itch.io

That's a plausible explanation. It's possible to manually save between each step, so you could technically spend a really long time hitting 10 0.6% chance. However, I probably won’t balance around this strategy, because it’s only possible on the web version, where saves aren’t triggered automatically on exit.

If that’s the case, then there must be some quirks in the random number generator, because getting 6–7 screaming mandrakes shouldn’t be feasible with a stated 0.6% chance. Even 6–7 normal mandrakes would only be around a 0.55% chance. I think having 1 screaming mandrake triggering +9999 vitality (0.03% chance) then getting 500 virtue combined with a good run should already be enough.

Thanks for the feedback! Questions like these are very helpful during development because it reveals what players think. I’ll try my best to address all of them.

Is the business permit useless?

At the moment, the business permit is mostly useless (aside from a score boost). However, I’m already working on lemonade stand content for the next update, which will require it.

How do you get demerits?

There used to be more ways to earn demerits, but currently the only options are trying to flirt with Liebeth then fighting the disciplinary committee.

Screaming Mandrakes are hard to get

Based on feedback from other players, the most effective way to obtain Screaming Mandrake right now is simply refreshing the page and trying again, since autosave only triggers once every 30 seconds in the web version. Alchemy is intentionally difficult at this stage of the game, but it will gradually become easier and eventually become your main source of Screaming Mandrake.

How do you get gold?

Gold is primarily earned by selling items on the map. The 1 million gold requirement may seem excessive, but it’s intended for players doing a Business Club run, which will provide access to significantly more gold. For now, without the lemonade stand business, the only way to reach 1 million gold is by selling Screaming Mandrake.

Inviting all three NPCs to the cabin feels useless

NPC interactions such as “Practice magic with Liebeth” are leisure nodes and do not progress the calamity. Their usefulness depends on your available food and sleep. Also synergizes very well with certain builds.

Gathering 2000 Calmness to calm the demon

Reaching 2000 Calmness to calm the demon should already be possible by following the meditation route.

Are more Shadow Comprehension bonuses planned?

Yes. I plan to increase Shadow Comprehension rewards so players can access more power earlier in the game. Maybe fewer nodes but larger rewards when you do find them.

Boss fight clarity / tutorial or journal

I plan to do a polishing pass after finishing Year 1 content for the Steam demo release. This will likely include a UI rework and some form of onboarding tutorial, journal, or glossary.

Is the highest recorded damage saved across runs?

No. It is only recorded for that specific fight.

What do the other stats do?

You can view what each stat does in the Summary tab. If a stat does not appear there, it likely does not directly affect gameplay.

Red and yellow text seems inconsequential

Those colors are mainly used for emphasis. That said, certain final endings (not here yet) will be locked or altered depending on choices such as defeating or sparing a hero.

What is the criteria for remembering an action?

Once an action is revealed (shown on your screen, whether activated or not), it will persist and appear in subsequent runs with the appropriate upgrade.

Thanks again, very helpful!

Multipliers from the same source stack additively, while multipliers from different sources stack multiplicatively.

The 600k score is more than a week old at this point. At the time, there was no alchemy and only one hero available. Cheesing for 9 screaming mandrakes seems absurd to me. That's like (0.06 x 0.05)^9 (probably a little less rare since the correct calculation would use a binomial distribution?) Even 3 screaming mandrakes is already super rare, having all those 3 trigger +9999 vitality is just so astronomically unlikely... unless I made a mistake and accidentally set the chance to something like 95%. (Yeah, there will be a recruitable hero in the future.)

It's just 1 point per basic stat. Calmness, Vitality, Manipulation is 0.1, 2, 10.

Then there are multipliers: +10% for each unique Status, +5% for each unique Resource, +2% per Skill level, +1% per point of Virtue. +50% for each Hero defeated. Then divided by 10 at the end.

A lucky screaming mandrake would only give like 20k points on its own, but with multipliers it can go pretty high.

Hmm… the server may have gone down for a bit, or it may have ignored new entries since it’s been over the 1,000-entry limit for some time now.

I probably won’t be adding key rebinds, but I can change the Alt key. I’ve actually been planning to do that for a while.

You can find more mandrakes from the 'Search Loggers’ Belongings' node. It's still random, but the chance you don't get any in a single playthrough is rather low.

In that case, you could try manually reincarnating. It should try to upload the score again. You don’t have to fully reincarnate, the upload happens on the end screen before the leaderboard loads.

Might be a web thing. Have to play around with it more to verify.

I'll check again, but it shouldn't affect the stats you've already gained.

Amazing! I don’t see your score on the leaderboard though, is it working properly?

The false endings themselves don’t really give a score bonus, most of the points come from the stats you gain along the way.

With that in mind, I think a 600k score might be possible if you choose to spare the heroes instead of defeating them as each point of Virtue currently gives a +1% score bonus.

Does this happen to every node? Some nodes are different size and require me to manually adjust the collision box. I might have skipped over some.

There shouldn't be anything special about that node... Do you mean you can't activate it again in a future run?

I'll try to add auto stop and capacity upgrades.

This update added around 2,086 seconds worth of hunger, I think? Not sure if that's enough.

It's a just a name I used to call nodes that you've seen before in previous runs.

Yeah. I plan to add low intelligence route in the future.

That’s… a bit concerning. It might be a race condition issue, since the web version usually takes longer to process things. I’ve moved achievement saving into the same step as the rest of the progress updates, so it *should* be fixed now.

I'm adding another hero that requires 200 Manipulation to defeat next update. It might be more useful then.

I suspect this might be due to my latest attempt at optimizing the auto save feature on web builds. I have reverted the changes back for now.

Did your Shadow Comprehension get reset as well? 

I’m also using firefox (librewolf) with ublock origin, and I haven’t had issues with saves so far. Could you be in incognito mode by any chance?

I'll get that fixed. Thanks.

Yeah, it's a reference :)

Since new nodes are constantly being added, it’s only fair that players don’t have to recheck older nodes every time.

The reason I haven't added that is mainly because I don't have a UI for it, lol. That's why everyone is named Diablo on the leaderboard too.

The persistence is a bit trickier because those settings are saved in player prefs which get wiped due to how itch.io changes the host url every new build.

Hmm... if it's a visual glitch then a refresh should fix it.

Yeah, older contents should keep getting easier with every update.

Thanks. It's fixed now.

Oops, it's fixed now.

I couldn't get things to fit with an automated text generation, so it's written manually. The bottom part is generated though.

Hmm. I'll see what I can do.

Thank you so much! :D

I believe that currently all +X% bonuses to stats outside of battles stack additively, while damage bonuses during battles are multiplicative.

Ah, I thought Itch.io finally supports Brotli. I'll fix this next update.

Thanks to your comment, I went back and cached the haste calculation. Before it was just simple multiplication so I didn’t bother, but now it uses a square root, so this should avoid those more expensive operations. I also made it show the exact time needed now.

As for the mode swap issue, I wasn’t able to reproduce that, but I’ll keep an eye on it!

I could see people doing that if I was Mr.Beast handing out free cash for playing the game lol. But I don't think that's the case here.

If I have to guess, it's probably 1) very obscure sequence of actions. 2) some kind of game speed manipulation to extend the hunger/rest bars.

Yeah, It's a highly requested feature. I'll work on it soon.

It's repeatable, but it's astronomically unlikely...

0.6% for each Screaming Mandrake, then I believe, 5% for the immortality.

To be honest, I’ve already been pushed out of the top 10 on the leaderboard, ahaha. There are just too many variables for me to account for all of them.  Calmness stacking? Haste potion? Maybe some leisure nodes are just too efficient?

The biggest source of score multiplier would be 'sparing a hero'. I can see how second place hitting around 55k points is possible by doing that, but 600k? I have no idea.

Storing player actions would let me verify runs, but that would require a fairly large amount of backend storage. Unless something is blatantly obvious like reaching integer limit, I can’t really prove it...

Thanks for the detailed feedback!

1. I’m planning to add an in-game glossary soon. I’ll consider the mouse over feature if I end up doing a UI rework.

2. There is a math formula that can convert haste to equivalent CDR, so it should be a simple visual change. I try to avoid extra calculation to save frames, but I’ll see what I can do!

3. I’m thinking about adding a 'Fast Forward' upgrade that just speeds up the whole game. It wouldn’t affect game balance, just make things faster.

4. That’s a good idea. Maybe an indicator for when a node disables another one too.

5. The biggest hurdle right now is probably the save system. There’s a save file that gets wiped every time players reincarnate, which I change frequently since it’s “safe” to do so. There’s also another separate persistent save file that I avoid modifying because it’s kinda permanent. On top of that, there’s the queue system. Players will probably want to queue nodes they’ve seen before, so it has to work with that as well.

6. Are you using Alt-Tab to switch between windows? I do that a lot and noticed that the single/loop mode switches on its own as well.

I want to implement all of these player suggestions and polish up a bit before releasing a Steam demo, but it’s definitely on the way. Thanks a lot!