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A jam submission

Northanda ChroniclesView game page

Command a trio of heroes, battling against Chaos, each with unique abilities but sharing a single, evolving deck.
Submitted by Hyperfocus Interactive (@HyperfocusI) — 5 days, 8 hours before the deadline
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Northanda Chronicles's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Controls / UI#34.6674.667
Art / Graphics#84.6674.667
Overall Fun#134.3334.333
Sound/Music#134.3334.333

Ranked from 6 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

If you have competed before, how has your game changed?
This is our first Feedback Quest! Glad to be here 😄

Genre #1

Strategy

Turn-based | Card Games | RTS | 4X

Rating #2

Family Friendly

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Comments

Submitted

I played this game on my stream (VOD) and you were there too!

Overall, I really enjoyed playing this game! It definitely gave me Slay the Spire vibes. I'm not a big StS player, and I've only sometimes made it to the first boss, and more often than not, die before then.

In this game, I made it to the boss on the first run (yay!) and had quite a bit of fun doing so. I liked the variety of the cards, and the explanations on the tooltips were generally sufficient that I understood what was happening with the monsters, and what each card would do.

Fun game, and I might continue to play it after FB7! :)

Submitted (2 edits) (+1)

Here is my more serious review:

For context I'm a quite good slay the spire player, the only reason I didn't grind until ascension 20 is because I got bored after a while.

🧚‍♀️What I liked about this game:
-Everything

🧚‍♀️What this game would benefit from:
-More stages and more characters, but I'm pretty sure you are already working on them
-Didn't see any fairy in the game, but I may have missed them
-The possibility to visualise which artefact/card you are offered without being forced to choose directly (like if I'm proposed the toxic egg, it would be nice to know if I have any nice skill in my card choice)
-A way to see what the upgrade of a card looks like (for example, seeing the upgrade of a card like poison arrow make it suddenly quite more interesting to pick).
-A reminder at the camp that you have a mystery essence in your deck and you may want to rest rather than upgrade.

🧚‍♀️Bugs:
-Stable orbit+ either doesn't work properly or doesn't explain well its effects, I only received radiance from it when I actually redirected an attack.

🧚‍♀️Random thought (neither positive nor negative):
-I wish you good luck to balance all of this. I got the tangle yarn on my second run, and let me tell you it is even more ridiculous than the pyramid cube of slay the spire. A lot of gems/relics scream that they want to break the game.
-The huntress' relic seems by far the best, to not say the only sensible choice. You are at the mercy of card draw in this game, even more than in slay the spire due to having 3 different colours of mana/cards. Having a good starting turn is essential. The dwarf's starting relic may be fun for a greedy run. The tactician relic is laughingly bad. No battle is ever going to last 7 turns unless it is a boss battle, and an upgrade at that point of the fight isn't going to change much. I don't know what to think of the priestess' relic, multi-enemies encounters aren't that common.
-The game is already easy for me despite having upgraded no heroes. I hope there will be enough challenge justifying those upgrades.

Developer

Super helpful, and in-depth feedback. Really appreciate your perspective on it, you clearly know the genre well - especially given you crushed your first run!

If only you'd rested at the campsite and transformed Mystery Essence, it becomes a fairy wisp summon ;)

You're totally right, balance is going to be a huge undertaking. We're gonna be relying heavily on data, and there's thankfully a ton of dials to turn to balance stuff, but it's likely always gonna have the potential to get wacky given the number of possible interactions and hero/card/gem combinations.

Regarding difficulty, it's a tough one to dial in for the demo, given it's only the first act, and balance is most definitely a work in progress. We hope to implement something akin to the Ascension system to provide difficulty progression in the end, albeit with a twist to serve the party based gameplay. For the time being, empowering only provides a modest increase to power, and mostly serves to unlock new cards and therefore playstyles for heroes.

Thanks again, a lot of great insights, glad you had fun!

Submitted(+1)

Too easy. And this first run video will prove it.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XWVi4LVTr2Ka9w88jvlYCpOJEIseEXL9/view?usp=shari...

(Actual feedback fairyloading)

Jam Host(+1)

Hello! Welcome to Feedback Quest 7! My name's Hythrain and I'm one of the hosts and one of the streamers for this event! This feedback is being written live as I stream your game! If you're interested in seeing my live reaction, let me know and I can send you a link to the VOD once it's posted to YouTube!

So my normal approach for any game in these events is simple: I get the game, make sure it's not a virus, then play it with as little information on how to play as possible. This way, I can judge how intuitively someone can figure out the game. Only if it's obvious that I need to read more will I do so. I note this so you can get a sense where some of these feedback comes from. In addition, I want to note that feedback and rating are different; don't use this feedback to gauge what I'll rate, nor should you view my rating as entirely indicative of my feedback.

So I like me some deck building games. I'm a huge fan of Inscryption, and we've had a few deck building games come through previous Feedback Quest events. So when I started, I was excited. While I didn't quite understand what was going on in the beginning with my "learn as I go" method, it felt so impossible to reach the big boss of the first area, Titan. I only got through 4 or 5 stages before my first run ended. I expected a second run, where I now had all the knowledge I didn't have before, to see me double my progress at minimum. Instead I barely got through 7 stages. Okay... Go again! 3rd time's a charm, and I'm really getting the h- 10 stages. It wasn't until my fourth run, once I had upgraded two characters and was getting lucky enough to finish some difficult fights with one person alive, making me revive the other two, that I got to encounter the beast that was Titan.

Now I'm not sure how long the game will be; if you plan to have it you only play through 5 or 15 or 50 areas. Because of this, consider this feedback with a grain of salt... this game is way too hard as is. Enemies are incredibly strong when you're starting out. It's made so difficult to heal your characters, which can make surviving really hard. I remember getting to my first rest spot and thinking I'd be able to heal up... only for it to be 30% of the character's HP. Not only that, but you forego improving your character to try and get further in the run?! AND I couldn't use the shop?! Wha?!

My number one feedback would be to curb the difficulty early on. You're better off having a bit longer of an experience with a more gradual curve, so people have time to adjust throughout a run and not only when they've lost.

Developer(+1)

Thank you for your feedback! 

Balance and difficulty is definitely a work in progress for us, and each run can be wildly different with so many potential combinations and interactions between heroes - this kind of feedback is super helpful.

We'd really love to have difficulty levels and achievements as a central aspect of progression eventually. As such there will be a difficulty setting for everyone. 

Please, send the VOD on through!

Jam Host

Here is a link to the VOD. :D

Submitted (2 edits) (+2)

Man, I really enjoyed this one. Being a huge slay the spire fan, I immediately recognized the similarities and I really liked the twist you put into the systems. Having 3 characters with each their own energy and cards was a very nice layer of strategy as well as the jewel system, the upgrade system and the hero empowerment. Really awesome all around.

Controls wise I think it handled just like slay the spire. Cards can be played in quick succession, everything felt smooth and worked as it should.

If I had to critisize anything, it would be the  the audio and the UI. I found it a little annoying that the "hitbox" for the enemy tooltips to pop was so massive, that I felt I always had to put my cursor on top of the screen to actually look at the nice art you got going, which is bad, because my cards are at the bottom.

The one music track I got to listen to sounded very generic and the loop seemed very short, so it kinda got boring to listen to really quickly.


I think you got an amazing game in the works. Wishlisted immediately.

Developer(+1)

Thank you!

It's really great to hear that you recognize similarities to STS, but also see how the party aspect adds novel layers to deckbuilding and strategy. That's a big goal for the project, to keep the best aspects of STS that make it a classic, while creating meaningfully distinct gameplay. I've tried to make design decisions that add genuine depth, but not burdensome complexity, and I was hoping that the end result does feel unique.

Thanks also for the feedback on the UI and audio, I totally agree regarding tooltip hitboxes - that needs cleaning up.  With respect to the audio/soundtrack, it's very much a first draft, the loops will definitely be extended, and there's a lot of orchestration left to do. It needs some time and attention now for sure - I appreciate your honest feedback!

Jam Host (1 edit) (+1)

I gotta say your game is really polished, I find the rouge lite aspect and the game loop pretty addictive, I was able to sell it to my hubby and get him interested in trying out the demo, I hope for your success on the steam market. Best wishes. I was slightly slow on getting the fact the 3 heores in the beginning is the "team" you start with, I thought I was supposed to be pick one. lol

My Game feature of this playthru: 

Developer(+1)

Thanks so much for the feedback, support and the VOD too!

It was really informative to watch, and great to get your perspective given that you don't generally play deckbuilder games. I'm going to look into ways to make it clearer that you're drafting a party and not just picking one hero :)

Thanks for sharing with your husband too - I hope he enjoys!

Jam Host(+1)

oh here's his playthru for your info. :D He's far more experienced in this genre. lol

Developer

I saw! And gave it a shoutout here: https://x.com/HyperfocusI/status/1823311473214435454

Really enjoyed the playthrough, and the feedback was so helpful! My partner and I watched and scribbled notes the entire time :D