Could you have multi-color symbols that combine with both colors as usual, but where that kind of multi-color symbol only activates itself if other symbols with both colors are present in some combination? To encourage multi-color decks?
That's an interesting idea. I wouldn't want too many of them due to complexity creep, but something like Diamond but off color (like, a Red symbol that deals damage depending on how many Green you have) or something that scales with the number of different colors in your deck would at the very least provide more support for rainbow decks (which are currently only held by the actual Rainbow symbol)
After understanding the game, I played it a bit for fun. and at the third level, I got a crash.
Are some mono-color decks meant to be brokenly powerful, or would it be an idea (good or bad) to add one or more mechanisms that penalizes mono-color decks or incentivizes non-mono-color decks? Players might like the mono-color decks, but it feels a bit too easy to me.
I have beaten the demo twice now, and I do not get how pressing the bandit works. At the default state, do you just press 'space', and wait? Can you affect the outcome? Maybe time it at the start and then wait? Outside of extra turn tokens or the 'Rusty Cog' artifact, is it only the initial timing that matters, and otherwise you just have to wait for the result? I never tried timing it, until I got the 'Rusty Cog' artifact, and by then all the items I had were one color. Could the time spent waiting for the result be decreased, to one second? But one artifact/item had as an effect "1 second lane". Also, having to wait that long for the spin to complete is annoying and time-consuming. Maybe it is just me that is the issue here for not getting it, but if other players also do not understand, making it clear (and less time-consuming?) how the spinner works would be good. At the start I was deeply in doubt about what kind of game it is - is it a action and reflex skill game, where I have to time things? And I kept being confused for quite a while. But then I realized that it is a deck building game. The Steam description makes that clear, but I stupidly just skipped reading any text. I enjoyed it a lot more once I just skipped any actions and reflexes, but that almost turned each battle into an autobattle, and took a lot of time. I discovered at some point in the settings that you can speed up battles, which helped. I am still confused on this point, for some of the battles give the impression that the player can have agency in the battle, but apart from the initial timing when spinning each turn (and Rusty Cog and Extra Turn tokens), is there any agency, or is it almost autobattle? Even if there is no agency, showing the battles is good for letting the player understand what is going on and what each enemy does and their strengths and weaknesses.
Mini-games were OK, I disliked the Space Invaders mini-game, it is normally a skill game, but can it even be beaten without a lot of luck? The other mini-games I encountered were good enough. However, at some point, I skipped any and all mini-games.
For the deck building, I was in doubt about what to get. I quickly realized that a mono-color deck is really powerful, since it activates many more symbols per turn on average. In particular once I saw that shops offered the ability to remove a symbol. I first tried with a blue deck, but not getting full health between rounds meant that you could get worn down. Red symbols can combine with power and attacks, but they have the major drawback that they can cause retaliation damage. I then went with a green deck due to both poison, regeneration, health gain, maximum health gain, life steal. And after a few tries, that turned out ridiculously powerful. Removing any and all non-green symbols using shops, never picking up non-green symbols no matter how good they were. Items vary greatly in their power, and some are very powerful and also fairly cheap. Shops are therefore priority targets.
Poison is really powerful, since you do not risk getting massive amounts of retaliation damage, and it keeps stacking up on the enemy without going away. Early on, it is also very helpful, since before you get a mono-color deck, you can go several turns without dealing damage. Poison also works even when the enemy has filled your deck with bad symbols (a neat concept).
After I won once, I kept restarting using the menu until I got a start with the Dart symbol, because I wanted a green build again.
I almost did not have to care about which enemy I went up against, in particular once getting powerful and getting to the second and third floor. I did lose one run to one enemy when I did not pay attention, the ghost one that deals 20x3 damage, but I won that easily on later runs after paying attention and using up all the Extra Turn tokens. I always avoided the copy cat enemy, and I do not know what that one is like.
When you press the stop button, the first reel will stop nearly instantly, the rest are up to RNGesus. So you're not exactly in control, but timing the first reel right can be a difference between blocking and hitting Spike with a Beetroot. I understand why this is not clear though, and a better tutorial tooltip is needed. Rusty Cog just lets you time all of them, which lets you pretty much select each turn by hand if you have the patience and enough eye drops.
I haven't "beaten" space invaders ever, that game is kinda unfinished as I'm on the fence about it.
The crash you got probably has something to do with the Perfume item since it appears to be activating, thanks for reporting that
As for the color balance:
It wasn't my intention to make mono colors the best, but they are the most consistent due to how matching works. However, going into one color should hold you back in some other areas, as the only color that has access to everything is Purple, but that has its own problems. My ideal outcome of balance would be that builds focusing on 2 colors, or 3 colors with strong duos, end up being the best. I'm also trying to add enemies, especially bosses, that counter specific weaknesses in builds. For example, if you have no Blue at all, King of Clubs will slap you down. If you have too much Red, Spike will out-retaliate your damage. If you have a meandering slow deck, Queen of Spades will end you. There's a boss in chapter 2, DJ, that gains strong color-themed buffs that can only be removed by activating that color, meaning that a mono-colored deck will only be able to remove one of the five.
Admittedly, I probably haven't done enough to deal with Green. The only thing that comes close is Chieftain boss, as he purges Poison off when it goes above 10, and since Poison is just a single instance of damage per turn, a Shell will negate it. But he's a Chapter 1 boss so if you can get past that (or just happen to see Malfunction instead) you're fine for the rest of the run. I should probably give the debuff purge action to a few more enemies.
I have not designed final bosses yet, so I might aim to counter mono-colored decks with them.
I am tempted to record a video where I go full munchkin with a green mono-color build, and upload it such that you can see it. And try to defeat every enemy I find. I have defeated the Chieftain a number of times with a green mono-color build - green can even get good direct damage, with for instance the heart symbol.
I tried it some more, and poison is useful in several cases. It is especially useful at the very start, since you have a large mixture of colors of symbols and only one dual color symbol, and dealing damage consistently can be difficult. But if you get off a bit of poison, time may be on your side, even if you never hit a damage dealing effect again. That can give you symbols and tokens to get rid of some of the colors, and even removing one, and especially two, can make a deck much more powerful.
I also found that a start with the Dart symbol is much easier than some other start, due to the somewhat reliable way of getting at least a bit of poison in with a dual-colored symbol.
Pachinko is good. It could have some way to look down. Because now when you open it, camera moves up too fast to notice all rewards, and I have to wait for it to go down again.
Space Invaders is good as it is. The only thing it needs is proper visuals.
Pinball is noob hostile. Because camera is moving it's hard to estimate when to use the paddles. On top of that paddles seem to have a reaction lag (or that's just time they need to get up, but it feels like a lag).
I think playing OAB normally the learning curve for pinball is too steep, and it requires you to spend resources on top of that to even practice, this makes pinball feel unfair. When playing previous demo I simply abandoned pinball machine, because it felt like I won't win anything and I can't even practice it.
This demo I discovered that hitting the ball is actually not impossible, but to learn it I had to specifically start new games over and over just to go to pinball machines and keep trying until I finally managed to hit the ball with a paddle.
Only bug I noticed: Fork item references "Spiky" status, but does not offer tooltip for what "Spiky" does, like other items and symbols do
Other than that the game is great. I love the music, sound effects, style, gameplay and overall vibe.
Minigames disappearing is a good decision.
The new intro is cool and has a lot of character.
I didn't beat 1st stage yet, but if the rest are as good then I'd buy it on release.
I watched your video and it seems like you missed the idea of timing reels to get what you want for each turn. This isn't your fault as it's not really explained and slot machines are assumed to be random with no human influence.
Pinball has been giving me trouble forever, it never felt right. I might just scrap it, or make it significantly easier. Not sure why you felt delayed input on the paddles
Comments
Could you have multi-color symbols that combine with both colors as usual, but where that kind of multi-color symbol only activates itself if other symbols with both colors are present in some combination? To encourage multi-color decks?
That's an interesting idea. I wouldn't want too many of them due to complexity creep, but something like Diamond but off color (like, a Red symbol that deals damage depending on how many Green you have) or something that scales with the number of different colors in your deck would at the very least provide more support for rainbow decks (which are currently only held by the actual Rainbow symbol)
After understanding the game, I played it a bit for fun. and at the third level, I got a crash.
Are some mono-color decks meant to be brokenly powerful, or would it be an idea (good or bad) to add one or more mechanisms that penalizes mono-color decks or incentivizes non-mono-color decks? Players might like the mono-color decks, but it feels a bit too easy to me.
Nice game.
I have beaten the demo twice now, and I do not get how pressing the bandit works. At the default state, do you just press 'space', and wait? Can you affect the outcome? Maybe time it at the start and then wait? Outside of extra turn tokens or the 'Rusty Cog' artifact, is it only the initial timing that matters, and otherwise you just have to wait for the result? I never tried timing it, until I got the 'Rusty Cog' artifact, and by then all the items I had were one color. Could the time spent waiting for the result be decreased, to one second? But one artifact/item had as an effect "1 second lane". Also, having to wait that long for the spin to complete is annoying and time-consuming. Maybe it is just me that is the issue here for not getting it, but if other players also do not understand, making it clear (and less time-consuming?) how the spinner works would be good. At the start I was deeply in doubt about what kind of game it is - is it a action and reflex skill game, where I have to time things? And I kept being confused for quite a while. But then I realized that it is a deck building game. The Steam description makes that clear, but I stupidly just skipped reading any text. I enjoyed it a lot more once I just skipped any actions and reflexes, but that almost turned each battle into an autobattle, and took a lot of time. I discovered at some point in the settings that you can speed up battles, which helped. I am still confused on this point, for some of the battles give the impression that the player can have agency in the battle, but apart from the initial timing when spinning each turn (and Rusty Cog and Extra Turn tokens), is there any agency, or is it almost autobattle? Even if there is no agency, showing the battles is good for letting the player understand what is going on and what each enemy does and their strengths and weaknesses.
Mini-games were OK, I disliked the Space Invaders mini-game, it is normally a skill game, but can it even be beaten without a lot of luck? The other mini-games I encountered were good enough. However, at some point, I skipped any and all mini-games.
For the deck building, I was in doubt about what to get. I quickly realized that a mono-color deck is really powerful, since it activates many more symbols per turn on average. In particular once I saw that shops offered the ability to remove a symbol. I first tried with a blue deck, but not getting full health between rounds meant that you could get worn down. Red symbols can combine with power and attacks, but they have the major drawback that they can cause retaliation damage. I then went with a green deck due to both poison, regeneration, health gain, maximum health gain, life steal. And after a few tries, that turned out ridiculously powerful. Removing any and all non-green symbols using shops, never picking up non-green symbols no matter how good they were. Items vary greatly in their power, and some are very powerful and also fairly cheap. Shops are therefore priority targets.
Poison is really powerful, since you do not risk getting massive amounts of retaliation damage, and it keeps stacking up on the enemy without going away. Early on, it is also very helpful, since before you get a mono-color deck, you can go several turns without dealing damage. Poison also works even when the enemy has filled your deck with bad symbols (a neat concept).
After I won once, I kept restarting using the menu until I got a start with the Dart symbol, because I wanted a green build again.
I almost did not have to care about which enemy I went up against, in particular once getting powerful and getting to the second and third floor. I did lose one run to one enemy when I did not pay attention, the ghost one that deals 20x3 damage, but I won that easily on later runs after paying attention and using up all the Extra Turn tokens. I always avoided the copy cat enemy, and I do not know what that one is like.
The game is full of atmosphere.
Damn, thanks for the thorough review
When you press the stop button, the first reel will stop nearly instantly, the rest are up to RNGesus. So you're not exactly in control, but timing the first reel right can be a difference between blocking and hitting Spike with a Beetroot. I understand why this is not clear though, and a better tutorial tooltip is needed. Rusty Cog just lets you time all of them, which lets you pretty much select each turn by hand if you have the patience and enough eye drops.
I haven't "beaten" space invaders ever, that game is kinda unfinished as I'm on the fence about it.
The crash you got probably has something to do with the Perfume item since it appears to be activating, thanks for reporting that
As for the color balance:
It wasn't my intention to make mono colors the best, but they are the most consistent due to how matching works. However, going into one color should hold you back in some other areas, as the only color that has access to everything is Purple, but that has its own problems. My ideal outcome of balance would be that builds focusing on 2 colors, or 3 colors with strong duos, end up being the best. I'm also trying to add enemies, especially bosses, that counter specific weaknesses in builds. For example, if you have no Blue at all, King of Clubs will slap you down. If you have too much Red, Spike will out-retaliate your damage. If you have a meandering slow deck, Queen of Spades will end you. There's a boss in chapter 2, DJ, that gains strong color-themed buffs that can only be removed by activating that color, meaning that a mono-colored deck will only be able to remove one of the five.
Admittedly, I probably haven't done enough to deal with Green. The only thing that comes close is Chieftain boss, as he purges Poison off when it goes above 10, and since Poison is just a single instance of damage per turn, a Shell will negate it. But he's a Chapter 1 boss so if you can get past that (or just happen to see Malfunction instead) you're fine for the rest of the run. I should probably give the debuff purge action to a few more enemies.
I have not designed final bosses yet, so I might aim to counter mono-colored decks with them.
I am tempted to record a video where I go full munchkin with a green mono-color build, and upload it such that you can see it. And try to defeat every enemy I find. I have defeated the Chieftain a number of times with a green mono-color build - green can even get good direct damage, with for instance the heart symbol.
I tried it some more, and poison is useful in several cases. It is especially useful at the very start, since you have a large mixture of colors of symbols and only one dual color symbol, and dealing damage consistently can be difficult. But if you get off a bit of poison, time may be on your side, even if you never hit a damage dealing effect again. That can give you symbols and tokens to get rid of some of the colors, and even removing one, and especially two, can make a deck much more powerful.
I also found that a start with the Dart symbol is much easier than some other start, due to the somewhat reliable way of getting at least a bit of poison in with a dual-colored symbol.
https://mega.nz/file/F2kWWQIC#VxoBGZDpquI5GVBKOWLRAzWW5upoLPHN0bfM1DnvXC4
I think playing OAB normally the learning curve for pinball is too steep, and it requires you to spend resources on top of that to even practice, this makes pinball feel unfair. When playing previous demo I simply abandoned pinball machine, because it felt like I won't win anything and I can't even practice it.
This demo I discovered that hitting the ball is actually not impossible, but to learn it I had to specifically start new games over and over just to go to pinball machines and keep trying until I finally managed to hit the ball with a paddle.
Fork item references "Spiky" status, but does not offer tooltip for what "Spiky" does, like other items and symbols do
Thanks for playing!
I watched your video and it seems like you missed the idea of timing reels to get what you want for each turn. This isn't your fault as it's not really explained and slot machines are assumed to be random with no human influence.
Pinball has been giving me trouble forever, it never felt right. I might just scrap it, or make it significantly easier. Not sure why you felt delayed input on the paddles
I love the audio and visuals
I don't know what was happening exactly, but I like it!