After playing 13 different runs of signs of the sojourner, I'm really excited to try another novel card game format. I found this game while trawling the rougelike tag and I bought it right away. I'm really excited!
I hope it's good, but this sort of game concept is so my jam that I'll like it even if it's bad. I just downloaded it and I'm really excited to play!
oh omg I already beat the game 3 times now and I'm having trouble thinking of it-- if I knew you were going to ask that question I would have taken a screenshot. I think the first time I beat the game I used a lot of things that enhanced my ability to shield myself and attack, like shields up, shield bash, and the one that gives your shield thorns, along with forge?? Also venomous bite, volley, healing rain, health potion. Extra attack cards, meditate, full moon, corrupted aether. In later games I got a lot better at using combos and prioritized flexibility.
I tend to play really defensively in most games so I struggle sometimes to get enough damaging cards in my hands. At one point I had to give up because I got call of the void early and I couldn't get enough damage cards going, and eventually my hand filled up with shield spells and my enemy couldn't damage me or do anything. So I had to concede. It was really silly.
edit: oh omg and necrotic blast-- it's so useful!! It's kind of hard to time since you need like 3 AP at the start of your turn to really use it to its full potential but it's a lot of fun, especially chained with fire blast. I really like how well-tuned the difficulty is and it feels kind of fair? That's actually the reason I tend to prefer rougelite games or hardcore modes-- a lot of other games feel really unfair in favor of the player, and it feels like the game is just letting me win. I think my favorite card is probably seance. Edit 2: turns out it's actually radiant burst!
aaaa I really like radiant burst, it really suits my preferred playstyle (without feeling _too_ powerful, i suppose? I mean fireblast is straight 3 damage and way less complicated to play for the same cost)
I've won again and it's pretty cool how the game keeps track of your playtimes for you for speedrunning records!!!
Honestly there's so much more to this game besides just the gameplay-- not only is taking the basic structure and coming up with all sorts of ways to play with the rules in order to come up with cards a lot of work (and theming those cards for this game a lot of work too,), but-- your use of color in this game is really good, you make the most of the limited color pallet to make a game that feels almost retro but also not. I counted a black, a white, a grey, a red, a blue, a teal-green, a yellow-orange, a dark magenta, a dark blue, and a brown? And they're used super well and convey a lot of information (without being relied on to the exclusion of colorblind people!) The aesthetic feels kind of grungy to me? Which, I really like. Oh, and the music... it does a really really good job at conveying tone and theming and it just feels nice to listen to, if kind of spooky?
The story is really interesting, the characters and creatures are all really unique... I like how it has 3 different boss fights so it doesn't feel repetitive to win. Most games don't have this kind of re-play value... (which I mean is fine I am an undertale fan after all!) so I really appreciate it. The value per dollar is pretty high to me (I'm broke so that's pretty important!) I really like how games are fast-- I don't have time to play videogames for more than 20 minutes or so at a time; i really like that even my longest playtimes are within that window. It feels like a game that doesn't waste any time.
The coding seem 2 be really good since it takes up relatively little disc space and runs smoothly even on my glorified word processor. Like it's a nice game all around?
