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I've got it added this morning! Halfway through making bombs and other consumables, but expect to see that in the next update.

Yeah, I think that's something where I'm so used to it that I don't even notice anymore. I'll add some greater visual distinguishability between the standard attack and defense icons in a near-future update.

Further out, I'm planning to add an item that gives you a "Bash" peg - it'll act like the Slime peg, but damage the targeted enemy each time something bounces off of it :) 

Thanks so much for posting this! I love watching playthroughs since I can see exactly what players are thinking when they play. And even for unfortunate occasions like finding bugs, I can see the exact circumstances that led up to the crash.

I agree that the game needs a lot more onboarding. Things like the purple exhaustion balls, which drop when you shuffle your discard bag back into your draw bag, are left way too mysterious, and the effect resolution stack is firing off too quickly and without being legible. For instance, poison damage occurs, then the poison effect decrements, then you lose all of your armor (unless you have the Heavy Armor effect) all in the space of like half a second. Woof. Needs better communication.

I'll be sure to add an in-play options menu in this week, and maybe some different music choices long term. 

I'm glad you enjoyed the game! The moment at the end where you start getting back into the game is a good moment for me, haha.

It's a good idea, but this version at least is designed for mobile and screen space is so precious as it is. I think I could play around with that idea if I make a dedicated desktop version for Steam.

I checked it out this morning. Nice work! I will say that the morning commute was absolutely murder, haha.

Haha, love the jet ski physics.      great sliding action, and I love the way you can see  obstacles ahead of you coming down the line. Here's me wiping out on my first play - so many boulders!

Fun game! It took a minute to get the timing down, but there's a good level of challenge. Super satisfying to get a double or a triple, too. 

And version 1.2 is out! This update swaps around the controls, like you suggested.

Ya know, it makes a lot of sense when you put it like that. Expect an update this weekend!

(I was thinking it was require more skill if you aren't able to drag to where you want it to land, but you're right that it's unintuitive. That latter concern should trump the former.)

Loved playing this. There's such a great sense of polish to it, and it feels very satisfying to mossify a level.

It looks pretty to boot! 

Thanks! I wish I had more time to play with the lighting - horror can be so atmospheric, and I left things more or less at the default settings. #Regrets

The people need to know.

WHERE ARE THE DRUM BUGS?

My sacks got jacked! Better attack back.

Thanks! I'm excited for where it's gonna go. In addition to the next update containing an Ice domain, it's also gonna add an event or decision that adds a "War Touched" tag to a hero. That'll give them combat bonuses, but also make them the focus of future War events and efforts.

Good stuff! I like the music (electroswing?), it sounds appropriately Looney Toons-ish. It all came together great!

Nice game! Everything is nice! Nothing is wrong in my life anymore, and every day is sunshine. Thanks, Sunbright!

Ah, fun game! It took a minute to figure out, but it's an interesting take on snake.

Screenshot for proof :)

312! I see the Domino Grove influence, but I like the direction you took it. I definitely take it more personally here when the board fills up, haha.

Alright, the bug has been fixed! By removing the factory's smoke particle effect, the new version shouldn't have the glitch issue anymore.

Thanks for the confirmation! I do appreciate it.

This visual bug has been a real bugbear for me. I can't reproduce it myself, and I can't find good information out there on what might be going on. Given how long this bug has been haunting me and how much it degrades some players' experience, I'm going to take that particle effect out of the full version. On the plus side, the overall graphics are getting a big upgrade, so I don't think it'll be missed as much :)

Hey, good timing! I might have finally figured out the source of the bug, but I'm not able to test it myself since I've never been able to reproduce it. Could you download the new update and see if the bug still occurs?

(For the curious, the bug comes from Godot's particle system, which can sometimes cause problems if the particle FPS is lower than the game's FPS and their "Interpolate" flag is set to true. I've updated all particles in the game up from their default 30 FPS to 60 FPS and disabled interpolation, so I'm hoping it works now!)

(This bug has been a thorn in my side for months now, since I can't trigger it on my own.)

Hey, fantastic feedback! I feel like you can see where I want to go with the game :) But I absolutely agree the game needs work. A big reason why I put the game out this early was to start getting feedback from players, smoothing the rough edges, and making sure the moment-to-moment gameplay is satisfying. (When you design a game and already have perfect knowledge of how the systems work together, it's hard to see what is and what isn't obvious when someone only has partial or imperfect knowledge of those. New players, for example.)

I think I want the game to _eventually_ be difficult, but it doesn't need to be as hard at the beginning. There's a few knobs I can turn here - cheaper hero recruiting, more gold from lairs, cheaper trading, etc. I'll think on what I can do here.

Managing hero stress is definitely one of the core 'loops' of gameplay, and right now the player is a little short on ways to affect hero stress. (Building a teahouse or casting the "soothe" spell, I think, are mostly it. Heroes with a "Friends" relationship can also take a relaxing walk together, but that's not something that happens often.) There will be more ways to deal with this in the future, but I think this is one of the tricky design problems I'll have to solve. (The problem, briefly, is that the core loop of managing stress is both a long-term thing and only indirectly affected by player actions. Figuring out how to give good feedback on player actions is tough with those conditions.) I like your idea of a festival! One-time things that trade resources for a little breathing room are cool decisions to force the player to make :D

I'll think about ways to better highlight the default pay rates for different jobs. You can't throw too much text at a new player, or else it all blurs together and information retention plummets. Maybe adding a line to the bottom of the Build Screen could be a nice hint: "Build jobs pay 20 gold per job, set at the Guild Hall" or something like that.

The Explore job refers specifically to going to unexplored tiles, rather than trying to conquer new lairs or maintain already-conquered ones. When a hero goes Questing, they could take an Explore job, a Conquer job, or a Maintain Lair job (or a Kill Monster job, if you've created any of those). Unconquered lairs also have gold inside already, which acts as a sort of "base pay" for the job that can't be modified by the player. Heroes do have a "New Guild Optimism" mood modifier - I could see adding in something where their Wanderlust meter fills up more slowly when they are new. (Once Wanderlust is full, the hero wants to go out on a Quest next.) That would decrease the amount of questing and danger for the first couple of days.

Mana is used to cast spells, which must first be researched. There are three spells in place, but more planned for. Your comment has convinced me to make the Soothe spell available at the beginning. This gives all heroes a mood boost for a day.

I do plan to increase the total number of possible heroes (up to eight, ten, or twelve, not sure yet). I _currently_ have a restriction that you can only hire one hero of each type, though I've considered opening that up. If I do, I won't have to implement another class before increasing the max number of heroes. (Side note: heroes are cheaper if you have fewer employed.)

I plan to go pretty far with relationships. One of my long-term goals is to have crazy things like "necromancer / zombie"  or "betrayer / betrayed" relationships. Shorter term, I'll be adding things like "dude, you just burned down my house" as negative relationship modifiers. If it burns to the ground, then that should be an automatic rivalry. (It's not all doom and gloom. Something like "neighbors" could provide a relationship bonus.)

One of three immediate problems that I'll be working on is what I'm calling the "coordination" problem. You might need three heroes to party up in order to take down a lair (like the Dark Tower). How should I try to get all these heroes to go questing at the same time? The spells Call Home and Call to Adventure can help with this party formation, but that's what I'd consider a "skilled" play (requiring knowledge of how the systems work). More automatically, I've tried to synchronize the sleep schedules for all heroes (even when a hero fills up their sleep need earlier). Then, all heroes are at least starting the day at the same time. More work to be done, though.

(The other big two problems are the "distance" problem, where heroes eventually spend most of the day wondering across the map as you expand outwards, and the "experience" problem, where heroes hired later don't have the benefit of easy early experience provided by exploring unknown tiles. I've got some ideas for these to try out, but I always love hearing more :)

Speed does reset to x1 when a hero is under attack. I could add some small effects to indicate this (maybe a small vignette effect when speed is increased?) and add a "zoom to combat" button to replace the "speed up" button when combat is occurring.

Really, this type of feedback is exactly what I was hoping for! Thanks for helping to make the game better :)

(On a small scheduling note, I've had to pivot focus to Neongarten in January to meet a publishing deadline. I hope to have a small update out by the end of the month (decreasing the difficulty), and a larger one in February.)

Thanks! Eventually, the player will get to pick four of seven or eight possible heroes / classes when they start a new game, and all te heroes will display their personality and (maybe?) a backstory trait or two, somewhat like what Rimworld does. Maybe some cooler artwork during those intro "Hero Decision" screens would be fun too!

Appreciate the kind words :)

Thanks for the feedback. Polishing up that first fifteen minutes of play is always a hard thing to do. (Lots of AAA games get overly hand-holdy about this, so you'll see people online railing against tutorialization for instance.)

Your heroes are always supposed to decide what to do on their own - perhaps that needs to be made clearer. I did add in a quick update to fix the first part of the problem: you can get rid of the sidebar just by clicking somewhere else now.

Might as well be the theme song....

I wanted to post a quick explanation of how I'll be using version numbers for this project. For games that can last a long time (like colony sims!), I know that maintaining save game compatibility is very important.

I'll start off by saying that this is the alpha version of this game. Breaking changes can and will happen, and I will not feel the least bit of guilt about it. (No more than when I design a twisted storylet / hero decision that kills off your Guild, like some coked-out G R R Martin.) But, if I do break things, I want you to know about it ahead of time.

The version number displayed on the title screen will follow this format:
[MAJOR VERSION NUMBER] . [SAVE GAME VERSION NUMBER] [mod?] . [BUILD NUMBER]
So, for instance, the first version I launched just now is version 0.2.1.

If I post an update tomorrow that fixes a bug and doesn't affect the save file at all, that version would be v0.2.2.

If I post an update tomorrow that changes the "starting conditions" of the map, but is compatible with save files from today, then I'll increment the option "mod number" after the save game version number. So, say I add in a new monster and lair type. Those get added to the map at the start of the game. I would call it v0.2b.2. You could still play with a save file from v0.2.1 (since the save file version number hasn't changed), but you wouldn't get the new "start of game" content. C'est la vie.

If I post an update tomorrow that adds on new stats to the Heroes, or something else incompatible with the previous saves, then the new version would be v0.3.2.

So, if the new version has the same save game version number as your save file, then you are good to go!

The googly-eyed wildcard is such a nice touch. *chef's kiss*

Definitely not the visual effects I was going for! Thanks for the bug report. Could you let me know your OS and graphics card?

Oh yeah, that's not something you can come back from. Almost any piece added would be eaten instantly.

Part of that comes from the simple AI I coded up for single player. "Random Randel" doesn't take the board into consideration at all when he plays a move - that's part of the reason he gets such a huge handicap. If you're looking for more of a challenge, try playing him where you don't capture any of his pieces for X turns, or where you don't try to capture his pieces at all.

And the bug has been fixed! A bit later than expected, but life will do that to ya.

I'm glad you enjoy it! Mac support would require paying a $100 development fee, and that's something I'll gladly do if the game gets enough wishlists (say, at least 100) from mac-specific gamers.

My guess - you've got a controller plugged in. There's a bug where if you have one plugged in, the game is assuming you'll be using that. I should have a bug fix out in a week, give or take a couple of days.

"Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair!"

Thank you! I tried to keep the game a good mix of strategic depth and approachable play, and I'm glad to hear it resonated with you.

Fixed in the latest update! There were some weird windowed / fullscreen logic to work through, but the latest version accepts Alt+Enter and F11.

There is some small weirdness to note - the game starts off in windowed mode, but if your monitor resolution is 1920 x 1080, then the game will look like it's in full screen mode. It's really windowed, but the title bar is drawn outside the monitor. Working through the weirdness this week.

Thanks for the feedback - that's how the game gets better!

That is one fine-looking bee. Nice job!

I feel jounced. Great work with this game, it feels very kinetic and full of life. No mean task.