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Shuffle Tactics

Shuffle Tactics is a roguelite deckbuilding tactical RPG. What if Final Fantasy Tactics and Slay the Spire had a baby? · By Club Sandwich, hugues laborde, MadameEtrange

Alpha Impressions (Spoilers: they're good!)

A topic by Ettrian created May 17, 2023 Views: 168 Replies: 3
Viewing posts 1 to 5

The game looks great, the game sounds great, and the game feels great! Visually speaking, the design of characters, ally and enemy alike, are very compelling and really push this pixel art style to the max. Each card has good, and visually distinct, artwork, making it smooth to recognize each card at a quick glance. The visual and audio effects of playing cards are done well too; cards sound weighty, both in your hand and when played; the cards are free of visual clutter and have all the pertinent information cleanly arranged; they are able to be tilted around to provide a sense of depth to them. All in all, deckbuilder mechanics all seem sound and clean and well-desinged.

As for the boards/tactical elements, from my experience thus far they are also very enjoyable. Boards immediately invoke that classic FF Tactics feel, although the deckbuilder stylings present a whole fresh outlook on the tactical choices players must make. There are small details done right, such as the sound of water rippling when it is present. Enemies have highly variable movesets which means that navigating the terrain effectively to defeat them is critical.

Overall, design decisions are very creative and compelling. Even in the first few encounters, multiple concepts and keywords were introduced that I've never seen before, a testament to the creativity at work here. Highly, highly recommend!

Here is gameplay from a review I did. I somehow ran into a bug that basically made the game unplayable within the first few levels. But the art style was awesome for the most part. I can tell that a lot of love went into this game! great work!

Quite fun!  I did a Possessed Strength build on my first playthrough, and it was good enough to beat the game. Momentum is an extremely powerful mechanic, especially when combined with Impact.  I found the 'big damage at a cost' cards to be pretty underwhelming-- a single possessed strength lets me use shoulder bash et al for 11 damage, while all-in strike et all seem to aim for 20-40 damage in exchange for leaving you at or near 1 hp. Considering the abundance of ranged enemies and the limited availability of movement options, not to mention every boss becoming invincible, teleporting, and dealing fixed damage to the player at set intervals, I just can't see those cards ever really being the backbone of a strategy.  Pristine Strike, which wants you to keep your health at max, seems much better since if you end up taking damage only that part of your build is temporarily offline and you still have an opportunity to recover, whereas the other option results in your death. Regardless, after two to three possessed strengths Tactical Bash is basically the best card in the game, giving you actions, cards, and massive damage potential.

Developer

Just noticed I hadn't answered this thread! Thanks for all your feedback folks, lots of great ideas in there :) And thanks for taking the time for shooting a video Jack!

I updated the game a few times since then so hopefully most bugs and issues should be ironed out by now, thanks to your reports!