Thank you! A sequel that retells the story with a twist is currently being developed, it should make the first public appearance in Spring if all goes right.
Regarding the endings, after enough successful audits you can challenge Celine. Win the card battle and you'll get an ending based on what happened during that playthrough. Check the gallery for all ending conditions.
I hope to send the whole family on vacation to the southern country Trove will take place in. I don't want to make it an official promise, because there will probably be a lot of other cameos and I have no idea how complicated the sprites will be to make this time.
Let me know how it goes! I'm curious how approachable those final challenges are. If you're struggling with "Crumbling Corridors", I have two alternative solution videos on my Discord server, the link is in my profile page.
Not that I know of. My other game Summer Sweepers has a fanfiction story written that's linked in the description, I don't think there are others. But Monster Monsoon does have the biggest amount of fanart of any of my games, you can find it all on my Discord server in the artwork channel!
Making Friends: Using the well to turn a single coin into lots of piety and resetting using "Split the Pot" is by far the easiest way to summon your first fairies.
Crumbling Corridors: You want to drag the altar close to the chest walls either on the top or bottom using a combination of spells, with "Binding Waltz" being the big gap-closer. Reveal any walls you want to break with care, especially at the start.
Wicked Lighthouse: Summoning Plunder Hands is easier, but starting with Whispering Winds is also a viable strategy. Don't activate anomalies until you have to, you can use spatial rifts to move stuff out of the way. Pillars of eyes will sometimes let you get a full heal or allow you to hop over a wall. Don't overstay in the first map and try to bring full supplies into the second to focus down the chest.
Astral Crypt: Any combination of gods should be viable. The solar route is more straightforward but the lunar route can allow you to get to the final room in better shape. Don't forget that land twister can move things over walls, that pillars of eyes reveal around your position, and that you can't use your current god's powers in the future rooms but can still gain piety.
The different resolutions available on phones don't work well with pixel-perfect art. But this is definitely one of my games I'd consider making a port for if I have time since the single-button controls and repeatable nature fit the mobile game style well.
Sometimes Godot can have system or hardware compatibility issues. Most commonly this is a problem with the GPU or drivers. You can try to force the game to use OpenGL instead of Vulkan. This is something that should happen automatically, but there are some reports of this method working:
- Right-click on the .exe file and select "create shortcut" (on Windows 11 it will be under "Show more options")
- Right-click on the shortcut and add --rendering-driver opengl3 after the target path (right after the last quotation mark)
I really like the design idea of converting dress-up poses and clothes to playable cards! It feels very efficient and gives some story to the characters and what they're wearing. The card game stays interesting for the play length, it would probably need extra mechanics and interactions with the opponent if you want to scale it up to something bigger. Figuring it out felt fairly intuitive, but the terms and abbreviations could be replaced by resource icons for consistency, I got confused about which color was what a few times. Quite impressive for a little over a week of development, nice work!
It deeply upsets me to see your game remain in quarantine. I feel responsible because I suggested that it could be safe to put the tags back in, which may have been the trigger. I hope that you can forgive me for the bad advice, it's unfortunate that Itch does not give any hints regarding which actions activate their flagging system.
You have a lot of talent as an artist and developer, I'm sorry about how this site has treated you. I wish for luck and great success for any of your future projects.
Not being able to capture kings is intended, you are meant to prevent Hectie from being able to make valid moves rather than make a direct capture. In most cases where Hectie is stunned and is threatened by one of your pieces, the game ends as a checkmate. The other issue that you're describing is probably an overlooked bug. My guess is that I forgot to make a "self-checkmate" check after a card is played, and you're in a position where Kate is threatened and can't make a valid move. I do hope to revisit this game at some point to make a small patch that adds a title screen, a few dialogue events, and fixes bugs, but I don't know when I'll have time, I've got some busy months ahead.
Unfortunately not this one. Most of my most popular games didn't qualify for Steam's regulations even before the recent crackdowns. Familiar Finders was meant to be my first big game to get released on Steam, but now I just hope that it won't get deleted from Itch at some point. Plight of the Priestess is the only other game I have that may get a Steam release, and I'll try to keep the events in my next big project within what Steam and Itch allow. Hopefully it will appear on Steam in a couple of years, if no new rules get introduced while I'm making it.
Use possession to recover Val's hp and get early on enemies before using other powers to help Val avoid damage. You can also possess other enemies to hit each other. If there's too many enemies or you need a chance to recover, push Val into an object to hide her. Remember that hp recovery applies to all adjacent characters, so you can't make much progress while healing enemies. Abigail does 2 damage a hit, while every other character does 1 right now.
I always enjoy having a variety of endings to offer new reasons to replay my games. I don't expect players to try to get 100% of everything immediately, usually getting an ending or two and coming back to the game in a few months or years to see more of it is the sort of experience that I would recommend.
I'm happy that you liked it! Monster Monsoon is probably the biggest and most ambitious game I've made so far. It used to just have still sprites for everything like Bastion, but it fully came to life after Hexagum animated them. We hope to do the same sort of thing in the Bastion sequel.
I'm glad that you have enjoyed it! An animated sequel is currently being developed, but I don't know if it will come to Itch due their recent regulation changes. Keep an eye out, I'll try to find someplace to release an early version of it publicly in a few months, with a full release due to be finished over the next couple of years!
Really cool demo! I like the idea and high-paced nature of it. The art looks great. I love seeing all of Athena's reactions in the menu, perhaps the status panel should be the default thing it opens to?
The platforming demands feel a bit high at times for the type of game this is, but the bonus fracture rooms are a good way to keep some of the tougher challenges as side-missions. A way to exit out of a map that's beyond a player's skill would help a lot. I recommend reducing the amount of areas where falling resets a lot of progress, one-way platforms can work as soft checkpoints to reduce frustration. Throwing your partner is a really cool mechanic, but there are not that many opportunities to use Athena effectively, I feel like most level should incentivize the player to use her at least once and have some sort of bonus that only she can reach. She is also not that good of a weapon, a small stun effect could reduce the chance of her getting stolen right after being thrown.
It took me a while to figure out that the game wants me to press both the dash and jump button while wall hopping. With how common this is, it may be better to keep the dash speed bonus active until the player lands. Jumping on edges of the screen is also not too intuitive, but just including a small section in the tutorial where you do it will be enough.
I see a lot of really cool ideas and potential, I will definitely keep an eye to see how this game continues to develop, nice work!
I'm sorry, I don't think there's much I can do on my end to increase compatibility for the web version. I'm hoping that Godot improves such things in the future, but I don't think that the upcoming 4.5 version of Godot adds too much compatibility features. I'm not sure if this will help, but you can try forcing the desktop release to launch with opengl (it should do so automatically on older hardware, but it doesn't hurt to try):
- Right-click on the .exe file and select "create shortcut" (on Windows 11 it will be under "Show more options")
- Right-click on the shortcut and add --rendering-driver opengl3 after the target path (right after the last quotation mark)
I'm sorry for making the suggestion, it triggered the quarantine system. My guess is that it's because of the amount of tags added rather than the types of tags, but Itch doesn't disclose how it works so there's no way of knowing for sure. I recommend just waiting for a week before doing anything else with the tags, wrongful quarantines usually don't last long.
I've had one of my own games quarantined recently and the reason turned out to be that the page linked to Steam which isn't written as a rule anywhere but is apparently not allowed. The hidden regulations on this site can be very frustrating.
I'm very sorry that this happened, I just wanted your game to be a bit more visible again, it's fun and I really like the art.
I think you can put the tags back in. Free adult games have been reindexed and can appear in searches, and if I type "Goblin Glade" it comes up, but at the moment this game is very difficult to discover for anyone new because it has no tags. I don't think there's anything in it that goes against the new regulations, so it's probably safe.
I think that honey slime is the weakest. Like catalyst, it's vulnerable to misplacement, overfills, and idols, but unlike catalyst it's also loses to cook time manipulations. It also caps at reducing time by 8, requiring 4 drops, while accelerant requires just 2 drops even at level 4. Perhaps honey slime should decrease brew times by 1 on infuse? That way you'd only need 2 to brew at max level, so it will have an advantage over accelerant by being synergistic with rose slime and easier to max out.
Stimulant injection is definitely the thing to switch to for a final build. I would take stimulant injections even if they were to become single use. Almost any offensive pair of level 6 elixirs with a persistence modification powered by stimulant injections can win infinitely. This isn't necessarily something that needs fixing, since there should be some sort of a finished combination to aspire towards, but I've gone infinite with a "carnal, bulging, growth, concentrated" combo, and a lightweight "mesmerizing, compression" combo.
I've had a bit of time to play a few sessions, there's lots of variety to discover and tons of fun to be had! I want to offer several balance related suggestions:
- The first match is currently among the biggest obstacles with weaker starting builds being underequipped for dealing with high-end first opponents. I've had a couple of 10 minute starting matches that I ultimately ended up losing. Accelerant elixir wins the first match every time, but honey slime and catalyst elixir users are at a big disadvantage against any slime or growth themed opponents (new sticky elixir is very strong in the first match). While I think that all 3 have room for strong late-game builds, I recommend giving honey and catalyst starts stronger allure elixirs to compensate for the unreliable nature of their trigger mechanism. A weaker starting opponent could help ease new players into the game, and get players to the fun of build customization faster.
- Overflow related issues are completely fixed, great work! Some of the related strategies can feel slightly underpowered now and countermeasures like corruption and golden idols are very strong. Compression feels even stronger, and is currently an auto include for all builds, perhaps it should trigger on combination instead? With the cooking time changes, combining spirals, and negation chances, all overflow builds now have a place without being too dominant.
- I really like the coins and gems. However, they allow for some incredibly high allure generation, with most of my builds that defeat 10 or more witches all losing to a gem user. They may not need too much direct tuning, since most can be countered if overflow methods become stronger, or if there will be ways to prematurely cook the opponent's brew. I have also never seen tourmaline gems offered, are they in the player's pool? The gold growth effect they offer would be a handy counter to gem-based strategies.
- Opponents that use infinitely stacking effects like diamonds, rubies, charm elixirs, and sultry injections offer just one chance to win before the power scaling becomes too much to handle. However, this is not as big of an issue with virile elixirs and prophesy elixirs since they fill up the cauldron. A similar downside would help balance other stacking-allure ingredients, if they increase in size proportional to their added power or clog up your cauldron with useless steam clouds.
- Injections are an awesome addition, I really like how they work and the different new strategies they open up. Jams are also interesting, but I feel like jelly and strawberry could benefit from being single use with a reset to inventory after casting (like citrine gems).
- The new upgrade system is really cool, it feels like there's a good range of options. "Persistence" may be too strong of an offering and dissuades the purchase of eternal injections which require an extra step. "Consolidate" feels a bit awkward, but it does make sense as a way to shrink down ingredients if needed. Perhaps there could be an effect that exchanges the power of a sacrificed ingredient to those offered in the shop as a way to allow players to switch builds in late game?
- There are lots of situational counter effects that clog up your inventory when you don't need them. Picking what to use and when is a big part of the game, so a "side-pack" which you can add to your inventory if needed could add a layer of strategy and another direction for upgrades. For example a virile elixir user could keep a situational emerald gem to punish slime users, or a corruption elixir to prevent overflow. Tough opponents could also pull out new ingredients to adjust to your strategy.
The game is already lots of fun to play, so these suggestions are certainly not meant to be critical of the experience I've had, just a few ideas for how it could be rebalanced a bit! You have an excellent sense of gameplay design, and there are many other ways to improve the overall flow.
Thank you, I always have lots of fun inventing and coding new game mechanics! I hope to keep making games for as long as there's a place that can host them.
Incredible work, I am already in love with all of the new additions, quality of life improvements, and thoughtful balance changes! I am very happy to see such a huge expansion to was easily one of my favorite new games of the year, thank you!
There is already a second version of the game on Steam, but it a few scenes were removed, so this one is the more complete game. I don't think that an Android version is easy to make, games with pixel art are difficult to scale to a variety of resolutions.
A guide for card unlocking events could be a good addition to make in the sequel. I haven't fully decided if card unlocks will work the same way as they did in the first game.
I'm planning to add a dungeon crawl focused section in the sequel as well as some additional card battle mechanics to make the different opponents a bit more distinct. There's quite bit more Bastion stuff coming (hopefully) later this year, I just don't know where the new game will need to be uploaded since Bastion is now too spicy for Itch.
I don't think I'll ever be the one to make it, but an online PvP card battle game in this style could be neat. There's probably not quite enough strategy involved for it to be highly competitive, but it can probably get there if a bigger variety of card effects were to be introduced.
I don't want to publicly announce where I'm from, but it's not too difficult to figure out.
It will be a bit more clear where I can post my stuff in half of a year. I'll have to see which corners of the internet remain after all of this is over. I'll stay on Itch until bans and removals start to roll out, but public SubscribeStar posts may become my new way of hosting my games if things get tough.
We'll have to wait and see how strongly the new terms of service are enforced. I think that even if the situation is fully reversed, Itch has lost too much trust and probably won't be useful in the near future, but I'll keep using it as a repository until my games start getting removed. My near-term plan is to make public SubscribeStar posts with uploads of older projects that Itch deletes. I don't currently have a long-term plan, I'll don't have any guesses regarding which safe harbors may still remain or suddenly appear in the next 6 months.
Thank you for all of these years of support Nekolag! I hope you will find a new home and continue making your games too, I've always enjoyed them! If Itch starts taking my games down I think that I will start a public section on SubscribeStar to offer free downloads, but I'll need to find a place with a bit more public visibility eventually.
I still don't know what causes this, but I hope it goes away when I patch the game to newer Godot versions in the future. Is it broken in both the online and offline releases for you?
Thank you, that means a lot to me! I will continue to do what I do for as long as I can, I'll just need to find some workarounds now that the internet is becoming smaller.
I'm sorry about this, I hope that Godot improves compatibility in the future. I don't think that the second method will help, but if you want to try it the process is:
- Right-click on the .exe file and select "create shortcut" (on Windows 11 it will be under "Show more options")
- Right-click on the shortcut and add --rendering-driver opengl3 after the target path (right after the last quotation mark)
