Posted November 19, 2023 by IsochronalGames
#update #devlog #card #balance
As always, this update is live now and can be played for free in browser at https://isochronalgames.itch.io/timelinegame. Updates like this will be coming out every week, so please follow if you're interested in seeing future updates!
Ton of balance changes this week, but I think there's even more to come! It seems it's still a little too difficult from my personal testing. Give it a try yourself and let me know in the comments!
Some new content this week too, and a couple bug fixes
-The lag on the web version I believe has been fixed
-The web version was not displaying the Phalanx - that has been fixed as well
-AOE cards now benefit properly from the Critical status, doubling damage on all enemies for one stack
-Shops will no longer offer more than one copy of the same card
-The HP number is now larger. You can also hover over a toolbar to get a tooltip with their HP
-Shop prices have been tweaked
-The Remove Cards and Remove Ticks deck upgrades allow you to remove two cards/ticks instead of one
-Added a new Deck Upgrade option, the Library. It shows you twelve cards and allows you to pick three
-The Warbot's Seize has been nerfed, only applying grapple twice
-The Tron Team has been nerfed in general, adding more empty ticks to all their cards and reducing the Stun on Overload Cannon
-The Engineer's Swing Wrench has been nerfed
-The following cards have been buffed - Retreating Blow, Make Opening, Accelerate, Stunning Blow, Guarding Strike and Longshot
-Added a new card that is Cancellable like Wait for It, but only in specific places - Combo!
-I also added a dotted line indicator for where a card can be cancelled, visible on Combo above
-Trinkets are now available in shops, items that give static bonuses for the rest of the run. No art for them yet, but you can hover over them to see their effects!
As I'm starting to focus on balancing in earnest I've changed the way I playtest. I've created a google document where I track my ending HP after every fight, how difficult I felt it was, and the cards and upgrades I selected after every fight and in every shop.
I've found this really helpful - it actually led directly to a lot of the card buffs I listed above, as I noticed I kept taking those cards but they weren't really helping me. Definitely going to continue with it in the future!
My target is to reach around a 80% win rate for this base level difficulty. At the moment I'm at about 1/3, so there's a lot of rebalancing to go. My current plan is to add some more powerful defensive cards and insert breakpoints into more cards, as a lack of defense and timeline inflexibility seems to be the most common cause of my losses at the moment.
On the plus side, I found myself saying "Just one more run" a few times while doing my playtesting, which I think is a really good sign for the game as a whole!
In development - Tutorialization sort of fell by the wayside as I focused on balance, so I want to dig into that more and readability in general. As the game gets more complicated the previews are getting harder and harder to read, so I want to improve that. I also have a new shop item planned that I hope to add soon!
Gifs in this were created using ScreenToGif - thank you ScreenToGif!