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A jam submission

Calamity SanctuaryView game page

Roguelite inspired by Battle Network.
Submitted by videogreg93 — 2 days, 18 hours before the deadline

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Calamity Sanctuary's itch.io page

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Comments

Submitted

Hey, it was my first time playing your game. I tested on linux.

Right of the bat I am going to say I wish the game was turned based, but I see you are trying to make something different.

Your tutorial was good, except I didn't always know where I needed to be looking.

The "scrap" was confusing at first. I think "scrap" in deckbuilding games is something that would be bad for you, not good. Something like "useless cards that keep cluttering your deck".

Even with the game being real time, I think it would be much easier if you were able to use mouse to play cards., while still moving with keyboard.

I found the game very hard, so I am definitely not the target audience, but I kept trying. I wanted to get to the first boss without dying, but it always ended in failure for me.

After about 10 runs, I decided to use your demo option, and kept on going. I got to the first boss after 2 deaths, and surprisingly I found the boss to be much easier than the rest of the game (I think I was only hit once).

I am all for hard games, and yours kept me trying, so I can see how people who are into the genre are going to really learn all the combos, and strategies for dealing with different enemy types.

Developer

Thanks for playing!

I agree that one of the major things I need to work on is balancing, which is why I'm trying to get more and more people playing the game. Since I know the game like the palm of my hand it's very easy to breeze through it but I know that isn't the case for others, so your feedback is really valuable. And yeah I think the boss is too easy/the enemies before it are too hard.

For the final version of the game before you start you'll pick your character, and at that moment it'll very briefly explain that characters mechanic, so hopefully that should help remove some of the confusion around scrap.

As for the controls, I admit I have in mind that players will play with a controller, where you can swap between cards with the shoulder buttons much more easily than on keyboard. I hadn't thought to use the mouse at all, but that is an interesting idea for sure.

Submitted(+1)

Hey. I played your game as part of a Demo Day stream. If you didn't catch the stream live, here's a link to the video:

You can see my other demo day 46 streams as well on my channel.

Submitted

I didn't get far, but whatever status effect stuff that confused me last time doesn't seem to be here this time. That being said, I can't really say I enjoyed it. It felt clunky to play, like some times it was impossible to dodge an attack and attack myself. That might just be my own skill for all I know. It's been a long time since I've played a Battle Network game.

Submitted(+1)

Pretty interesting mix of battle network with deck building roguelites.
I think the player base shot is too slow, even if you want to a more methodical and thought out approach than mbn. Other than that, there's nothing more to say. I hope you have a new demo next DD.

Submitted(+1)

Don't bind stuff to Z/Y. I see this done again and again in Game after Game. If you can't or don't want to support dynamic Keyboard Layouts, you should at least keep the major Layouts of US/EU in mind when setting your Keybindings, and Y/Z are swapped in Germany, so it makes it way different to control. Not always for the best.

Edit ontop: You seem to automatically set the Keyboardlayout to US, so I can use Y as the Z in the readme etc. This is fine, but you should still register and change the display in the Keybind options and so on to display Y, so I don't think I need to press Z when its really Y. You also have a key rebind so its even less of an Issue. I still keep the above Paragraph in Hopes somebody reads this and changes their Keybinds.

Your Resolution is automatically set to the Screen one on first start which is nice.

But if I tab out too often it goes into window mode or something, and when I tab back in, swaps to some giant resolution that causes only a quarter of the actual Area or so to be visible. This might be a non-issue tho, since You don't have to expect a Player to tab out constantly.

Its nice that you gave a Readme with the controls I can keep open on the Side. Thank you for that.

The Controls on Keyboard ingame are pretty bad. I didn't understand some of the requirements and displays, so sorry if I get something wrong, but do you need manual carddraw? It seems to be just something you can do if your Hand gets more empty, and you need to pay attention to the battlescreen for Positioning. So why not use Card on space, move Arrows, and swap card on A and D, instead of A and S. I'm more used to A/D for side movement, and I'm sure others are aswell. 

The Deamon screen is a neat Idea, but a bad execution at the moment I think. Rotation doesn't work or isn't shown anywhere how to, and the swapping between selecting a Demon and your Grid also is poorly done. It says to use left arrow key, but that doesn't work, I have to use down key, which also doesn't work all the Time, but only sometimes. Sprites on there are too big, You should have a smaller list on the side, and a smaller grid. Also the Return button or whatever it is thats on the right seems dumb.

Scrap Gun seems to just be the out of Cards option? But Cards refill upon an empty deck, so theres no need for that at all?

Your Control for removing a Card, again, is weird. If I press down it scrolls up? I'm assuming its to keep the selection of what Card I have on view, but I don't have any Card selected. And if I have 8 or less cards, they are all in view already.

Best tactic in the end appeared to be to just spam card usage, redrawing when the Hand is empty. and use scrap gun whenever I couldn't do anything else. Not worrying about what the Cards do or where they Aim, but focusing entirely on dodging and moving on the Battlefield.

Your Sprites are great for the Player and the ENemiy, but the Battlefield and Demon selection sprites aren't. I'm assuming the later to be placeholders.

Its got Potential for a Fun little indie cardgame dungeoncrawler roguelike thing or whatever you call these Games these Days, but the Controls and the Gameplay need a bit of work I think. 

Developer(+1)

Thanks for trying it out!

Concerning keyboard layouts, I've haven't done the work yet to automatically detect keyboard layouts but you can rebind the controls in the option menu, which I think is a good "catch all" for the moment. The game is supposed to be played with a controller anyways, so I don't think this should be too much of an issue down the line. Honestly keyboard controls are based on common gba emulator controls, since this game is based off of a gba game originally.
I'll have to look into that tab in and out issue, never seen it before.

Automatic card draw is an interesting idea. You need manual card draw though because sometimes you'll have too many cards in your hand and not enough energy to play them all, so unless you refresh your hand and energy you'd be stuck. But something to keep in mind I guess. Manual card draw also affects things that trigger each time you refresh your hand, so you do want control over that as well.

You can't rotate daemons, I thought I removed that from the tutorial. Unless it still says it in the readme? and the left arrow thing should work, another thing to look into as well.

Best tactic in the end appeared to be to just spam card usage, redrawing when the Hand is empty. and use scrap gun whenever I couldn't do anything else.

That' part of it, at least in the early game. Ideally down the line once you get better cards you'll need to understand them a bit more, and there's the whole deckbuilding part of it as well.


Once again thanks for playing!