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Barry Hooter spotted! (1:14)

Congrats!

I am surprised that stalemate detection would be challenging. Iterate over the current player's pieces and count the number of available moves. If they are fewer than 1 -> stalemate. What could I be missing? I assume that you have something that detects valid moves as the board tiles are properly highlighted when a piece is selected.

In terms of priorities , probably not the most urgent issue.

Wow great concept and the title gave me a chuckle.

You really love your tarot cards, haha.

I was able to break the game on the third attempt. I was already on island 16 or 18. I had 4-5 queens and a king. I was stacking a lot of extra turns, sometimes reaching 5 turns for a single piece. I had reached over 100 souls. The last thing that I did was rearranging my cards before leaving a friendly island. As I pressed embark some of my pieces disappeared and the game froze. (web build)

Still - had a good fun. The tarot upgrades make for some unusual puzzles with the enemies. Some of the upgrades are more troublesome than others. Does the difficulty progression account for that?

Oh, is it a jam game? Not mentioned in the description and not showing on itch's collection feature in the top right corner.

Loving how simple yet entertaining it is! I notice that over the years you have established and refined a certain style. Care to share what was your focus with this one?

Some minor problems that you might want to address in an update:

- scrollbar on boss description not needed for the web version

- When on the map, I can use dice to strike somebody off screen instead of moving (helps with recycling for free)

- After the first battle in "endless mode", the spoils offered included new dice and new rerolls. I couldn't pick either because "inventory full"

I guess you noticed this, but just to be sure - Excommunication blocks only the first stack of a relic. If you stack multiple times the same relic it will appear disabled, but will actually work (-1 stack)

What do you think about the sacrificial pit not appearing?

I was not happy that 6 people got 5k+ points today, while I could barely reach 200 in the daily today. I tried a few more times in different browsers.

I noticed that:

a) Sacrfice didnt create a sacrificial pit for me (bug)

b) If you play a run with Magna Carta (+1 hand size) and then play the same run without it, you will get different chest rewards and pylon placements. I guess that it is because of the different number of RNG calls. Not a bug, but something that makes me think about the daily challenge implementation in my own game. I am thinking about implementing separate RNG objects to keep the daily runs more similar between players regardless of choices (?)

Thank you for the lighting fast support!

I tried it on Chrome and Brave - it works. I tried it in Firefox incognito and the game works there as well.

My guess is that it might be related to my personal save - not many players have the grail hat, so maybe that is why it is not reported.

If there is a way to extract the save and you will need it to debug this, let me know how I can help.

This is repeating many times without stop. The number of lines with  gets longer and longer with the repetitions. This is on Firefox. 

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Am I the only one facing this problem (no buttons when I start the game)?

There are some problems with the collision physics. Jumping up - I get stuck in the air. I assume I am stuck on a pixel so I click around my character to dislodge myself. Finally loose, the character falls down, but falls through the solid ground and through the whole letter. Happened to me on my first 2 expeditions.

I would wait for an update before trying it again

Oh. I just assumed that it is a trinket that will have an immediate effect. Feels a bit underwhelming if I have to wait for new crew members

Some more things about 1.4.4:

- Changing between challenges would cause the game to hang. I am not sure about the exact steps to reproduce, but I think that if I finish a run, get back to the starting screen and then choose a new challenge I would get the game to freeze.

- If I enter a wish and the genie says "is this what you want or do you want to continue" , if I confirm my current wish - it gets granted, but the button to sail forward disappears. I have to go inside my ship and exit again to make the button available.

- If I have a bard in my crew and receive the "parasite" trinket, I expect my bard to level up and boost all crew members to level3 .  That didn't happen, but if I replace the bard with a new one - parasite trinket kicked in, and it worked as expected.

Not sure if this has always been there or only left unlocked in the latest version, but I somehow unlocked a debug mode where I could spawn cargo and crew with the keyboard.

Playing the 'what you wish is what you get' challenge - "RUM" is not a valid wish, game is literally unplayable 🤣

I came to report the same thing that @Requiem and @Henri-VIP already mentioned - delivering the prince from side boat to his father causes the game to glitch/freeze.

I recorded this from the steam version today (build  18419734)

Oh, wow! If I knew that about the mouse wheel, I wouldn't have asked about the right click. Maybe an omission on my part. 

Regarding the progress - exactly the special skills make me feel less certain about what counts as a valid contribution to the task. Ideally, once I place a piece it will add to the current progress, including all "power ups"

Hey, hey! Love the post-jam update.

A few quality-of-life feature requests:

- Right mouse button to rotate the piece that is selected/dragged (Backpack hero and Backpack battles have it)

- Show the target number and the progress for the current task (e.g. "3/5 white fuel cells")

- Quit button that returns to the main menu (useful for the web version)

Hey, I find this game very rage inducing, but I can't simply drop it.

What better way to show support then to send you a list of bugs?

This is from the Steam version 1.3.11, I made a recording as well 

- When inside the cabin, you can still interact with the boats outside - I could select letters from the genie boat, while in the cabin (not in the video)

- At one point, while having 3 dice, I rolled 3 or 4 consecutive times a total sum of 1. This would be around 0.1% chance of happening. On the other hand, it was in one of the last ships of the 13th fleet and I think that something was forcing the battle to go longer, as my parrots were very quick to destroy the enemy. (not in the video)

- Plated cargo doesn't get boosted by the crew member that adds value on blank rolls (05:00 in the video) ( could be intentional, but why would it be)

- Parrots get splash damage from Bob (earliest at 00:57) - I love that one, it got me to ∞x6

- I got into some weird infinite intimidation glitch at the end.  I guess 3 intimidations in a roll are statistically possible, but then the ship was too intimidated to sink, so there is definitely something going on there (starts around 12:00)

I like the luck stat idea - gives me a reason to hope and to continue playing. 

I still think that reducing the spread in the beginning might be good. But it is also true that I generally don't enjoy so rng-heavy games

Hey, I was showing the game to a friend today and we noticed that mobile full screen doesn't support landscape mode. 

If you plan to update the game more, maybe you could add that. 

Another mobile friendly feature would be to show pylon info when tapping on it

Hey, some feedback from me: 

* I wouldn't mind if the initial RNG is a bit "doctored". Like if the starting dice roll, first enemy cargo and the first loot are more favourable. I end up restarting runs that finish the first battle with less than 12 cargo points

* I noticed that the crew mate that upgrades cargo on blanks sometimes attempts to upgrade non-upgradeable cargo (pearls, special pieces, 9's)

* When some long ships pass by, they might disappear before they are completely off screen

A bug, I suppose:

I placed a tile with a green gem next to a brute's chest and walked there. Instead of the regular behavior of waiting for me to move away, the brute immediately appeared on a tile next to me.

It would be an interesting curse - heretics to immediately jump out of chests without delay, but in this case - I don't see why it happened.

Today's 3rd boss battle was insane!

The main point that I was trying to make is that, while the end animation is happening, you can drop one more tile, this will force you to skip the next level (if you have the hp to survive the level end)

Hey, I am back. This can be a nice game to relax with.

Did you know that when there are heretics involved, you can cause the level to change while still having valid moves to play? If you are quick with the mouse, you can place more tiles while the thunderbolts are flying. This way you can force two simultaneous level-changes and skip a level. Here is a gif I made to demonstrate. The first time, when I did it out of frustration, I skipped a boss level.

Sorry for breaking your game

You definitely should start putting games on Steam

It is great. I love the idea of relics having both positive and negative effects. It actually works in this case. I prefer shorter dailies than longer ones

One of the daily relics today doubles your starting HP to 10, yet none of the descriptions mentions that.

I wouldn't mind having a little more player agency by allowing me to rotate the pieces. I read your comment on this from 3 years ago, and I feel like people would play by randomly placing pieces because they often don't have any other choice.

In today's daily, I got so far, and it looked like I could continue going indefinitely (you might want to ramp up the curse chests after some point to make things more difficult). I was looking for ways to intentionally finish the run. This gave me an idea: how about a level on which you need to defeat your own character. Let's say that after countless attempts to find the holy grail and after mingling with too many heretics, our noble hero lost their mind and need to be stopped. Maybe each step could deduct points instead of granting points. All boons and curses are still in effect, but the goal changes.

Additionally, one edge case: if you have red+purple wildcard ; smite and the bonus that stuns heretics when they step on purple - they cancel out. Nothing happens to the heretic when they step on red (no stun, no death)

Thank you for your fixes. A few things that aren't really bugs:

1. In this boss battle, the level is wider than the game screen and the chest is not visible (it was on the left end below the boss position) ... Have you thought about zoom out / scaling down when the level gets above a certain size?

2. I believe that "amethyst resurgence" should be classified as a curse instead of a boon.

Some bugs: 

1) I had a case where my tiles were getting duplicated when I was stepping on 2-3 penance gems one after another. My guess is that because I was at the end of the deck, the second penance started to shuffle before the first penance had finished "delivering" its shuffled tile.
This happened multiple times before I made the recording

2) I have cases where a gem from a pylon can get permanently added to a tile. I can't tell for sure when it happens. The one from today I had a tile with blue gem, a purple pylon added a purple gem to it and I was stuck with that for the next levels.

3) I tried the daily in a new browser - the pylon colors are not the same between runs

4) Placing a tile affected by green pylon generated a blank, without it, there would be an empty spot that would be struck by lightning. Instead of recognising the blank, the lightning still struck and reduced the hp (better watch the video)

Heh,  regarding Nchiren - I was initially writing it as a question if it was intentional or not and if it was to give the player some indication that they are allowed only one purchase. But then I deleted it to keep my "essay" shorter. Using the same slogan texts as the other vendors ("shop till you drop") also doesn't help to highlight the difference.

The legacy pylon activation on the tutorial level definitely not a priority.

The multiple pylons thing - to me it would make sense if the pylons overwrite the existing gem. In theory there could be a case where 3 (or more) pylons touch the same tile. It is definitely more simple to just pick 2 of them and ignore the rest but ... on the other hand ... if each of them activates but only 2 remain, it would be more fun 😇. An example: if there are green, red, blue and orange pylons (corner position), if you are lucky, your placement would get you healed, place a blank tile and have blue/orange left on the tile. The order in which pylons activate would play a role in deciding which 2 gems remain at the end.

Two minor comments I forgot:

- I notice a significant delay between the moment I place the last possible tile and the moment when the thunders start. It could be something that you added intentionally, based on previous comments. If that is the case, I recommend including some indication for players that they are having 1-2 seconds to drink a potion. Might not be obvious to newer players and would help to show that it is intentional and not just sluggish. I personally would enjoy the reminder as well.

- Not a sound designer myself, but my first impression from the pylon's sound effect was not pleasant. I am getting used to it, but if more people mention it, maybe you can find a more chill / less jarring variation for that sound.

Great update. The pylons add another level of strategy that needs to be considered. I love it!

Some stuff to point out after a few plays:

• Nichiren vendor:
  While other vendors allow multiple purchases, here the merchant window closed after the first purchase. Right after the vendor interaction, I placed a tile next to a chest. After reaching the chest the rewards window was not reacting to my hover/clicks, but the tiles in my hand were playable. This happened in 3 separate games. Once it was between levels (merchant was at the end of one level, rewards bug happened on the next level).
• "Monumental Presence" and "Obelisk Enrichment":
  - Appear to be duplicates with different names.
  - Used as legacy in a new game, they don't have effect on the starting level. I was hoping to start with more than 10 points on level 1 :-)
• Tile with gem placed between two pylons - enhanced only once:
  Placing a tile with a purple gem between red and blue pylons resulted in blue+purple gem (expected blue+red). I uploaded a public video, and you can see this at 18:00
• Pylons don't affect non-manually placed tiles (?):
  - I used the "pathfinder's" potion to add some tiles around me. The newly appeared one that was next to a pylon didn't receive a gem.
  - Just a guess, but if a green gem places some blanks, I assume that the pylon would not add gems to those blanks. If then I use 2 of the potion that adds paths to tiles on the board, I will have walkable tiles around the pylons that don't have gems. Imagine the horror!
• After my last death to a boss the starting tile started to render above all other objects. Both in the menu and during a new game. It fixed itself after reaching level 2.
• I don't have many impressions about the fragile tiles. I like how they skew a little bit when you step on them once. Didn't have a case to step on them again to break them.
• I love the gems become anti-heretics barriers upgrades.

In case your backlog of ideas has become too short after your vacation. Here are a few:
- a relic that acts the opposite of a wildcard: prevents combining gems of certain colors. Might be useful to counter some (green) pylons.
- relics or potions whose effect depends on the number of gems currently on the board
- vendors that give delivery quests: You receive some bad potion. You have to carry it a few levels and when delivered to another vendor you get points or a better potion. .... or: You get a package of 5-10 fragile tiles. You get paid XYZ number of points for each delivered tile to another vendor 3 levels later. Maybe subtract points if too few tiles are delivered.

It won't take much effort to entice me. There are games that I have paid 10-15EUR and I have played them much less than this one. I believe that it has potential.

Regarding the greens here are some thoughts:

- It is ok for not all gems to be desirable from the start. Navigating around the green rarely poses a problem (for an experienced player).

- In later stages, when curse chests start appearing, green can be helpful to complete the stage while avoiding opening such chests (maybe a shopkeeper can offer the service to remove relics, Cavalry is one of those good until it becomes bad, kind of relics).

- Maybe not directly changing green gem, but adding more use cases where green can be useful would add extra depth.

Here are some ideas:

• Fragile tiles - tiles that can be used only once, and then they disappear from your deck
• Dangerous spots - makes tiles placed on them fragile. Similar to the sacrificial spots, but the placed tile remains in use for that level.
• Extra-dangerous spots - Walking on a tile placed on such spot will break the tile. An extra challenge combo-breaker that you need to plan how to finish the level without stepping on it too many times.
• "Wild beasts" that walk on empty spots - Similar to brutes, they damage you when you pass by, use your tiles to "pen" them so that you can continue playing undisturbed.
• Change scenery - after XX levels, the background changes and some gems have different effects(?)

These are the ideas that come to me when I think: "I have a gem that creates tiles and has map control, when can it be useful?". I am sure that you can think of others as well. I have been amazed by your creativity, and when you ask for my suggestions I feel very honored.

I have been playing too much this gem of a game. It is time for me to take a break from it. 

Sometimes when you start off a good run it can go for hours before the curses catch up with you, a death of a thousand cuts that can go on forever. I would love to see a menu screen where I could either save my progress and continue later or can give up (submit my score) ... also add some sound controls there too :) 

Ignoring scope constraints, instead of simply "give up" maybe there could be some sort of "go to siege" button or something similar that would send you to a super hard, impossible to win level, which offers massive points with every step that you take.

The RNG in the daily is not as deterministic as initially thought.

I was worried that my score was so low in comparison to others, so I tried to find my mistake and load the daily in a new browser. Surprisingly, reloading the game in incognito can give you different starting deck. Examples:

neither the points or the shop prices were shown...

One thing that doesn't sit well with the rest is that SIN should only activate after I place a tile that I can't access - step 3) in the above plan, but in this case we see the problem already before step 2)