Oh yeah, that is indeed quite a lot when you run the numbers like that. Didn't really think of it much when adding it and was just like "hurr durr, third of the time isn't that bad as you can actively fight against it with rerolls". Rerolls do still indeed help avoiding those dodges and I kinda like that it adds a fresh layer of required need for staying aware of the "bad" numbers. I don't have any problem with letting max level (I don't think crew can get past level 6 right now withupgraded frog + upgraded frog bard) crew members be very powerful but of course it feels kinda bad when it's used against you. The dodge crew member is always enemy one, it's an alternative version of navigator (who wouldn't do anything on enemy).
With all that math, I think you might like this upcoming event...
Very cool!
Sadly didn't manage to beat it in the three runs I did. Did come very close to it twice though but got kinda dicked by RNG in the end.
The visuals are great. Everything looks nice and easily distinguishable. All I'd really do is add more animations and better (if there even was anything else besides linear) easings to existing ones like for example shuffle seemed very slow and stiff. But other than that it looked pretty damn flawless to me.
Same story for the audio work really. The music is chill and doesn't get annoying at all even with repeated plays. The sound effects too were nice and informative.
The gameplay is interesting but it's a bit much at first. Restricting the shop options to only what you can buy might be a good start to have it introduce itself a bit more smoothly. And I'd rather see the tutorial be more integrated to the first few rounds and not being an info dump in the beginning.
Being a full information game, it'd be nice to have the spawner cards also include the description of the card they spawn on them. I kinda strayed away from some of them thinking that their targets would be a hinderance (like some of them are) but they ended up being good too. And then there are loads of items that have a pointless cheaper counterpart that pretty much just clog the shop and are noob traps (torch to lantern, bonfire to axe and so on).
Had to go for a one more try but no luck again... so close again!
But this seemed like a solid strategy really. Have a bunch of lanterns to light up the start, tip jars and super soakers to rack up some money and flips. Then harvest all the stacked up envelopes/leaves/balloons/fireworks and have some moons etc to spend them on.
Some of the other cards were interesting but didn't really seem worth it in comparison. It might be more interesting if there were less options to choose from but in turn you could spend all your money instead of just buying one card. Or you could even have both kinds of shops and even more different "events" in between to make the runs more varied and interesting.
But the early game is so boring, slow and tedious that it really deters me from trying again. You basically have to slog through the same steps every time pretty much getting rid of your starters and slowly building some bank to get it going with new ones. It just didn't seem fun after first two times. Dunno what a good solution for this would be though. Being a roguelike kinda limits the options as can't really have checkpoints/levels so that the goal would first be 10 coins for example and then it would kinda save your progress there and continue to 20 etc. One way maybe could be being more in roguelite vain and allow the player to maybe manipulate their starting deck somehow.
Good job! 👍
Not too hard to notice where the inspiration for this comes from. Sadly the cards here (for what I've seen of em at least) don't have enough variety to make it all that interesting. And I hit a complete wall few levels in where I just can't do anything no matter what I try. I just can't get enough mana fast enough to keep up with the constant onslaught of enemies. Not too fun getting absolutely stomped and slowly losing all your deck with nothing you can really do about it. And it's so dang slow too. Doesn't really inspire me to even keep trying.
It looked very nice and moody. Not a huge fan of the font though, it's not very readable and the tutorial having loads of texts for you to slog through without really getting to play yet made it feel even worse. It did a good enough job to teach the mechanics but it wasn't paced all that well and wasn't really interactive enough for my liking. It really would have been better if more integrated to the first level.
Well, after some time off from it starting to write this feedback, I went back and few more tries in managed to luck through the level with some luckier starting draws. Then proceeded to steamroll through the rest of the game with no issues.
So basically all the stat boost cards are pretty much a trap and not worth it at all unless you have a surplus of mana and in those cases you are already probably winning and have some secrets to spend your extra mana on instead. The dark ritualish mana gain card seemed to be the best one I saw by far.
Placing the cards seemed a bit pointless. Didn't see any reason why you really would play your cards on anywhere else besides the furthest along the track you can. Just made it clunkier to play and seemed like "we gotta do it like this because StS does it like this". Would need more deep mechanics of having more defensive front line defending the more fragile ranged units and casters but even then it would be just wrong or right with no real strategy involved.
The audio work was very much on the lights side but even though it was simple, it somehow didn't get too boring and irritating. In fact, it's still playing there on the background as I'm writing this. But sound effects were lacking a bit more. Having some more actual noises of combat and so on would have made it more interesting to follow. The game was mostly just about waiting for the next available cast while watching to fight go on so might as well make it more entertainable.
The fights should always start you with at least some mana. That initial wait every round start felt horrible. All at the same time where sometimes enemies were already half way down the track before you were even able to cast anything.
But yeah, all in all, it was pretty enjoyable ride. Would just need pacing improvements, less duplicate and boring cards and more interesting ones instead to make the gameplay deeper and less about just blindly waiting for your 2/2 grizzly to throw in the mix.
Good job! 👍
Fun stuff! Required some grinding but here we go. Still did some sloppy dashes and could still shave off some fractions but beating the dev is enough for now.
At first I didn't really like it but still decided to go for a faster run and stumbled on the secrets and it really clicked and grew on me. The controls (for pad) still were a bit mysterious to decipher even with the instructions which I guess isn't bad at all considering the theme.
And gotta agree with you on bisect at least, it's awesome for finding the regression points. But no love for blame, it's my favourite!
Oh shit, now I realized that there are separate trophy categories on the leaderboards. Back to the grind!
Yeaeeah, nope. Got at least the second spot on all but that final trophy is draining the will to live out of me with the inconsistent annoying wall clips and getting stuck or getting screwed by the invisible dash delay. On my first time through, by the way, I got it without knowing about the dash at all.
The hand drawn aesthetic is great but the sound was a bit lackluster. So little effects and they seriously lacked oomph and variety. And even the visuals had some not so great looking quirks like the corners and massive amounts of copy/paste. Would have looked so much better if you had drawn bigger chunks of the level by hand and not just small tiles.
The physics and controls overall were pretty good but could still use some improving. The collider being there for only about top half of the "single blocks" was quite annoying as there was a discrepancy between what it looked like and what actually was there. And double clicking the sticks happened by accident for me before even finding it and it first made be think if I completely broke it somehow. Only now I realized that it could be done with double clicking too cause when finding the note about it (and all the time playing after that) I just kept pressing both of the sticks just like using both shoulder buttons for dashing.
But obviously more content would have been nice. Running the same level again and again with the same objectives really got kinda stale a bit fast.
Good job! 👍
