This game has come a long way since DD 45! I beat 2 different hour long runs and had a blast! The starting decks are fun and get you going nicely, and the beginning enemies are paced great, as are the late enemies to create a run that feels good. Cards are for sure overpowered, chaotically in the lategame but it feels good in this PvE dungeon run with equipment that was awesome. Crafting menu is great, only thing it needs more of is art and a way to change the art without flipping the card back and forth. Random crafting menu scaling with the int stat is brilliant and playing a mage vs rogue I saw the difference. Great job, what is left to add and when do you plan on releasing?
Thank you so much fren, this is such a lovely comment!
More images won't be added to the base "pack" for both balance reasons (The more images you have, the less you will get duplicates), and because I don't wanna keep blowing the budget on them, at least for now.
What's left is the 4 "cutscene" images for the rogue, another 8 images for events and menu buttons (Waiting on the artists), 3 music tracks, and steam integration, I should be releasing January or February!
Thanks again for your comment and if you ever stream or record you playing please let me know c:
I see, I guess I just wanted more art for the custom cards but I understand. It seems so close so best of luck on the steam release and I'll be there! Also I play DD games over 2 weeks thus the lateness so a stream or video is unlikely, too busy with life haha.
I love card games, I will give it another try but so far I only had time for 1 run so I'll give me first impressions.
It feels a lot like a mix between Magic the Gathering and Hearthstone which is fine but I did find most of the card effects to not be all that exciting. Maybe its just because its your starting deck. There was a card that gives stats to another card when it enters the board but it could also target itself which felt weird to me but maybe I'm just used to it being different in other games. I'm not sure how much you want to focus on the AI but there was an instance when the AI could prevent losing but didn't. I had 5 damage and he was at 4 hp and he blocked the creature that dealt 1 damage because it was a good trade for him (if he had the life to survive). Overall pretty interesting idea but I'd love to see a lot more flashy effects and rewards for this kind of game
The minion that gives stats to another card can target itself because the "trigger time" reads "When this minion enters the battlefield, put a +1/+1 counter on target minion" which means the minion has to successfully enter the battlefield for it to trigger, and in turn, the minion itself is a valid target by the time you decide targets for its ability. At least that's the logic behind it.
It seems you played as the Warrior which is the most "beginner-friendly" class, so the cards and effects its starting deck has, are quite simple. I recommend you give the Trickster or the Archeologist a try if you want a more complex starting deck! Also, some combinations of Equipment pieces make for quite interesting and explosive decks.
Regarding the AI, yeah, it's all made by me without any sort of learning algorithm or advanced things like that, so it behaves sub-optimally in some situations.
I hope you get the other classes a try and let me know if you need help with unlocking anything and whatnot.
First time trying this out. First off random notes:
- Mana symbol on cards looks way different from mana symbol you have on the game table
- The symbol on the upper right side of cards is unclear. I guess it’s the rarity, but then it needn’t be so prominent, as it has no meaning in game-play, or?
- Flavour text talks about "delve deeper" yet on the map you keep going up, not down
- Shop says "Owned: 2" on cards instead of "New Variant"
- Card variants seem to have nothing in common except the artwork and the "color" (color doesn’t even seem to matter at all)
- Cards with multiple effects may not be prompting clearly enough about which effect you are targeting. For a "nuke 1 / buff 1" effect I kept clicking on the same enemy creature for both, because I was not sure my first click had gotten registered.
- Generally the level of polish is quite high, I mean, UI looks kinda like slop, but at least it’s very functional slop and has good sound and visual effects for clicks and so on. Tutorialization is also well integrated and feels professional.
My subjective take on this game design. CCG are inherently fun. Even without any rogue aspect, deck building is about mixing and matching the cards that you have available to create a machine that will surprise even yourself at times with its chance interactions. This aspect works well in Card Artisan just like in other CCG. But there’s some aspects that make it kinda worse.
Crafting is not very interesting. Finding cards at merchants and so on is way more exciting than deterministically creating puny effects (mostly the cost to make a good card seems immensely high) on custom cards. Also the wide range of available effects makes it kinda … boring and overwhelming at once. As Mark Rosewater preaches, restrictions breed creativity. I think a card crafting system can be cool, but it needs a more limited range of choices imho. It could work like you find a "diamond quality" effect for card drawing. That would be "draw 4"; where bronze quality would be "draw 1". And then you combine that effect with a trigger. Bronze quality trigger would be harder to satisfy, e.g. "whenever your opponent destroys one of your creatures with an effect". And diamond quality would be very regular like just "at the start of each turn". Just as an example. This would give me the roguelite excitement about finding high quality "pieces" that I can combine with other pieces to create insane effects. With the current system, I see myself just crafting the same "meh" cards every run, and I’m not very excited for that.
The encounters. This is a fundamental problem in this type of "serial 1v1" roguelite type of game. You so easily lose by just running up against a build that "counters" yours. One Armed Bandit e.g. had the same issue. The Bazaar (which is multiplayer, admittedly) tries to solve it by giving you some amount of lives >1. In games that are more focused on execution, you can always learn to play against your counters, or you can run away from them. In deck builders it’s just frustrating. Idk how the big entries (StS and so on) solve it, I haven’t played them. Maybe the genre just isn’t for me.
Ah ye, a few words on the actual game rules. It feels like a watered down MtG that removes some checks and balances without adding anything interesting. I think it’s curious to implement Magic’s interrupt-system in a PvE game of all things. That system is mostly about enabling player interaction at all times, avoiding the situation of one side sitting back and being bored. That’s not a problem in PvE. And there are some cool designs (Lorcana, the old WH CCGs) that split up MtG’s system in a way that players are taking turns without interrupting each other, but still have high interaction. I would love to play such a thing on the computer.
First of all, thank you so much for your lengthy comment and playthrough video. It's really appreciated.
I'll address some of your comments below.
-I don't quite understand what you mean with Mana symbols looking different on the game table. Maybe you mean that the mana on the UI is a circle/ball and like a hexagon on the card. In this case, yeah this is an issue that I tried but wasn't able to address myself, so I'll need to get the help of an artist to improve it.
-You are correct, it is the card rarity and it has no relevance to the gameplay basically at all other than giving the player an idea of how strong a card is. The only reason it is the way it is is because I wanted to make the card symmetrical and couldn't come up with a better design.
- The map "going up" is a fair criticism, but I've tried making it go down instead and made for a bad UX at least with the assets and design I have going on, so I keep it going "up". While I get it is a bit silly think of the map being like in front of you instead of a top down view and that way maybe it makes a little more sense?
-The shop says "Owned: 2" because you have two copies of a card, so when you buy that card you know you'll get the showcased variant, and a third copy of that art. It is this way because you might want the card for the variant you are purchasing, or you might want it for an additional copy of a card you already own.
-Variants don't share anything except card art and color, this is correct. While this might seem a bit silly, please keep in mind that every card in the game other than the starting decks is randomly generated every time you play. Regarding card generation and colors, each color has a subset of effects it has an affinity with. For example "Sharshooter" cards among other effects, are more likely to generate "Deal x damage to any target" kind of effects. The effects have an 85~% influence, but the other 15% of the time you might get any other color's effect.
-Whenever you click a targetable target, a big purple effect with sparks and whatnot spawns on top of the thing you clicked, but I will try to make it clearer by maybe making the text for the part of the effect you are currently targeting for, a different color while you target or something to that effect.
-The UI is a bit slop because I used asset store assets for most of it and did what I could with it. Having an artist work on them proper would be really nice but is a bit out of my budget at the moment. That said, screens like the Meta progress upgrade screen are particularly sloppy. Thank you for your comment on the tutorials, I tried my best! Also thanks for pointing out the spelling error in your vod.
-Regarding crafting, from what I saw on your vod, it looked like you never spent any gems on your cards, so the casting cost remained super high. The times you tried using gems the cost didn't go down because the effect and timing you wanted were quite strong, so getting them cheaper required a hefty amount of crystals. However, for balance reasons, the "max" casting cost is capped and balanced around your current difficulty level. This is a flaw that I realize now I have to address since a new player would feel the gems are doing nothing, but in fact, you just needed more gems, or going for a different timing.
The amount of available crafting options is based on your INT stat, I believe you had around 8 effects to choose from when first crafting, and while it is a fair amount, that's a random pile you get out of 60+ possible effects, so it is still working with restriction.
Funny that you mention "Crystals" for effects because that's what they originally were, and in fact, in the back end, the effects and timings you get as options for crafting still behave like crystals on an invisible inventory. I moved into the current system because having to drop the effects was tedious and also getting an effect you didn't want at all would mean you were stuck with it through the whole run instead of getting a new set of effects on each forge. However, there are probably ways of making it work and I might try new approaches for this mechanic in the future.
Regarding encounters, the way that, for example, StS approaches it is "Don't build this kind of deck without any way to deal with its counters because the final boss might be a counter to your deck and you won't be able to win" Here the solution is somewhat similar. You can either go "All-in" with a specific strategy and pray you don't encounter your counter, or make sure you include some safety options in your deck. You can probably beat most runs on lower difficulty levels without much of a worry about deckbuilding against counters, but for higher DL's, there are some tools that you really wanna have in your deck, like at least one card that shuffles your graveyard into your deck and so on.
Regarding player interaction, I think you make a very fair point. I made this game mostly based on what I like and what kind of game/gameplay I wanted to make, which might be to the detriment of the final product's marketability and widespread appeal. I don't think I would be changing that aspect of the game this late in development since I want to complete this project and put it out there, but again, you make a very good argument and going that way would probably be more attractive for more people.
i'm having fullscreen resolution issues. i tried reenabling and disabling it, to no avail. the resolution itself is set to the correct one for my monitor, 1920 * 1080.
i can't really play like this, because part of the screen is missing.
Damn, sorry to hear that. I feel like apps do this sometimes ? Have you tried enabling and disabling fullscreen or trying a different resolution or something?
I did fiddle with the settings menu this update but shouldn't cause this/
Comments
This game has come a long way since DD 45! I beat 2 different hour long runs and had a blast! The starting decks are fun and get you going nicely, and the beginning enemies are paced great, as are the late enemies to create a run that feels good. Cards are for sure overpowered, chaotically in the lategame but it feels good in this PvE dungeon run with equipment that was awesome. Crafting menu is great, only thing it needs more of is art and a way to change the art without flipping the card back and forth. Random crafting menu scaling with the int stat is brilliant and playing a mage vs rogue I saw the difference. Great job, what is left to add and when do you plan on releasing?
Thank you so much fren, this is such a lovely comment!
More images won't be added to the base "pack" for both balance reasons (The more images you have, the less you will get duplicates), and because I don't wanna keep blowing the budget on them, at least for now.
What's left is the 4 "cutscene" images for the rogue, another 8 images for events and menu buttons (Waiting on the artists), 3 music tracks, and steam integration, I should be releasing January or February!
Thanks again for your comment and if you ever stream or record you playing please let me know c:
I see, I guess I just wanted more art for the custom cards but I understand. It seems so close so best of luck on the steam release and I'll be there! Also I play DD games over 2 weeks thus the lateness so a stream or video is unlikely, too busy with life haha.
That's fair, but yeah only 10 images per color. A lot of people asked for a better way of choosing the image when crafting so I'll add that.
Either way, thanks again for playing and I'll be trying out your demo later today!
I love card games, I will give it another try but so far I only had time for 1 run so I'll give me first impressions.
It feels a lot like a mix between Magic the Gathering and Hearthstone which is fine but I did find most of the card effects to not be all that exciting. Maybe its just because its your starting deck. There was a card that gives stats to another card when it enters the board but it could also target itself which felt weird to me but maybe I'm just used to it being different in other games. I'm not sure how much you want to focus on the AI but there was an instance when the AI could prevent losing but didn't. I had 5 damage and he was at 4 hp and he blocked the creature that dealt 1 damage because it was a good trade for him (if he had the life to survive). Overall pretty interesting idea but I'd love to see a lot more flashy effects and rewards for this kind of game
Hey fren, thanks for your comment.
The minion that gives stats to another card can target itself because the "trigger time" reads "When this minion enters the battlefield, put a +1/+1 counter on target minion" which means the minion has to successfully enter the battlefield for it to trigger, and in turn, the minion itself is a valid target by the time you decide targets for its ability. At least that's the logic behind it.
It seems you played as the Warrior which is the most "beginner-friendly" class, so the cards and effects its starting deck has, are quite simple. I recommend you give the Trickster or the Archeologist a try if you want a more complex starting deck! Also, some combinations of Equipment pieces make for quite interesting and explosive decks.
Regarding the AI, yeah, it's all made by me without any sort of learning algorithm or advanced things like that, so it behaves sub-optimally in some situations.
I hope you get the other classes a try and let me know if you need help with unlocking anything and whatnot.
Cheers!
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2292515959
First time trying this out. First off random notes:
- Mana symbol on cards looks way different from mana symbol you have on the game table
- The symbol on the upper right side of cards is unclear. I guess it’s the rarity, but then it needn’t be so prominent, as it has no meaning in game-play, or?
- Flavour text talks about "delve deeper" yet on the map you keep going up, not down
- Shop says "Owned: 2" on cards instead of "New Variant"
- Card variants seem to have nothing in common except the artwork and the "color" (color doesn’t even seem to matter at all)
- Cards with multiple effects may not be prompting clearly enough about which effect you are targeting. For a "nuke 1 / buff 1" effect I kept clicking on the same enemy creature for both, because I was not sure my first click had gotten registered.
- Generally the level of polish is quite high, I mean, UI looks kinda like slop, but at least it’s very functional slop and has good sound and visual effects for clicks and so on. Tutorialization is also well integrated and feels professional.
My subjective take on this game design. CCG are inherently fun. Even without any rogue aspect, deck building is about mixing and matching the cards that you have available to create a machine that will surprise even yourself at times with its chance interactions. This aspect works well in Card Artisan just like in other CCG. But there’s some aspects that make it kinda worse.
Crafting is not very interesting. Finding cards at merchants and so on is way more exciting than deterministically creating puny effects (mostly the cost to make a good card seems immensely high) on custom cards. Also the wide range of available effects makes it kinda … boring and overwhelming at once. As Mark Rosewater preaches, restrictions breed creativity. I think a card crafting system can be cool, but it needs a more limited range of choices imho. It could work like you find a "diamond quality" effect for card drawing. That would be "draw 4"; where bronze quality would be "draw 1". And then you combine that effect with a trigger. Bronze quality trigger would be harder to satisfy, e.g. "whenever your opponent destroys one of your creatures with an effect". And diamond quality would be very regular like just "at the start of each turn". Just as an example. This would give me the roguelite excitement about finding high quality "pieces" that I can combine with other pieces to create insane effects. With the current system, I see myself just crafting the same "meh" cards every run, and I’m not very excited for that.
The encounters. This is a fundamental problem in this type of "serial 1v1" roguelite type of game. You so easily lose by just running up against a build that "counters" yours. One Armed Bandit e.g. had the same issue. The Bazaar (which is multiplayer, admittedly) tries to solve it by giving you some amount of lives >1. In games that are more focused on execution, you can always learn to play against your counters, or you can run away from them. In deck builders it’s just frustrating. Idk how the big entries (StS and so on) solve it, I haven’t played them. Maybe the genre just isn’t for me.
Ah ye, a few words on the actual game rules. It feels like a watered down MtG that removes some checks and balances without adding anything interesting. I think it’s curious to implement Magic’s interrupt-system in a PvE game of all things. That system is mostly about enabling player interaction at all times, avoiding the situation of one side sitting back and being bored. That’s not a problem in PvE. And there are some cool designs (Lorcana, the old WH CCGs) that split up MtG’s system in a way that players are taking turns without interrupting each other, but still have high interaction. I would love to play such a thing on the computer.
K, hope some of this is useful to you.
Hello fren,
First of all, thank you so much for your lengthy comment and playthrough video. It's really appreciated.
I'll address some of your comments below.
-I don't quite understand what you mean with Mana symbols looking different on the game table. Maybe you mean that the mana on the UI is a circle/ball and like a hexagon on the card. In this case, yeah this is an issue that I tried but wasn't able to address myself, so I'll need to get the help of an artist to improve it.
-You are correct, it is the card rarity and it has no relevance to the gameplay basically at all other than giving the player an idea of how strong a card is. The only reason it is the way it is is because I wanted to make the card symmetrical and couldn't come up with a better design.
- The map "going up" is a fair criticism, but I've tried making it go down instead and made for a bad UX at least with the assets and design I have going on, so I keep it going "up". While I get it is a bit silly think of the map being like in front of you instead of a top down view and that way maybe it makes a little more sense?
-The shop says "Owned: 2" because you have two copies of a card, so when you buy that card you know you'll get the showcased variant, and a third copy of that art. It is this way because you might want the card for the variant you are purchasing, or you might want it for an additional copy of a card you already own.
-Variants don't share anything except card art and color, this is correct. While this might seem a bit silly, please keep in mind that every card in the game other than the starting decks is randomly generated every time you play. Regarding card generation and colors, each color has a subset of effects it has an affinity with. For example "Sharshooter" cards among other effects, are more likely to generate "Deal x damage to any target" kind of effects. The effects have an 85~% influence, but the other 15% of the time you might get any other color's effect.
-Whenever you click a targetable target, a big purple effect with sparks and whatnot spawns on top of the thing you clicked, but I will try to make it clearer by maybe making the text for the part of the effect you are currently targeting for, a different color while you target or something to that effect.
-The UI is a bit slop because I used asset store assets for most of it and did what I could with it. Having an artist work on them proper would be really nice but is a bit out of my budget at the moment. That said, screens like the Meta progress upgrade screen are particularly sloppy. Thank you for your comment on the tutorials, I tried my best! Also thanks for pointing out the spelling error in your vod.
-Regarding crafting, from what I saw on your vod, it looked like you never spent any gems on your cards, so the casting cost remained super high. The times you tried using gems the cost didn't go down because the effect and timing you wanted were quite strong, so getting them cheaper required a hefty amount of crystals. However, for balance reasons, the "max" casting cost is capped and balanced around your current difficulty level. This is a flaw that I realize now I have to address since a new player would feel the gems are doing nothing, but in fact, you just needed more gems, or going for a different timing.
The amount of available crafting options is based on your INT stat, I believe you had around 8 effects to choose from when first crafting, and while it is a fair amount, that's a random pile you get out of 60+ possible effects, so it is still working with restriction.
Funny that you mention "Crystals" for effects because that's what they originally were, and in fact, in the back end, the effects and timings you get as options for crafting still behave like crystals on an invisible inventory. I moved into the current system because having to drop the effects was tedious and also getting an effect you didn't want at all would mean you were stuck with it through the whole run instead of getting a new set of effects on each forge. However, there are probably ways of making it work and I might try new approaches for this mechanic in the future.
Regarding encounters, the way that, for example, StS approaches it is "Don't build this kind of deck without any way to deal with its counters because the final boss might be a counter to your deck and you won't be able to win" Here the solution is somewhat similar. You can either go "All-in" with a specific strategy and pray you don't encounter your counter, or make sure you include some safety options in your deck. You can probably beat most runs on lower difficulty levels without much of a worry about deckbuilding against counters, but for higher DL's, there are some tools that you really wanna have in your deck, like at least one card that shuffles your graveyard into your deck and so on.
Regarding player interaction, I think you make a very fair point. I made this game mostly based on what I like and what kind of game/gameplay I wanted to make, which might be to the detriment of the final product's marketability and widespread appeal. I don't think I would be changing that aspect of the game this late in development since I want to complete this project and put it out there, but again, you make a very good argument and going that way would probably be more attractive for more people.
Again, thanks for your feedback! Have a good one!
i'm having fullscreen resolution issues. i tried reenabling and disabling it, to no avail. the resolution itself is set to the correct one for my monitor, 1920 * 1080.
i can't really play like this, because part of the screen is missing.
i did not have this issue with previous builds.
Damn, sorry to hear that.
I feel like apps do this sometimes ? Have you tried enabling and disabling fullscreen or trying a different resolution or something?
I did fiddle with the settings menu this update but shouldn't cause this/