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Deckbuilding Roguelike - Steam Gift Card Draw

A topic by searle created Dec 23, 2021 Views: 582 Replies: 7
Viewing posts 1 to 3

Are you a word gamer? A deck builder? Do you have a PC?

I'm currently making a Solo Deckbuilding Roguelike (Slay the Spire + Bookworm). The game is playable, with all major systems in place. It has placeholder graphics, and sounds and FX are minimal. Currently PC only (although, I might be able to make a Mac or Linux build).

At this stage, I'm interested in feedback on balance, general fun, and any suggestions. I'd be happy to toss you in the games credits as well!

PC Download link can be found here: https://searle.itch.io/words
Tutorial

Draw

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There will be a draw for $20CAD steam gift cards (2 x $20CAD).

- One entry per IP address. Bogus survey data will be disqualified.
- Draw will take place after February 1, 2022
- Please ensure you allow network connections when windows asks. This will ensure that the metrics data can be captured / matched.

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Thanks,
John

Twitter: https://twitter.com/JSqearle
Discord: https://discord.gg/8N2TXeT8

Hi John. I'd like to check out the game. However, I only have a Mac right now. If a Mac build is possible I would be happy to try it out and share feedback.

Thanks!

I'll have to look into this. The only issue is, I'm using a windows DLL for SQLite access, so I'd have to find a replacement for Mac. Additionally, I don't have a Mac, so I can't even test to see if my replacement works :/

I'll do some research on this...

(1 edit)

Hey,

After a lot of head banging, I've made the application WebGL, which should hopefully play in your Mac browser.

Long story short, I had to remove my server connection and the local SQL database. 

Let me know if it works for you now!

Cheers,

John

The game works on the browser :)

Will play it for a bit and let you know my thoughts in a day or two.

Cheers,

Raghu

(+1)

First of all, congrats on building the game to what it is now!

In short, I liked the core game. There are rough edges to polish: teaching the player the game, audio-visual feedback, UI, bugs. These can be improved over time. There does seem to be promise in the word board-based battle mechanics, which differentiates this game from “Slay the Spire”.

Here are some points that I could think of, which I hope will help you in some way to improve the game. You may not agree with all of these. Use them as you see fit.

  • Learning to play
    • The main resource to learn to play the game is the pdf tutorial. Overall the tutorial does a good job introducing the gameplay. However, there are some points that I couldn’t get from the tutorial, and had to learn by playing the game.
    • On page 2, the tutorial mentions “One word per turn”. But this only means you can submit (or encash) one word to get action points to use on this turn. You can spell multiple words and save them to the lexicon though.
    • There are hover tooltips available for the word board (Blessed, Charmed, etc.), and for enemy modifiers (Strength, etc). It would be good to have similar tooltips for the various enemy stats, intent, action points indicator, etc.
    • Tooltips for the cards would also help. “Replace 3 Neutral tiles with Shiv tiles”. “Deal 6 damage + 2 per positive tile destroyed” What are Shiv tiles and positive tiles? I learnt by playing.
  • The core concept seems novel: a mix of word building and deck building battle.
    • The overall game structure follows that of “Slay the Spire”. The “Bookworm” part lies in the core game mechanics. It is here that the game brings in some novel ideas, and differentiates itself.
    • The interactions with the board are interesting. These are some of the cards that I thought were fun.
    • “Slash” and “Greed” provide damage by destroying cells, but then these cells become unavailable for future scoring.
    • “Fireball” damages multiple enemies in an area, but also creates a burning tile that will damage the player.
    • Enemies “Slime” cells, which cause damage to the player when words containing these letters are formed.
  • Balance and General Fun
    • I liked the interaction with the word board. Specifically the actions noted above. I think more development in this direction would be good.
    • The bugs, and to some extent the UI and feedback elements (see below) did reduce the fun in the game.
    • The initial levels were easy to cross. I couldn’t proceed too far into the game without encountering a crash or getting stuck. So I can’t comment on overall balance.
  • UI
    • The UI and art has a professional look to it. The hex word board in particular looks very good.
    • After a word is constructed on the board, it would be easier if there were a set of buttons: “Submit”, “Save”, “Cancel”, etc, in place of the current: “Hold Left”, “Right click”, etc. There is a “Save” button in the Lexicon, but I feel this should be next to the board instead.
    • Same after selecting a word from the Lexicon: “Submit”, “Cancel”.
    • After a word is submitted, my understanding is the player can’t do anything else on the word board this turn. So maybe disable the word board.
    • Lexicon should have a scroll bar to drag, rather than clicking and dragging on the words themselves.
    • Since the enemies are all shown on screen, it would be nice to have a player character on screen as well. Without this, it appears like a first-person perspective. Maybe this is the idea, but I’m not sure it suits the game.
    • The size of enemies on screen, and their stats like health, etc. could be a little bigger.
    • The stats bars and other icons around the enemies seem to be proportional to their size. This makes the stats for smaller enemies harder to read. The icons around the enemies could all be made the same size, independent of the enemy.
    • Some background music in-game would be nice.
  • Visual/Audio feedback
    • There is good sound feedback when clicking on letters to construct a word. In particular, the feedback when a word is submitted is satisfying.
    • As a word is being constructed on the board, I’m not sure if there is any feedback telling me whether the word is valid or not. This would help. Right now the feedback happens when I attempt to save the word.
    • No direct feedback when a word is saved to Lexicon. As of now the word definition is displayed.
    • No audio feedback for playing an action card, end of turn, attack, enemy death, etc.
  • Title
    • I like the current title: WordBinder.
  • Bugs
    • These bugs occurred randomly. But enough times that I couldn’t proceed beyond 4 or 5 levels.
    • Upon clicking end of turn, the game got stuck without proceeding, or crashed.
    • Upon right clicking to save a word, the game crashed.

Hope this was useful. All the best for your game!

Hey,

I've been putting off replying until I had time to give you a proper thank you... but, alas, time is always in short supply.

Thank you very much for this breakdown! It's one of the best bits of feedback I've had. Much appreciated!

As I mentioned, I'll be doing a draw for some Steam gift cards in the future, and I'll make sure you're included.

I have some follow up questions for you, but it may have to wait a few days until I feel like I have some time to give everything some more thought.

Cheers,

John

Sure, let me know when you're ready. As an indie game dev myself, I know how difficult it is to get feedback. Happy to help out.