Having played this a little bit more to finish it...
All the modes are too short. It feels like you're being told "no fun allowed" whenever you're just getting your build going. And I can barely feel the difference in their difficulty.
Red is junk.
Black is grotesquely overpowered. Inactive turns are extremely common and not the imposed limitation the effects seem to assume. The dog being busted as a final unlock makes sense, but the samurai, not so much.
Wildcards are disproportionately good, but they add so much player agency to the game that I would like to see even more of them.
Yellow, besides the extra interest one, is awful, but that's mostly because the runs are too short. I think it might be actually impossible to get any value out of the briefcase unless you pick it exactly on the final round of the run, considering the lost interest, and even then, it's barely a payoff. Color buffs are often not worth it even if you're mono-color (and there's no reason not to be.) The high rarity items are all overpriced junk, so why would I want more of that? The only time I mathematically got any use of any was in using the cheaper rerolls to get the fully upgraded build badge.
Weapons are very rare to come by now, yet upgrading them is such a big advantage. Are you going to have more weapons besides the starting ones?
the game is short since most of what is in the current version of the game will eventually become the demo of the full, longer game and i’ve heard bad things about people’s responses to “open development” games taking away content to make a demo on release. i hope to have a ending like Balatro with a definite end and then an increasingly hard infinite postgame once the game is complete
Red is junk.
did you find that lowering LIMIT wasn’t useful?
I think it might be actually impossible to get any value out of the briefcase unless you pick it exactly on the final round of the run
i use it as a way to pivot out of a gold build if i’m unable to get gold artifacts for long-term power. it might actually be a bit underpowered, though, since the last time i used it reliably there were a lot less items in the shop pool, so i’ve buffed it slightly
Are you going to have more weapons besides the starting ones?
no, probably not. but i’ll add more starting weapons when i add more characters
A lot of the red abilities seemed useful in theory, but I found that playing that was the best way to consistently lose the game. Undertuned, maybe.
The thing with the briefcase is that you have to weight the payoff against losing access to the excellent extra interest item forever, and it does not compare favorably. If the game gets longer, that prospect will be even worse. However, I did not realize that a full-yellow run was even viable in this 8-game format, since it's so hard to get the opportunity translate money accumulation to any real advantage when the pieces you want to snowball into are so rare and slots are so expensive. It does make sense to have the briefcase as a pivot, since it would be the lesser of two evils.
thanks for playing and much appreciated for the video! i'm still having trouble simplifying and communicating the mechanics to new players so it was really eye-opening and useful to see your experience. i had purposely trimmed down the tutorial to avoid overloading players, but i think i'll just have to expand the tutorialization to introduce players to the deeper mechanics of the game in a simpler way
>Graphics are really good, animations are really good, game feel is great
>Music is really good, very calming
I'll list the two problems that came up:
1. Sometimes there is a lot of tapping end turn for the player and enemy, feels very luck based at times with getting a combo
2. I have no idea what the abilities actually do, it's hard to read. I tapped randomly and I won, and some stuff was clear that getting combos is good. Not really sure on the stuff that has a bit more depth.
these two might be the same problem, since i hadn't explained enough about the skills in the 0.8 version so that new players could understand what they can do to avoid that situation/get an advantage from being in that situation -- there are skills in the game that make it easier to pick up cards when stuck in a situation like that, and other skills that power you up when you take no actions for a turn
i found it made the game too complicated when this was an ability everyone had. now brown skills apply this stun effect instead, there's even a brown artifact that lets you stack multiple stuns
Whenever I think I finally understand how damage works in this game I am proven wrong
it increases the likelihood that you'll deal the upper integer in damage the closer you get to it, so 3.1 will usually deal 3 DMG and 3.9 will usually deal 4 DMG. i now realize i mentioned this nowhere in the game, so it's something i should rectify
this game is awesome! you've got something REALLY solid here. I got addicted almost immediately. love the art, the visuals, animations, design, sounds, music, everything is super polished and well executed.
I think, before adding anything new, you should make the tutorial a lot more robust, and really break down all the basics as much as possible, because I played for a while just clicking and not understanding anything. I might just be dumb, but I feel like i was only grasping about 15% of what was going on for the first hour. but I did get hooked and play for like 2 hours so maybe you're already on to something.
thanks for playing, i'm really glad you liked it! i think you're right about the tutorial and teaching new players the basics of the game, i'll be working on that before anything else
thanks for playing again and the kind words! i'm not sure if i'll put it on Steam, i don't forsee the game getting enough interest to guarantee 10 positive reviews in the first day (or week, or whatever the criteria was for a successful release)... so far i'm expecting that i'll end up releasing on itch.io only
incidentally, i would have played and reviewed Coin Pusher but my PC simply cannot run it. i did appreciate the Solitaire Battle reference
That's pretty cool, feels good to play. I played it way longer than I planned until the mimic in 2-4 got me. The one thing that's not super clear to me are all the skills and text and icons that are going on in the shop, it's just a lot to take in in the beginning.
thanks for playing and the kind words! yeah, the shop seems to be a bit much for new players. i think i'll be using more detailed tutorials to make new players understand the game in simpler way from now on instead of expecting them to read the detailed descriptions that appear in the shop after just starting
As someone who plays Zachtronics Solitaire almost every day, this game feels closer to Dicey Dungeons than a traditional solitaire game, and that's maybe for its own good.
One thing I have to say is that the shop feels very daunting for a new player, there's a lot to read and it's mostly numbers that you don't intuitively know the results of yet.
thanks for playing and the kind words! the response i've gotten from new players is pretty consistently one of confusion, so i think going forwards i'll try and tutorialize it so that players can understand the basic concepts and uses of skills instead of feeling like they have to read all of a sudden when they enter the shop
You fixed the stuttering! The game feels almost finished at this point to me, well done. Can always use more content and polish of course, like more levels/backgrounds and music. I like the enemy mouse pointer, much clearer to see what he's doing than when I played before. I'd like to see some things happen in the background occasionally, like I don't know a horse galloping getting chased by bandits or something etc - for some added soul.
thanks for playing again and the kind words! i'm really glad to hear you think it feels somewhat finished
i plan to add more backgrounds for different zones but will probably keep them as simple as what's in the game now
as for the stuttering, it was a bug on a specific version of SDL that only occurred when too many USB slots were in use, bizarrely. i was lucky to have caught it...
Comments
Having played this a little bit more to finish it...
All the modes are too short. It feels like you're being told "no fun allowed" whenever you're just getting your build going. And I can barely feel the difference in their difficulty.
Red is junk.
Black is grotesquely overpowered. Inactive turns are extremely common and not the imposed limitation the effects seem to assume. The dog being busted as a final unlock makes sense, but the samurai, not so much.
Wildcards are disproportionately good, but they add so much player agency to the game that I would like to see even more of them.
Yellow, besides the extra interest one, is awful, but that's mostly because the runs are too short. I think it might be actually impossible to get any value out of the briefcase unless you pick it exactly on the final round of the run, considering the lost interest, and even then, it's barely a payoff. Color buffs are often not worth it even if you're mono-color (and there's no reason not to be.) The high rarity items are all overpriced junk, so why would I want more of that? The only time I mathematically got any use of any was in using the cheaper rerolls to get the fully upgraded build badge.
Weapons are very rare to come by now, yet upgrading them is such a big advantage. Are you going to have more weapons besides the starting ones?
thanks for the continued feedback!
the game is short since most of what is in the current version of the game will eventually become the demo of the full, longer game and i’ve heard bad things about people’s responses to “open development” games taking away content to make a demo on release. i hope to have a ending like Balatro with a definite end and then an increasingly hard infinite postgame once the game is complete
did you find that lowering LIMIT wasn’t useful?
i use it as a way to pivot out of a gold build if i’m unable to get gold artifacts for long-term power. it might actually be a bit underpowered, though, since the last time i used it reliably there were a lot less items in the shop pool, so i’ve buffed it slightly
no, probably not. but i’ll add more starting weapons when i add more characters
A lot of the red abilities seemed useful in theory, but I found that playing that was the best way to consistently lose the game. Undertuned, maybe.
The thing with the briefcase is that you have to weight the payoff against losing access to the excellent extra interest item forever, and it does not compare favorably. If the game gets longer, that prospect will be even worse. However, I did not realize that a full-yellow run was even viable in this 8-game format, since it's so hard to get the opportunity translate money accumulation to any real advantage when the pieces you want to snowball into are so rare and slots are so expensive. It does make sense to have the briefcase as a pivot, since it would be the lesser of two evils.
it honestly seems pretty complete to me.
the tutorials are clear, and the tooltips are helpful
i'm very grateful to hear it! thank you for playing!
Video Feedback: Pretty similar to the feedback I gave on DD51, i'm overwhelmed and i don't exactly know what's going on.
thanks for playing and much appreciated for the video! i'm still having trouble simplifying and communicating the mechanics to new players so it was really eye-opening and useful to see your experience. i had purposely trimmed down the tutorial to avoid overloading players, but i think i'll just have to expand the tutorialization to introduce players to the deeper mechanics of the game in a simpler way
>Graphics are really good, animations are really good, game feel is great
>Music is really good, very calming
I'll list the two problems that came up:
1. Sometimes there is a lot of tapping end turn for the player and enemy, feels very luck based at times with getting a combo
2. I have no idea what the abilities actually do, it's hard to read. I tapped randomly and I won, and some stuff was clear that getting combos is good. Not really sure on the stuff that has a bit more depth.
thanks for playing and the kind words!
these two might be the same problem, since i hadn't explained enough about the skills in the 0.8 version so that new players could understand what they can do to avoid that situation/get an advantage from being in that situation -- there are skills in the game that make it easier to pick up cards when stuck in a situation like that, and other skills that power you up when you take no actions for a turn
I like the badge system better than the old unlock method.
Whenever I think I finally understand how damage works in this game I am proven wrong.
I miss the top row bonus turns. They added a nice wombo-combo nature to the game even if they made digging a bit OP
>balatro-like
kek i was thinking of this game seeing Balatro blow up
This is a very fun game - it's nice to see it has seen a bit of the two cakes effect.
thanks for playing again and the kind words!
i found it made the game too complicated when this was an ability everyone had. now brown skills apply this stun effect instead, there's even a brown artifact that lets you stack multiple stuns
it increases the likelihood that you'll deal the upper integer in damage the closer you get to it, so 3.1 will usually deal 3 DMG and 3.9 will usually deal 4 DMG. i now realize i mentioned this nowhere in the game, so it's something i should rectify
"no, we have balatro at home"
this game is awesome! you've got something REALLY solid here. I got addicted almost immediately. love the art, the visuals, animations, design, sounds, music, everything is super polished and well executed.
I think, before adding anything new, you should make the tutorial a lot more robust, and really break down all the basics as much as possible, because I played for a while just clicking and not understanding anything. I might just be dumb, but I feel like i was only grasping about 15% of what was going on for the first hour. but I did get hooked and play for like 2 hours so maybe you're already on to something.
The wild card powerups are the absolute sauce tho
thanks for playing, i'm really glad you liked it! i think you're right about the tutorial and teaching new players the basics of the game, i'll be working on that before anything else
Still super fun, feels more and more polished. I got killed by a slime twice on the first level somehow, but after that had some good runs.
I read the tutorials this time, and everything made more sense. But maybe that was just from my past gameplay experience.
It's super solid. Put it on steam!
thanks for playing again and the kind words! i'm not sure if i'll put it on Steam, i don't forsee the game getting enough interest to guarantee 10 positive reviews in the first day (or week, or whatever the criteria was for a successful release)... so far i'm expecting that i'll end up releasing on itch.io only
incidentally, i would have played and reviewed Coin Pusher but my PC simply cannot run it. i did appreciate the Solitaire Battle reference
That's pretty cool, feels good to play. I played it way longer than I planned until the mimic in 2-4 got me. The one thing that's not super clear to me are all the skills and text and icons that are going on in the shop, it's just a lot to take in in the beginning.
thanks for playing and the kind words! yeah, the shop seems to be a bit much for new players. i think i'll be using more detailed tutorials to make new players understand the game in simpler way from now on instead of expecting them to read the detailed descriptions that appear in the shop after just starting
As someone who plays Zachtronics Solitaire almost every day, this game feels closer to Dicey Dungeons than a traditional solitaire game, and that's maybe for its own good.
One thing I have to say is that the shop feels very daunting for a new player, there's a lot to read and it's mostly numbers that you don't intuitively know the results of yet.
I like the music and artstyle a lot though.
thanks for playing and the kind words! the response i've gotten from new players is pretty consistently one of confusion, so i think going forwards i'll try and tutorialize it so that players can understand the basic concepts and uses of skills instead of feeling like they have to read all of a sudden when they enter the shop
You fixed the stuttering! The game feels almost finished at this point to me, well done. Can always use more content and polish of course, like more levels/backgrounds and music. I like the enemy mouse pointer, much clearer to see what he's doing than when I played before. I'd like to see some things happen in the background occasionally, like I don't know a horse galloping getting chased by bandits or something etc - for some added soul.
thanks for playing again and the kind words! i'm really glad to hear you think it feels somewhat finished
i plan to add more backgrounds for different zones but will probably keep them as simple as what's in the game now
as for the stuttering, it was a bug on a specific version of SDL that only occurred when too many USB slots were in use, bizarrely. i was lucky to have caught it...
That does sound really weird. Not easy to find, grats on finding and fixing it.
hey, here are the changes for this version: