What'd you change? I was worried about the tile highlights from when you click a spore spire; I know that the creepers aren't blocked by the now-far-worse-than-useless anti-space-cannon-shields for presumably the same reason cars aren't, but the radioactive spore spewers seem like they'd be somewhat more impeded by them.
Horatio Von Becker
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Fascinating; I'm learning as many as several new things today. I am also updating quite a bit upward on how complicated Vapor Trails must have been to code, if this is simpler.
(Not actually that surprising given the combo system, I guess, not that I paid much attention to it; I was mostly there for the art and the mobility tech.)
Finished the game! Final boss was very tough, in a too-random feeling way; having non-skeleton summons never drop gems broke the loop of being able to use two shorter paths in a turn, and melee is most of your possible damage output, so fireball was nearly useless by the time I got it. Cross also felt powerful but slightly overpriced. At a guess I'd try doubling fireball damage and reducing Cross to 25 tiles?
Oh, this is frustrating. See, the armor upgrade fails to reduce damage to 0 under any circumstance, but does not tell me this, so I have what should by rights be an invincible build (3 armor) to slowly chip the Master down, but I simply don't have the bust limit to beat her in the game as actually implemented. I would have made different build choices if I'd known.
Very fun! Game breaking glitch with fireball somehow, though, and I'm not sure what caused it. Second Green level I think - starts with a Big Slime and the boss is a Squidface - and I'd started turn on a hatching egg, so a Common Kobold was on top of me, and I tried casting a Fireball centered on the boss, in hopes that it would do 36 damage total - and the dev console said something like 'clone tile already present', and wouldn't let me Undo, and I closed the console in hopes that that was the problem but now I can't cast spells, undo, or end turn. I can still read unit and spell descriptions?
Sorry I didn't get the actual error code. :(
Edit: I was able to reload the browser and restart the level from the map, though, so that's nice.
The level where Covemonty is connected to three ice cubes is bizarrely glitchy, and I don't know the intended solution or if it's actually possible. Glitch specifics: pushing a block into the water makes the ice able to push it further somehow?
Edit: Okay it probably wasn't a glitch, just very poorly documented.
Very pretty, but the fencing was sufficiently obtuse that I died a lot and lost track of the atmosphere. Also, I don't know what the hint for the lockbox is, although it's probably something to do with the teardrop symbol on the sun painting and the four dots on the melted armor - but the group portrait looked like a hint, and apparently wasn't? And I'm not sure whether the cube shield was a hint for that or the alchemy lab. The interface was too annoying to brute force, though.
And I didn't find a use for the heated blanket. I'm guessing you have four routes past the monster, and they are swordfighting, music, poisoned meat, and meat-plus-a-meal. Maybe swordfighting doesn't work? It seems a shame that only one obstacle has multiple intended solutions.
I also wonder if this had some influence on Nowhere Stars, or if it's merely convergent evolution/shared influence from Dark Souls. The less-obviously-doomed ending was still pretty weird for suggesting you need brighter light, though. And I'm really surprised that the bells can actually hold back the precession of the sun, rather than just shielding the locals from its influence to some degree.
Hm.
I was initially interested because the thumbnail looked like a good match for a Millennial Scarlet game.
...Reading more deeply, no, this game's about trying to solve demonic catastrophes because you're the only ones who can, despite the fact that this will draw government attention and the government basically always presumes people who come to its attention are subversive elements (whom it should, coincidentally, enslave). Millennial Scarlet is about living in a world where the American government claims to have won a war with Hell, has outsourced most building exorcisms to the moderately incompetent private sector, and is generally a lot more boring and frustrating than scary, even when they're being super shady.
Still, it might be an interesting contrast.
They state that they corrupt Villagers but don't explicitly specify that it's only villagers, and it's one of those things that are hard to keep track of during the transition from a friendlies-who-tell-the-truth-and-enemies-who-lie paradigm to a friendly/unfriendly-versus-truthful/lying four-option matrix, deserving of special highlighting I think. I also missed that the Poisoner only targets cards right next to it initially, possibly because the terminology wasn't standardized with the # Cards Away abilities.
I think what I'm saying is that a glossary/rules reminder guide would be helpful. :)
Wait what? Not just the immediately adjacent cards? That was not at all obvious from the Alchemist's description, and makes him much more powerful.
My confusion remains; why is the Plague Doctor not corrupted, despite being next to a Pooka? It doesn't have the Corrupted flag, and is stating accurately that Alchemist is not corrupted. Are Plague Doctors, undocumentedly, immune to Corruption?
Seems fair. I do hope you keep the dev files backed up, though, or even release them as-is - the previews we've gotten are pretty cool, and would be neat to see finished up someday. Maybe someone else could pick them up, or you could find yourself with a bunch of spare time one summer a decade from now? Even if you don't, properly mothballing projects you don't think you'll pick up again does let you self-plagarize more easily for other work.
Best of luck with your grownup life!
Fun concept, good art, secret boss too hard given the rest of it, can't refight secret boss after final boss because final boss room has no route back to the rest of the game for some reason. Also, no good way to deduce where targets for Spark are since partial reveals aren't a thing, so you're lucky to do 1 damage per AP per target.
Won with all but one star (needed to farm health/strength/agility on the second boss at 4 stars). I think the game would be more fun if you could discard items in a manner other than leaving them on a loot grid; there were as many as several things I'd have liked to get but couldn't because I didn't have enough free space to get rid of the thing I wanted to swap them for.
They're dull colors/textures with minimal borders, which is kinda ugly. That was popular in free browser RPGs fifteen years ago, so it might be a good choice if your game is deliberately riffing on those, but I don't think that's your intention here.
In the Battle Network series, tiles and buttons were simple, but careful color choices and some slightly ornamented borders did a lot to make them look good. MMBN Chrono X is mostly what I'm thinking of here, because it's fully displaced my memories of the originals. Here's an example, if you like: https://www.mmbnchronox.com/news/126
Well, I really want to play a decent MMBN-like, but I'm afraid the bikini armor is turning me away from this one. It's a shame, because the logo looks pretty decent!
Another thing that would help the aesthetic considerably is nicer art for the buttons and battlefield tiles, and maybe a different font for the stats and such. They take up quite a lot of the screen - and show most of the gameplay information - so it's weirdly important for those to look good.
