Skip to main content

Indie game storeFree gamesFun gamesHorror games
Game developmentAssetsComics
SalesBundles
Jobs
TagsGame Engines

Suggestions Sticky

A topic by Sisyphean Games created 53 days ago Views: 102 Replies: 14
Viewing posts 1 to 8
Developer

Post any suggestions you have for changes or additions to the game here!

(+2)

At present, the game stops if the player reaches one of the Victory conditions.  Consider giving players the option to continue playing until they've achieved ALL of the Victory conditions.

Developer(+1)

Yeah, we will probably add this feature for beta but there is plenty more we want to focus on fixing and improving first.

(+1)

Having played Cardalaxy a couple dozen times, now, I've noticed something about the current Wellness mechanic.

Once the player has reached the first Wellness milestone, the Wellness decay mechanic pressures the player into investing heavily into Wellness to stay ahead of the decay.  Unlocking Health Tracking Centers and/or Modular Farms becomes a major survival priority for the player, as a result.  However, once either of those are unlocked, it becomes much easier to overshoot the Wellness decay and jump straight to victory.

I therefore suggest two changes:

1) Currently, the rate of decay is a function of the highest Wellness the player has ever reached.  Change this to instead be a function of the player's current Wellness; as Wellness drops, Wellness decay should also drop.

2A) Double the Wellness amounts required for all milestones OR...

2B) ...add more Wellness milestones such that Victory is still the last milestone, but requires 100 Wellness.

Developer(+1)

Yeah, we are planning to rework Wellness in some way. Having the decay based on the current wellness rather than highest wellness reached is something we are considering but we may want to make more changes as well to how it works. We are also thinking about adding more rewards to wellness as it feels a bit weak at the moment.

(+1)

Increase the delay between a boss being defeated and the next one showing up.  Or, perhaps, have an (early-game-unlockable) toggle for aggressive/normal/defensive that makes all ships show up immediately/after one turn/after two turns.

Developer(+1)

Thanks for the suggestion! We will take a look and see how that feels.

"Can't replace a building with the same building."

While this makes sense in the general case, Space Mines need to be refreshed and thus should be exempt from this rule.

Either that, or just rework Space Mines completely.  The mechanic from your older game, "Planet Crafter" will suffice: 1 Combat plus 1 Combat for each other Space Mine played on the same turn.

Developer(+1)

Thanks for the suggestion. I'll take a look and see what we want to do.

First Wellness milestone sometimes presents the following two options:

"Cooperative Endeavors": Gains 3 Science when completing a missions and gain 3 Exploration when completing a Technology.

"Surplus": Gain 3 random points each turn.

Completing missions and/or technologies doesn't happen every turn.  The player ALWAYS gets more points in the long run by choosing "Surplus".  I suggest increasing "Cooperative Endeavors" to at least 8.

Developer(+1)

Thanks for the suggestion. I'll make note of it for when we do a balance pass.

(+1)

For a deck-building adjacent game (deck-management?) I feel like I have very little control over what I'm dealt, and have no way to line things up. I'm working with what is given to me, and sometimes that leaves me with really good or really bad turns.

Once you've got your victory condition in mind, the other symbols don't do much. If I'm going a science route, you want just barely enough combat and health, and exploration be damned. 

If I'm going for a science victory, I don't feel like I can splurge and go for the cool things on the side. Any decision that isn't going straight to the top of the track feels wrong.

Combat units come quickly. Defeating them feels less rewarding than just pinging them so they won't bother you.

I'd like some stats/charts regarding my deck and it's contents. Just some rough things to look over more quickly when making decisions. How many open building spots do I have, what's my average combat per planet, what's the total population of my empire, etc. 

Developer(+2)

Thanks for the feedback! 

Having little control over the deck is intended as we want the focus on upgrading and changing the values of cards. We may add a bit more control over it in the future but we don't currently have any plans for it.

As for the different point types, we do want them to be more closely tied together to make sure you need to at least interact with a couple different systems in order to achieve victory. We are working on making some changes to some of the systems and that along with some balance changes will hopefully get us there.

Defense is one of the systems we plan to make some adjustments to and we will take a look at how quickly the ships appear. Let us know if you think of any other changes you think would help.

Some card stats sound like a great idea! I'll take a look at adding some stat displays to the deck/discard viewer.

My first set of suggestions since Version 0.4 went live:

1) "Space Mines", "Gives: Gives 5 Combat -1 per turn when played."

This is useful over the span of 5 turns for a total of 15 Combat, which is an average of 3 Combat per turn when played.  Tier 2 buildings that do NOT require a strategic resource give a guaranteed 3 points per turn when played and don't need to be refreshed.  This makes Space Mines underpowered compared to the Tier 2 baseline.

I suggest one of the following:

A) "Gives 9 Combat -1 per turn when played" <-- Average of 5 Combat per turn.

B) "Gives 5 Combat." <-- This brings Space Mines up to the power level of Modular Farms and Orbital Telescopes, which also require Strategic Resources.

C) "Gives 1 Combat +1 Combat per other Space Mine played this turn." <-- I think you had this right the first time in your earlier game, "Planet Crafter".  Just borrow that mechanic.  (As an aside, "Planet Crafter" has had a couple of unfixed bugs for the past few years.)

-----

2) "Arcology", "Gives: Gives 3 Random Points to all active crises when played."

This is comparable to the Tier 2 building "Crisis Response Center" (if I remember the name correctly; I don't have the building in front of me right now) which requires a Water strategic resource to build.  "Arcology" is supposed to be a Wonder; increase the build cost to 12 and have it give 8 Random Points to all active crises when played.  (This might need further adjustment once Tier 3 buildings are introduced, but until then, this suggestion should suffice.)

-----

3) The animation for shooting enemies with the laser is a bit slow, especially if I'm shooting the Mothership 20 times all at once.  I suggest cutting the animation time per shot in half.

-----

4) Regarding this selection (and similar selections): make the box bigger and put the planet inside the box.  As it is now, the colored outline draws the player's eyes to the contents of the box, making it less likely that the player will look outside that box.

Developer (2 edits) (+1)

Thanks for the suggestions!

1) (Edited) - For now bumped the starting number up by 1. I'll have to look at it and evaluate if changing it to the original space mines thing will work for this game. Defense works a bit differently here than it did there.

2) Ah, yeah that does seem rather under-powered now. I'm going to bump the number of points to active crises and also have it give a permanent decay reduction

3) This is already fixed by some changes in the upcoming update. Now the laser will charge up when shooting the same target and do one larger shot all at once.

4) Agreed, that is probably a better idea. Adding it to my list but it might not make it in the next update.