Skip to main content

Indie game storeFree gamesFun gamesHorror games
Game developmentAssetsComics
SalesBundles
Jobs
TagsGame Engines
(3 edits) (+1)

I found this on incrementaldb, this is probably one of my favorite games I’ve seen in awhile. It’s really good!

I haven’t played stacklands, so these kinds of card dragging games are new to me, but I like how it plays. It reminds me of a neat concept I found in the devlog of another game, which is context sensitivity. Everything is just dragging cards so it’s easy to understand new concepts as they’re introduced, like visiting town, crafting, dungeons, etc.

I also surprisingly liked the crafting. I went barbarian so I tried all the bone needle and lash combinations to find something with a high attack speed, it’s fun preparing a stack of like 20 lashes and then marking off all the combinations until you find a good one. It reminds me of those element combiner games, but especially Infinite Craft. I was glad to only see 231 possible recipes because if it was like 1000+ or infinite I think I would’ve lost interest.

I needed a bunch of rope and in the process of farming the woods, I ended up with a ton of trees I didn’t want and they were getting in the way. I’d like some way to prevent so many trees from stacking up, like maybe a way to stack them, delete them, queue them, rush them for less resources, a maximum number of cards from the woods you can have out at once, etc.

The game is pretty hard on my browser, I’m pretty sure that’s just the web though and the desktop version on steam will run fine.

The themes are pretty (i also didn’t know they were there). I ended up liking Stained Glass and Meadow more than the default, especially the card colors of Meadow and the background color of Stained Glass.

I’m confused what the resources did when leveling up my pet and what it turned into. It’s a Spark Baboon?? I fed it mostly rope, flint, bones, and stone I think. I like making bad decisions so I wanted to feed it 20 rope to see what happens, but I changed my mind halfway through

When you zoom out, some words like “Berries” and “Arcanite” get split at awkward spots. They could get a little smaller instead (idk how you’d do that) or maybe spill out a little bit, like negative margins in CSS

All of the text could be a little bigger, it’s hard to read even in fullscreen

When I have like 80 wood I like splitting off 60 to sacrifice. I have to drag off 20 pieces of wood individually first, it’d be easier if there was a way to split stacks. I can drag all but one, but that leaves me with 1 wood and I want to have some leftover.

Making the pet “queue” things by surrounding it with tasks you want done is great. Having it bounce around randomly and do things gives you a surprising amount of control by spatially organizing cards on the board. If you don’t want it to activate a card, just take it away. It’s kind of funny looking away for a second and then returning to see it spawned some monsters and started fighting them, the pet is literally getting into trouble which is very monkey-like

It’s a little confusing that you’re taught about breaking down unwanted weapons but can’t break down the dead-ends, especially for the arcanite weapons. The bonus XP is nice though.

If you use all of a resource (like the XP things), it’d be nice if the next one you get is put back in the same spot. I keep a stack of the XP cards next to the level up card but after using them they usually show up somewhere else. You can do this by just clicking and dragging all but one, but it’d be nice

I think cards that are occupied could stand out more, especially when zoomed out

A way to filter or sort weapons would be useful, like searching “bone needle” for the tier 2 bone needle combos, or sorting discovered recipes by attack speed.

The way entering a village works with its own dedicated board is fantastic. I didn’t even know you could move the interior village card itself until I needed some space and realized you could move it and the NPCs

I think I exhausted most of the available content, but I was still having fun with it and wanted to keep playing.

Also, idk how I feel about the quest timers. The dungeon and traveller timers were fine though.

While it wasn’t really an issue while I was playing, I’d like if middle click only panned and didn’t move cards

Offering a huge stack of items is like the best thing ever

This is what my board looked like near the end if you’re curious: image.png

This game is really good, even if you weren’t aiming for the incremental crowd lol. I’m looking forward to any future updates

Wow, you definetely won the prize for the most thorough comment about the game left everywhere at all. Thanks a lot for this, the feedback is very valuable and the fact that you enjoyed it is motivating.


> I’d like some way to prevent so many trees from stacking up, like maybe a way to stack them, delete them, queue them, rush them for less resources, a maximum number of cards from the woods you can have out at once, etc.

Thats the new one! I thought of deposit stacking previously, but one of the latest version with autonomous pet behaviour made it messier to implement so I postponed it for now. But I didn't think of rush them for less resources. That's a feature worth thinking about, don't know how, but never crossed my mind at all even though it's a pretty cool solution

> The game is pretty hard on my browser, I’m pretty sure that’s just the web though and the desktop version on steam will run fine.

While desktop build (that since it works on electron just runs a crhomium based wrapper anyway) might solve the issue partially I'd still offer you to play a bit with "stack collapse" setting. When stacks collapse earlier it will lead to less rendering and might help with performance. I added it exactly for that. Hope it will work for you at some level

> I’m confused what the resources did when leveling up my pet and what it turned into. It’s a Spark Baboon?? I fed it mostly rope, flint, bones, and stone I think. I like making bad decisions so I wanted to feed it 20 rope to see what happens, but I changed my mind halfway through

Evolution work such way that it evolves into the form related with materials you fed pet the most. So since its sparkling you ended up feeding mostly flint. Or at least that how it's intended to work. I tried to hint at plot card that it will work better if you feed only one material - this way you'll unlock pet's true form and can get to named form later

> When I have like 80 wood I like splitting off 60 to sacrifice. I have to drag off 20 pieces of wood individually first, it’d be easier if there was a way to split stacks. I can drag all but one, but that leaves me with 1 wood and I want to have some leftover.

I even started to implement a way two versions ago with special "split" buttons but ended up being SO laggy, so unfortunately I had to scrap it. Your description pushed me to thinking of Using three cards instead of two for collapsed stacks where second card would work as middle card in the stack. But in will damage low spec machines performance

> If you use all of a resource (like the XP things), it’d be nice if the next one you get is put back in the same spot

That's the coolest one tbh and the best recomendation I got yet. Yes, other players told me the board gets messy pretty quick, but your order with slots is pretty interesting. I'll try to dig into it. Thanks a lot for this one

> A way to filter or sort weapons would be useful, like searching “bone needle” for the tier 2 bone needle combos, or sorting discovered recipes by attack speed.

I will totally work on better recipe book dialog window layout


Thanks again for the feedback. I'll address two more spesific things that needed to address separately in other two separate responses

First addition:

> This game is really good, even if you weren’t aiming for the incremental crowd lol. I’m looking forward to any future updates

Check out this post: https://sshulin.itch.io/soulstack-demo/devlog/1511627/bumped-to-v030-thanks-to-i...

TLDR: As regular solo indie gamedev I make the most common mistake ever - I don't target anyone and just make games based on what I usually play myself. And since I played too many incrementals every game I do end up being incremental in some way

Second addition:

> I think I exhausted most of the available content, but I was still having fun with it and wanted to keep playing.

I bet you didn't! I challenge you to show me a screenshot of your prestige tree. Especially the familiars evolutions branch. How many scorpions did you evolve to named forms? Or turtles? Or eagles? Pets discoverability is the mecahnics exactly for such completionists as you (in a good way), but it's pretty demanding