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Here is an option: Don't just make it fully random, but tweak it a bit in the players favor. How much is of course subjective, but for example if you have a cow and a baby you could increase the chance that they spawn next to each other. Or if you know that it's generally required to get a farmer early on, make sure you'll always have a farmer as an option in the first three rounds. Or unlock new tile types as the game progresses, e.g. ravens arent useful until turn 7 or so when the pest starts appearing, so you can think about not giving the players ravens at the beginning.

Additionally (or alternatively) you could think about letting the player adjust (some) tile placements before the round starts, maybe for a fee. 

Or maybe they can somehow adjust their chances for specific tiles generally or next turn.

Plenty of ideas, which one fits your idea and your game is of course for you to figure out :D

I really enjoyed this game - i wish it was a little better balanced or not quite so luck dependant. My best run was round 7, and that only happened once out of a few dozen.

I'd love to play it some more when it's gotten a few balance tweaks! There's a lot of potential here!

Very nice game! Entertained me for an hour before I accidentally left the page. But not before reaching ~30M points - and my two giant forests weren't even connected yet! :D

Some small improvements that I think could be nice:

• start from the smaller numbers to the bigger ones. it's really boring to watch the single digit numbers tick up from random tiny fields after you already did a massive combo.
• a big combo / the thing that clears the requirement should come with more fanfare :D
• being able to get rid of dominos could be nice - but also massively overpowered.

Unfortunately I am too late to give a rating, just wanted to jump in and leave the message that it is very cute either way! Love the idea and all the details in the environment!

Don't know yet. I would like to at least fix the biggest issues and bugs, maybe add a few features and balance it a bit better.

It's a nice concept, but with it being a GameJam game (and more importantly GJ code), if I continue with this project and idea in any serious manner I'll probably start over from the ground up and do it properly. :D

ah nice, I just tried it again and is it me or is the game a lot harder now? I die in the second round every time, before even my first purchase arrived. And I can't just buy some health potion either, because I generally don't have enough money after the first round.

Okay, I managed to survive a little longer by taking my house and turning it into a much better defense around my chest. Now it's starting to last a while and be fun, though there are still some hidden mechanics (like how exactly do the third enemies attack? How do the towers work? can they shoot over walls (and if not, why not? would make building a proper defensive base a lot more fun. :D )

Edit: Oh yeah, the camera is super jittery and that's really annoying. I think it's because it's sticking to the pixels? I think it would feel a lot better with a smooth camera, even if that means there are half-pixels on the border of the screen.

Yeah, the archers (should) buff the golems attack. If they don't, that's a bug. But archers seem bugged atm anyways.

And because you can stack cards, it can be very useful to have a golem to protect underlying cards (such as the +1 draw card that is very weak and thus needs protection, but has a LOT of value).

oh okay. So can I go and pick them up? Place them wherever I want or something?

Edit: no I can't, as you point out on the game page. Sorry, turns out I'm blind. XD

This is such an amazing game. Simple idea, solid mechanics, great execution. It looks amazing and it's just the right amount of difficult, too 5/5x3, one of the best games I've played in this jam.

my god, this game is marvelous. It looks amazing and plays really well. I just wish there was more of it. :D 

Love the little cutscenes and all, really cute. Great job!

Nice concept, great simplistic presentation. I love how it really feels like I'm herding a group of somewhat braindead individuals, who ignore my orders if they see something more juicy nearby they can attack. Very cool, and also quite difficult at times.

Does upgrading actually do anything? I seem to keep my gold and none of the things I bought appear in the world.

It's a nice idea, but unfortunately seems a bit unfinished.

Haha, i love the little keyart with the monster in the bag. Speaks well to the actual game concept.

And yes, it seems to be a little confusing at the beginning, especially when your inventory just stays empty for longer periods of time, but it's a fun game when you get the hang of it!

such a unique game, and what a wonderful complete package - the style is cool, love the way it interacts with the music, not to mention how it fits with the theme. Great stuff!

wow, 1.5GB for this game? that's quite a lot. :D but it was fun to see a different approach, not only on the theme but also as one of the few games going for actual 3D.

damn, I wish you slowly introduced me to the mechanics instead of throwing me into a room with everything in it immediately, this makes this super hard. Also the fact that it doesn't rotate a clean 90° angles makes it extra hard. But I had fun, great job!

Such a nice game, I had so much fun (until I figured out a way to cheese it :D )! Love the art and the idea - I've seen a few "reverse frogger" games, but none where you actually had to actively kill the frogs :D

great job for your first game. And a unique take on the theme, too, from what I've seen so far. :D The level design could use some work in the second level, as I often wasn't sure where to go to be able to get all 3 keys, but other than that it was a fun experience. Loved that you used differently sized fires to make for different kinds of obstacles! Keep at it!

This was a very unique take on the theme, and it looked great, too! It's a little light on the gameplay side, but acing 3/3 in a GameJam is unrealistic anyways! :D Great job!

great game. the slime feels good to play and the enemies telegraph their attacks properly. Like other commenters I didn't know what I was looking for, so in my first attempt my slime family died of starvation. :( 

Other small annoyances are: running into slimes that are right behind a room switch with basically no way to avoid them, and occasionally getting stuck inside a corner getting bodied by other slimes.

Edit: How much health does this damn hero have? I've leveld my slime to lvl 17 and must've hit him 6+ times and he still didn't even flinch. :(

yeah, allowing you to change the cards you played in the same turn you played them is high up on the list of things I would change if I work more on this. Thank you for your feedback.

How would multiplayer even work? Multiple players building a dungeon and then the heroes going to only one of them decided by some sort of factor? Then you'd need an incentive to attract heroes, because currently all they do is beat up your rooms. :D Or were you thinking more along the lines of one player plays the heroes, one plays the boss monster?

Thank you so much, I appreciate it!

I like the minimalist style of the art, looks really cool with the text being integrated into the level. Unfortunately I wasn't able to figure out lvl 2 so I was stuck :( (or is that because there is nothing after lvl 2?)

22 brave mice did it cost, but we finally defeated that dreaded snake! Too bad our mice are so slow, we should've invested in some running points :D

The lagging behind camera made me a little nauseated, but other than that it's a nice little game. It seems too easy to let the hero just fall into lava / red water though, considering the description of the objective.

unfortunately the game seems half done. While it looks great, it's a little light on the gameplay aspect.

A fellow card game maker I see. Except in this case I guess it's the player who's making the cards.

Really cool idea though, and a more unique spin on the other "you help the hero" games I've played so far.

What a fun little game. I love the premise and it's surprisingly tough to keep both of them alive. :D

I wanted to add a visual "rip" effect when a card was destroyed, but unfortunately didn't manage to add it in time.

And yes, actually managing your deck, choosing which cards to put into your deck and stuff like that would be great for a future iteration - unfortunately I only had enough time to do a "pick a random card out of all available cards" thing.

It's definitely on the todo list if I ever expand on the idea, to allow you to move cards you played this turn.

It only came up AFTER I played the game (thanks, antivirus, for nothing lol). So I still managed to play (and enjoy) the game very much. :D

Oh yeah, unfortunately my antivirus has detected a threat inside this game soooooo..... Be careful everyone? Might always be a false alarm, and I hope it is, just letting people know.

great game. I don't have much else to say, just a great game. Great visuals, great concept, great idea, cool stuff.

Similar idea to what I had (you're the boss instead of the hero), but a VERY different execution :D

Loved the art style.

It took me a while to figure out that I needed to design the spell for the next round, as i was wondering why it didn't change actively and I'm still not sure what causes the spell to swap to the next type. Once I made something completely useless that didn't even reach the hero... whoops. :D

This fish said WHAT about my mum?!

It was a little much to read, but I did very much enjoy reading all these characters stories. The art was amazing, too. My only nitpick / feedback would be that you need to pay attention to your renown (small number in the corner) to know whether the quest you just gave out failed or not, which could be improved (as I want to know which quests failed, so I can learn from my mistakes).

great game, especially for your first gamejam. What it lacks in depth it makes up in cute graphics and the satisfaction to unleash dozens of enemies onto the humans. Love the fact that my resources are also my lives.

with all the high praise in these comments I wish I could've played it, but both the browser and downloaded version are stuck on the title screen.

...is what I would've written if I didn't figure out (after more time than I'm willing to admit) that I had to press spacebar to move on to the main menu.

And now that I've played it, this is a lot of fun to play, gotta agree with the others here. My only complaint is that I can't put small tiles close to the wall. I love the music choice, the little animations and texts the little character does, it's great.

My god this game is terrifying, in no small part due to its aesthetics. Well done!

Fun Fact, cows kill more humans than sharks do, so I'm not so sure about that whole "cows usually don't kill humans" part ;) :D