Grimorium Mortis

Deck Building Game where you lose cards when you acquire new ones or play one card from your hand · By Biim_Games

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General Feedback

A topic by Krak3rs created Jan 15, 2025 Views: 247 Replies: 7

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Krak3rs353 days ago(+1)

I like the mechanics and I'll be waiting for the updates.

I know it's a jam entry, but would like to share my thoughts. Maybe there's something obvious that you haven't noticed yet:

Starting characters are pretty random. My first run was a total disaster. I've got orc, rat and goblin. You know how it ended... :D
Picking characters should not be obligatory. I've started with strong starting set but eventually ended up with nerfed version as I had to choose some weaker characters.
Missing attacks is so annoying! I feel it's 50% or more. Very frustrating. Especially when I've managed to play two big guys and they couldn't take orc and rat (because of misses).
Late battle stages seem to be pretty boring. I have to finish my oponent (with annoying hit chance) or wait until he finishes me (with same annoying hit chance) :D
I've tried to use the "escape" button but it didn't work. Maybe I understand it wrong?
Would be nice to skip/speed up some battle phases/animations. They become repetitive very quickly and break the fun.
I think characters should not be able to pass other characters. With weak avatars there's no brainer strategy. Just rush forward and hit / shoot. Luckily the AI is not that smart :)

Please don't feel overwhelmed with these. The concept is pretty cool. Just would like to play more polished version ^^

Biim_GamesDeveloper352 days ago

Hi Krak3rs,

Thank you very much for playing Grim Grimoire and for your feedback! :-)

I'm glad you like the game idea and you are interested in see future development :-)

About your points:

Starting characters are pretty random. My first run was a total disaster. I've got orc, rat and goblin. You know how it ended... :D

Yes, it's true, but it's part of the jam theme "Though Choice", so you must choose knowing that bad things will happen. Of course for the first time it's already difficult because you need to get into the game idea and there are no so much detailed instructions inside the game yet, then you got also a bad combination, so I totally understand your feeling. I am not sure about changing this part yet, because still the game need to have lots of additions, once those are in place, it will be easier to decide if touching this part of not. For example, there will be other cards that are not just creatures and some of them will benefit only some particular other cards, so having a Goblin + the card Ambush or Hit & Run, might make the Goblin a nice card to keep. Also, for the first battle the enemy would have probably easier cards, if taking for example what's available now, Ogre and Trolls will not be part of its Grimoire, however I could still add those strong cards, but give them a very low percentage to come out, just to add that little randomness that makes every play a different experience and let you want to have one more go.

At least I hope you enjoyed the Orc and Goblin voices in your first game :-P

Picking characters should not be obligatory. I've started with strong starting set but eventually ended up with nerfed version as I had to choose some weaker characters.

This point has more or less the same reply of the previous one, it's mainly part of the theme and I would probably keep it as it is as part of a different game. You can mitigate the loss with a trick, leave out the best cards on the Available section and pick them as last choices. So if you have 2 cards that are good on your hand and they are "stolen", take them back at the very end with the last 2 choices, you will probably get both and if not, you will get the last one for sure ;-)

Missing attacks is so annoying! I feel it's 50% or more. Very frustrating. Especially when I've managed to play two big guys and they couldn't take orc and rat (because of misses).

That's a die roll for both attacker and defender. You can calculate the odds before choosing the attack icon. Select a Creature and hold the mouse button/finger to see their stats. You will see the range including the dice roll. So for example, if you have a Troll, the Melee Attack is 6~11 while the Target Orc has Defence 3~8. So even if you roll a 1 you get 6 at minimum, letting the roll with the only options to get 4+ to save himself. In this case yes, it's 50%, but only after you roll a 1 that is already only a 16.7% of chance that it happens to you.

I have just created a detailed instruction section in the game page, you can check it out to see how many things in the game works. Aside for that, there will be more cards in the future that will boost you creatures like magic and equipment, that will give you more chance to change the odds in your favour :-)

Late battle stages seem to be pretty boring. I have to finish my oponent (with annoying hit chance) or wait until he finishes me (with same annoying hit chance) :D

I totally agree with you, I went through this so many times during the test I was making in development phase. Unfortunately I cut a lot already due to the lack of time, so I postponed the option sections that will have an automatic victory or defeat in those cases.

I've tried to use the "escape" button but it didn't work. Maybe I understand it wrong?

No, you did understand well, I just left the button there to show that there will be that option. Since I had to cut out the exploration part, there was nowhere where to escape, so I left the thing behind. I should have add at least a text saying that it's a future feature, but again, time restrictions.

Would be nice to skip/speed up some battle phases/animations. They become repetitive very quickly and break the fun.

Yes, you are right and actually in the game I was already implementing that. There is a variable for the maximum waiting time for the "dialogue", now it's set to 3 seconds. You can notice that when the Skeleton and Goblin sometimes still talk and the action start anyway. I will also have options to skip the waiting time for the dice roll and disable the talk of your creatures. Again, time restriction meant cut out all the non-urgent features. Like for example, I cut out the save system since without exploration and proper progress, there was no point in wasting time setting it up.

I think characters should not be able to pass other characters. With weak avatars there's no brainer strategy. Just rush forward and hit / shoot. Luckily the AI is not that smart :)

Well, that's part of the game idea, no? While kill a 100 cards deck when you can just kill the boss? Isn't real life like that too? ;-)
With improved AI, tougher enemies in terms of "Players" (and not only Cards), and spell Cards, that will become a less available option, but if at the beginning of the game you got an Orc, Giant Rat and a Goblin, and your opponent's avatar is a Goblin/Rat/Orc. Would you prefer to feel like your first battle is a disaster or would you still like to give it a go and win anyway that battle? You can then choose a card from your enemy, so maybe you are happy to swap a Goblin and a Giant Rat for a Troll. Isn't it? ;-)

Thank you again for playing the game and taking time to write very good points.
I hope to come back on the project soon, so you can start to experience the whole game idea I have in mind.
Also I was considering to create some sort of polls to decide with players how to create the next Creatures, like how much initiative should have a lizardman? Should it have Range attack or not? And so on. I think that will make everyone happy to be involved in the game development in a more direct way in addition to the always useful feedback.

Again, as reminder, if you now check the game page, you will find the game instructions that should be complete for the current game state.

Thank you!
Simone

Krak3rs348 days ago(+1)

Yes, it's true, but it's part of the jam theme "Though Choice", so you must choose knowing that bad things will happen.

Well, that explains a lot. But for people from the outside (or lazy like me) it will be unintuitive and frustrating. Would be nice if you could somehow introduce player to this in game. Maybe some small storyline?

That's a die roll for both attacker and defender. You can calculate the odds before choosing the attack icon.

Ok. Now I understand why there were those die rolling sounds. You could tweak the description with some better spacing / die icons. Should be much more intuitive for more casual players.

This leads me to another issue - I've seen creatures with blue progress bars. I didn't know what they really are until some creature got damaged. I was suspecting some kind of mana / energy and that damage bar is not yet implemented due to my bad luck and miss mechanic. I think you should stick to the convention and use green bars. I would even argue they should be horizontal.

While kill a 100 cards deck when you can just kill the boss?

I agree. But i still think it should be easier said than done. I think Hearthstone's Taunt mechanic would fit here much better. It should provide very interesting choices and game dynamics. You could put some barricade to protect your weak hero. Oponent could counter that with rats who could still be able to breach it. Some bigger creatures like Troll, Ogre or Bear could have taunt too and maybe only swift/flying units could pass em. Maybe you could make em blind / frozen or apply any other cool counter effect.

Again, as reminder, if you now check the game page, you will find the game instructions that should be complete for the current game state.

Thats cool for me. But for many lazy users it may be a big blocker. You should think about some form of guidance explaining the core concepts - especially those unique for your game. I know it's a lot of work and not for a game jam. But now you have little bit more time I suppose :)

Biim_GamesDeveloper347 days ago

Well, that explains a lot. But for people from the outside (or lazy like me) it will be unintuitive and frustrating. Would be nice if you could somehow introduce player to this in game. Maybe some small storyline?

Yes, definitely, now that the game jam is concluded I can work on the game and improve it, especially adding in-game information about how to play and why of some restrictions. Need to make a brief story around it ;-)

Ok. Now I understand why there were those die rolling sounds. You could tweak the description with some better spacing / die icons. Should be much more intuitive for more casual players.

Yes, I supposed to add a die with the result and show some sort of battle log, but I scrapped the idea for the jam, postponing for later.
There will be an option to show those calculation for players that wants to see them.

This leads me to another issue - I've seen creatures with blue progress bars. I didn't know what they really are until some creature got damaged. I was suspecting some kind of mana / energy and that damage bar is not yet implemented due to my bad luck and miss mechanic. I think you should stick to the convention and use green bars. I would even argue they should be horizontal.

You are right, originally they were green, but the colour was confusing a bit with the background, so to avoid issue for players that might have visual difficulty, I changed it to blue for higher contrast. Will probably go back to green having an outline or such.
I tried to have horizontal bars, but initially that wasn't working because in my first game layout, creatures were overlapping to give a sense of dept, I then discarded the option due to the difficulty of showing the lifebar and understand which one is which, especially on small screens as mobiles, that's why the design changed as it is. I like the idea of overlapping the creatures, so I might find a way to show them in that way, probably another option that players can take advantage of, when playing on computer screens.

As you can see, having the bar horizontally would be confusing if I do the overlapping. I will play around with these options and see what I can do to make it looks nice and at the same time be functional :-)

I agree. But i still think it should be easier said than done. I think Hearthstone's Taunt mechanic would fit here much better. It should provide very interesting choices and game dynamics. You could put some barricade to protect your weak hero. Oponent could counter that with rats who could still be able to breach it. Some bigger creatures like Troll, Ogre or Bear could have taunt too and maybe only swift/flying units could pass em. Maybe you could make em blind / frozen or apply any other cool counter effect.

It sounds a good idea to me, it's similar to some of the additional cards I planned to have. There will be more stuff than just creatures in order to create different combos ;-)

Thats cool for me. But for many lazy users it may be a big blocker. You should think about some form of guidance explaining the core concepts - especially those unique for your game. I know it's a lot of work and not for a game jam. But now you have little bit more time I suppose :)

You are right, and as said at the beginning, in-game info is one of the first things I have to develop to let players understand how the game works. Unfortunately no one wants to read any more manuals :-D

Thank you again for contributing to the development of Grim Grimoire! :-)

SpaceAgeToaster307 days ago

Hi! The game is really cool, nice work. I had some minor feedback. Sorry if this has been covered elsewhere but:

- The text on the pages is a bit hard to read sometimes. The font is fine but because of the brush effect it makes it a bit hard I think.

- I found the instructions about picking creatures kind of hard to follow. It said that picking your own is the beginner options and random is for experts, but it feels like it should be the opposite. When I don't know what I'm picking for, there should be a tutorial that guides me through who to pick maybe?

- I was also a bit confused when the battle started. It said I could place a unit down and I would lose the other one, but there was no way to check on the stats and compare them, so I kind of just picked at random. Sometimes I could get the text to come up though - that might have been covered in the known bugs post.

- When I had combat options, I also had no idea what to do with them. For example Intercept. Or how Ranged attacks worked. Was it for people not directly in front of my square, or for people in a row further back?

- The dialogue for the creatures is cool but maybe a hair too loud? And some of the roars etc went on for a second or two too long.

-There are effects for the attacks, but not the actual attacks hitting the enemy (or missing). Some juicy sound effects there would be cool.

- There were a few spelling errors in different parts, eg saying 'loose' instead of 'lose' etc.

Biim_GamesDeveloper307 days ago (1 edit)

Thank you SpaceAgeToaster for taking the time to play and leave an extensive feedback!

About your points:

- The text on the pages is a bit hard to read sometimes. The font is fine but because of the brush effect it makes it a bit hard I think.

I will see what I can do to improve it, thanks. By the way, did you tried the game on PC, Tablet or Mobile? Just to have an idea about the screen size that can give more problem.

- I found the instructions about picking creatures kind of hard to follow. It said that picking your own is the beginner options and random is for experts, but it feels like it should be the opposite. When I don't know what I'm picking for, there should be a tutorial that guides me through who to pick maybe?

I see, so you suggest to have maybe another option, like fixed set of cards with balanced choice, or would it be enough to have a sort of info button to see how the battle mechanics works? Maybe a tutorial section with screens that goes through the game without any interaction showing the various game phases or just the battle would be enough?

- I was also a bit confused when the battle started. It said I could place a unit down and I would lose the other one, but there was no way to check on the stats and compare them, so I kind of just picked at random. Sometimes I could get the text to come up though - that might have been covered in the known bugs post.

Yes, it's difficult at the moment and also I forgot to mention it both in the game and in the game page instructions. You have to hold down the finger/left mouse button on a character to show the relates stats. Be careful though that if you select first the action of Melee or Ranged and then hold on a possible target, the attack will start.

I was considering to simplify to show the stats when clicking on any card, however that will require a dedicated card info area because the current info text will be otherwise lost. Also I was considering to remove the drag & drop for placing cards or choose at the beginning or during loot phase, and add maybe a double click. What do you reckon?

- When I had combat options, I also had no idea what to do with them. For example Intercept. Or how Ranged attacks worked. Was it for people not directly in front of my square, or for people in a row further back?

The game currently lack of detailed info, but you can find details about the game mechanics here:
https://biim-games.itch.io/grim-grimoire#Index

There is a lot of things to write so I have still to consider how to best show all this amount of info on the screen, probably a tutorial is the best thing to do to avoid to have too much on screen, especially for people playing on mobile where everything is even smaller.
Intercept is used to have a free attack on the first enemy unit that tries to breakthrough the line where your unit is, so basically is at the same time a pass turn and if someone moves on top before the unit is activated again, you give a free attack on the opponent's creature. At the moment due to a modification of the code, I got a bug that stops enemy's units to try to pass over yours, so the option is not useful yet, aside for just passing the turn. More details here:
https://biim-games.itch.io/grim-grimoire#Intercept

About the Range attack, you can find details here: https://biim-games.itch.io/grim-grimoire#Range, but you might want to read the Melee section before to get a clear idea: https://biim-games.itch.io/grim-grimoire#Melee. However, in short, with melee you can attack the creatures directly in front or behind your current line (column), while with the range you can attack creatures that are 2 lines away from you. When selecting those actions, if there are available targets, their background tile will increase their visibility (opacity of the tile goes to 100%, while normally is 50%). It doesn't matter if someone is on top, centre or bottom of the line (column), you can attack either. Think those as reach area.

- The dialogue for the creatures is cool but maybe a hair too loud? And some of the roars etc went on for a second or two too long.

The first funding goal for the game has a poll where players can choose what feature they want to see next, you are welcome to vote here. One of the poll choice is about adding a volume option for SFX and Music (music is not in the game yet, it's another poll choice), that will let you choose at which volume play the SFXs in the game.

About the long sound, I will try to find something shorter. I bought stock voices, so sometimes it's not easy to find the right match. I will see if I can edit ad cut some of the longer ones in case I can't find a good replacement.

-There are effects for the attacks, but not the actual attacks hitting the enemy (or missing). Some juicy sound effects there would be cool.

Even here, in the poll for Goal 1 you can find an option for new SFXs: "Additional SFXs for each creature (Injury, Death and Retire)."
I might add a few mores if this option is one of the most popular ones and I will reach the funding goal.

- There were a few spelling errors in different parts, eg saying 'loose' instead of 'lose' etc.

Thanks, I opened a post to notify me about those errors here: https://itch.io/t/4628009/spelling-mistakes-post-here-what-you-found, so it will be easier to let me know when those errors come out. Sorry, despite being in Australia for 10 years, my English is still wrong sometimes and it's hard to notice especially while slapping quickly a sentence while coding the game as temporary line. A line that then becomes semi-permanent because I forget to go back to check many of those due to the major bugs that take more time to fix.

Thank you again for playing and taking time to leave a feedback, I would be glad if you, like the others that have left a feedback, will keep me posted with your thoughts about the game development!

SpaceAgeToaster304 days ago

No worries! To answer your questions:

I played on a laptop (Mac)
Yeah I think something like a fixed set of cards or a balanced choice would be good. I think Slay the Spire or Into the Breach are good tutorial examples to emulate here. They pick a character/units for you on your first time, and guide you through the basic logic of a battle. Then you take it from there.
I think drag and drop is fine!
Thanks for the explanations - I'll take a look at them. And fair enough - there's an order of priority with new features etc. I also understand that using stock effects will never get you 100% what you're looking for.

I look forward to seeing the game progress!

Biim_GamesDeveloper304 days ago

Thank you for the details.

I played on a laptop (Mac)

Ok, so screen has a good size, but the font itself is hard to read. I did some test, adding effects to see if I could clean the font, but I didn't have much success at the moment. I might have to add an option to use a alternative font. Maybe the other one that is already in use in the game.

Yeah I think something like a fixed set of cards or a balanced choice would be good. I think Slay the Spire or Into the Breach are good tutorial examples to emulate here. They pick a character/units for you on your first time, and guide you through the basic logic of a battle. Then you take it from there.

I haven't played those games, so I will try to see if I find videos going through their tutorials to get an idea of how they work., but I think I got the point. Thanks.

I think drag and drop is fine!

Cool, thanks.

Thanks for the explanations - I'll take a look at them. And fair enough - there's an order of priority with new features etc. I also understand that using stock effects will never get you 100% what you're looking for.

No worries mate. Yeah, for the audio part maybe I might take the microphone and create some new effects, or at least I might have to do for future creatures since I am planning to have more creatures than the ones I could find nice effects for.

I look forward to seeing the game progress!

I am busy in these days because I'm moving to the new home, but I might get back to work properly on the game around mid-March, I will try to have some bugfix going in the meantime if I will find a bit of free time for some simple bugs.

Thanks again for your help! :-)