Post by Ryftik in Parallel Dungeons Demo comments

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Having played through more than a hundred times now, mini-bandaid should be cheaper by 1. Pretty much all the healing items are better.

Sword and Shield should be a repeatable item, not one use. It’s technically worse than knife which does 2 damage since it contributes less towards ending a round.

Nubby universes are too expensive towards the beginning. They have to survive a while to be worth it.

I wonder if final boss Doctor’s frequency is bugged. I get him a lot less than Medusa or Princess.

I just now discovered infinite money mode exists so I can play test hands.

I think the cheapest hand I can consistently beat the game with is Dagger, Wave Collapse, Icy Breath, Recycle, Auto Energy (to make deck duplicator’s frequency increase), Deck Duplicator. I got about all of those (subbing EMP for freeze) in one real run plus a few things I didn’t need and got 827.25. If you got lucky, picking up the quarter for each universe defeated, the ten dollar bill, and the blind for 5 I bet you could break 1000 points.

Ethan Clark (EPICPIKAGUY)17 days ago(+1)

I'll check Doctor's frequency.

Nubby is expensive because making a new universe is a huge deal. One strategy is to get ten dollar bill (lowers max HP and gives you money), then get nubby, then recover a few times to get some max HP back. Nubby is still a risk though, but that's by design.

Sword and shield was originally multi-use but I found it was pretty overpowered. Getting at least two sword and shields means you can easily play nothing but that item and steamroll enemies. It felt bad to have such an effective strategy based on only spamming a single item.

I'll check tiny band-aid.

Ryftik16 days ago (1 edit)

I’ve tried nubby a half dozen times, and even with aggressive healing and the tactic you suggested, there is enough chaos that the dollars invested probably pans out less than 50% of the time. Kobold, that guy with Silence, and the Knight pretty heavily punish low HP and right-side universe situations and it is pretty common to get one of them, so you have to keep investing on healing. I’ll buy a nubby before a final fight if I think I can roll over boss (e.g. I’ve got EMP and some other shield game vs. Princess), but I’d rather reroll most days.

Maybe the balance with sword and shield is to only add shield if you don’t have more than one or two.

Ethan Clark (EPICPIKAGUY)16 days ago

I’ll look into lowering the cost of nubby. It’s probably okay to lower it; honestly you could make an argument that an entirely free nubby wouldn’t be too unbalanced since a 6 max HP universe is as much of a liability as it is an opportunity.

Ryftik16 days ago (1 edit)

The math works out that you can get 8 extra dollars in play if you keep it alive the whole game. I feel like progressively making it more expensive is the best strat so when you are really cash strapped at the beginning you can try to farm it, but if you just want to gamble for points at the end, you better be confident.

MetaMetaPuzzle17 days ago

As an example of what is meant, a Nubby universe gives you an extra dollar after each round if you win. I built a random collection of objects without too much deckbuilding strategy, bought a nubby before the first fight, and I scored 955.05.

I would suggest a balance check for wave collapse, it's extremely good in my opinion

Ryftik16 days ago (9 edits)

Re. Wave Collapse, I feel like there is a conundrum. If you don’t invest in attack items because you are doing a status or shield flip type run, it is pretty hard to win without it because you are in rounds for so long because your attack is flat out bad with the defaults. Going without it on non-attack runs feels like a punishment for attempting any sort of ‘creativity.’ And part of the problem with that is many of the other healing items are pretty situational - if the healing situation were more balanced, wave collapse could be better regulated. And I’m not really sure how to approach that without a lot of tweaking and playtesting.

If you go gangbusters on attack items and shuffles, wave collapse lets you coast. I feel like the balance would be to reduce frequency/increase cost of wave collapse if too many attack items or increase frequency/decrease cost if you purchase more status items and are clearly going for something kind of “off brand.”

Ultimately I’d rather play a fun game than a perfectly balanced game, and wave collapse works in that direction. And the runs that I remember most fondly were probably my first or second run where it came together right away where I had poison and flip and could nab shields, and that one absolutely bonkers run where I think I somehow lootboxed a second deck duplicator (I really wish you could see what you bought at the end of a run because I wish I could verify what I did for that one - I was still learning the ropes.) and wound up with 46 energy.

But one way I would balance wave collapse is to make sure you can’t have more than one, even with deck duplicator.

But mostly, I think the biggest missing item right now is a healing item that gets more effective when you have fewer universes. That would truly make those low universe runs viable, playing close to the edge.

Its pair would be an item that heals if you lost a universe in the current round.

Ethan Clark (EPICPIKAGUY)16 days ago(+2)

> I really wish you could see what you bought at the end of a run because I wish I could verify what I did for that one - I was still learning the ropes.

That’s in the game now, and will be coming to the updated demo I’ll put out very soon. The fix was as simple as making sure the “view deck” button was still visible on the end screen.

> [there should be a healing item that heals you if you’ve lost]

I’ll probably make an item like that for the Medic (a character in the full game) since that seems like a good fit.

> [there should be a healing item for low universe runs]

“Miracle” heals (if I recall) five HP in the universe of your choosing, which IMO is generally more useful the fewer universes you have. It occurs to me that I could have the shop be more likely to stock items that it thinks are more useful to your current run, which might be necessary given how “bloated” the item selection has become.

> [wave collapse is kinda OP]

I intentionally made it VERY powerful and one of the best items in the game, because IMO it’s fun and ties in very nicely with the “themes” of the game systems.

Ryftik13 days ago (7 edits)

[there should be a healing item for low universe runs]

“Miracle” heals (if I recall) five HP in the universe of your choosing, which IMO is generally more useful the fewer universes you have. It occurs to me that I could have the shop be more likely to stock items that it thinks are more useful to your current run, which might be necessary given how “bloated” the item selection has become.

The thing about those single universe target items is they take up a whole deck slot. I feel like there a sweetspot that is “Once per floor, pay 4 energy for 20 healing divided evenly across all universes you have, rounded down.” So if you have a four universe run, it’s super nifty, but a waste of a card in many universe situations.

Agree with your logic on wave collapse. It helps with the fun.

And also agreed on adjusting the shop inventory to match your current situation!

itch.io

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