Holder of Place
Find your followers in the darkness and slay the dragon consuming the world.
In a long dead kingdom, a young dragon has unleashed a primordial gloom that swallows anything it touches. Your quarry lies now in the heart of the kingdom; Can you endure the monsters that lurk and halt the spread of the dark?
Gather your companions. Hold tight your faith. Acquire new strengths and venture into the endless night.
- Fast paced auto-battler gameplay
- Recruit from 70+ unique followers and trinkets
- Explore the ruins of a dark science-fantasy world
- More features and updates yet to come
If you encounter any bugs or have any feedback, please post it in the comments!
Download
Development log
- December Update 217 days ago
- December Update37 days ago
- Endless Mode Hotfix58 days ago
- Endless Mode Update66 days ago
- Notes on "followers attacking simultaneously" bug74 days ago
- Balance Patch & Future Plans!91 days ago
- Post-launch Hotfix!Sep 30, 2024
Comments
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Is it allowed to use Cheat Engine to speed up the game?
play the game however you like!
Thanks. I was just wondering what is your view on interfering with the game, because after many games the wait times becoming so painful. It is nice to be able to speed up the game and specially if you getting above like 70 level.
Cool game anyway. Are you planning to add other types of gameplay any time soon?
Understandable. Eventually there'll probably be settings to speed up the transitions but we haven't got to that yet. And the reliquary mode is almost done! Should be able to post it next week or the week after.
oh my goodness
wth man, what round did you get to?
I have suggestions. from my experience, there is practically only 1 combination that can consistently survive above depth 140. I think it would be a good idea to have more combinations that are actually very good (now it seems to me that the only good late game strategy is aspiring aspect + familiar strategy , or bee strategy. This could be done even without adding new followers, just fixing some combinations that seem like they should work, but they don't (e.g. familars don't get statistics from another one, you can't upgrade a unit's combat trait with an artificer many times, you can't give a dragoon's combat trait to a unit, the additional attack of an additional trait is not multiplied by a dancer (if applied to another dancer too), etc.) another thing is that some followers or additional traits are much too weak, even if not on their own, they simply don't fit into almost any combination, and it's definitely worth changing them to better fit different strategies. these new combos could then be difficult to do in a normal playthrough (to prevent from abusing them ), and would be geared towards endless mode. finally, an alternative to crow would be useful (high random or AOE damage), and in the initial few depths, a slightly larger store size would be helpfull (I often had a situation where I simply restarted when I didn't get faith's production at the beginning, without which it's hard to good start)
Yeah... Aspiring + Familiar is definitely the anomaly since it's the only cubic scaling in the game. I'm currently in the process of looking at all the least used followers and see if there can be a similar cubic scaling mechanic, but it's tricky since the while system is reeeaaally not designed to have scale infinitely (as in endless mode). Multiplying dancer's attack could work since charging aspect is the only way to make dancer attack twice and it's already pretty rare, I'll do some testing on that to see if it'll be too op. However, artificer and dragoon will be hard to implement, since the "+1 to all values" effect is not a variable, but a different version of the follower; and what dragoon is doing is change the first aspect into its intrinsic trait instead of actually getting 2 aspects.
I agree that early game need some small adjustments. The current plan is to adjust the spawn rate of initiate and supplicant when the player is on low faith and make the 4-choice recruit events show up 1-2 depth early. Hopefully that'll make the early game feels more fair.
There's another interesting combo I have in mind... involving duelist trait, somehow her switch hp and atk counts as stat gains. Which can be doubled, and then copy by (forgot the character's name) w/ also a doubling stat gain trait (so a quadruple).
The issue is... it's NOT a faith build so I gotta get lucky with the rolls.
And a non AoE has too many weaknesses... Enemy with max dmg taken 5 / hit, or reduce dmg taken to 1.
Those bs, so unless there's a way to create a self-healing monster (Which I thought we could w/ paladin + winemaker's trait, turns out it doesn't work) Death is but absolute.
Where did you get that idea? Duelist invert stats doesn't count as stats gain.
It is now with the latest update!
after this update this combo also have cubic scale and this is even more op then aspirating aspect - i menage to get around 1 500 000 damage and 3 500 000 health on familiar with crow trait. My game crashed but it wasnt even maxed because a had only 3 mirroring dancers (without obelisk )working on duelist with 35 basic health and 3 damage. This beast can with adaptive aspect, double bigger stat every atack so after 7 atack he has 32 times 2 to power of 7 atack ( after just one round !)
Weird. Doesn't seems to work for me. Duelist attack doesn't get doubled with Adaptive Aspect.
EDIT:
It works. I was using Unity WebGL Player to play game and it is not updated somehow.
https://html-classic.itch.zone/html/12174289/V14.5/index.html
(3 Ravens w/ Copy, Reaper with Emissary, Refiner w/ Copy, Emissary w/ Copy, Paladin w/ +1 faith / dmg taken)
The character that reduce all dmg to 1 + (Fractured Aspect + Winemaker)
EDIT: It doesn't work, the best thing u got is mirroring a tower... or fractured + support traits
cant wait for full version this game is great I've beaten it about 10 times and i love the game; although i think there is a need for some speed ups on the end of combat scene and entering any instance
Very cool!
The art direction is absolutely top notch!
The gameplay is rewarding and actually thoughtful which is perfect for a game like this.
adaptive duelist and family (or familier) (the one with the trait gaining stats like the adjacent unit) seems good but not. At first, I thought family (or familier) would gain the stats when duelist switches his stats but not, sadly. And somehow, when the family (or familier) gains stats from its trait, the gaining stats effect doesnt trigger on (the special visual effect). However he still can get stats tho.
Ok, first of all fucking good game, that aout of the way, it''s critic-ing time:
There are some combos and combinations that:
Me and my friend were playing with a cloning and extra triggers build and sometimes we could barely guess how things would turn out. Don't get me wrong, i like the experimenting aspect of trying different strategies and see how they work, but this is a very punishing game and the runs can get long, so it ends up feeling very bad when you lose a core because you guessed wrong what would happen.
The endless mode works funny, even tho the game adds new enemies and mechanics, it really feels like a mode you aren't supposed to play. It gets too hard too fast and the hunts mecahnic just break, you can go on hunts, but they don't have rewards? and also sometimes bosses appear normally for no apparent reason? wat? The core punishment is also too strict, they are an important mechanic for you to progress forward in early game and a precious resource towards end game, just to become completly irelevant post-end-game.
Also, i think the game could really use some kind of re-roll mechanic, mainly for early-game since it is so harsh. maybe just adding some extra choices in some shops would suffice. Again the early game is very harsh, it really turn offs the will to play.
another question - does sumoned ( mirroring aspect ) obelisks also can trigger other abilities ( for example prospector aditional trait)?
Theoretically yes.
there is a Bug - prospectors start of the comber ability ( aspirating aspect ) don't trigger more than twice even with multiple obelisks. I had a familiar with 9999 damage and they didn't copy his attack even though I still had one unused obelisk
Obelisk make the effects trigger twice, not an additional time. It's intended that obelisks don't stack.
It would be nice to have a mode to choose the cards to try different combinations without resorting on randomness to see how the cards would work. And is there anything to recover the core health?
The game is good.
Just one point I'd like: option to speed up to x10.
yes.
i would love if this game haved a version for mobile :)
Me: this build is pretty strong I'll probably get to the next hunt
The post dragon Maze on his way to destroy my build.
Found a bug:
Sculptur didn't summon any scuptures for some reason. I don't quite remember the circumstances, but I had no other supporters when I bought it, and I had an Artificer rerolled to trigger adjacent follower start-of-combat effeccts twice.
Edit: I've disabled it again. There was no obvious answer, but I've rerolled a combat trait again, so that might be it no matter the outcome.
Appreciate the report! I'll try some random testing with sculptor to see if I can recreate it...
Refiner doesn’t activate stingers ability when it does damage to it. Is this intentional?
An oversight! Will make it work in the next update
At later levels even though the monsters have > 10k helath the moment it take any damage it reverts to 9999. no sure if that is intended
Huh that's weird...I'll investigate
to be fair my attack is also limited to 9999, so it is impossible to beat pass 200 if my attack is capped.
Speculation: what is the cultist follower a cultist of? It's not a cultist of the dragon, otherwise they wouldn't join us, so are they a cultist to the same thing the supplicants and emmisary's are, but then why doesn't the cultist have the pink coloring?
Bug report: Artificer does not work with Stranger, it plays the animation but does not apply the buff
Ah that could be the case; I'll investigate
forgot to mention I replaced my artifacer with stranger and it played the animation but not the buff
It seems a support follower would block the dancer ability.
Yes. That's intended behavior: support follower are also followers, so they'll still be triggered by dancer to attack while they can't.
If you copy the dancer ability to the support follower, it should no longer block your dancer chain.
(At least in a previous version. Haven't tested it in the most recent version.)
Here are a few confusing descriptions I stumbled upon.
I think I noticed a few more, but I forgot to take notes …
(a) "after surviving combat"
(b) stat potions in shop
When selecting the item, next to the item's description the small description for "additional trait" is shown.
This can be confusing for beginners since it can be interpreted as "this potion will take/replace the additional trait slot" which would be really bad in most cases.
(c) swarming aspect
The trait's description is different from the description of the shop item.
Thoughts:
Bug regarding "At the start of combat, Summon another identical hound" on non-hounds (Stranger, fractured aspect)
Tested example: Hound + Swarming Stranger (with hound trait)
Thoughts:
Great game so far!
Here are a few suggestions. There is nothing really original, but perhaps it still helps.
QoL features
These are aimed mainly to make longer runs as well as finding/reporting/debugging bugs faster, easier and more fun.
1. Speedup: Options to skip animations (via buttons)
2. Replay last combat (during normal run)
3a. Replay mode (selected from main menu)
3b. Sandbox mode (selected from main menu)
4. Display more information during combat
5. Preview of modified stats/abilities in shop
6a. Visual stacking of (almost) identical followers
6b. Rearrange visual space
7. Visual indicator for state of "once per battle" abilities
Man, this game is so elegantly designed. The only thing I ended up wanting as a player was a re-roll option in the campsite. Can definitely see how that would be difficult to implement though. Amazing work!
How do the algorithm figure out what card to spawn in the shop? Is there a way to manipulate the spawn rates somehow.
That's a secret. But generally it'll choose followers that's closer to your current faith
just a tip:each follower only appear once you have atleast the same amount as the cost of the follower (like beekepeer that is 10 cost) so you could technically pay something to reduce the amount of faith you have to manipulate the spawn rate it wont work really well with 14/18 cost followers.(its what i think,and it work really well)
BUG: Adaptive Familiar next to another Adaptive Familiar doesn’t get stats, when the first adaptive familiar gets stats from an adjacent follower.
Yes. Sadly familiar will not trigger other familiars. Technical constraint.
That sounds interesting. Can you roughly explain the cause of that constraint, as I’m also interested in developing card game rogue-likes.
How familiar works is that whenever a status (e.g. a buff that gives +1/+1) is given to an adjacent follower, a hidden status on the said follower will then transfer a copy of that status to familiar. However, the status being transfered can't remember what's going on before the transfer. Therefore, if we let a status being able to be transfered multiple time, it'll result in an infinite loop of 2 familiars transferring to same status to each other (since the status can't remember that the prior incarnation of itself has already being transfered to one of the familiar). So we just make it so that a transfered status can't be transfered again.
I’ve not even considered the possibility of an infinite loop. Every follower could remember from whom he’s gotten stats within “A stat propagation iteration” and not gain stats, when he has already gotten stats from that follower this iteration. That would in my example lead to the following:
Yes, except that that's not how status works in this game at all. To get into more details, almost all interactions in the game is done through "signals", and each follower will have a bunch of "status" to interact with those signals. Each signal is consisting of a signal type, whatever object reference required from that signal type, and a bunch of float variable. for example, a signal can be something like "deal 3 damage" or "gain +1/+1"; "deal 3 damage" signal will have the signal type of "damage" with variable "damage = 3"; "gain +1/+1" signal will have the signal type of "create status", with a reference to a generic stat status, and variable "AddDamage = 1; AddLife = 1". Each status can be more complicated; some status will passively modify a follower's stats or have interaction with specific signals, like the status "this follower will gain double stats"; How signal and status works in action is: when a follower receive the "gain +1/+1" signal, the signal will inform all status on that follower of the signal's existence, and if the follower has the "this follower will gain double stats" status, the status will then modify the "AddDamage = 1; AddLife = 1" variables of the signal to "AddDamage = 2; AddLife = 2"; after that, the signal will execute its proper function to add a new generic stat status to the follower, and modify the new status base on the AddDamage and AddLife variables; maybe the follower also have a status that says "deal 3 random damage on stats gain" status, in which case, when the status is aware of the "gain +1/+1" signal, it will send another signal "deal 3 random damage" to the same follower, which will then go through this entire process again.
How familiar works is that it'll create a special "adjacent stat status link" status to all followers before the start of combat. This adjacent stat status link is a status that, whenever the source follower receives a "create status" signal, the status will check whether the "create status" signal is creating a stat status, whether the "create status" signal can be interacted by status (whether it has "IgnoreTrigger = 1"), whether the source follower is adjacent to the follower that created the status link (the caster, which, in this case, should be a familiar), and whether the caster is alive. If all conditions are met, the status link will then force another copy of the status are to be created by "create status" signal to the caster. And here's the problem. If the status link then create a new "create status" signal and send it to the caster, then that new signal will also go through the same process. That means that if 2 familiars each have created a status link on each other, then familiar 1 will gain a stat status and send "create status" signal to familiar 2, which will go through the same process and end up sending a copy of the same "create status" signal to familiar 1. To avoid this, the "create status" signal sent from familiar 1 to familiar 2 will need to include the information that "this signal is created by a status link from familiar 1, and therefore should not trigger any other status link that are created by familiar 1", which is really troublesome to implement because signals are coded to only carry float variables and not extra reference to objects. What we end up doing is to just mark the new create status signal with "IgnoreTrigger", making it unable to interact with other status link status.
I guess this is just a really complicated way to say that yes, such a propagation iteration does make sense in a vacuum, but it doesn't really work with the process of how all signals and status are processed in this game. To make familiar being able to trigger other familiar, we'll need to change how signal or status are coded, which is just a bit over-scoped at the moment.
There's a couple of bugs with the Mirroring Raven (deal 4 random damage when a follower gains faith):
I don't know if these interactions may be intended, but they should probably all work given they're nothing special. Except the "gain 1 more faith" unit (after all one might argue it just increases the faith gain) but I think that one especially should work since it's pretty bad.
Another notion on endless mode: I'm not sure how good it is to have random Doppelgangers, Barricades, Firework Masters, and Black Knights in there. They're hard counters to certain strategies (e.g. hyper-buffing a single unit) which leads to fewer strategies being viable there, exactly the reason why you hesitated implementing endless in the first place. I'd rather see enemy units with a lot of stats in the first place, and from there focus on softer effects like multiple attacks, revives, or not taking more than 25% of their HP in one hit.
These raven interactions are all intended. How it works is that everything that happened simultaneously are considered the same effect. Therefore initiate + emissary will only proc raven once, while Initiate + obelisk will proc raven twice. Huntress and lightkeeper follows the same rule. I made it this way so that trigger effects will be easier to balance and for player to predict, but I guess if this rule turns out to be unintuitive for too many people, the alternative will be to have them based on numeric value (like deal 2 random damage for each point of faith gained)
I agree with the comments on endless mode. My intention is not to just brick some builds completely, but rather that player will need to identify and mitigate the weakness of their build rather than keep using the same strategy. It is probably a good idea to have some endless mode exclusive mobs with weaker version of those hunt mechanics.
Especially with Emissary, that interaction is actually not literal to the wording. As Emissary says "whenever faith is gained by another follower, gain 1 faith", which suggests that the Emissary is the one gaining faith (and thus should trigger Raven again). So as you've intended, the Emissary's wording should change to "when another follower gains faith, that amount is increased by 1". Although personally I'd recommend Emissary to be its own instance and trigger Raven an extra time since it's sort of a really subpar unit as long as Supplicant isn't nerfed and also doesn't scale well in general.
Overall though, I'd probably carefully recommend to make separate instances their own triggers. As it stands, triggers are unintuitive and also don't prevent abuse, as one effect still works while just one or two others don't. It's just a knowledge check, plus a bit more RNG involved.
On top of that the units in question don't really scale as well. They are harder to scale multiplicatively than just a stat-based strategy and they don't scale at all with stats gained inbetween rounds. Compare that to an Adaptive Familiar next to another Adaptive unit together with some permabuffs and you can easily gain +8+8 per round or more.
Ultimately, as far as balancing concerns go, I think you might actually be able to achieve the opposite with some clever wording. In permitting multiple triggers by default, you can then easily nerf overtuned units by making those triggers happen only "once per attack", or instead of being two separate effects, you can make the second effect increase the value of the first one, etc.
On endless, I also just noticed another soft-nerf option, which would be to put most of the special units in one of the first two spots so countered builds have the chance to kill them quickly. Except the Barricade, which should obviously be further towards the end.
Familiar trait does not triggered when another Familiar stats got boosted, is that intended or a bug?
Mostly technical constraint, but maybe also balance (?)
I got the card to apply the trait of the next recruited follower and then recruited the Draggon, but their trait was not applied to the fractured supplicant.
Yes. Unfortunately dragoon's trait don't work with fracturing due to how traits are coded. Essentially, dragoon will change their intrinsic trait into the first aspect their given, so their original intrinsic trait can't be an additional trait itself.
Sculter only summon 1 sculpture when i have 3 support (include him)
yes. Unfortunately the original sculptor is just too op and require too little investment. Now sculptor'll always summon 1 sculpture but it'll have more stats with more support; and we added beekeeper for the mass summon archetype.
i have a ideia for sculptor:instead of making the summon gain +1/+3 for every support,make him summon everytime a follower dies with a 0/5 sculpture(0/+2 for each support)that only works for the first 3 killed followers
Hmmm. I feel like that is probably too complicated as a single trait since it'll need to have a cap. There's probably some design space for summon on friendly death tho...
adjucator first attack didnt attacked the last follower instead just attacked on the front(dont know it it supossed the first attack to be in the front or is just a bug)
yep that's a bug
after 160, there is no shop and all encounters got was 2 veriants of firework master.
201 is drakknight but i can't pass it without crashing the game lol.
I already loved the other prototype, I couldn't believe I would like this one so much more, but here I am, putting hours and hours on it. One of my favourite card games (those are cards, right?), and my favourite auto battler for sure.
I just wish I could activate x4 / x8 speed, because I'd really like to just test a huge amount of comps and strategies in less time (the beginning of the game, and the "travels" between depths feel a little sluggish).
yeah game speed is way too slow still.
I'm trying to make a absurd Hound build that I'll call Bring Dudes.
Prospector Obelisk
Vanguard Hound
Mirroring Hound
HellHound Hound
Mirroring Hound
Incarnator
Adaptive whatever that dude name is, that gets 1+/2+ for every dead unit (2+ Artificer'd)
Familiar Crow
Physically probable, but statistically impossible.
Although it would be nice to have a like challenge run where you can build multiple parts of your team. Instead of just leaving after you buy one item.