itch.io

The batch of new monsters in this release covers all terrains and power levels and uses new mechanics such as card attachment and monsters triggering by playing cards.

Some of the new encounters are quite deadly for unsuspecting player, and hopefully require novel tactics to win against (or a strategy to avoid).

I would like to hear the opinions on the balance, in particular:

• Are some new monsters too hard for the stages they appear?
• How new final bosses compare to existing ones in terms of difficulty and entertainment?
• Is the nerf to infinite indirect playing too harsh?

Of course, any other feedback is also welcome.

… giving it a more thematic downside instead, like giving 1 confusion every time it successfully triggers.

I also would like more interesting downside for Paradoxical Figure, but adding confusion, while indeed thematic, still feels not quite right. I will try to think of more ideas.

Un-upgraded carnival trick reads like you can upgrade the stamina cost to 0. After you upgrade it, suddenly it has minimum stamina cost of 1.

Yes, this is the problem I described / fixed. It worked like this: normally “max upgrades” is a fixed number either intrinsic to the card or from ascension. However, cost reduction upgrade tried to estimate the maximum number of upgrades by looking at the current card cost, so in fact it displayed “upgrades remaining” instead of “maximum”.

Now, the UI will display something like “upgrades: (2 left)” instead of “upgrades: (max 2)”, and both the absolute maximums and cost upgrades will (I hope) be correctly taken into account during calculation.

I think turmoil, failure, oppression, and blaze are the more generally difficult ones.

I usually play with larger deck, so ‘blaze’ is not so punishing for my style (BTW, I hope to some day pick it while having Pendant of Amnesia, thus vindicating that otherwise rarely useful item).

I agree that ‘hailstorm’ is often the easiest, except for very “flimsy” builds. I am thinking of buffing hailstorm to Shoot 3.

I often pick turmoil/failure to add “spice” to my final battle when I feel that my deck is truly broken the barrier and the fight would be boring otherwise.

show “max total upgrades” … or … “upgrades remaining for this instance of card”

After some experiments, I decided to go with the second option, since it also avoids some rare corner cases when adding/removing upgradeable effects on a card changes upgrade limit.

Thanks for detailed report, as always.

Wool Thread doesn’t work with Paradoxical Figure.

Yes, it was oversight of earlier effect implementation not updated until now. I am now debating whether to apply similar change to few remaining items, mostly related to reimbursing, like Shimmering Robe. It would make Paradoxical Figure even stronger, but since it is already hopelessly busted, maybe it is ok.

BTW, despite what I said earlier about leaving Paradoxical Figure as is, what do you think of adding counter to it, say 1 per turn? Would it be enough nerf to make it somewhat “fair”, or is it better to leave it to player’s self-imposed limitation to pick or avoid that item?

’Get individual curriculum’ doesn’t count a play if it triggered pea pod

It also did not work if Ivory Tower already persisted by some means, such as Burnt Pancake. Fixed.

unupgraded Carnival Trick says max: 3 for upgrades, while upgraded says max: 2

This one is a bit tricky. The issue is that some upgrade limitations are absolute (e.g. imposed by ascension), but some are relative (e.g. cost reduction only works while cost is >0, but if you increase card cost for some reason, upgrade will be available again).

So do you think it is a better fix to always show “max total upgrades” (but that number would in very rare cases grow after modifying the card by other means), or to show “upgrades remaining for this instance of card” (or maybe both, at the cost of cluttering UI?).

then loading a different reward screen, results in different rewards

That bug was devious. The savefile you sent triggered two unrelated bugs, one of which was the problem you faced (caused by Porcelain Dove bans leaking into next savefile and messing up random choices), and another you probably did not notice (very similar leak, but for ascension effects).

Either problem would be not so hard to debug, but since they occurred at once, it confused me for quite a while. Fixed.

endless turmoil discarding a persistent card that you just played

Fixed

BTW, did you manage to win that battle? Looks hard to me, especially as Proselytize is not very useful on transforming enemies without Grafting Knife.

What are your opinions on the final quests overall and their individual level of difficulty?

persist does nothing if you have 0 fatigue and the new ascension

Oops. Fixed in next version

typos

Fixed

“Invent magic deflector” quest shows up even though the prereq aren’t fulfilled

Fatigue on Austerity is ‘bad’ status and the prerequisite does not distinguish positive and negative values. Will add ‘redirectable’ requirement and probably remove ‘bad’ requirement, since fatigue is not redirectable, but, say, -vitality from Screeching Tune or Stigmata is.

chest randomly spawns in chaos realms, but “all monsters” menu says otherwise

Both “View possible monsters” button and “Encountered in” line in monster hint do not take into account so-called “encounter modifiers”, such as randomly occurring chests, bushes etc. As well as small monsters added by ‘May encounter additional enemies’ ascension.

I think adding those will be too much noise, since they can appear at basically any stage.

Maybe I will document algorithm of generating encounters, even though there are not many impactful details there.

I have published new release, with changes based on this discussion.

Pawn’s Move

I used “cards played < 5, upgradeable” condition instead, which on the one hand is even harsher than Persists 5 since it requires playing Pawn’s Move before other cards, but OTOH resets every turn, thus making it more “stable” when hand manipulation is needed frequently.

Rally with three upgrades … pray+heartiness

I removed fatigue improvement from Rally upgrade, and also changed Rune of Heartiness to “Fatigue -1”, BUT upgradeable. This hopefully works towards the goal that player must “earn” OP build, by spending more efforts and resources.

Ribcage Armor … Draining Touch

Duh. I internally debated a lot whether to include vampirism in Ribcage Armor anti-healing effect, and just forgot about that decision. For now, I opted for simply nerfing defence value, which maybe makes it a bit less interesting but also increases the risk.

Vampirism itself is rarely a threat. Maybe Garlic could inflict some stun or a fumble effect

I gave minor buff to most vampiric enemies (they now all have Max HP a bit higher than initial one, so can heal on the first attack). I also added minor buff to Garlic (vampiric enemies strength -1) which is not as powerful as stun, but still decent when fighting multiple/multiplying vampires.

Diamond Ring … Censor History

Besides updated Patience (which turned out to be very good, maybe even too good), I added an item with similar “protect if <=1 cards played” effect and a quest for Censor History. Hopefully these changes together give enough boost to Diamond Ring

I also feel that most of “too strong to be interesting” infinite builds are currently centered around Persist effect (as opposed to infinite draw / fetch or infinite defence and multiple turns), so I added new ascension which penalizes such builds.

I guess I played some noname clone of this game, since it was on PC, but gameplay and UI were very similar.

What Lanista name did you use? Did you give him a name?

Don’t remember, maybe something like a1

if you move the logic to the client cant it be easily hacked?

Yes, but why should you care? It is a single-player game anyway, there is no downside if somebody cheats for his own local game.

the freeze screen shouldnt happen

I was able to work around the problem by removing session token from local storage. It seems there is some real deadlock-like bug.

do you mean you expect a kind of “spinning wheel” while waiting for network?

There are many ways to indicate it visually, but important point is not to accept new command from UI until the previous one is processed. Otherwise, player clicks on button, thinks it did not work, click again, and gets unintended duplicate action when the server finally responds.

Here is typical result of above-mentioned problem

I played a bit. Few notes:

• You do not need to ask for e-mail, it scares off casual players for no reason. Just name it “login”, since you do not verify it anyway. Maybe provide optional email field in profile if for some reason you want it.
• The music is very beautiful, but perhaps just a bit too slow / morose
• The art is good. However, I noticed that all gladiators (who are slaves) are depicted as black, which could offend some people (not me, I am just saying).
• The game is somewhat laggy, you may consider moving to less network-heavy architecture. TBH, I do not see much reason for this game to be so network-centric, it seems that all the logic could work just as well on client
• It seems that UI does not lock while waiting for network, which sometimes leads to user accidentally pressing same button multiple times, duplicating game actions
• After pressing “New game” the UI has frozen, displaying “crossed swords” icon. Refreshing the page does not help, so my testing stopped there

Thanks for your feedback. I hope to also hear your impression about the game itself.

Tutorial indeed explains very basic things, but there are subtle differences from the “normal” expectations of many players (e.g. persistent resources, “mixed” enemy targeting) which cause confusion for players who think they know how things work based on other games. This was actually the reason I added tutorial at all.

Can you point out some specific small improvements, to maybe give me a better idea of direction you suggest?

explain how things like shield … work … it after the player experiences these things

Hm. This is a novel idea. I am afraid this can be inconvenient since the player will miss the interaction and would be frustrated by the fact that game did not tell beforehand where to focus his attention. (I.e. “the defenca icon which just disappeared meant that some damage was prevented”)

it would also be good if the info from the tutorial could be viewed at any time through a ? menu or something

There is indeed “info” window accessible by clicking “?” on the right-side menu, and also “?” icon on rewards screen allows to repeat rewards tutorial (which may be useful since that tutorial changes as you unlock new gameplay mechanics). Although currently “info” windows does not directly repeat tutorial, it documents lots of other, more complex elements of gameplay. Do you think adding “Basic info” section there is worthwhile?

Wow. THAT is a sort of information which would get you much more attention if mentioned in the original post.

Do I understand correctly that your app requires to use phone camera to capture the real-world image, and adds some post-processing to it to obtain a texture? Perhaps a few examples of “normal” + “processed” photos would be good to explain / promote your app?

I played your game a bit. Here are few notes:

• The font is very hard to read (letters like H-K, U-V a practically indistinguishable, X looks like a solid block for some reason). Since you already have UI options like palette, I suggest adding “normal” font option (or maybe some more readable pixel font).
• “Enter” for rotation is very strange, I repeatedly mixed up controls when playing. Something like “S” to rotate, “Space” to drop would be more natural for me. Maybe just add changeable control settings.
• Holding down “drop” key continues dropping next piece after landing the first one, which is frustrating.
• Conversely, auto-repeat on left/right movement would be welcome
• The fact that diagonal matches also work is not obvious at first, maybe worth mentioning in the description
• Maybe add point bonus for dropping pieces
• Fully same-color pieces feel “too good”, maybe remove them
• Please add lines indicating field limits it is awkward to play without them
• I maybe noticed that sometimes when a piece completes multiple lines at once, some lines are not destroyed. Not sure though, as it is hard to test/reproduce.
• When the game progresses to “new stage”, I suggest adding some message / indication.
• I am quite sure that I played very old game with this exact gameplay, but can not remember the name. Did you also play it?

I think that Android is not a well-suited platform for this kind of tool. Why not create a web version and put in itch? You will surely get much more feedback.

The quality is quite professional. I think this level of work is indeed worthy of selling.

Looking at fire sprite animation, perhaps you could provide smaller “stride” variant(s), so that developers could synchronize sprite leg position with movement speed without “sliding” effect. Current versions supposes very fast movement.

You may think of offering additional optional layers, such as shadow of items in hand, or maybe a few pre-made palettes.

Here is (very exaggerated) example of what I am suggesting: https://kingbell.itch.io/

I am a hobbyist developing free roguelike deckbuilder: https://alsoknown.itch.io/way-to-crown

I would be great if you could playtest it.

The game is quite complex and has rather steep learning curve, so while “first impressions” testing on tutorial and UI is also welcome, I would really appreciate more in-depth feedback on balance and replayability, which could take a little bit more of your time.

You can look at existing feedback / discussion on our forum and discord, or DM me directly in discord: alsoknown1.

Played a bit, here are some notes:

• The graphics is excellent
• Maybe make fruit icons on cards larger?
• Animations are mostly smooth, but card dragging unexplicably lags sometimes
• Please implement volume controls
• It seems that the game does not have save/load capability?
• When playing in browser, console contains errors: <color=#0099bc>DOTWEEN ► </color>Target or field is missing/null (Void ThrowNullReferenceException(System.Object)) ► Object reference not set to an instance of an object. at UnityEngine.Bindings.ThrowHelper.ThrowNullReferenceException (System.Object obj) [0x00000] in <00000000000000000000000000000000>:0
• Cross-pollinating rare crops drops rarity back to 1, which feels like somewhat of a letback
• Maybe put harvest value on the card
• I understand that game is supposed to be “cozy”, but lacks of goals / possibility of defeat significantly reduces appeal, at least for me
• Basic game loops feels like a bit of busywork, at least until late-game upgrades which make crop placement meaningful
• I think there is a lots of unexploited potential for deeper mechanics, which could turn this game into a formidable contender on the market

Good luck with development!

experience the untold horrific atrocities committed multiple times through history, only you get to experience them firsthand, you have no idea how absurd a human can get.

Besides valid points mentioned by previous posters, the lines above do not feel enticing, to put it mildly. Are you playing as a victim of some historic genocide being slaughtered? Why would I want this experience?

Maybe I implied too much of a reaction,

Not at all, “very good player stops using item because it makes game too easy” is an excellent indicator of imbalance, so this feedback is exactly what I want.

Lament

This is outright bug, I forgot to add “exhausts” and effect condition. Funny thing, I played Lament a few times since then, but somehow failed to notice that actual card is different from the one I have in my mind. Fixed by adding both exhaust and “have enough piety” condition.

Now the impact of Lament is rather similar to Inquisitor Seal, as both allow to refill the resource once per battle.

pawns move + gather magic

Pawn’s Move is a tricky card. It is supposedly intended to facilitate hand manipulation, but I myself noted that I use it mostly for creative exploitation of infinite persist. In particular, weird “if effects <= 1” condition is added to avoid making too good of a chassis for card construction with Idea.

Another example is Pawn’s Move + Rewind, which completely bypasses fatigue since “return from discard” effect is not affected by it.

Perhaps just using fixed “Persist 5” would be better?

more than 2 effective fatigue reduction … e.g. fatigue rune + pray

That’s still just effective -1? Even though Pray persists, it still increases fatigue normally. Nitpicking aside, I understand the general issue. Maybe nerf Rune of Heariness to Fatigue -1 …

Ribcage Armor … avoid it when playing Renevant

Indeed, this item is custom-made for Revenant, especially on high ascension where you are limited in Lichform upgrades. However, I thought that poison, fear, and recently guilt, pose high enough risk to push this item into “powerful but prone to sudden death” category. How do you usually mitigate those when using Ribcage Armor?

Paradoxical Figure

This one is intentionally “too broken to balance, but fun to use occasionally” item, so the only thing I considered changing is to make it ever more rare in some way.

Burnt Pancake

I significantly reworked this item by changing the counter increase condition to “played card had zero effects”, same as Large Basket. This makes an item potentially even more powerful, but adds significant requirement / downside (and even some danger of forced infinite self-stalling), so now both picking and using it hopefully require some thought.

I think the Burnt Pancake counter gain should be on start stage instead of start turn.

Yes, this is most logical fix, but I hesitated since it would be so much of a nerf. I will probably still do that, but try to “soften the blow” by adding some compensation.

I usually pretend it doesn’t exist.

Wow, that is even stronger reaction than my own. Are there other items which you feel are similarly overpowered? Long ago, Blowgun and Scythe were IMO in the same category, so I actually added first version of item counter mechanics in part to limit those items.

an idea for scales is to also let them sort your draw pile

I have already implemented different Delicate Scales buff, and I am working of Crude Scales, which will probably be total rework. My current plan is to add “self-synergies”, so these items by themselves have small benefit from sorting.

Current Delicate Scales addition is ‘Playing Precious increases equal-valued Precious on adjacent cards’, which is very minor, but at least hopefully improves this item’s chances from “never ever” to “very rarely”.

But the idea of sorting draw pile is interesting. What benefits / synergies do you see? Initiative effect on cards already does draw pile sorting, but adding secondary sorting mechanism currently feels even more niche than hand sorting.

Diamond Ring, another option is to buff Censor History or give it more things to combo with

Agreed, this is what I shall do. I have already buffed Patience card (which was also too niche before) to give defence on end turn, helping to make skipping turns move viable play for Wp-based heroes, and will add more changes / additions towards that goal.

Mittens could have the general utility vs freezing enemies by persisting one frozen card per turn.

Question is whether it should synergize with Snowflake, which is currently the “make-or-break” item for Frozen builds. If it synergizes, then this change would make Mittens into another Burnt Pancake, although admittedly much harder to achieve, so perhaps it is ok. But if it does not, it “feels bad”.

Vampirism itself is rarely a threat

I think this is the “problem” in a sense that currently vampirism on hero is good and interesting, but vampirism on enemies is insignificant and boring. I will think about this more.

the second character once, which i find much more intuitive and fun to play

I am glad you liked Mage. Interestingly, while many players agree that Mage is fun to play, some also find him less intuitive, since Warrior is just straightforward “burst damage” character, while Mage requires player to plan across several turns and stall to regain resources right from the start.

If you have a rule for - i want this behaviour and for + i want this behaviour… for me a second word would help…

I understand your point, and indeed “perfectly additive” status like strength is best suited for going negative. However, even for more complicated cases, negative status may be simpler.

Consider the defence status. Currently it is “subtract from incoming damage, if was >0, spend amount equal to damage reduction”. Suppose I split it into “defence” and “vulnerability”, both of which work only if >0. Then the rules must additionally state:

• If both defence and vulnerability are present, smaller one is subtracted from larger one and the difference is actually applied (which is one more thing to calculate mentally).
• Cards which change the sign of statuses, like “Adapt”, must explicitly list all pairs of “opposing” statuses.
• “Defend X” for non-constant X must be re-formulated as “if X > 0, apply X defence, else apply X vulnerable”
• Cards which base their effects on defence, like Bash, need to be re-formulated to “Melee 1*(defence - vulnerability)” etc, (or rebalanced around new defence system).

Overall, the amount of text needed to explain the defence mechanics will grow. The radical solutions is, of course, just to remove “negative” statuses from the game, which many other similar games do. However, I specifically think that added depth of interactions is worth additional complexity here.

map of slay the spire is mostly there to reduce complexity and not to increase it

It is debatable, and StS map is of course a good design, with is why it is copied by most modern games. Still, consider that:

• Right from the get-go, the map offers player to plan the entire route, which is about 4-5 decisions even before the first battle.
• Possible future encounters and their relative probabilities play approximately the same role in StS and my game, but calculating probabilities is much harder in StS, since you have to account for multiple encounters at once
• Opportunities like card upgrade and removal are rarer in StS, but it makes planning for them harder. Basically, you have to decide beforehand whether you want a path allowing to upgrade a card, while in my game upgrade is always available, so the decision is simpler.

All of the above is not a negatives for StS, as it is just another level of strategy, which is simpler in my game. Naturally, beginner StS players can ignore the complications and just click on next stage randomly, but that is also true for my game.

take a look at the coming opponents (it’s good that it’s there in some sense and i only noticed recently)…

That feature is very new, was just added in latest release (see devlog). You may look at the neighbor thread on this forum for a discussion which lead to this feature.

expect the player to … read the description of every possible opponent

Probably the most jarring difference is that my game explicitly exposes the complexity which is hidden in other games. For example, experienced StS players actually do the same, the difference is that they remember all the enemies and their strengths / weaknesses either in their mind or on a separate spreadsheet (see, for example, Jorbs videos for examples of the latter).

Maybe hiding information like the possible enemy list from beginner players may help…

it feels like the process of creating it was “putting a lot of rules and cards in very fast” …

You can read devlogs to gauge development pace. Looking now myself, I see that over the last year, I introduced about 120 cards, so 10 cards per month on average. Not sure how this speed compares to other games.

a game which has more complex card rules … magic the gathering … more similar to your game.

Another keen observation on your part, MtG was indeed second-largest influence after the StS. Multi-color card cost and persistent hand between turns are most obvious MtG similarities.

Regarding your suggestion of slower unlocks: although I long resisted it, it seems like the way to go since many beginner players request it.

compared to the first version I played the warrior plays better now

Perhaps the main difference is that you are now more experienced. When I watch your video, I can see that after trying and learning certain cards and items you have already improved your play (which is the intended player progression).

What I see is the same as the first screenshot, sans the lines on the squares. How do I get to UI on the second screenshot?

This sounds very promising, so I tried you project. However, I does not seem to do anything.

I can create / delete “boards”, whatever they are, but no way to edit actual images / sprites? I tried pressing just about any key and mouse button, nothing helps.

default filter doesn’t take into account the “encounters may appear earlier” ascension.

Will be fixed in next release. Meanwhile, you can manually add 1 to the high value of stage range filter

I could always have my own conducts to have a reason to drop ascensions

If you find some interesting conducts of this nature, I can add them as achievements.

For example, existing ‘Revolutionary’ achievement is somewhat close to the ‘remove starting card’ goal you mentioned.

Released v0.31 with some changes discussed above

I pushed new update with changes to Dreamwalker. I replaced Dispersion with new Somnicide card, which makes some encounters much more comfortable, and is more thematic.

New Psychotic Strike is a bit unreliable, since it can randomly produce guilty dream, but combos well with negative statuses from Otherworldly Tune and is one of the very few cards with multiplicative upgrade scaling. Hopefully this would be enough to make it worth picking.

I did win once on max-ascension, exploiting new quest for Bounce card, which makes good addition to status-managing toolkit, but takes a lot of brainpower due to combinatorial explosion of possible outcomes depending on card order.

I went to laguna and realized I can’t kill the kraken tentacles in time before fatigue kills me

Kraken is a natural enemy of insanity-based builds. I did consider making tentacles flee/die when “main body” dies, but, although thematically good, it makes Kraken too weak against burst damage builds.

idealized, more experienced player would’ve seen that coming.

I have added “View possible enemies” button to next encounter preview, to reduce amount of memoization needed for such decision. I goes with general principle of “give player convenient access to all information not explicitly hidden by game rules”. You still need enough skill to understand which enemies are good / bad for your build, of course.

I avoid using conspiracy … delirium does it’s job

Yeah, when creating Conspiracy, I added potentially much better scaling to compensate, but seemingly that was not enough.

I’d actually appreciate having a reason not to have all ascensions up.

One, admittedly convoluted, reason is achievement hunting. For example, quest-related achievements are much easier without ‘harder quests’ ascension. Of course, that is only relevant if you are into this sort of thing. I personally am not, but I know a few players who enjoy forcing builds and chasing strange achievement goals.

Overall, I think currently late game is too easy in the sense that if you live past ~stage 15, you are probably busted enough to just stomp the rest. I have vague plans to add significant spike in difficulty for the final boss, comparable to Heart in Slay the Spire.

I too suffered from lack of this feature. If your goal is only to create lobbies, you can share links directly to the nested iframe, like this: https://html-classic.itch.zone/html/15886391/index.html

Unfortunately, these links are unstable between game versions, so they are not suitable for long-term publication.

Thanks for putting thoughts and efforts in your reply. This kind of discussion is the main reason I develop the game, since I enjoy exploring unusual and intricate mechanics.

I can see how the current defence (and some other statuses) description is insufficient, and will certainly try to improve it. It is true that “resistance” is more often used in games with negative values. However, resistance is also strongly connected with the notion of multiplicative changes (i.e. “resist 50%”), as opposed to defence, which is frequently additive.

You are quite correct that the decision to allow negative statuses is rare among similar games, but it was quite intentional and currently every status (and even every resource except HP) can be negative, with most of them having real effect depending on the sign.

This creates some interesting and non-trivial interactions which I quite like, as well as actually reducing overall complexity in a roundabout way (since I currently have 27 statuses, which would grow to ~50 if I would replace every negative status with corresponding “inverted meaning” status).

For example, consider Wyvern monster, which does “Repeat 4: (Defend hero -1, Melee 1)”. This sounds quite weak, until you take into account compounding nature of negative defence. If hero has 8 defence, this attack do no damage. However, if initial defence is zero, it does 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 = 14 damage, enough to one-hit weaker heroes.

Another example is negative strength, which obviates requirement for (1) separate “weakness” status (2) additional rules on interaction between strength and weakness.

Your comparison with Slay the Spire is very on point. I intentionally deviated from “simpler is always better” rule of card design which StS embraces. I compensate for complexity a bit by simplifying other parts of the game (such as UI and game map).

i frequently stumble over cards “which talk about status effects” I haven’t even acquired yet

I did consider “trickling down” unlocks in the beginning, so that player gains access to new cards / statuses at a slower pace. Note, however, that actually the Warrior is already “simple and straightforward” character compared to later ones, and his cards are mostly very simple “gain buffs, beat enemy, heal self”. Even Heavy Blow, which is indeed hard to read on first try, is basically just “hit, getting more damage from Weight effect and Critical status”.

Later heroes / cards use indirect damage, hand manipulation, card modification, summoning, etc.

concept of toughness though… (it felt kind of expensive to pay for it…

One other issue I noted watching your playtest is that probably I should reduce probability of rare cards. Note that some cards, including Scaled Skin and Feast on Flesh are rare (with golden titles). Rare cards are more powerful, but also have higher requirements / downsides. So taking a rare card early can be viewed as a risky investment, hoping that necessary ingredients will arrive in future rewards. By default, the game scales up probability of rare cards with each stage, from 0 to 100%.

Problem is, full game contains 20 stages, but stages after 12th have to be unlocked. So the rare card probability grows too fast precisely for novice players, where it can lure them into taking too much unsupported cards. I will certainly think about balancing this.

I played your game a bit. Here are few notes:

• Game UI does not scale with the browser window in non-fullscreen mode
• After the first look, I was really hoping for the game similar to Orb of Creation, but yours is much closer to Cookie Clicker, which is of course ok, but less interesting for me personally
• I suggest to make costs on disabled buttons well-visible, since they are actually the main thing player stares at when he waits until next click
• I suggest some indication of available purchases on the tab buttons (e.g. number in parenthesis)
• Manual clicking income is not reflected in mana/sec making it much harder to judge relative efficiency
• Balance-wise, manual clicking is made obsolete way too fast IMO
• Since the game is Cookie clicker-style, I suggest to copy many useful features from Cookie Clicker UI, such as separate display of income for each unit type, and maybe combining unit purchases and upgrades on single screen
• After quickly reaching ~1000 mana/sec, further progression feels rather bland, since production units do not differ in anything except production speed. I suggest either adding more interesting upgrades, or, if they already exist, making them available much sooner.
• Text in “about” and “privacy” misses spaces after periods.

negative player confusion triggers as if it’s 1

Fixed

Spider Web has no sanity immunities

Fixed, and gave it immunity to ensnared to boot.

spawn of silver getting more guarding is considered the lucky outcome

Fixed, it was a bit funny since I stared at the “obviously correct” line for a few minutes, thinking that I was affected by insanity from my game, until I finally saw the typo:

E.guarding(new RandomInRange(0, 2), { invert: true }), vs E.guarding(new RandomInRange(0, 2, { invert: true })),

dazzling ink improves the multiplier of infectious delirium

Will fix, but this bug also affects some other cases, for example splicing “Melee” effect from Spear into Revenge with Idea. I need to review those carefully.

vitality damage from all sources triggers guilt

Yes, I have already noticed this, and consider this bug serious enough to again publish mostly-fixes release. Unfortunately this change requires some extensive refactoring, so it will take a few days.

Meanwhile, I would like to get some feedback on Dreamwalker. He is certainly very hard, I actually did not yet manage to win on max-ascension. What was your experience with Dreamwalker? I would like to buff him slightly, but without affecting his core “identity”.

So far, my ideas include:

• Give “negative insanity” statuses some benefits, like (bad example) additional melee damage from negative fear. So far, I did not invent interesting enough benefits.
• Tone down guilty damage a bit, but it will make it almost useless when applied to enemies
• Ignore attacker’s guilt when the victim is immune to guilt itself. I like this idea both thematically (no guilt for destroying mindless things) and for balance (since currently the most dangerous enemy in early game is a chest, as it forces player to use Eldritch Light). The main downside is that this change is hard to explain in status description
• Give Dreamwalker a summon (as a way to circumvent guilt). I will certainly add dream-themed summon(s) anyway, but the question is whether to add it to the starting deck.
• Either buff Dispersion or remove it from starting deck, since, although it does save you very rarely, it feels like a burden 90% of the time.
• Maybe you have other opinions?

Thanks a lot.

A few clarifications / notes:

• “defence” works like this: when taking damage, defence is subtracted from the damage, and spent at a rate of 1 per damage prevented, but only if it was >0. So if defence = 3, and incoming damage = 5, then incoming damage becomes 2 and defence becomes 0. If defence = -3 and incoming damage = 5, incoming damage becomes 8, but defence stays at -3. I will try to re-phrase the explanation.

• The “replay” button on tutorial window lets you see the flashing animation again if you miss it. Were you curious what it does? Maybe you thought it does something else?

• It seems that you did not notice “Melee self” effect on Punch card, which acts similar to cost 1 in some ways, but is preventable by block, so you could play Block card before Punch to avoid this self-damage.

• Self-damage is affected by strength, so gaining strength should be managed carefully. You did see the “Brass Knuckles” item which mitigates this (but self-damage was not the problem this run, so your decision not to take it was good).

• The “Spring” card indeed appeared too early (i.e. you did not yet unlock the cards with Clockwork mechanics), I fixed that. I also delayed unlocking of Heavy Blow.

• As usual in deckbuilders, picking even a good card has downside of bloating your deck. In this game, you encountered 3 powerful card/item combinations, each of those could let you win. However, you deck was too large and you drew only 1 of them in your final fight.

• With deck this thick, game should have unlocked the “stashing” mechanics which helps to temporarily remove unneeded cards from deck. But due to a minor bug, unlock was delayed. Fixed that.

• The toughness does reduce card cost, so 6-cost Scales card pays for itself if you play more than 6 total cost of cards afterwards. Playing Scaled Skin + Muscles gives your 2 strength, which you did manage to pull off once. This combo is powerful but very expensive, and default healing in the deck is not quite enough to support it.

• You picked two copies of Feast of Flesh and did not encounter +vampirism card or item, which is unlucky. Feast of Flesh is “win the game with one card” level of power, but only if you have a source of vampirism. After unlocking quests in this game do a lot to increase your chance of finding missing combo pieces.

• You picked Flimsy Shield + Sun Shield + Bash, which is also extremely powerful, but needs card draw and/or more copies of Bash

• You picked Revenge, which you did use well, and correctly noticed that intentionally spending HP may be beneficial.

• The Second Wind card and Blank Paper item could help a lot with card draw.

• The “does-nothing” Boulder card has lots of uses. Simplest is to spend HP for Revenge, especially in combination with vampirism. It did not happen in this game, but with enough vampirism and toughness it may occur that hero is unable to spend HP even if he wants to. Another use is some cards (like Fling or Fair Trade), which do effects proportional to card cost.

• The final battle is perhaps still winnable. The key is NOT to play Feast on Flesh, play only Revenge on the first turn, and maybe play a Secret Technique on the second turn, when your hand contains several attack cards, to buff them all. Salamander Flameraiser can be considered a hidden boon, since it exhausts you cards, getting rid of expensive ones to free the space in hand. If you did not play since then, you can post you “autosave” (press export/import button in “saves” window), and I will try to check if I can beat it.

Thanks again, I gained some valuable insights from your playtest.

This sounds like PotionCraft and other similar potion-brewing games. I do not see anything wrong with this concept, but that is true about almost any other game concept too. The implementation and specific details are what matters most.

Regarding embracing monotony/repetitive actions, I suggest to look at incremental games for inspiration, there are many alchemy-related ones as well.

I played a bit more. Level progression, UI and tutorial are all much better. Separate thanks for volume controls.

I like most of new graphics, except balloons, are now visually hard to parse due to strange white blob, and “mats” where player must place a weapon due to their “noisy” look.

When playing on Windows/Firefox, I experience significant lag every time I pick up the weapon, so severe that music pauses for half-second.

The step-by step nature of tips is very good idea. However, it seems that using tip has no downside. Maybe give 1 less star for level if tip was used?

When playing more complex levels, it is sometimes tedious to watch the process again and again while figuring out next weapon to play. Maybe add “animation speed” setting and / or “quick play” button

Overall, good job on improvements!

In my recently posted devlogs, <meta property="og:image"> tag points to the project cover image, while previously it correctly pointed to the image inside the post. As as result, posting link to external sites such as Discord shows wrong preview.

Example of correct tag: https://alsoknown.itch.io/way-to-crown/devlog/1123383/v028-new-antiquarian-hero-weight-effect

Example of incorrect tag: https://alsoknown.itch.io/way-to-crown/devlog/1144822/v030-insanity-rework-new-dreamwalker-hero

Here is current list of items which I would like to balance, but unsure about exact solutions. Any thoughts and additions are welcome :)

• Burnt Pancake. This item is probably the “most broken” on this list, due to its interaction with exhaust / single use effects. I like the interaction itself, but I feel it is too easy, so perhaps some extra downside / hurdle is needed. At a minimum, I will probably make this item rare.

• Cezvee / Coffee. Maybe Coffee should be slightly nerfed? Down to -12 fatigue? I am especially interested in impact on higher ascensions.

• Crude Scale / Delicate Scale. Both items are far too weak / niche. At the minimum, I will modify them to allow both descending and ascending sorting, but I feel some additional upside is needed.

• Diamond Ring. This is one of the oldest items, and unlike other rings, I find myself never picking it, since the downside of skipping turn is too harsh and the potential upside of infinite Wisdom scaling seems unreachable. There are ways to mitigate the downside, like Censor History and various methods of postponing defence, but maybe some buff is needed. Maybe just add quests for combo pieces?

• Garlic. Item works as intended, but the effect is too weak in practice. Maybe the problem is actually that enemy vampirism is too rare / low?

• Ice Cream. Although it counteracts many snow enemies and comboes well with Icicle and Permafrost, I feel that +MP effect is too weak, since if I dare to pick ice cards I usually already has solved MP regeneration. Maybe increase MP gain or replace it with some other effect?

• Mittens. Similarly to Ice Cream, seems that upside is insufficient

• Inquisitor Seal. This item serves two main purposes: as a convenient method to branch from MP to Wp cost, which works fine, and as a way to guarantee full Wp replenishment for deck without MP cards, which is too strong. One obvious fix would be to limit Wp replenishment, but I like the idea of gaining more benefits from negative resources. The most interesting idea I have is to add “If MP card is in play” condition, but may be it is too harsh?

First, thanks for taking time to playtest my game, especially since you had to put much more effort than I did in yours.

using the output numbers on the cards rather than engaging with the math.

That’s ok. The intention of the formula is to help player understand what influences given number, and the pre-calculated result is to reduce (not completely avoid, since some effects are interdependent) the need to calculate exact values.

RNG formulas actually confused me even after re-reading. The die icon’s hard to make out.

Do you mean you did not understand that the syntax means ‘random’ when you first saw it, you was it still unclear / confusing even afterwards?

Impale card might be a little crazy; Yes, I should probably nerf it a bit. That being said, the game has lots of overpowered combos, as the Impale it not the craziest one.

point to fear … All it does is reduce sanity, which reads like a weird form of damage?

You correctly identified the fact that fear is slightly “boring” currently. It can be seen as a form of damage, which, unlike HP damage, is cleared up between stages, but is not prevented by defensive statuses.

In the next release, I have already made significant changes to fear / insanity: in particlar, hero sanity is calculated as (HP + Wp), and fear effects of most enemies are scaled up to balance. This way, at least buffing max HP is less universal counter to both fear and damage.

typo on the potion(s)

Thanks, fixed

cuttlefish grinds the game to a halt … as mage

Early Mage has generally hard time against Laguna enemies do to lack of damage in starting deck. I have already added some mitigating factors, in particular more quests with damage-increasing rewards (but you probably did not unlock quests yet).

I am on the fence about what to do. On the one hand, experienced players just know not to enter Laguna without strong damage card / item, which is exactly intended part of skill in the game. On the other hand, beginner players will certainly feel bad in these encounters. Maybe I should lock harder encounters behind some achievement…

The deepest one can get you in a spot where it’s impossible to win, but it still takes ages to actually finish you off.

Weirdly, this can be solved by buffing Deeper One damage and/or adding damage to Deepest One, so that they kill you faster. On the other hand, the game has a lots of “you lose but the game does not know it” situations, and the player is expected to just give up and restart.

This feels unusual, but my analogy is giving up in chess even when you know that by perfectly playing the end game you can drag the game for 20 more moves.

massive prevalence of symbols… stave off certain kinds of players

You are correct, it does. But this seems unavoidable since the core concept is “not being afraid of complexity”.

Thanks again for your feedback!

I am a hobbyist developing free fantasy-themed card game ( https://alsoknown.itch.io/way-to-crown ).

Both yourself and your music sound interesting, so I would like a conversation with you.

Please contact me on discord: alsoknown1

I do have a game ( https://alsoknown.itch.io/way-to-crown ).

Note, however, that my game is large and complex, so please don’t spend too much effort unless you happen to like the game :)

destroy towers by right clicking

Heh, I totally missed that. Why the right-click is used for both moving and attacking? That is extremely awkward, at least for me.

make attack automatic instad of right click?

Why not put in on the left click?

you are suggesting that towers attacking from fog of war are revealed on minimap?

At least those which are in the walls and thus remain invisible no matter what player does. Alternatively, you can modify map generation to put towers only in the corridors.

Now that I understand how to get upgrades, they seem to work – not much to say since currently they are very basic, which is normal for first prototype.

Good luck with development.

Good job, the game is now playable. Some more feedback:

• Constant regeneration may be not the best choice, since it forces player to just sit in the corner for a long time, which is not fun. I suggest putting healing consumables into the maze instead.
• Towers inside the walls are not marked on the minimap, which is bad. I understand the player technically did not “see” them, but I suggest to still show them.
• The “laser” tower seems to be the worst since it is somehow impossible to dodge. The damage seems to happen even when I clearly move out of the red line.
• The minimap flickers when player moves – seems to be the issue with scaling / viewport
• Although the “follow cursor without clicking” control scheme is indeed much better than previous one, I would still prefer an option for using keyboards. Also, this genre usually implements dashes, so maybe you want to as well.
• I did not find any upgrades you speak of in your first post. How do they look?

I tried your game in browser (Firefox/Windows) and unfortunately found some significant hurdles.

• UI does not scale when playing in small window, cutting off part of the screen
• UI does not scale in full-screen either, making use only of small part of the screen
• Game does not capture mouse, making it almost unplayable for me (since I have browser gestures enabled). If you do not want to capture mouse for some reason, I recommend to add keyboard controls.
• Controls in “Options” and “How to play” screens do not react to input, including “close” button, forcing player to restart game
• The gameplay does not resemble the video you posted, towers seem to be located inside the walls (?) and are invisible to player.

So it seems that the game needs some work. I can test again if/when these problems are fixed.