itch.io

Very interesting and crisp, gameplay-wise. I don't recall encountering such a thing as a "melee shoot'em up" where you get, er, up close and personal with a sword slash. It was very fun to use, and i like the little detail of having it slash left then right, instead of always in the same direction. It's the kind of little things that many games wouldn't care about but that makes me tick here.

Nice music, although the backbeat disappears from time to time, making it hard to keep the beat (although in your defence there IS another music playing in my background right now on a different beat so it mustn't help). Also, some enemy shots are slightly offset from the beat, is that on purpose to disrupt the player's rythm ? Nice touch (it disappears in the boss fight though, doesn't it ?)

Overall good concept that is well executed, i like this and will likely replay it again !

Biplanes, Blimps and Bouncy Boy Buttocks in Booty Briefs, Mama likes !

Ooooh, good job! i finished adding pages for the Spells & Items section and added some content on other pages

The game can be played in browser for free in its latest version here and on Newgrounds, you can also buy and download it here on a pay-what-you-want basis.

FINALLY!!! COMPLETE REGICIDE WITH NO HEALTH LOST!!!

Eat your crown and CHOKE, Royalty!

now i can finally say i've fully beaten the game for good, and move on to another addiction 💀💀💀

Not pictured above: A level 2 Succubus who single-handedly took care of everything up to the Royal archer, and a level 2 Milkman who gave my Big Boned Babeh a much welcomed calcium boost!

thanks again for your wonderful work, Stopsignal! You rule!

Upgraded and shielded pigmen in the back of their lane are excellent candidates for regicide! At level 3 and with a shield, they can practically hold a lane all by themselves

Wait, now i realise it's not really drag and drop. Just click on one unit, then on the other; if they're identical they'll merge. But yes, you can merge units that are already on the board and are not forced to buy upgrades from the shop

Good speedrun! Can you beat mine?

I think i had the same about not getting that i had to click on the necromancer, at the start… fair.

To make a level 3 unit, you simply drag and drop a level 2 unit on another level 2 unit of the same type, just like you would do with level 1 units. The only thing you have to mind is that they must not be carrying different pieces of equipment – a unit that carries nothing can be combined with one that carries a shield, for instance, but if one has a shield and the other a funny bone, you cannot merge them. 

Also, I am not sure about that but i think if you want to keep the equipment, you have to drag and drop the unit that carries nothing onto the one that carries the equipment, otherwise it seems the equipment is lost. Same if you have a unit that was buffed with milk or a building: if you want to keep the buff, drag and drop an unbuffed unit onto the buffed one, not the other way around.

You cannot simply add a lvl. 1 unit on a lvl. 2 one, they must be of the same level to merge. So in the end, you'll need 4 identical lvl. 1 units to make a single lvl.3 one

Ah yes that was it, thanks! Thus the only way to prevent a Riposte is to kill them in melee before they get the chance, or BATS! them.

Units, buildings and spells can all be upgraded twice, but you need to merge 2 level 2 units to make a level 3 one. This is not always the best choice until mid-to-late game, as it can be overkill against weak ennemies and thins your other lanes, but it is essential in the late game: you'll obtain powerful units able to go toe-to-toe with knights easier, and making a level 3 unit gives you a high-tier unit to buy in the roster. Plus, level 3 spells are a blast!

You don't have to "do" anything to upgrade the tier, you just gain access to more powerful units as the game goes on.

Question. Correct me if I'm wrong (and might well be), but it seems that Royalists do not riposte to a Stoner's rock or an Assassin's knife, provided it's the killing blow. However, they do retaliate when hit by the Kobold's bullet, even though they immediately die afterwards. Is there a particular reason ?

I'm addicted to this so here comes the time to add gratuitous suggestions, hoping that my fix becomes even better in the future:

– Possibility to cancel a purchase or upgrade, once per game – or twice, if no buying or upgrading has been done since; makes it less penalising if it's just to correct an inattention mistake, but make it decisive and limited if the player wants to use it to reorient their strategy long after the purchase or upgrade in question.
• Alternatively, making this a common pool of "hexes" along with spying, that way choosing to use either has to be strategic. Once they're depleted, spying is still possible at the cost of 2 coins but cancelling is no longer possible.

– Possibility to "Research" a unit, that is, paying one coin during the prep phase to increase the odds of having it pop up in the roster next preparation phase. This would let the player use spare coins at the end of a turn with a bit more control than just re-rolling.
• Such odds increases could be proportionately leveled to the current size of the roster – or not, if you deem it too powerful for higher tier units.
• "Research" could be a 3-items alternate roster, where units available for research are randomised each prep phase ? That way the player doesn't get to research any one unit. But maybe a second randomised roster would be perfectly redundant.

– "Advanced research" would be paying 2 coins to be sure a given unit appears – powerful, but perhaps still balanced as the unit effectively costs 5 coins to obtain, over the course of two turns.
If Mausoleums make this too easy to use, then Advanced Research could cost 3 coins, bringing the unit's total cost to 6. Expensive, but that would be the price of cheating rolls and encourage the player to trust their luck a little.

– Something that's meant to decreases enemy offensive power, or "stun" an enemy unit?

– A building that lets the player swap any  2 units on the fly when battle has begun ? Once per level of the building. As for theme, it could be either:
• An observation tower (with a spotter for strategy)
• A standard bearer (they were used for armies' coordination)
• An underground rail network, dug under the graveyard. Because I believe it would be really funny that undead minions would reorganise their formation during combat by… taking the metro.

– Other "campaigns" that would pit the witch against different bosses with different mechanics, such as :

• one who shows up after a fixed amount of turns, and whose power is instead proportional to the number/level of units the player has, forcing to adopt different optimisation strategies.
• "multiple" bosses who would have to be defeated all at the same time; each could require a different lane optimisation.
• "Sequential" bosses who'd be fought one after the other, with a progressive increase in power (Granted, that's far less original than the King's "grows stronger with time")
• A Rival Necromancer using "mirror" units and spells?

– Different types of protection, like a light armour that only stops 1 damage – useful against retaliation attacks, but that's it; maybe make it only work against such projectiles; or one that halves all damage received (rounded at the player's disadvantage), starting at 4. That way it's more efficient against very high damage, but no better or even worse than a shield against anything lower than 5.

– More RATS! (I love rats but no pressure)

Am very curious to see what you will come up with in the future, especially the "alternate decks".

Excellent game. A bit of a shame that it's not possible to shoot while running (it's more of a Run or Gun then), or downwards during a jump, but those are your design choices and I trust that you knew what you were doing. Not sure what the deal with no longer losing coins was. The bosses are simple yet intuitive.
 Overall a pleasant experience!

Very fun and addictive game! Really like the ambiance too!
Took me a few tries, but today turned out to be a good day for

GLORIOUS REGICIDE 

My late-game build
(off the top of my head):

Spells: 2x Lvl.2 Bone Books, 1x Lv.2 Blessing. I couldn't make bats work in the late game since there's no way to make their power scale up. EDIT: I hadn't worked out that spells could reach a third level at the time I wrote this. Lvl.3 Bats, just like any Lvl.3 spell is very powerful indeed!

Top lane: Lvl.3 Excalibur (14/5!!!) who received at least one blessing. Also a Lvl.2 stoner, a once-milk-buffed Lv.1 viking and a Lv.2 Pigman who, er, participated somewhat.

Center lane: Summon-focused build with Lvl.2 summoner & Lvl.2 flying skulls, both with funny bones, Lvl.3 Bard and Lvl.2 Rockstar, plus a few Bone Book summons; waves upon waves of buffed & blessed minions for sweet, sweet carnage.

Bottom lane: Lvl.3 Archer (8 damage on 2 ennemies) and Lvl.2 Kobold (shielded) who did a lot of clearing up the toughest guards in the final battle, and a shielded Lvl.2 Pigman. Forgot what the last unit was, probably a very brave little undead who sadly couldn't shine bright enough for me to remember them…

Notes : a well-optimised somewhat optimised summon build did most of the heavy lifting, and synergised wonderfully with the Bone Book spell. Naturally they were the ones to take down the king, and presumably feast on his corpse! And upgraded rats are amazing!

Second winning Playthrough: Lvl.3 Big Boned with Shield + Lvl. 3 Nurse = BWAAAHA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HAAAH! I AM BULLETPROOF !!!

I hope you're doing well, and i look forward to seeing your next work!

(Note: I play the mac version)

How do I get more workers?

I like the game so far but I'm struggling to understand how to get more workers. I assume I need both houses and food production (either windmills or berry picking) but I fail to grasp the exact proportions, and I keep running out of workers. I've got too many fires that can't be upgraded for lack of a pickaxe, and just no more workers. How can I stop hitting that wall? 

Edit: In more than 8 hours of playing, I also never got a single pickaxe. Not one. I've rased rainforests, pulverised plateaus, laminated the landscape and nothing. The harder rocks remain unminable. This is a far cry from the advertised half-hour playing session, am I doing something wrong?

An overall pleasant experience. I never played Blackjack but the rules were quick to get the hang of, and it shows a lot of promise. The graphics are appropriate.
I do agree with a few comments, in that having a small hand at all times other than the aces up your sleeve or trump cards could really make the game less frustrating, as even with an optimised deck, a single bad shuffle can leave you to be mercilessly pummeled. Alternatively, the ability to reshuffle one's deck (with or without the discard pile) in a pinch more often, without having to rely on a specific card and instead using advantage or chips, would be quite nice. The possibility to remove cards is nice, but I am unsure it really does much with that frequency. The multiple "cards that are not cards" (i.e. SIM card, memory card, business card etc.) is a very creative idea and I like the humour in all of this.

Final note, do you intend to release this through itch.io as well ? I am asking because my computer runs an obsolete OS for which Steam support was cut off, thus I can no longer use the app. In any case, good luck and strength to you on completing this delightful indie !

I had 3 cards locked once. The encounter might need balancing, though it could also be meant to be that way : an opponent who starts slow but gets more and more powerful in the endgame, requiring you to play fast and aggressively to defeat him quickly, lest he becomes unbeatable. The fact that your run can be ended because you built too slow a deck befits the game's roguelite style.

Hi, first off : this will be a long read for a comment.
Second : this was very nice! I browsed through your other games (finished Swords & Claws at time of writing), they're fun, and the sheer effort you put in them even as a beginner dev deserves my congratulations! As for your general project of making perfectly casual naturist games, it is also something that I can appreciate. So far, in none of them did it seem gratuitous, awkward or forced – and why should it?

As for Water Warfare itself, so far it's solid, rather responsive, with appropriate graphics for such a humble game and a funny theme. Nice to see a third-person shooter that's not about killing (though the use of the term "ennemies" feels a bit violent, I would have said "rivals", "adversaries" or "opponents" – especially since you already use "soaked" instead of "dead"). The ethnic diversity effort is much appreciated. Nothing to say about the music, it's nothing incredible but it serves everything appropriately. The Theme is definitely there, what with towels "healing", water pools soaking you fast and the campfire slowly drying you - that's a nice touch.

Reading through the comments I see that you are unsure about continuing it ? No pressure, you're the one to decide. If you ever do come back to it though, here are a few gratuitous suggestions :
- Aiming is awkward. Someone mentioned a first-person view, though I'd be more in favour of keeping the over-the-shoulder aiming and adding an aiming reticle – or maybe two : one close, one far to adjust the parallax. They could even be water balloon/water drop/beach ball-shaped to keep with the theme
- Crouching long enough next to ponds, rivers or the sea to refill the water gun. This would let one bypass the need for bottles to spawn, maybe even get a full refill, but leave the player a "sitting duck" during that time so it would still be risky. Alternatively, higher water bottles and lower towels spawn rates.
- Limited sprinting. Since it is already hot under the sun, there'd be a cooldown which would be removed faster if the player character gets splashed in the mean time
- AI that would discourage opponents from jumping in the river because they're pursuing you ; in the campfire level, it seems one can just camp (no pun intended) on that little "island" in the corner and just wait for people to jump in the river, adding to the soaked opponents count
- The palmtree feels like one should be able to pass under it but it's solid. It'd be nice if it either looked more unpassable, or only the trunk was solid and not the leaves
- The option for stockier, fatter body types. Body positivity is a huge part of naturism, and I see you added "vitiligo" skin which is already amazing ; but everyone is still very thin (and smooth, but more on that later). The larger hitbox of heavyset characters could be balanced with more "health" (as the body has more surface and thus takes longer to soak), holding a bigger water gun or being able to carry more water balloons at once.
- Since we're talking body image, the character creator is admirably complete for a humble game made by one person, but it could use options for body hair, wrinkles, maybe ordinary scars like stretch marks. So far, everyone is looking really smooth and within current western beauty standards.
- No relation but it feels so weird to play this while reading Dune on the side

Anyhow, feel free to disregard any/all of those suggestions if you are already planning to implement them in a later version, or just don't find them relevant. And good things to you, keep up the awesome work!

I see, thanks for your answer ! Of course, there's a lot of trial-and-error and I trust your choices. Will the finished game be available for purchase on itch.io as well as on Steam ? I'll remember the kickstarter for latest updates.

Hi ! Just finished the demo, I had fun and hope I can get some friends to try co-op mode ! Do you intend to keep it to 2 players, or would more players be a possibility in the future ? Maybe with increased difficulty (more ennemies, more boss HP…) to compensate.

I am eager to discover the rest of the story and that universe. 

I like how it looks so far, the controls are responsive although maybe a bit sluggish. I don't think the game would suffer from everything going a little (or much) faster : player movement and attacks, enemy movement and attacks, projectiles, everything can stand being a bit more nervous and fast-paced. But it's very playable like this. The Dash and Double Jump are appreciated, it's a bit strange that the aerial dash doesn't preserve momentum but I understand that it could be for balancing reasons.

Minor details and gratuitous suggestions :
– I know that historical accuracy is not the goal here (character have bombs after all…), but is feels a bit strange to see cross-shaped tombstones in a pre-christianised (and even pre-romanised, if I got it right) environment. Tombstones are easy to decipher visually, even with a simpler shape. Same goes with gothic-looking archs, it's a bit unsettling.
– I like what you've done with the 1-handed/2-handed system. Do you intend to develop that for other things than melee weapons ? Or could there be other possible actions for the shield slot, like spells ? Other kinds of bows and/or ranged weapons (slings and throwing spears come to mind) maybe ?
- The healing spells could use not working when you're already full health. They could also use a nerf to make them more strategic, such as "1 use, then you have to destroy an enemy to use it again". Each spell could be evolving as well : buying it again to make it more powerful.
- It could be nice to have weapons whose modifier isn't just damage, but range and/or speed (a spear comes to mind). But maybe you're already implementing it with the war club ? I wasn't sure
- Being able to buy ability modifiers instead of just weapons and spells could be funny (higher jump, longer dash, more attack range…)
- It'd be nice if pushing the joystick up or down while in the air could orient attacks, let's say 45° up or down for a bit more aerial flexibility – unless that would make the character overpowered.
- Some chests reset after dying. This means if the chest was after a checkpoint, each time I die I can open it again for 10 gold. Not much but it does feel a bit like an (albeit grindy) "infinite gold glitch". Maybe this is intentional, a little help when a player gets stuck somewhere ?

Welp, that was longer than I envisioned. I'm eager to see what you'll come up with. Stay awesome !

Salut Malerouille ! Avant toute chose, j'aime beaucoup ce que tu fais, merci encore et félicitations pour ton travail acharné et passionné depuis tout ce temps ! J'ai deux questions en rapport avec quelque chose que tu mentionnes avec ton dernier update, comme quoi tu veux travailler sur un nouveau jeu :
– Il était question, à une époque, de rajouter 2 espèces jouables à Daggan avec leur arbre de compétences propre (tigres et rats, si je me souviens bien ?). Tu as laissé l'idée de côté ? Je me doute sans problème que c'est beaucoup de boulot, surtout l'animation…
– Est-ce que cette version 1.0.1 du jeu ne sera disponible que pour Windows ?  Je me souviens que tu avais mentionné à quel point le portage et le débuggages sur d'autres systèmes d'exploit' étaient un vrai casse-tête. Je demande quand même car j'ai un sale ordi de bourgeois  mac. J'avais pu jouer à une version (ainsi qu'à la première démo) qui tournait sur cet OS, mais j'ai bêtement supprimé le fichier du jeu sans en garder une sauvegarde. Maintenant je ne peux plus télécharger cette ancienne version, itch.io m'envoie toujours sur la plus récente !

En bref, est-ce que ces questions seraient traitées dans une futur relativement proche ? Pas de pression hein, je comprendrais sans problème qu'après tout ce temps tu veuilles passer à autre chose et j'ai hâte de voir ce que tu nous mitonnes !

Bon courage et porte-toi bien !