In fact, the name probably should change. But anyway!

This is my turn based tactics game! I've been working on it part time for a while now.

Jaggy Battles started out something like this:

I wasn't sure with what direction to go here but have come to something like this:

I have several recent articles I've published. I'll put the links here but will update this thread with more information when I release more!

Introduction to Enemies - The Rats

Introduction to Enemies - The Undead

Introduction to Items - Starting Items

Feedback would be welcome!

Patch Notes for 0.0.17 [12.01.2016]

General

• Added mini tips to highlight points of interest.
• Players can choose 2 items before a new game instead of 1.
• New Main Menu and Options assets.
• Added new Blessings:
  • Leader: If you have a full team, deal 30% more damage.
  • Commander: Your maximum team count is 4 instead of 3.
  • Sadist: Whenever an Ally dies, heal 30% life.
  • Fool Hardy: You take 50% less damage while below half health but 30% more damage if above it.

Units

• Marked tiles are now no longer consumed by Goblin abilities.
• After 25 Stages, 3 Bosses are spawned instead of 2. Hard mode!
• Add new boss: Goliath Siblings.
• Added new Units
  • Goblin Mechanic: Summons Turrets that Mark tiles.
  • Goblin Bruiser: Heals self and Slows units on Marked tiles.

Barbarian

• Pummel 35% chance to Stun instead of 25%.
• Concussion also adds a +15% chance for Pummel to Stun.
• Blood Ritual now heals 50% of damage and heals allies instead of 30%.
• Cornered now requires 3 enemies instead 4 to get the 50% damage bonus.
• Brawl has a 35% to Stun instead of 50% chance to Slow.

Sorcerer

• Ignite increases chance to burn by 25%.
• Ground Freeze has a 50% Slow chance instead of 70%.

Cleric

• Judge deals 100% more damage to Undead instead of 50%.

Items

• Ring of Expulsion no longer requires a Shard.
• Bandage 30% health instead of 20%.
• Shiny Mirror no longer requires a Shard.

Bug Fixes

• Bosses now properly drop portal items.

Patch Notes for 0.0.18 [25.01.2016]

General

• Portals to different enemy types are now unlocked for testing purposes.
• Player units no longer can move freely after clearing a stage.

UI

• Added a game over screen.
• Added speech support for units.
• Minitips are shown less.

Units

• AI units are more likely to attack ranged units than melee units.
• Goblins have been redesigned.
• Units on Marked tiles take 50% more damage from all sources.

Mechanic

• Marks an enemy tile.
• Summons an Auto-Turret.

Auto-Turret

• Deals ranged damage.
• Destroys an empty Marked tile.

Bruiser

• Damages an enemy and heals that amount.

Thief

• Now steals Gold equal to the damage dealt instead of a Shard

Sniper

• Deals ranged damage.
• Marks an enemy tile.

Bug Fixes

• The Small Health Potion is no longer selected by default.
• Banshees can now move when trapped.
• The Move skill is no longer automatically selected when using Matter Switcher or Mixer Upper.

I'd really like to push for an open release in the next few months so I'm adding features and polishing as I go!

This week I made it so the player can choose a beneficial bonus as they play through. It looks something like this:

The crunch is on! :D

Feedback

Last week I posted on the weekly Feedback Friday thread over on the gamedev subreddit. Feedback is essential for moving my game foward! Taking on criticism is often difficult but taking it on board is a skill I'm refining and getting much better at. Because of this I welcome any and all feedback I get – the rough and the smooth.

I got a fair few comments last week and managed to extract a good amount of criticism to work with:

• Destructible rocks were good apparently.
• Good feedback on the music by Spiff Tune.
• Too much text in the tutorial.
• The mimic spawning on the first chest gave a player a bad time.
• Someone liked the colour options.
• One person died on the first stage.
• Tutorial was bad. Someone didn't know what Shards and such were.
• The game feels somewhat polished.
• One person stopped at stage 8 before getting bored and quitting.
• Looks awful on high definition screens and resolutions.

Thoughts on the Feedback

Lets have a look at some things that stood out to me and how I can fix them!

• Looks awful on high definition screens and resolutions.

A few users were kind enough to supply screenshots from their devices. This was great! I got to see how truly terrible it looks.

This is a difficult one for me to address because I don't have a high definition monitor or any new Android devices. So I can't rapidly view changes on the fly to make sure things look OK. Regardless, I need to fix this! It's going to put a lot of testers off.

I plan to update the assets to scale with the screen's width. I'll have LOW, MEDIUM and HIGH user interface assets. I'll try updating the fonts, dialogue windows and buttons to scale better.

• Tutorial was bad. Someone didn't know what Shards and such were
• Too much text in the tutorial.

Another valid criticism. The previous tutorial was tacked on and overly wordy. I'm going to try a "less is more" approach here and add contextual tool-tips. I don't want the player to be sitting and reading for ages before they can do something.

• One person stopped at stage 8 before getting bored and quitting.

Pacing is something I've been trying to get right and if someone wasn't engaged at stage 8 I feel I've don't something wrong here and the pace is too slow. Currently, the format is something like this:

• Stage 1 – 3 total enemies, 2 new enemy types
• Stage 2 – 3 total enemies, 1 new enemy type
• Stage 3 – 3 total enemies, 1 new enemy type
• Stage 4 – 4 random enemies from before
• Stage 5 – Boss

To increase the pace and keep things fresh I'm changing this to:

• Stage 1 – 3 total enemies, 2 new enemy types
• Stage 2 – 3 total enemies, 1 new enemy type
• Stage 3 – 4 random enemies, 1 new enemy type
• Stage 4 – Boss

This means bosses will come around quicker and a new enemy type is shown every stage. It does mean I'll eventually have to create more unique enemies to hit my 50 Stage goal for release but that's not so bad. We'll see how this does!

• The Mimic spawning on the first chest gave a player a bad time.

This was an interesting one! The player in question self admitted not liking these sorts of tactics games and when he got ambushed by the Mimic enemy from the first chest he looted, I feel this was his last straw and he was scared to pick up any other chests. Admittedly it's not very new-user friendly for that situation to happen. I made a sneaky change to only allow Mimics to spawn after 2 chests had been successfully looted to avoid making new players think chests were bad things.

The Mimic Causing Havoc

Conclusion

I've got a lot of changes to make for the next feedback session! I'm hoping I can at least get the resolution changes up and running for this Friday and the rest for the Friday after.

If you'd like to try the Android version, you can here and you can download the desktop version through my itch.io page.

If you have any feedback let me know!