Okay you got me, I'm hooked. I am interested in seeing the second chapter of this if it will ever come.
I found myself saving a lot, which I am happy about because death endings were quite common (especially with my fight first attitude!). Not that the death endings are a bad thing, they're fun surprises in a morbid kind of way.
I found myself getting some theories throughout the game. Mainly the one that the character we play as is the child of death or the girl leaning more towards the MC. The stuff mentioned about them definitely makes me feel pushed in that direction.
I like the combat, I kind of hope you make the King, Queen, and Jack cards do something special because they kind of feel like like reskins of the 10 card which makes them feel redundant once you realize that they're all the same or maybe I have not found the difference between them.
Anyways that's all I am writing for now because if I put all of my thoughts it might get too long, I hope you keep working on this and if you aren't anymore then you did well for what you made, well enough for me to make an account for this comment.
I'm sorry there's been no updates in ages - I'm trying to get better at both coding and art so that I can tell the story I want to properly - and while progress has been slow, hopefully the day I can get back into the flow of writing this will be soon!
Have a great day (and sorry again for the delays) :D
This, I must say, was a pretty nice start ! I'm a bit ashamed we can't use the time to visit the town to check on what happened on coffee gal. There is a bit too much thread left open so I'm waiting for the continuation of the story!
However, I have to say that I was less appealed by the combat. The idea itself is pretty fun, but the implementation was not my cup of tea: at the end of the day I just felt like clearing or not a combat round was entierly at RNG's mercy, which is not exactly fun to play.
One last nitpick: what happened to all of that water in the basement? (fair warning: it's pretty late here, so I may have dumbly missed the explanation, apologize if it is the case)
Thank you! And thank you for the feedback! I’m working on a quick hotfix where I’ll absolutely include a lil option to check up on the barista’s situation :D
Combat is definitely an area I’d like to improve – for the current stuff, I want to tune down the enemy’s numbers so that it doesn’t grind the pacing to a halt. The goal is to have affinities with things like “War” and “Death” affect in-combat numbers (so that playing a more “evil” route could potentially make combat easier/open up options to deal with more things violently) as well as a couple other things that'll pop up later, but I’m still working on a way to add more skill expression into the core loop!
(As for the disappearing liquid, I think I might’ve straight up forgotten to write the line explaining how it had seeped away – although now that I’ve got the time, I should probably just draw a couple puddles to help solve the issue :D)
Barista check: done ! Thanks for that (and why am I not surprised by the answer there~)
Somehow, combat felt way easier that playthrough! I don't think there was more than two round when I didn't get enough power to beat the opponent, which was radically different than last time. did the number were adjusted slightly, or was it just a very different luck?
> The goal is to have affinities with things like “War” and “Death” affect in-combat numbers
That's a pretty interesting idea! I do get more violent choice does increase war level, but Death level felt a bit less clear in what would increase it, and if they were a good or bad choices (like, asking maggot what will happen to her when you bite does increase your death score - which did not make me associate death with a negative choice. Since bitting her without saying a thing increase life, stats may have been reversed there?)
As for the flooded cave, some element that does disturb me is actually the description of the cave on your second visit: The text mention nothing moved at all - which is not exactly what would I expect from a cave visited by a huge amount of pretty insistent water suddenly entering.
Keep on the good work! I'll wait patiently fore more content o>
Ah yeah! I tuned down the enemy numbers so it will hopefully flow nicer now! I’ve thought of some ways that should make combat feel less rng-dependant/make the player input matter more for in the future when battles become a bit more challenging, whilst also keeping it simple. I just need to figure out how to make it work xD
As for the affinities, I’ll try to hold off mentioning it here as there’ll be a bit in the story that will properly explain what behaviours increase which affinities (and also why they don’t increase based on what they intuitively should)
And ah whoops, I think that was a line I was supposed to change! I was planning to mention that stuff on the floor had been jostled around a bit in the update :o I should probably also put more focus on the player shutting the trapdoor quickly when they first leave
On the combat department: currently, it did indeed felt less frustrating, sadly not yet engaging.
The more I think of the combat, the less I see how to balance it (guess writing my thoughts about it gave me some inspiration, sorry for the essay~) : if the card roll does not give you enough power, or a winning combination, it does just feel frustrating. I don't remember how monster damage is computed, but I never had the feeling I could do something to minimize the damage taken. It felt more like "roll a dice? no luck? you're screwed that turn!"
On the other hand, when the cards are too generous, it become so easy to break the seal and keep 10+ damage than having the right number don't really matter anymore. - in that case it's on the bland side by the lack of challenge.
The card matching is only enjoyable when your available resources is pretty close the the monster's card ; in your favor, so it become a puzzle of "how can I break all rack as much damage as I can" - however it is not that rewarding since you're only able to rack 2 or 3 extra point of damage on a pretty big health bar, and I do assume that will become stale pretty quick too.
In all cases, I think this system is, for now, a pure optimisation problem that sadly don't propose the player any meaningful or long term choice. Note than I have zero idea on the kind of player you target, nor if having a challenging/brain racking fight are your objective - having something simple that change for the story may be your goal, in that case it's pretty spot on (even if not my cup of tea) - in short: please stay true to your game vision! I'll be happy if any idea below inspire you or are used in the game, but only do so if it is in line with what you had in mind! (and also beware I have zero clue if these idea would really be fun, nor how long they would take to balance)
Not having enough resources to break everything could be OK, or even fun, if each card to break had specific effect, and you're tasked to decide which to destroy (like, "deal 3+X damage on player (X being the current card value)" ; "deal 20 damage", "this card heal the boss by 10" ; "when breaking, that card inflict 2x the extra amount as damage to the boss, up to 10" ; "if broken the boss will have 1 less card the next turn", "can only be broken by matching it value exactly, do XXXX")
Having more long term decision could also be nice. It could be done with card that last until destroyed ("deal 3 damage, then the card take 5 damage, does not disappear at the end of the turn") ; or the ability to player to retain card from one round to the other and draw X between round - up to a certain hand size (this way they decide to either spend their card now, or have more card the next round). That ability to keep card would mesh well with some vision on what card the boss will play on the next turn (it create an "should I keep my card to counter that big attack that is coming, or should I try to dump as much damage as I can now?")
On alternative (or additional) idea to give more interesting decision to the player would be to give a "power" to each card. Currently, each card have a "if it stay in your hand, deal cardValue damage to the boss". Instead they could have a variety of effects ("draw an extra card next turn", "deal X damage to the boss" (that may not be the same value than what is on the card), "next turn, all extra card give +1 damage to the boss if kept in hand") to give the the player some thought about which card they may want to pick ; or if they prefer matching the boss's card value for the extra damage or keep specific cards instead.
Ooo, thank you for the nice ideas :D I've been messing around with the numbers and doing some playtesting, and yeah, the difficulty is definitely in finding that right balance between fun and unfair(and engaging/boring). I want to avoid it becoming a full MTG/Heartstone style tcg, but for it to still be an enjoyable change of pace between stretches of text. One minor change I'll probably make is booping the critical break damage up to about 5 - which so far has made the whole thing flow much nicer and allows for tougher fights with it still feeling more player-involved. This is poteeentially heading into spoiler territory, but the idea of cards doing more specialised things was actually where I'm (hopefully) planning to take the combat in the future :O (characters would get character-specific cards that could do specialised things, like destroy a defence-slot regardless of its value etc. - with each character having a focus) - but that's still very much in the oven xD I do like the strategy involved with holding onto cards, and I want to eventually try and create something that uses that, but that'll probably be when I have a clearer idea of how best to let it play to the player's advantage :O Ah, also one more idea I have that I've played around with a bit is actually to have defence-slots hidden at the start of each turn - but have them able to be revealed by burning a low attack against them - although I might save this only for specific enemies...
But aa thank you again! I'm gonna try and get special cards working so I can really start making the fights a bit spicier :D
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Okay you got me, I'm hooked. I am interested in seeing the second chapter of this if it will ever come.
I found myself saving a lot, which I am happy about because death endings were quite common (especially with my fight first attitude!). Not that the death endings are a bad thing, they're fun surprises in a morbid kind of way.
I found myself getting some theories throughout the game. Mainly the one that the character we play as is the child of death or the girl leaning more towards the MC. The stuff mentioned about them definitely makes me feel pushed in that direction.
I like the combat, I kind of hope you make the King, Queen, and Jack cards do something special because they kind of feel like like reskins of the 10 card which makes them feel redundant once you realize that they're all the same or maybe I have not found the difference between them.
Anyways that's all I am writing for now because if I put all of my thoughts it might get too long, I hope you keep working on this and if you aren't anymore then you did well for what you made, well enough for me to make an account for this comment.
Have a wonderful day. :D.
Thank you so much! And interesting theories :)
I'm sorry there's been no updates in ages - I'm trying to get better at both coding and art so that I can tell the story I want to properly - and while progress has been slow, hopefully the day I can get back into the flow of writing this will be soon!
Have a great day (and sorry again for the delays) :D
This, I must say, was a pretty nice start ! I'm a bit ashamed we can't use the time to visit the town to check on what happened on coffee gal. There is a bit too much thread left open so I'm waiting for the continuation of the story!
However, I have to say that I was less appealed by the combat. The idea itself is pretty fun, but the implementation was not my cup of tea: at the end of the day I just felt like clearing or not a combat round was entierly at RNG's mercy, which is not exactly fun to play.
One last nitpick: what happened to all of that water in the basement? (fair warning: it's pretty late here, so I may have dumbly missed the explanation, apologize if it is the case)
Thank you! And thank you for the feedback! I’m working on a quick hotfix where I’ll absolutely include a lil option to check up on the barista’s situation :D
Combat is definitely an area I’d like to improve – for the current stuff, I want to tune down the enemy’s numbers so that it doesn’t grind the pacing to a halt. The goal is to have affinities with things like “War” and “Death” affect in-combat numbers (so that playing a more “evil” route could potentially make combat easier/open up options to deal with more things violently) as well as a couple other things that'll pop up later, but I’m still working on a way to add more skill expression into the core loop!
(As for the disappearing liquid, I think I might’ve straight up forgotten to write the line explaining how it had seeped away – although now that I’ve got the time, I should probably just draw a couple puddles to help solve the issue :D)
Barista check: done ! Thanks for that (and why am I not surprised by the answer there~)
Somehow, combat felt way easier that playthrough! I don't think there was more than two round when I didn't get enough power to beat the opponent, which was radically different than last time. did the number were adjusted slightly, or was it just a very different luck?
> The goal is to have affinities with things like “War” and “Death” affect in-combat numbers
That's a pretty interesting idea! I do get more violent choice does increase war level, but Death level felt a bit less clear in what would increase it, and if they were a good or bad choices (like, asking maggot what will happen to her when you bite does increase your death score - which did not make me associate death with a negative choice. Since bitting her without saying a thing increase life, stats may have been reversed there?)
As for the flooded cave, some element that does disturb me is actually the description of the cave on your second visit: The text mention nothing moved at all - which is not exactly what would I expect from a cave visited by a huge amount of pretty insistent water suddenly entering.
Keep on the good work! I'll wait patiently fore more content o>
Ah yeah! I tuned down the enemy numbers so it will hopefully flow nicer now! I’ve thought of some ways that should make combat feel less rng-dependant/make the player input matter more for in the future when battles become a bit more challenging, whilst also keeping it simple. I just need to figure out how to make it work xD
As for the affinities, I’ll try to hold off mentioning it here as there’ll be a bit in the story that will properly explain what behaviours increase which affinities (and also why they don’t increase based on what they intuitively should)
And ah whoops, I think that was a line I was supposed to change! I was planning to mention that stuff on the floor had been jostled around a bit in the update :o I should probably also put more focus on the player shutting the trapdoor quickly when they first leave
And aaa thank you! :D
You're welcooome!
On the combat department: currently, it did indeed felt less frustrating, sadly not yet engaging.
The more I think of the combat,
the less I see how to balance it(guess writing my thoughts about it gave me some inspiration, sorry for the essay~) : if the card roll does not give you enough power, or a winning combination, it does just feel frustrating. I don't remember how monster damage is computed, but I never had the feeling I could do something to minimize the damage taken. It felt more like "roll a dice? no luck? you're screwed that turn!"On the other hand, when the cards are too generous, it become so easy to break the seal and keep 10+ damage than having the right number don't really matter anymore. - in that case it's on the bland side by the lack of challenge.
The card matching is only enjoyable when your available resources is pretty close the the monster's card ; in your favor, so it become a puzzle of "how can I break all rack as much damage as I can" - however it is not that rewarding since you're only able to rack 2 or 3 extra point of damage on a pretty big health bar, and I do assume that will become stale pretty quick too.
In all cases, I think this system is, for now, a pure optimisation problem that sadly don't propose the player any meaningful or long term choice.
Note than I have zero idea on the kind of player you target, nor if having a challenging/brain racking fight are your objective - having something simple that change for the story may be your goal, in that case it's pretty spot on (even if not my cup of tea) - in short: please stay true to your game vision! I'll be happy if any idea below inspire you or are used in the game, but only do so if it is in line with what you had in mind! (and also beware I have zero clue if these idea would really be fun, nor how long they would take to balance)
Not having enough resources to break everything could be OK, or even fun, if each card to break had specific effect, and you're tasked to decide which to destroy (like, "deal 3+X damage on player (X being the current card value)" ; "deal 20 damage", "this card heal the boss by 10" ; "when breaking, that card inflict 2x the extra amount as damage to the boss, up to 10" ; "if broken the boss will have 1 less card the next turn", "can only be broken by matching it value exactly, do XXXX")
Having more long term decision could also be nice. It could be done with card that last until destroyed ("deal 3 damage, then the card take 5 damage, does not disappear at the end of the turn") ; or the ability to player to retain card from one round to the other and draw X between round - up to a certain hand size (this way they decide to either spend their card now, or have more card the next round).
That ability to keep card would mesh well with some vision on what card the boss will play on the next turn (it create an "should I keep my card to counter that big attack that is coming, or should I try to dump as much damage as I can now?")
On alternative (or additional) idea to give more interesting decision to the player would be to give a "power" to each card. Currently, each card have a "if it stay in your hand, deal cardValue damage to the boss".
Instead they could have a variety of effects ("draw an extra card next turn", "deal X damage to the boss" (that may not be the same value than what is on the card), "next turn, all extra card give +1 damage to the boss if kept in hand") to give the the player some thought about which card they may want to pick ; or if they prefer matching the boss's card value for the extra damage or keep specific cards instead.
Ooo, thank you for the nice ideas :D
I've been messing around with the numbers and doing some playtesting, and yeah, the difficulty is definitely in finding that right balance between fun and unfair(and engaging/boring). I want to avoid it becoming a full MTG/Heartstone style tcg, but for it to still be an enjoyable change of pace between stretches of text. One minor change I'll probably make is booping the critical break damage up to about 5 - which so far has made the whole thing flow much nicer and allows for tougher fights with it still feeling more player-involved.
This is poteeentially heading into spoiler territory, but the idea of cards doing more specialised things was actually where I'm (hopefully) planning to take the combat in the future :O (characters would get character-specific cards that could do specialised things, like destroy a defence-slot regardless of its value etc. - with each character having a focus) - but that's still very much in the oven xD
I do like the strategy involved with holding onto cards, and I want to eventually try and create something that uses that, but that'll probably be when I have a clearer idea of how best to let it play to the player's advantage :O
Ah, also one more idea I have that I've played around with a bit is actually to have defence-slots hidden at the start of each turn - but have them able to be revealed by burning a low attack against them - although I might save this only for specific enemies...
But aa thank you again! I'm gonna try and get special cards working so I can really start making the fights a bit spicier :D