over once you quit or die.
The only mechanic I wish you had noticed is the Variant mechanic. When you get a new card with the same artwork as a previously owned card, you can choose all of your copies with that art to have either the previous effect, or the new effect you just got.
At any rate, thanks again for playing and for the feedback!
I'm happy the recording was helpful, and thanks for clarifying some things. Shame about no save, but the next time I play, I should be able to get there much quicker.
Interesting. I will keep that in mind the next time I play.Hey Fullen! I played a lot of your game in my free time.
I successfully finished 14 runs, and I am pretty sure 10 of those were in a row.
I encountered some bugs: chains that involve things happening when cards get discarded and player gains health seem to get stuck i.e. everything gets animated, but the chain doesn't resolve, and the game makes a clicking sound at a constant loop (I think it's the health gaining sound). I got some screenshots when that happens:
Here's another bug situation:
Enemy cast a spell to gain life, and during my priority I cast my spell which gives me life, and sends minion on top of the deck. After the minion was removed, the game got stuck just like in the bug above. here's screenshot:
Let's talk a bit about balance, because there is none and that's not necessary a bad thing, but it might give you some ideas.
I tried multiple builds and strategies, and I am sure I found the most broken ones.
Example number 1:
Cards like that make the enemy not play any more, because every time they get a new card, they must get rid of it before they have the opportunity to use it. It's a pretty safe way to play.
Example 2:
It's nice to win when the enemy cannot do anything, but what is more even broken is winning before they even get to play! At some point after many successful runs the enemies got pretty strong. Their cards get better, their decks grow in size, and they get much more health. Not a problem. Let me introduce you cards, ad strategy that wins every time before my enemy plays a single card:
I think the last boss had 35 cards in his deck. I calculated I could remove over 80 before his first turn, so it really doesn't matter how big and strong he is, there are even more strategies to make it even more abusive, but there was no need. I basically just remove his cards whenever I play cards, and I can just play 0 cost cards, and stack the same effects on multiple cards.
The only way I though of how it could be countered is if in my enemies starting hand was a card costing 0-1 mana which could take control of my minion. I could counter that by having those kind of cards myself, but that edge case never happened, so I did not need to play it that safe.
Fixing it?
I don't think you should be completely rebalancing the game around bullshit strategies, because coming up with them is what makes it interesting. At this point I feel like I won the whole game, because I found that one strategy that always wins, but I got ideas how you could prolong the fun:
You should reward players for trying out different things instead of having them play over and over what works. You could do that with some sort of achievement system that would force players to come up with different strategies. To make that work, you would need to have the player be able to adjust the difficulty instead of keep increasing it until only the broken builds work. Have an achievement for getting 30 max mana, or 50 health, winning in x number off turns, getting a minion with x resistance and so on.
With that said, if you do want to balance the game, then I got some ideas.
Misc Feedback
At some point it became a chore to open card packs, especially when you must search for specific new cards whenever you want to add them to your deck. I think it would be nice to have an option of instantly choosing which cards you want to add to your deck from the "card opening pack" screen.
Other Bugs
At some point I tried adding mods. Making a new one did not work for me (probably to do with wine and linux), but adding images to the existing anime mod seemed to work. The only problem I noticed was how some pictures appeared zoomed in in shop:
Another minor bug is how the text saying "upgrades available" shows up even when everything is maxed out (I had over 1k of each resource, but no screenshots).
Help
At some point I changed my resolution, and went from fullscreen to windowed mode, and that completely broke the game for me (Wine on Linux). I tried searching for where the save with start up resolution and window mode is located to manually edit it, but had no luck. The only saves I found were in AppData/LocalLow/Fullen Games/Card Artisan
Is there somewhere else where you keep your saves? Deleting that folder did not seem to make any difference, which means the game is probably going to be broken for me the next DD if I don't manage to reset it back to how it was.
Man, I'm both extremely flattered you played this much and horrified because the sheer amount of improvements that I've been making from this version is crazy, so I hope you didn't get fed up with the game by the time the new and improved version comes around.
First to address the bugs you shared on your screenshots. I BELIEVE these should ALL be fixed with the next patch since I completely remade the chain resolution logic in order to precisely fix the problems you outlined which I couldn't get fixed by the DD49 release, however, I'll double check with this specific gamestate to see if it's working correctly or not.
The new system also allows for a "Super fast mode" that makes turns go by in an instant, so for veteran players like you it will make future runs way more enjoyable.
I'll address other suggestions and comments in no particular order but I think you'll be happy to hear that most of the things you suggested are coming soon!
First the "Finding the broken strategy" part. In part, I did want players to create broken decks and two-card combos, and there is a small bit of work put in place to prevent it from being TOO easy to achieve, but not that much really. Future updates will feature achievements as you mentioned to push players to try different things, but it will also provide increased challenge on higher difficulties (For example after winning 4 or 5 runs, bosses will have access to tools and logic to stop infinite combos specifically). This should force you to build a more robust deck that doesn't rely on a single infinite combo to win harder runs.
Edit2: Another way to incentivize the player to try different strategies will be the upcoming Equipment system that will give you unique items that modify combat. For example, items that make it so your direct damage spells deal additional damage if your deck doesn't contain any minions. I believe that if the player obtains such an item, they'll have a reason to want to try out such a build either in their current run or on future runs. I'm working on the foundations for this mechanic right now, so if everything goes well it should be running in 2 or 3 weeks with 50 different pieces of equipment planned for the first batch.
Additionally, one feature that I'm heavily debating if I want to add or not (And will probably include an optional toggle at the start of every run) Is limited crafting abilities at the forge. So what effects you have available when crafting will be limited and randomly selected. A higher Intelligence will give you a bigger pool of effects to use at every forge. This should completely eliminate the problem, but it might also eliminate the fun of doing these broken combos, so I'll have to test it a bunch to see if it's a good idea to include it or not.
Regarding adding cards from the pack to the deck, I was actually fiddling with that idea and will probably implement it for the next dd.
Regarding the issue of "upgrades available" still showing after maxxing your upgrades, I'm not gonna lie, I never expected someone to go this far with the demo so I didn't even test this scenario, needless to say, I'm extremely flattered you played it this much.
Edit: I forgot to mention, the problem with not being able to create mods is 100% because of wine since the way I create the file and folders is very windows oriented, I'm not surprised it doesn't work, however a workaround, for now, would be either doing what you did or just cloning the anime mod folder instead of modifying the content of the original so you can have multiple mods at a time (I believe this should work). Also I'll look into the merchant bug.
Regarding your problem with resolution, the options are saved as player prefs, so they are saved in the registry, I have no clue how that would work on Wine, but instead of trying to fix that mess, I can just do a build for you that fixes the settings on startup of the game. Additionally, since you played this much I'd be more than happy to give you some dev builds with the new improvements once I polish some minor issues the current development build has. If you are interested in either of those, feel free to join this discord server and I can send you the special builds there. https://discord.gg/QxyuB8t7
(Also if you don't use Discord which would be understandable lemme know and we can talk through some other platform).
It looks like you got some good ideas. The equipment does sound interesting. If you are worried about removing fun from the game by putting limitations on players, I think that could be easily fixed, by just adding different game modes that have limited number of crafts, card abilities that must be found and so on.
Another bug I found, but forgot to mention is how crafting minion cards which add x/x for each card in graveyards get crafted with no abilities.
Damn, I was hoping for just a file I could locate and delete, so I would be ready for DD50.
I think I played enough this DD. I will get back to you on DD50 if my wine resolution problem persists between different Card Artisan builds. Ideally I would play a linux version <wink wink>.
I forgot to mention, I also tried the other game mode with 3d first person gameplay. I got to level 9 if I remember correctly. I know many features are missing, so it's hard to judge it, but I did not find it fun. By the way, I unlocked all illustration, and the number was bugged (it was something like 113 out of 112, so just off by one error I assume).
That's understandable, friend. Thank you for all the feedback!
I'll try to include a Linux and Mac version for the next DD but can't promise anything since I don't have a way of testing either version. At the very least I'll include some optional .exe file that fixes the resolution on boot for you.
Works great on Proton. Had a very easy run until towards the end. I hadn't really added too many new cards and so I got completely screwed by that gravekeeper card. Seems solid, I don't what else to say as I'm not much of a card game player.
Thanks for playing man!
I don't know what card you meant because every card is generated randomly every time you play, but yeah, some cards get a bit out of hand.