The game felt very responsive and functional. I liked your tutorial, it did a good job explaining how to play. I think you did a good job on the technical aspects of the game. The AI was pretty good. All the systems worked as I expected. I guess I have a hero ability when I click that little banner button. I clicked it but it damaged me instead (using the archer). I think I should be able to select a unit I want to affect with my hability. And if I want to target myself, then I just select myself. Overall I think the most challenging part will be to find a cohesive visual identity for the game. The card art is well rendered anime style. The UI looks mobile, and simple in comparison. You will need to invest on having everything "match". If you go with this anime style for the cards, perhaps you could have an oriental theme to the whole UI. I like the map, where you choose where you want to fight. Reminded me of another card game, Yu-Gi-Oh forbidden memories for the ps1 haha. Those are my 2 cents. Keep up the good work!
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SlayQueen: The Gatekeeper's itch.io pageComments
Hey,
I've played a bit of the campaign mode, and I have to agree with other comments : this feels really hearthstone-like.
- The main mechanics are mostly the same (heros, weapons, hero power, mana system with a +1 each turn, taunt, battlecry, etc.)
- Some cards are carbon copies (3 damage for 2 that freezes, "fireball" 6 damage for 4 mana, a troll looking guy which is a 4/5 for 4 mana, etc.)
Right now, the card game itself seems to not be doing a lot of original things (mind you, I didn't play that much).
Also, some UI elements feels a bit weird. For example, the hero power of your character requires you to hold the mouse click to then select the target. If you just click it (as I did, expecting a "click to activate --> click to select target"), then it default to hitting yourself. I had similar kind of issues with battlecry cards.
I'll also add a small comment on the art which I assume to be AI generated. I understand that the game is in an early development stage and that you can't necessarily get cool looking cards without a huge time or money investment, but I think it does go with the lack of identity the card game currently has. The different cards lack a coherent theme which kinda makes it a bit hard to get attached to the cards you obtain, or to get inspirations for deck building. Having a clear theme for different kinds of archetypes really helps to make a card game more interesting. Even something as simple as visually looking alike could be enough (like, all the blue-looking cards kinda working together for example). I would even say that having less details can make cards easier to identify. You can look at a game like Quantum protocol to see how a very simple art style when it comes to card design goes a long way to make it distinctive and easy to want to build with.
So yeah, the base is here for a card game, and it seems there is enough content currently in the game to play and have fun, but it lacks distinctiveness making it hard to really want to play more.
thanks for playing
Also, some UI elements feels a bit weird. For example, the hero power of your character requires you to hold the mouse click to then select the target. If you just click it (as I did, expecting a "click to activate --> click to select target"), then it default to hitting yourself. I had similar kind of issues with battlecry cards.
I am torn on this, because if you had a battlecry where you wanted to target yourself like a heal, there' no way to distinguish intent. I will think about this.
For the art, it's from a asset pack. I am wondering if going full AI would actually improve the art...
The overall theme of the game is Heaven vs Hell in a fantasy world.
The synergies are there. many Hearthstone Launch archetypes are fully implemented. Maybe they're not as obvious because you're not forced to use the cards in a certain class.
Played the campaign mode and got through a level 1 woods dungeon, then tried arena for a couple of rounds.
- It's pretty much a knockoff hearthstone. Pretty much all the mechanics are the same as far as I'm aware, which makes it easy to pick up, but hard to sell on why anyone would play it.
- I think that if the card game aspect is the same, then I'd like the part outside of the cards to be different. The non-arena mode is pretty much just aimless deckbuilding to play matches, while HS would have ranked matchmaking to contextualize why you want to do that. It might help if there was some clear goal you want your players to work towards, and show progress towards that goal.
- >Gargoyle Bat 01: "Every time you pee you poop from your butt" ????
- Card games need a lot of art, so I can't really fault you for having limited and inconsistent card art, but having names just be Entin 01 until Entin 03 with just a colour filter on it is pretty lacklustre. At least give them proper names.
- The rest of the UI looks decently polished (albeit in that slop mobile game style), but the text contents tend to show a lack of care in the inconsistent capitalizations and phrasing.
It's pretty much a knockoff hearthstone. Pretty much all the mechanics are the same as far as I'm aware, which makes it easy to pick up, but hard to sell on why anyone would play it.
There is a game Shandalar which is "MTG but singleplayer" which has some fans and I was thinking a Hearthstone version would be similarly interesting.
I wonder if Dungeon progress x/7 which fills up would be enough for people to try and beat each dungeon.
I like it! Especially the arena.
Arena feels balanced and very replayable (played two games deep).
With the dungeons I couldn't beat the initial swamp without getting booster packs (and after getting them it became too easy). But I was still getting the hang of the mechanics, so maybe that's why.
The open-ended design of the overworld confused me a bit, not sure why should I go to one location over another.
It would be nice to have a way to visually determine if the minion attacked already.
Overall very good!
Two bugs I've encountered:
1. In the arena the card pool doesn't reset on returning to the main menu, but the deck does.
2. Lots of taunt popups in the lobby between arena battle (an empty card prefab?)
thanks for the report.
The "point" of the overworld is that it's a bunch of challenges for the player to beat while improving their deck. Maybe I can explicitly say "Defeat all the dungeons to beat the game"
The Visual for minion attacked already is that it's missing the green highlight. Maybe it's not as visible as I thought.
thanks for the bug report.
Would like to see some original cards, all of them look like hearthstone card effects. The deck master idea is interesting but it's way better to pick 1 mana cards from what I've seen. Also is there any restriction for your deck? It says 30 cards but you start with less and I was able to play with less without any issues.
The gameplay seems to work fine, didn't encounter any bugs and I managed to beat the arena! The AI has terrible decks but the increasing health made it kind of a challenge.
I'd say being able to play with an undersized deck makes it too easy, because you can take just one card that grants double-attack or taunt and etc. and chain them with certainty onto a supermonster, and have the rest of your cards be maxmagic and walls, with a leader-archer or something to make up for inconsistency. I found a 15 card deck was the strongest. I don't think it's a bad thing, since you need to worry about boardclearing cards and such, and it being singleplayer the balance isn't that important.
Daffodils as a leader card is crazy though, it just turns into endless board-wipes at 10, it sticks out too much for countering it to be fun unless it was a set challenge-match where you play one round knowing what's coming. And it's exploitable in the worst ways, where I'm not sure there's any counter to a healwall Daffodils deck-out strategy, except the passive agony of participating in that. You go minus for clearing the field with a card, but in a game where monsters can't attack on the first turn being able to click board-wipe each turn is too much.
I'd also really like the card-packs to be location specific, if they aren't already and I just got unlucky. I went to get a card I wanted from the area I thought gave it out but then got completely unrelated cards.
And I think it's best not to increase the number of rounds with the difficulty level, since the enemy health is already higher so it combines to make clearing it take more than 4 times longer or something at level 3.
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