Ok, first of all fucking good game, that aout of the way, it''s critic-ing time:
There are some combos and combinations that:
Don't work how you think they will work
You have no clue how they could even work
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.
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
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?
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.
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?
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"
It could be debatable whether "being alive at the end of combat after being revived" should count as "surviving" since "survive" usually means "continue to live".
"when alive at end of combat" would be much clearer and seems to be what actually happens in the game.
(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.
Shop: something like "At the start of combat, gain +1 Faith for each follower that has the same name as this"
Trait: "At the start of combat, gain +1 Faith for each other duplicate follower"
Thoughts:
Changing the description like this is a bit confusing. They should match.
Also "each **other** duplicate" would mean that the follower does not count towards its own ability, i.e. it would gain 1 Faith less with the second description. This does not seem to be the case in the game.
Followers with the same base type but different aspects/traits do still count. I think this is a good decision.
Since the aspect/trait is added in front of the base name wherever the follower is mentioned by name, it seems to be a part of the name. So using "same name" feels very wrong.
The word "duplicate" usually means "identical copy", so that isn't quite correct either …
Maybe use "same **base** name"?
And if you want to stick with "duplicate", you should drop the "other" or replace "each other" with "every" or something similar.
This generates 1 faith while highlighting the Stranger and 3 faith while highlighting the Hounds.
(Both actions do not create a combat log entry for faith gained. So there might be another bug. But I checked that the displayed values for faith gained were actually added.)
With an Obelisk in the middle this is changed to 1+1 (Stranger) and 5+5 (two of the five Hounds).
So the name-specific mechanic seems to work correctly and the combat log is simply using the wrong name.
Thoughts:
Spawning an actual hound makes interactions with other abilities more interesting: "all followers unique", "followers with same name"
But then the ability's description is wrong and should be corrected:
"another" when it is the first … "identical" when it in fact has a different name …
However, a corrected description might be too long.
Changing the ability to create a copy instead of a hound could be a simplifying solution. But then this special ability would loose its uniqueness and simply become a variant of Mirroring Aspect.
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)
(a) Skip to end of current combat round
summary for each follower/enemy (all at once): Show accumulated damage taken, stats + faith gained etc. and maybe some indicator for status change between alive/dead or getting newly summoned.
This summary should probably stay visible longer since there should be much more info available at once.
Perhaps this skip action automatically pauses the game and the summary stays visible while the game stays paused.
Or this skip action is only available, i.e. the button is clickable, while the game is paused. This could also prevent unwanted interactions and visual glitches.
This should scale much better than a flat speed factor and still give some idea of how well the build is doing.
Not sure whether skipping to right before or after revival actions would be better.
Filling the combat log with some kind of summary might be better than flooding it with the usual entries.
(b) Skip to end of combat
Only show the final state of the battle.
Not sure whether a summary like the one in the previous option would be needed.
(c) Skip transitions
Maybe unlock these features after defeating the dragon for the first time or only in endless mode.
2. Replay last combat (during normal run)
Note regarding RNG:
I hope the game uses some kind of software-only deterministic algorithm for pseudorandomness where the state can be represented and restored with very limited data like a random seed.
Otherwise this feature would probably take a lot more effort to implement and there could be no compact replay code.
Generation of compact replay code that encodes everything relevant: game build, RNG seed before start of combat, current enemies (including stats), current followers (including stats and modified abilities), reliquaries etc.
Used internally so not every combat action taken has to be saved.
This could also be a core functionality of a robust autosave feature, so it hopefully does not require much additional work.
Export for bug reports and/or for sharing with other players:
Display code in pop-up window or copy to clipboard or save to file.
Displaying it directly in the game interface is probably not a good idea since even a "compact" code can be quite long.
After starting the replay, the combat should simply work like it would normally do.
Obviously the outcome of combat and the contents of the next shop should not be affected to prevent abuse.
Hopefully this can reuse a lot of already existing code so the implementation does not require too much additional work.
3a. Replay mode (selected from main menu)
Implementation hopefully takes very little additional effort.
Replay one specific combat outside of an actual run.
Import/input previously generated replay code (your own or shared).
3b. Sandbox mode (selected from main menu)
Implementation probably takes a lot more effort than a simple replay mode.
Configure and simulate one specific combat outside of an actual run.
Try out extremely improbable builds.
Test synergies, bugs.
Import/export replay code or something similar.
4. Display more information during combat
Round counter
Combat time
Estimation of remaining combat time:
This requires the combat to be precalculated at the beginning—without any animation—to get the number of every kind of action that is going to take place.
This would probably require the RNG used to be as described in the note above (see 2nd feature requested).
etc.
5. Preview of modified stats/abilities in shop
It would be nice to see what you will actually get before recruiting a new follower.
As an addition or alternative: Some visually highlighted indication of pending "on recruitment" effects would be helpful.
This could be some highlighting effect on the not yet chosen follower and on the relevant already recruited followers.
Maybe even some kind of nice warning to prevent frustration: "If this follower is recruited, EffectXY will go to waste."
Motivation:
If no follower has been recruited for several encounters or you have to pause the game for a few hours, you might have forgotten about the last Prophecy or that there still is some Cleric/Artificer waiting to be useful.
The Artificer only seems to enhance values written as number symbols while ignoring values written as words like "one", "once", "twice". The resulting frustration could be prevented with a reliable preview.
With more followers, aspects and other stuff being added, having to keep track of everything yourself can reduce fun—especially for new players and people with bad short term memory.
This could be part of the tutorial. I.e. if you disable the tutorial when starting a run, you have to keep track of everything yourself. Or it could be disabled by a separate option.
6a. Visual stacking of (almost) identical followers
Here "(almost) identical" means only health+attack might be different.
Idea: Waste less horizontal space by stacking them similar to playing cards in Klondike (solitaire), i.e. only one copy is completely visible and the rest only show their health+attack—or a symbol for being dead.
The order should be intuitive and there probably should be a maximum stack size.
This should only be a visual change. It should **not** influence adjacency and order.
When one of the mostly hidden followers is part of a combat action, it should be temporarily displayed completely even if that means temporarily hiding some of the other followers completely.
This probably does not work well when two or more followers of the same stack are part of a combat action (e.g. stack of flagbearers when one of them gets killed), but in most of those cases there should be an intuitive (or least surprising) solution.
6b. Rearrange visual space
During combat there is a lot of unused visual space while builds with lots of summons are going far off screen. Some of that space could be made available and used to reduce this "overflow".
(i) The depth indicator could be changed from horizontal to vertical and moved to the left/right border to free up a bit more vertical space.
This would feel more intuitive for something called "depth".
If the dots are closer together, more could be displayed at the same time and the next hunt could simply be visually marked without needing a big countdown.
The dots for different event types (shop, encounter, hunt, prophecy etc.) could be distinguished visually (symbols, colors) to reduce further use of space for long words.
(ii) More rows for followers
During combat the followers could be displayed in two rows instead of only one.
This would require more vertical space (e.g. using (i)) or some resizing of the "cards".
This should only be a visual effect without changing adjacency and order.
With lots of summons and no stacking (see 6a) this could still require a lot of space off screen …
(iii) Zoom + more rows
With some kind of zoom there could also be 3+ rows of followers.
This zoom should probably be automatically and dynamically adjusted to the current number of followers during combat.
7. Visual indicator for state of "once per battle" abilities
Some indication of whether a followers "once per battle" ability was already triggered would be nice.
Maybe some kind of special border around the "card"?
Not sure how this should work for followers with two such 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!
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)
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:
// Follower object structure:
// First element: is the identifier for a specific follower
// Second element: follower stats after stat gain has been applied
// Third element: a list of followers this follower has gotten stats from (this stat propagation iteration)
// The Templar0 just attacked.
[Templar0 2/1 []] --(Templar0 +1/+0)-->
[Familiar0 3/2 [Templar0]] --(Familiar0 +1/+0)-->
[Familiar1 3/2 [Familiar0]] --(Familiar1 +1/+0)-->
[Familiar0 4/2 [Templar0 Familiar1]] --(Familiar0 +1/+0)-->X
[Familiar1 3/2 [Familiar0]]
Seems reasonable to me.
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):
It doesn't work with the unit that gains an extra faith whenever a follower gains faith.
Copying a "gain faith at the start of combat" unit will still only proc this effect once.
Adding a "gain 1 faith at the start of combat" buff onto the same unit will also not trigger it a second time.
Nor will the "gain 2 faith on death" unit trigger Mirroring Raven twice if it's enchanted with "gain 1 faith when damaged" (unless of course it survives the hit)
What will work however is the unit that gains faith on each attack. Make it attack 4 times and Mirroring Raven is gonna blast 4x as well.
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.
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.
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)
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).
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.
So, lore speculation, what are we, the player? The "core health" mechanic is rather esoteric, and the fact that we can't fight is also strange. plus, the fact all of our followers revive on death after each excision, even though the only other way to do that is with a Incarnator and even that can't fully restore someones health. and also I should mention that our followers are extremely loyal and don't seem to mind being killed or replaced. none of it made sense of me, until I remebered that the Adjudicator of the Hunt called us a "traitor". So, basically, my theory is that we are a boss monster that enthralls other followers, like the Fireworks Master or the False Sun, and we have abadoned the dragon to maraude across these wastes. Maybe we're like a "Core of False Hope".
on a unrelated note, It would be cool if there was a small random chance that instead of the normal encounter you'd fight your team from a previous run at that depth, with a "core" at the back that has zero attack and health equal to your core health from the last run.
I finally made the ultimate build with scaling and stupid amounts of damage. The number is too big and it crashed. Just a suggestion but i dont think crow needs to display more than 100 arrows, just cut off the loop after 100 count.
I got to lvl 180, then manually exited the game (with still 3 core health remaining and strength to do another cca 10 levels I think). Combats got quite lengthy: - Although Crow is much faster than in previous versions, it still took few minutes to resolve attack 5k. - Since lvl cca 160, enemies stopped to scale exponentially...why? - Also shops stopped appearing after lvl cca 160...I was still looking for one specific follower :).
Except the last lengthy levels, it was very enjoyable run :).
Appreciate the report! That's a lot of things going wrong and I have no idea why any of them are happening...but also I'm kinda surprised the game didn't just explode at that depth.
seeking incarnator(wanted to put mirroring aspect into this)
;lost on depth 106 by hobgoblin,this first was gonna be a faith build but after it was leaning towards a summon build turning into a mix of faith/summon build (only got incarnator on deapth 90)
there where sometimes though where hound was incubating more than it should when near obelisk it was making 6 summons(4 tentancles and 2 hounds)but sometimes it would spawn a "extra" tentacle for some reason.
Thanks for at great game, and great update with endless mode :)
I experienced that the game just stopped at lvl 122. I had a summon heavy build but it seemed to have worked fine on other floors and I don's see anything particular that happened to have triggered a complete freeze of the game (played it just in the browser).
The game was just frozen at this point and more attacks happened. It was still possible to click toggle buttons (2x speed, and pause, but they did not do anything).
This was the comp, The first dog, was adapted with the bee keeper, the gate with summon 1/1 copy, and the last dog adapted with trigger all on death effects. (the remainder were just double stats)
If I remember correctly the time it froze it was only going through the first revive cycle, and in previous battles it had managed at least two. Of course it was slow looping trough all the dead bees at time, but this time it just completely stopped attacking.
Noted; appreciated the reported. Yeah there is possibly a bug related to having too many followers created and destroyed throughout a run, but I have yet to identify it...
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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.
i realy appreciate that such good game is free and playable in the browser
Im suprised how well this game is made because there is so much good strats and game is very replayable
i have just a tiny suggetion:make a list of what followers/aspects you have encoutered so far through the playthroughs.
it would help remember what followers/aspects are in the game.
So, lore speculation, what are we, the player? The "core health" mechanic is rather esoteric, and the fact that we can't fight is also strange. plus, the fact all of our followers revive on death after each excision, even though the only other way to do that is with a Incarnator and even that can't fully restore someones health. and also I should mention that our followers are extremely loyal and don't seem to mind being killed or replaced. none of it made sense of me, until I remebered that the Adjudicator of the Hunt called us a "traitor". So, basically, my theory is that we are a boss monster that enthralls other followers, like the Fireworks Master or the False Sun, and we have abadoned the dragon to maraude across these wastes. Maybe we're like a "Core of False Hope".
on a unrelated note, It would be cool if there was a small random chance that instead of the normal encounter you'd fight your team from a previous run at that depth, with a "core" at the back that has zero attack and health equal to your core health from the last run.
I finally made the ultimate build with scaling and stupid amounts of damage. The number is too big and it crashed. Just a suggestion but i dont think crow needs to display more than 100 arrows, just cut off the loop after 100 count.
Nice one :).
tried the desktop version instead of the web version, it crashed. Will be waiting for the update =).
I got to lvl 180, then manually exited the game (with still 3 core health remaining and strength to do another cca 10 levels I think). Combats got quite lengthy:
- Although Crow is much faster than in previous versions, it still took few minutes to resolve attack 5k.
- Since lvl cca 160, enemies stopped to scale exponentially...why?
- Also shops stopped appearing after lvl cca 160...I was still looking for one specific follower :).
Except the last lengthy levels, it was very enjoyable run :).
Appreciate the report! That's a lot of things going wrong and I have no idea why any of them are happening...but also I'm kinda surprised the game didn't just explode at that depth.
2 core health(from 50-106)
vanguard speaker(i will explain if asked)
mirroring speaker
seeking obelisk
mirroring beekeeper
incubating hound
charging reaper(75/78)
charging familiar(102/103)
seeking incarnator(wanted to put mirroring aspect into this)
;lost on depth 106 by hobgoblin,this first was gonna be a faith build but after it was leaning towards a summon build turning into a mix of faith/summon build (only got incarnator on deapth 90)
there where sometimes though where hound was incubating more than it should when near obelisk it was making 6 summons(4 tentancles and 2 hounds)but sometimes it would spawn a "extra" tentacle for some reason.
Thanks for at great game, and great update with endless mode :)
I experienced that the game just stopped at lvl 122. I had a summon heavy build but it seemed to have worked fine on other floors and I don's see anything particular that happened to have triggered a complete freeze of the game (played it just in the browser).
The game was just frozen at this point and more attacks happened. It was still possible to click toggle buttons (2x speed, and pause, but they did not do anything).
This was the comp, The first dog, was adapted with the bee keeper, the gate with summon 1/1 copy, and the last dog adapted with trigger all on death effects. (the remainder were just double stats)
If I remember correctly the time it froze it was only going through the first revive cycle, and in previous battles it had managed at least two. Of course it was slow looping trough all the dead bees at time, but this time it just completely stopped attacking.
Noted; appreciated the reported. Yeah there is possibly a bug related to having too many followers created and destroyed throughout a run, but I have yet to identify it...
got to 71 depth without Incarnator. I think there should be a no-incarnator infinite challenge
Hopefully reliquary will be able to fulfill the role of this kind of challenges...
just barelly did better with a 73.