Post by Rexor4321 in Hostile Takeover comments

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Know I'm kinda late to the party, but in the hopes that this project is still under development, I thought I'd give some feedback :)

Just finished my first and only run (after the tutorial) in the second loop after encountering a bug that stopped me from progressing. I used the "report incident" shortcut (F8), and hope you can find the cause. Despite the abrupt end, I had a good time!

First off, my biggest concern is the lack of strategic importance put on positioning (at least when playing paladin and mountain). I realize this might be rooted in a balancing issue, but I hardly ever used move cards at all, and after the first loop, I got rid of them. The enemy will swarm at you regardless, and having a bunch of cards that can't deal or mitigate damage is simply a handicap. In addition, I got one upgrade that gave me permanent cover, and another that gave me dashes every turn.

Secondly, I never had a man down (though I obviously never got that far), but I can see how that mechanic could potentially be frustrating. It means struggling players will have a harder time from then on, with the odds gradually stacking up against them. Considering how few and weak your options of healing are, I'm guessing it's pretty likely for the same character to die repeatedly (as they are only revived with 5 hp)

Thirdly, I think the virus mechanic is really cool, especially how their severity scales with how much power they take to get rid off, but I found that I would often spare the last opponent in a room just to wait until I could remove them. This is somewhat reminiscent of healing with certain deckbuilds in "slay the spire" which you mention as an influence, but I still think it can become a chore. Without the experience to back it up, I also think it will be strategic to just get rid of all your bad starting cards in the first, easiest loop, where the handicap of a virus is manageable, but I don't think that's the most fun way to play. Maybe make the power-cost decrease per room/battle instead of per use?

Fourthly, a couple of ui-issues: As someone else just mentioned, there are several points where I get a prompt to make a choice, and can't look at my decks or upgrades. I might just be spoiled after "into the breach", but I would also love some way of checking the enemy turn-orders (though I can see how this could be a little too "gamey"). There were also a few times where I wanted to check the AOE of a card, but had to make the power for it first. I think it would be nicer if you could select a card, even if you can't afford it.

Fifthly, I think the shield-mechanic is interesting, but has a few problems. It's already a bit weird that the shield you get from cover stays with you once you leave it, or that it helps you against attacks from behind, but once I got used to that, it didn't bother me. The real problem is scaling, and how after just one loop, enemies started dealing so much damage that the 3 shield you got from cover is almost negligible. It ends up as sort of a wasted mechanic with little impact. Maybe increase the amount gained from cover per loop? Also, the fact that almost half of the attacks that hit me would deplete all the shield I had, regardless of the amount, and how this obviously led to the "armored" status-effect just to counter it, is a bit clumsy. It makes going for a shield-build seem unreliable. Maybe remove or reduce the amount of shield-drain enemies, and make shields slowly deplete per turn instead?

Sixthly (are these even words anymore?), I think character-locked upgrades is frustrating. Several times I leveled up and got new upgrades, just to find that both characters got the one I wish I could put on the other, rendering them nearly useless. Especially since you have the upgrade rooms where you actually do get to choose as a comparison. One of the great joys in any tcg or rpg is the feeling of optimizing your build, and this made them feel clunky and imperfect.

Seventhly, I was a bit confused on this point, but I believe you only draw cards up to your hand-limit every turn. This means you are sort of punished for not spending all your cards, because you'll draw fewer in the turn to come (allowing you to play fewer cards overall). This incentivises individually strong cards instead of synergies (which are more fun in my opinion). There might be some aspect to this I haven't realized, but otherwise, I would heavily suggest to just allow the player to draw a set amount of cards, the delayed turn is punishment enough!

I'm not going to delve into features that are just a matter of more content, like more diverse enemies or interactable objects on the battlefields, but I do hope you make the card-pools character specific (the decks of my paladin and my mountain ended up very similar).

I also wanted to mention the theme, even if it isn't strictly criticism. I think what you touch on with the viruses and the sci-fi tech like teleportation is really cool, and I'd love to see this game take that matrix-esque direction. I'm personally a bit put off by the "modern warfare"-aesthetic, and I also guess some of the more lacking mechanics and designs are pulled along with it. I'm not suggesting to make the whole dungeon a simulation or anything (though saying that, it does sound cool), but it's something to consider.

As someone interested in game-design, I had a lot of fun writing this out, and if you can find some use for it, that would just be an added bonus!

PS: Sorry for the long comment!

WhisperingSpider4 years ago

Hi, thanks a lot for all of your feedback! I'll address what I can in response :)

Clearly I need to make this more apparent, but Paladin and Mountain are just randomly-generated names - both of those characters are of the Soldier class and have the same deck and upgrades to choose from. Currently there are two classes in game, the Soldier and the Ninja, with at least one more (Engineer) planned. I recently added the ability to play as the same class just to give people another option since playing as just the Soldier and Ninja each time could get repetitive.

The looping is just a temporary solution to let the player see and experience more deck and upgrade synergies - the full game will have three environmental levels to complete, each with unique enemy encounters. A lot of the enemies in the first (and only) level are melee, pistol, and shotgun enemies, which forces them to get into close range to the player. While the option for a non-movement deck should be a possibility (with things like stacking Stealth for the Ninja or long-range sniper cards for the Soldier), movement cards are admittedly not as important for the Soldier as they are for the Ninja or Engineer.

Funny enough, your point about viruses is one I put a lot of thought into, as optimizing the fun out of something is always what good players will do, and what you described is exactly how I saw it playing out. In my current build, I've changed removing cards to be an option post-combat instead of adding a card. I feel that missing out on a card or money is (for now) a fair price to pay for removing a card, and viruses can also be removed this way. I like allowing the player to remove viruses during combat, too, though. By trashing the virus once it's recycled, it ensures that if you want to wait it out like you chose to, you have to suffer its effects each turn as you can't just recycle it and wait for it to be drawn again once combat is safe. Once the game is better-balanced, hopefully the penalty of not only losing a card slot to keep it in-hand, but the negative effects themselves each turn, will be a better risk/reward choice than the optimal choice to make every time.

The current Shielding mechanic is after numerous iterations, and apart from the Soldier having the option of playing a "tank" class, it's meant to prevent or reduce damage from a single attack. This is another important aspect of movement cards - since you can view the attack range of enemies, and always have their intended target and action, movement becomes a defensive option to prevent them from reaching you to attack. I'm not saying it's perfect, and I'm sure some more adjustments will occur, just giving you the reasoning behind it :)

For upgrades, each character class has around 15 unique upgrades, and there are 10 upgrades that are class-neutral. The class-specific ones are always chosen from for reaching level 3 (also I hate the term 'level' for that and need a better phrase/graphic), and the shop will contain 1-2 character-specific upgrades. Neutral upgrades are always at least one shop option, and are always chosen from upgrade machines. I think your frustration was coming from playing the same class for both characters and seeing ones you wanted to swap with. Since levelup upgrades are class-specific, and require the character to have three consecutive combats without dying to gain, there are no plans to allow them to be swapped between characters.

I went with the option to draw up to your hand size each turn for two reasons - one, initially it was a simple discard/redraw each turn. I like that style because it forces you to work with what you're given rather than what you want, but I also liked the option to 'set up' plays yourself. Since NOT recycling a card reduces your power gain each turn, I made the change to let the player choose to not recycle a card and hold on to it between turns. If the player can hold cards and then draw ADDITIONAL cards each turn, this would produce strategies to run and hide for as long as possible to build up a giant hand, and then unload everything at once. By capping the hand size each turn, it still retains that 'work with what you have' strategy, while providing the option to save up for a wombo-combo if you're willing to make some sacrifices to do so.

Finally, the theme is absolutely cyberpunk, and additional character, environment, and ability designs should reinforce this as more content is added :)

Thanks again for all of the feedback, you've given me a lot to think about and work with, and that's the best thing I can ask for!

Rexor43214 years ago(+1)

Thanks for the in-depth answer! Looking forward to playing when it's further along in development :D

It was maybe a bit arrogant of me to write such a lengthy review based on a single, unfinished play-through (obviously, my misconception about the classes solves quite a few of my issues (Not a ridiculous mistake, one of them were named "paladin" :P)). Looking at the character-specific upgrades again, I also think it will solve itself automatically once the shop has more stuff I'd want (so taking cash instead doesn't feel like you're foregoing one of the limited options for a permanent upgrade). I don't think you should underestimate how much better some of the upgrades are compared to cards though! (as they don't cost power, don't take up a card slot AND goes into effect immediately), so missing out on an upgrade should pay very well!

If shield was supposed to always disappear with a single hit, I think I ran into another, tiny bug

I see your first point about the hand-limit, but I don't think the "save up cards, then unload all at once" strategy sound so bad. In my experience, the only time i could use movement to "run away from danger" was against melee-enemies on the first turn, and it requires you to somehow mitigate the damage on the turns where you aren't doing anything. Also, these "god-turns" where you just decimate the enemy and feel super clever and powerful can be kind of fun. You obviously know the systems wayyy better than me though, so if you think it would break the game, you're probably right ;)

Rooting for you, good luck!

itch.io

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