In one run I had a Speaker, a Mirroring Flagbearer, and a Supplicant whose ability was randomized by Birthing stone into "In combat, whenever an adjacent follower gains stats, this follower will gain the same amount." But when the Flagbearer copy was summoned, only it received the bonus stats from Speaker--the Supplicant's stats remained unchanged.
In another run, I had a Sculptor implanted with the Mirroring aspect, but the clone's start-of-battle ability would not consistently trigger; it only happened around 20% of the time (depths 40, 44, 46, and 49 had the clone Scultpor produce no statues; depth 42 had the clone sculptor produce statues).
In another run, I used a Rebirthing Stone on Obelisk & its ability remained the same.
Tried the build again; had a similar issue. Got a Mirroring Sculptor just before Depth 30, and only one of the two triggered their follower-spawning ability at depths 30, 46, and 49.
Yes. Found out that if you summoned too many followers at the same time, some of them will be skipped over and not registered into the followers list. Tomorrow's update will fix it!
Yes, the undying deck is cannon. Every piece here is undying invoked; except for the revived gate (it's mirroring which is summoning another one of it at 1/1). Well, with this deck you can revive up to 3 times. This deck is hard to build and requires so much luck. Tips for beginners: You have to rush your faiths with the "on death: gives 2 faiths". DONT buy the "at start: gives faith", he's trash. Try to save as much faiths as you can while playing safe. Until 14 faiths, you can now get some high-tier cards. The point is that you need to grab some high-tier cards to decide which path you follow: whether its summoner path or copy-chaser or multiple-attack or health-buffer, it's up to you. Have fun with the game.
I feel like too many of the aspect implants are tuned towards non-support followers, while there aren't any that specifically support all-support strategies. And there aren't very many all-support strategies that don't involve Sculptor; that feels a bit limiting, compared to the wide variety of all-non-support strategies this game has.
Definitely. And I think the majority of the problem stems from the lack of an alternative of attacking and attack damage (i.e. spell damage vs minion attack in hearthstone). Because in current deck you always have to kill enemies with followers' attack damage, support followers end up feeling like "regular followers that can't attack" instead of their own completely different thing; Even sculptor is sort of like "turn all support followers into 2/4". The dynamics between support follower's trait damage and active follower's attack is one of my faction concepts, and I'm really excited to create a deck where support and active follower has equal weighting when we get to factions.
If there's a way to shorten the animation between floors, I missed it.
Multiattacks provide too little feedback, it was really hard to see if they stack or not.
Also found a bug when summoning too many units (2x start of turn effect + the dog thingy + 3 units with tentacles) your units just vanish and attack from off--screen.
I've very much enjoyed playing this and hopefully I'll come back ta bunch o enjoy it plenty more.
It's short, it's sweet, it's deep, its world, despite the small lens it's viewed through, is enrapturing, the gameplay is addicting, and the strategic options are endless. It reminds me of ShogunShowdown, but with army- and deck- building elements that I can't help but fall in love with.
The art is amazing,I love the color palettes, and I adore the style, it looks like trading cards. And all of the detailing and symbols seem intricate and calculated, a perfect mix of mystical and futuristic.
The Faith system. THE FAITH SYSTEM. It's perfectly executed. It succeeds as a currency system, while also having parts in the combat system. How Faith is rewarded helps a single loss not completely spiral into an unavoidable failure.
The aesthetic. More about the art. The combat system itself. There is so much more I could say.
Are the characters human or mechanical? Are they a mix of both? Was this left intentionally ambiguous/contradictory? Was there a goblin kingdom, did they/it play a part in the kingdom's fall, and what exactly are the goblins, anyway? What are the shriekers and borers and every other horror of the wastes? Are there other groups like the Free Company? Is your following akin to the Free Party? Will there be an expanded version? Will there be a full lore explanation?
I've spent a long time playing strategy games on Itch.io, and this has to be one of my favorites of all time. It is the chef's kiss of this site's TBS genre.
I could talk about this for hours, but I'm running out of time. Actually, could I talk to you about this game? Like, talk a lot?
Thank you so much for this absolute work of art.
P.S. "The Sculptor" + "The Obelisk" + "The Speaker" is the best combo I've found. Add "The Flagbearer" and "The Incarnator" and you have an undefeatable army of sculptures. "The Reclaimer" is a nice touch to have a massive monster at the end of the line.
P.P.S. I have done probably ~10-12 runs in just a few days, at the very least. Probably closer to 15. This game is amazing.
Thank you so much for your passionate comment! It’s so delightful and motivating for us hearing about your experiences after finally being able to share the game with you!
Please rest assured that more story and lore will be introduced into the game; and with the coming codex, hopefully many of your questions will be answered! Much of the lingering mysteries surrounding the kingdom and the dragon are yet to be unveiled~
Sincerely, thank you for playing and please look forward to what's coming next!
Lightkeeper triggers twice with hound (one for the first and one for the newly summoned one, even though that one doesn't summon anything). Also doesn't trigger on sculptor.
just use this build and you can win for sure. Btw, please neft summoners. The sculpture should have maximum summons or he's just too broken. Dog is good but instead of at the start, change it to until death would be less broken xd
Have you thought about creating a list which I can view that stores the group of winning companions after every time I beat the dragon? The artwork is wonderful and I would also like to see how I won later.
every upon death effect is not working when i used a follower that gained damage and hp(dowloaded version) and i losed cuz it gained nothing and i losed
Is that only for that one run or every run? Either way that's really weird. If it's for every run, then the game should create a log at Users/username/AppData/LocalLow/DefaultCompany/HolderOfPlace. It will be super helpful if you can send me your log right after a death effect failed to trigger! (e.g. just start a new run, buy a supplicant and make it die in combat)
You can just post it here or email me at zittacheng@gmail.com
I think either it's something I'm completely not aware of or it has something to do with your language setting messing up with parsing numbers (e.g. your language use comma for decimals). I think I had solved it in earlier builds but maybe the newer codes messed it up again. If that's the case, the web version shouldn't have the same problem. I'll double check all my parsing code later.
as for what's YOU, uh...future narrative content will help with that
I'll have to double check but there's a chance that prospector's trait doesn't interact with familiar at all, nor does familiar interact with other familiars. This is for the most part a technical constraint, and I haven't decided on what to do with it yet
We'll probably start working on factions only after reliquary, but current plan for second faction is to have a hero card and make everything else revolve around the hero. Third faction is followers with magnetic tag from hearthstone.
2nd thing i've noticed, is that normal units have their cost shown in the top right, but support units don't. Idk if its intentional, but it just feels inconsistent.
I don't write comments very often, but I just wanna say that I love the game. Love the pace, the art and concept of dark fantasy with sci-fi is amazing. I have great hopes for this project, hope you are well, sleep well, best regards and good bye.
1 thing i've noticed through-out all my runs, is that it always seems to be that on the 1st Hunt, you either you have no trouble beating the boss, or you'd lose even if you chose to skip. So i find it rare to get a build with the power to lose to the boss, but still beat the enemies if you skip, and since theres no extra risk to the boss fight other than the difficulty, then i see no reason to skip it.
Absolutely love this game started with the demo now here perfect please be sure to update often and if possible please make sure all features are available in the itch version a lot of games usually fall short there
if you're targeting Steam, pls make this cross-platform. I will wishlist and buy it as soon as available, on Mac. And pls, build it for M-arch. 32bit is being deprecated everywhere, nowadays.
Just pure Peak, absolutely love the atmosphere and game feel, endless mode is a no-brainer, only complaint is that i wish there was a way to speed up combat. Im very exited for everything thats currently in development
Both Lightkeeper (far left) and the sanctuary (far right) duplicate and the seeker (middle left) attacks twice.For Zitta: I love how this has improved since the prototype which I honestly thought was all we were going to get. I like how the resource management has changed with the side areas and shop limitations as well as bosses being optional except the dragon of course.
Looking forward to seeing what else you do with this game, you clearly know what you want from it.
i had 4 dancers, 1 with swarming, 3 with charging in that order. on the first attack, all 4 will light up with animation to show ability trigger.
afterwards the animation of the next 2 dancers will skip the last dancer.
just to add on, chaser is meant to drain 2 attack on all newly recruited followers.
i see it does that to followers with less than 2 attack. and brings their attack to 0.
i do not see that working on support followers.
chaser can drain gladiator for 2 dmg but gladiator passive will fill it back to full hp. unintended synergy.
adaptive chaser drains 2 from new recruits but gains 4.
Pretty amazing! I basically became immortal after the 30-ish depth. Didn't really upgrade for anything after the thirties. The familiar is unstoppable with a team focused on buffs.
Love it! Got lucky with the following combo on first attempt and became unstoppable once it happened. 2 * 2x stat gains on the axeman and 2x attack on the mechanical dragon. (Forgot their actual names, cards are not clickable on winning screen)
pretty fun! a suggestion would be for there to be a "number of followers you currently have" thing under the "number of troops you can potentially have"
really fun but I did not have a big enough screen so after beating the dark knight or whatever I could not start the battle buuut realy fun would recommend
Fun game with good replayability. It also looks and feels really polished, congratulations on making a great game.
Thoughts/suggestions/opinions after playing a solid 20+ runs:
-Re-roll feature at recruitment camps
-Ability to scroll back through combat log
-Damage meter
-Events could have a 3rd choice where you pay faith for something better. e.g (gain 1 attack, Gain 2 health, or pay 3 faith to gain both)
-Sometimes you can fall into a "lose more" spiral where if you lose poorly once then you don't get enough faith and you continue to get weaker and weaker relatively speaking. Maybe if you lose you should get to replay the same depth instead of moving past it so you don't miss out on faith.
-It would be fun to be able to buy more than 1 thing per turn though maybe breaks the balance/core gameplay
-Having an Obelisk either side of a follower doesn't trigger their ability a 3rd time. Not sure if intended but it's not clear from the description
-If its a draw (e.g against fireworks boss) it feels like you should still lose core health
-An aspect or support follower that boosts combat traits would be cool. (e.g "double the power of combat traits")
-"Give random follower X" as a powerup rarely feels like a good choice as you often have disposable followers. Being able to choose might be nice.
-The "revive all followers with 1 health" support seems to end the opponents turn even if they all haven't finished attacking. Makes it even more OP than intended haha.
-After beating a boss the faith option seems underwhelming compared to extra capacity.
-Chaser seems to drain all attack from new recruits, even after hotfix.
-Familiar doesn't trigger off Duelist. Not sure if intended but could be fun if they interacted.
-Familiar doesn't trigger off Reaper. (maybe because permanent gain?)
-Stacking Sculptors, +2/+2 for summons with the fractured aspect seems to be the most OP combo I found. Pretty easy to get 15+ 8/10 statues.
-Familiar can also be pretty OP. On my first try I got him to 74/52 against the dragon.
-Some of the phrasing on the aspects isn't clear, specifically the "gain double the amount of stats" vs "double base stats" distinction isn't obvious at first.
I've always loved this game. This feels very different than the former version. Smart of you to lower the Initiate Faith gain from 2 to 1 and kept the Supplicant the same.
Some critiques because I LOVE this game and want to see you make a ton of money on Steam. I really don't like the 'support' followers that aren't even a wall like in the old game.
Big idea: REGAINING CONTROL AS THE PLAYER
1. Allow players to choose between recruiting attributes/upgrades or followers...
1.5 Or at least add the ability to reroll followers given a Faith cost (similar LOL's TFT or Dota 2's Underworld). You could also have similar followers combine.
2. Limit the amount of Faith like in the first game. Now the more Faith, the better the options even if you have 20 Faith in the first 4 rounds.
3. Showing followers out of your Faith range... that was the case in the first version but now you are limited to what you can buy which PREVENTS long term planning using the lock mechanism. (Maybe limit to 1 out of range per showing).
4. Be able to speed up the game (skip the first battle as well).
Big idea: ARCHITYPES
I miss the architypes of the original game. Generally, you would get some low level followers and hope to get the higher ups that made the architype. The architypes in order of power were:
a. "Upon Death" - Stacking Conscripts, Supplicants, Ghost, Flagbearer and others, would combo into the the "Upon Death" Hellhound for easy wins. Put the Incarnator in front of the Hellhound for some stupid stats. Combine with Speaker to spread the love. (SEE BELOW)
b. "PUMP UP / Cleric Stacking" - The +1/+1 from the Cleric was so much stronger in the old version as it was for EVERY NEW FOLLOWER (but only once each turn, not that that mattered). Whole teams were made of 4 Clerics giving followers a +4/+4 boost. Worked really well with Conscripts. Mix with Alchemist for potions to dump on Conscripts. Or use Sanctuary. (SEE BELOW)
c. "Double Attack" - Pump your Turret with Archivist/Alchemist and then put it behind a Incarnator. (SEE BELOW)
d. "Faith Based" - Nerfed correctly (but not in this upgraded version) by working only if all followers were unique. Since Faith is buying power, it needs to be nerfed in order to create balance. Still, it was a very hard architype to pull off as you needed the follower that gains faith per attack (Seeker) and the follower that attacks again each time faith is gained. (Never got Crusader to be good enough)
e. "Defense" - Try to make the Templar, Herald, etc (+1 attack damage per attack) to work by having high levels of defense. Not easy in the slightest since the final boss attacked 3 times. This is much easier in this version of the game.
You have added some new architypes that I really enjoy. I'd love to make a broken "random" damage team. But it seems so random what followers I receive and I really don't have any control over it. And I love that you have made "Medic" actually viable. Medic was terrible before. It allows for a weanie win team comp like seem below.
Thanks for the feedback! Glad you love the game and like, these are all really valid feedback and I really appreciate it! I want to follow up on several points you raised: not to say a certain piece of feedback is good or bad (they're all good!), just to provide some context as to how we made some of the decisions for the new version.
A lot of your feedback is somewhat tied to the faith/core health rework, which is probably the most impactful change we made. In the old game, faith is intended as a checklist mechanic: the player will have different faith caps at different points of the run, and are expected to more or less cap their faith; although they can achieve that through different means, and maybe increase their faith demands with certain cards like apprentice, but the game is designed around the player having a specific amount of faith income each round.
But this created a lot of problems when we tried to expand the game and add more cards. If we balance the game around a faith cap, then it means that the player should always have ways to reach their current faith cap, which will force us to design the faith generation cards and non-faith cards separately, and always keep them at a consistent ratio (which is exactly how we designed the cards in the old version). While it's easy to design a bunch of unique non-faith cards (with mechanics like random damage or summon), the design space is very limited for faith generation cards. I suppose we COULD have gone the route of having temporary/permanent faith, having followers interact with faith cap, or using other means to make faith more complicated, eventually, the decision is to make faith, or at least those generated by followers, to have the same weighting as other mechanics.
So the idea of the new faith system is that recruiting faith generation followers should be a strategic choice rather than a necessity and that the player should be able to beat the game without any faith generation from followers. We tried to achieve this with enemy faith drop being more substantial and random event options. Ideally, there should be builds where the player will buy high-value cheap cards with enemy faith drop and afford expansive core cards through skipping and faith injection from random events; or, to recruit tons of faith generation followers, BARELY winning every fight due to recruiting another supplicant instead of a templar, and get to big tech cards while still in early game (we'll still need to analyze the playtest data from the past few days to see how viable these playstyles are). We want to get to a place where we can design faith generation cards just like any other type of card, and don't need to worry too much about having an imbalanced number of faith and non-faith cards.
Only showing affordable cards is a byproduct of the rework. If I remember correctly, in the old version the game would occasionally show one card that costs more than current faith but less than faith cap. The assumption in the old version is that the player will be able to afford that card next round if they try. At some point, this feature existed in the new version as well, but I removed it because it constantly made me feel pressured to have a positive faith income, which is not the goal. But this 100% makes locking and planning build worse. I'll probably need to try a lot more things before I can decide how to solve all this. Maybe like occasionally having a recruit event that only shows high-cost cards or something.
Refresh is another thing we struggled with. Having refresh as a basic mechanic works best if the player knows what exactly is in the pool. But we really don't want to pressure the player to memorize every card, or even to constantly check a menu listing all the cards. This is one of the design goals for this project: to create a card game that is more fast-paced and free-form than, say, a deckbuilder. The current plan for refresh is to make it like Hades 1, where you can use tokens to refresh. For example, maybe a follower with "When recruited, gain +3 refresh tokens", so it's less of a basic mechanic and more of a situational/preference thing.
Tbh permanent buff and support follower is more or less the same as faith rework, where we are trying to make something not a necessity. Permanent buff followers definitely still need a lot of tuning -- it seems like they are still somewhat necessary for perfect runs. For support followers, the idea is that we want the player to keep getting more capacity throughout the run, but also want to make follower count part of the build, so that aoe effects like flagbearer can have variable value in different builds. We end up with summons and support followers, which is essentially trading 1 capacity for passive effects. This idea will definitely be further explored when we get to factions, where we plan to create archetypes with maybe just one or two active followers.
Generated around 15 faith per round by itself lol. Fourth card from the left (forgot its name) had the duplication effect. Somehow managed to kill the dragon without losing any core healths by having the three cards on the right all have double stats.
Funny moment when the firework master killed my last follower upon his death
Very op run where the 4/6 had aspiring so it would gain the attack of the 20/20. Then the 13/15, which had double attack, would kill the buffed 4/6 and gain all its stats. Dragon was absolutely shredded.
this is a really cool upgrade to the first version of the game, can't wait to see how it progresses! (also, have you considered making a discord for the game?
Glad you enjoy it! We decided against having a community discord because managing that will likely be a lot of extra stress :( Maybe when the game is in a more complete state!
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In one run I had a Speaker, a Mirroring Flagbearer, and a Supplicant whose ability was randomized by Birthing stone into "In combat, whenever an adjacent follower gains stats, this follower will gain the same amount." But when the Flagbearer copy was summoned, only it received the bonus stats from Speaker--the Supplicant's stats remained unchanged.
In another run, I had a Sculptor implanted with the Mirroring aspect, but the clone's start-of-battle ability would not consistently trigger; it only happened around 20% of the time (depths 40, 44, 46, and 49 had the clone Scultpor produce no statues; depth 42 had the clone sculptor produce statues).
In another run, I used a Rebirthing Stone on Obelisk & its ability remained the same.
when the mirrored sculptor failed to trigger, was there things like frame drop or anything weird in your game?
Not so far as I noticed. The abilities just kept triggering down the line.
Tried the build again; had a similar issue. Got a Mirroring Sculptor just before Depth 30, and only one of the two triggered their follower-spawning ability at depths 30, 46, and 49.
Yes. Found out that if you summoned too many followers at the same time, some of them will be skipped over and not registered into the followers list. Tomorrow's update will fix it!
Well, with this deck you can revive up to 3 times. This deck is hard to build and requires so much luck.
Tips for beginners:
You have to rush your faiths with the "on death: gives 2 faiths". DONT buy the "at start: gives faith", he's trash. Try to save as much faiths as you can while playing safe. Until 14 faiths, you can now get some high-tier cards. The point is that you need to grab some high-tier cards to decide which path you follow: whether its summoner path or copy-chaser or multiple-attack or health-buffer, it's up to you. Have fun with the game.
wow. just wow. looks freaking awesome!
I feel like too many of the aspect implants are tuned towards non-support followers, while there aren't any that specifically support all-support strategies. And there aren't very many all-support strategies that don't involve Sculptor; that feels a bit limiting, compared to the wide variety of all-non-support strategies this game has.
Definitely. And I think the majority of the problem stems from the lack of an alternative of attacking and attack damage (i.e. spell damage vs minion attack in hearthstone). Because in current deck you always have to kill enemies with followers' attack damage, support followers end up feeling like "regular followers that can't attack" instead of their own completely different thing; Even sculptor is sort of like "turn all support followers into 2/4". The dynamics between support follower's trait damage and active follower's attack is one of my faction concepts, and I'm really excited to create a deck where support and active follower has equal weighting when we get to factions.
A little bit of feedback, hope it helps:
I've very much enjoyed playing this and hopefully I'll come back ta bunch o enjoy it plenty more.
Not the dev, but.
2. They stack additively (I've tested this)
3. I doubt it's a bug, as the screen seems to be unable to show everything. Unless you mean it doesn't scroll to show the unit.
This game is astounding.
It's short, it's sweet, it's deep, its world, despite the small lens it's viewed through, is enrapturing, the gameplay is addicting, and the strategic options are endless. It reminds me of Shogun Showdown, but with army- and deck- building elements that I can't help but fall in love with.
The art is amazing,I love the color palettes, and I adore the style, it looks like trading cards. And all of the detailing and symbols seem intricate and calculated, a perfect mix of mystical and futuristic.
The Faith system. THE FAITH SYSTEM. It's perfectly executed. It succeeds as a currency system, while also having parts in the combat system. How Faith is rewarded helps a single loss not completely spiral into an unavoidable failure.
The aesthetic. More about the art. The combat system itself. There is so much more I could say.
Are the characters human or mechanical? Are they a mix of both? Was this left intentionally ambiguous/contradictory? Was there a goblin kingdom, did they/it play a part in the kingdom's fall, and what exactly are the goblins, anyway? What are the shriekers and borers and every other horror of the wastes? Are there other groups like the Free Company? Is your following akin to the Free Party? Will there be an expanded version? Will there be a full lore explanation?
I've spent a long time playing strategy games on Itch.io, and this has to be one of my favorites of all time. It is the chef's kiss of this site's TBS genre.
I could talk about this for hours, but I'm running out of time. Actually, could I talk to you about this game? Like, talk a lot?
Thank you so much for this absolute work of art.
P.S. "The Sculptor" + "The Obelisk" + "The Speaker" is the best combo I've found. Add "The Flagbearer" and "The Incarnator" and you have an undefeatable army of sculptures. "The Reclaimer" is a nice touch to have a massive monster at the end of the line.
P.P.S. I have done probably ~10-12 runs in just a few days, at the very least. Probably closer to 15. This game is amazing.
Thank you so much for your passionate comment! It’s so delightful and motivating for us hearing about your experiences after finally being able to share the game with you!
Please rest assured that more story and lore will be introduced into the game; and with the coming codex, hopefully many of your questions will be answered! Much of the lingering mysteries surrounding the kingdom and the dragon are yet to be unveiled~
Sincerely, thank you for playing and please look forward to what's coming next!
You're welcome, this game is deserving of every word I could give it.
This game will become something truly awe-inspiring, I have no doubt.
Lightkeeper triggers twice with hound (one for the first and one for the newly summoned one, even though that one doesn't summon anything). Also doesn't trigger on sculptor.
Noted. Thanks for pointing that out!
I've played many roguelike games but this one is goat.
sculptor is indeed very likely to be the most broken build rn...
So good, the UI is well-built, creating good vibe for adventures. Love how this creation be so simple that create greatness
Have you thought about creating a list which I can view that stores the group of winning companions after every time I beat the dragon? The artwork is wonderful and I would also like to see how I won later.
Wonderful mechanism and game by the way. Love it.
every upon death effect is not working when i used a follower that gained damage and hp(dowloaded version) and i losed cuz it gained nothing and i losed
:(
Which follower's death effect is not working?
actually everything related to death effect isnt working
Is that only for that one run or every run? Either way that's really weird. If it's for every run, then the game should create a log at Users/username/AppData/LocalLow/DefaultCompany/HolderOfPlace. It will be super helpful if you can send me your log right after a death effect failed to trigger! (e.g. just start a new run, buy a supplicant and make it die in combat)
You can just post it here or email me at zittacheng@gmail.com
right now i tried dowloading again and i did get a a follower that gives damage to all units on DEATH but it gave none
(just a silly question what represents "YOU" in the game some kind of bishop?)
i tried on another computer and the problem persist (now on the web version)
I think either it's something I'm completely not aware of or it has something to do with your language setting messing up with parsing numbers (e.g. your language use comma for decimals). I think I had solved it in earlier builds but maybe the newer codes messed it up again. If that's the case, the web version shouldn't have the same problem. I'll double check all my parsing code later.
as for what's YOU, uh...future narrative content will help with that
do you pretend to put this game into steam??
Eventually yes
This unit didn't copy familar's nor templor's stats
when the flag guy dided 5 other followers +1 attcak, prosoector didn't copy.
when familar copied highest attack, prosoector didn't copy.
when templor increase increase attack form attacking, prosoector didn't copy
I'll have to double check but there's a chance that prospector's trait doesn't interact with familiar at all, nor does familiar interact with other familiars. This is for the most part a technical constraint, and I haven't decided on what to do with it yet
Love the game, it's so much fun! Keep up the hard work!
I do have one question. What will the other factions look like?
We'll probably start working on factions only after reliquary, but current plan for second faction is to have a hero card and make everything else revolve around the hero. Third faction is followers with magnetic tag from hearthstone.
looking forward to it, keep up the hard work! One last question, what is the reliquary?
Check the devlog!
2nd thing i've noticed, is that normal units have their cost shown in the top right, but support units don't. Idk if its intentional, but it just feels inconsistent.
Support:
Normal:
Yep! That's a bug
I don't write comments very often, but I just wanna say that I love the game. Love the pace, the art and concept of dark fantasy with sci-fi is amazing. I have great hopes for this project, hope you are well, sleep well, best regards and good bye.
1 thing i've noticed through-out all my runs, is that it always seems to be that on the 1st Hunt, you either you have no trouble beating the boss, or you'd lose even if you chose to skip. So i find it rare to get a build with the power to lose to the boss, but still beat the enemies if you skip, and since theres no extra risk to the boss fight other than the difficulty, then i see no reason to skip it.
So making the boss take like 2 lives, or making the enemy encounter easier/non-existent when skipped, or anything like that would be great.
yeah you have to kill the level 13 boss, lossing 1 life is nothing but losing the +1 capacity early is huge.
Noted! tbh I have never received feedback on skipped first hunt before. Will definitely look into it.
Absolutely love this game started with the demo now here perfect please be sure to update often and if possible please make sure all features are available in the itch version a lot of games usually fall short there
Also if you could code an endless mode as the next update you would be an absolute legend. I absolutely love seeing how far I can ramp just for fun
I've been playing this for a couple of hours everyday, for the last 2 weeks, now. This was my strongest end-game boss-fight roster yet:
Nice! tbh I was expecting to see some sculptor shenanigans, but I guess incubating does make more sense
if you're targeting Steam, pls make this cross-platform. I will wishlist and buy it as soon as available, on Mac. And pls, build it for M-arch. 32bit is being deprecated everywhere, nowadays.
you mean something like this? 27 (6,8)
LOVE THIS GAME. first time I've ever replayed a game this much and didn't feel tired after like 5 replays =D
Just pure Peak, absolutely love the atmosphere and game feel, endless mode is a no-brainer, only complaint is that i wish there was a way to speed up combat. Im very exited for everything thats currently in development
Both Lightkeeper (far left) and the sanctuary (far right) duplicate and the seeker (middle left) attacks twice.
For Zitta: I love how this has improved since the prototype which I honestly thought was all we were going to get. I like how the resource management has changed with the side areas and shop limitations as well as bosses being optional except the dragon of course.
Looking forward to seeing what else you do with this game, you clearly know what you want from it.
This was a fun one.
Great game would love to see more and a Endless mode!!!
I'd love an endless mode.
if you every wonder what 100+ attack looks like
Here is how it happened
quadrupling of stats is bonkers. imagine fractured prospector with that support ability.
visual bug:
i had 4 dancers, 1 with swarming, 3 with charging in that order. on the first attack, all 4 will light up with animation to show ability trigger. afterwards the animation of the next 2 dancers will skip the last dancer.
That's really weird, and other than the visuals, did all those dancers function as expected?
yes. “charging dancer” will pass two attacks to the next available unit. stacking “dancers” works too.
just to add on, chaser is meant to drain 2 attack on all newly recruited followers. i see it does that to followers with less than 2 attack. and brings their attack to 0. i do not see that working on support followers. chaser can drain gladiator for 2 dmg but gladiator passive will fill it back to full hp. unintended synergy. adaptive chaser drains 2 from new recruits but gains 4.
Yes! These are all intended behavior for chaser!
Pretty amazing! I basically became immortal after the 30-ish depth. Didn't really upgrade for anything after the thirties. The familiar is unstoppable with a team focused on buffs.
8 follower capacity 5/5 Core Health
Non-combat traits:
- N/A Hound
- Vanguard Supplicant
- N/A Winemaker
- Growing Winemaker Stranger
- N/A Medic
- Leading Prospector
- Mirroring Familiar
- Vampiric Templar
Love it! Got lucky with the following combo on first attempt and became unstoppable once it happened. 2 * 2x stat gains on the axeman and 2x attack on the mechanical dragon. (Forgot their actual names, cards are not clickable on winning screen)
and my best run after 2+ hrs on this! Familiar does trigger on permanent gain, absolutely OP.
and I have no idea why the "cloned" hound has 50 attack. I'd think 28 + 2 + 2 (double gains) = 32.
Can't wait to see some page listing all cards so that we can come up with more OP/fun combos.
The base stats of hound are 1/2, I think the game gives it that and the aspect, then "gains" the remaining stats.
pretty fun! a suggestion would be for there to be a "number of followers you currently have" thing under the "number of troops you can potentially have"
really fun but I did not have a big enough screen so after beating the dark knight or whatever I could not start the battle buuut realy fun would recommend
awww... sorry to hear it. The windows build should always run with native resolution, so maybe that'll work if you are using windows!
Fun game with good replayability. It also looks and feels really polished, congratulations on making a great game.
Thoughts/suggestions/opinions after playing a solid 20+ runs:
-Re-roll feature at recruitment camps
-Ability to scroll back through combat log
-Damage meter
-Events could have a 3rd choice where you pay faith for something better. e.g (gain 1 attack, Gain 2 health, or pay 3 faith to gain both)
-Sometimes you can fall into a "lose more" spiral where if you lose poorly once then you don't get enough faith and you continue to get weaker and weaker relatively speaking. Maybe if you lose you should get to replay the same depth instead of moving past it so you don't miss out on faith.
-It would be fun to be able to buy more than 1 thing per turn though maybe breaks the balance/core gameplay
-Having an Obelisk either side of a follower doesn't trigger their ability a 3rd time. Not sure if intended but it's not clear from the description
-If its a draw (e.g against fireworks boss) it feels like you should still lose core health
-An aspect or support follower that boosts combat traits would be cool. (e.g "double the power of combat traits")
-"Give random follower X" as a powerup rarely feels like a good choice as you often have disposable followers. Being able to choose might be nice.
-The "revive all followers with 1 health" support seems to end the opponents turn even if they all haven't finished attacking. Makes it even more OP than intended haha.
-After beating a boss the faith option seems underwhelming compared to extra capacity.
-Chaser seems to drain all attack from new recruits, even after hotfix.
-Familiar doesn't trigger off Duelist. Not sure if intended but could be fun if they interacted.
-Familiar doesn't trigger off Reaper. (maybe because permanent gain?)
-Stacking Sculptors, +2/+2 for summons with the fractured aspect seems to be the most OP combo I found. Pretty easy to get 15+ 8/10 statues.
-Familiar can also be pretty OP. On my first try I got him to 74/52 against the dragon.
-Some of the phrasing on the aspects isn't clear, specifically the "gain double the amount of stats" vs "double base stats" distinction isn't obvious at first.
+1
i think familiar only gains in combat stats
I've always loved this game. This feels very different than the former version. Smart of you to lower the Initiate Faith gain from 2 to 1 and kept the Supplicant the same.
Some critiques because I LOVE this game and want to see you make a ton of money on Steam. I really don't like the 'support' followers that aren't even a wall like in the old game.
Big idea: REGAINING CONTROL AS THE PLAYER
1. Allow players to choose between recruiting attributes/upgrades or followers...
1.5 Or at least add the ability to reroll followers given a Faith cost (similar LOL's TFT or Dota 2's Underworld). You could also have similar followers combine.
2. Limit the amount of Faith like in the first game. Now the more Faith, the better the options even if you have 20 Faith in the first 4 rounds.
3. Showing followers out of your Faith range... that was the case in the first version but now you are limited to what you can buy which PREVENTS long term planning using the lock mechanism. (Maybe limit to 1 out of range per showing).
4. Be able to speed up the game (skip the first battle as well).
Big idea: ARCHITYPES
I miss the architypes of the original game. Generally, you would get some low level followers and hope to get the higher ups that made the architype. The architypes in order of power were:
a. "Upon Death" - Stacking Conscripts, Supplicants, Ghost, Flagbearer and others, would combo into the the "Upon Death" Hellhound for easy wins. Put the Incarnator in front of the Hellhound for some stupid stats. Combine with Speaker to spread the love. (SEE BELOW)
b. "PUMP UP / Cleric Stacking" - The +1/+1 from the Cleric was so much stronger in the old version as it was for EVERY NEW FOLLOWER (but only once each turn, not that that mattered). Whole teams were made of 4 Clerics giving followers a +4/+4 boost. Worked really well with Conscripts. Mix with Alchemist for potions to dump on Conscripts. Or use Sanctuary. (SEE BELOW)
c. "Double Attack" - Pump your Turret with Archivist/Alchemist and then put it behind a Incarnator. (SEE BELOW)
d. "Faith Based" - Nerfed correctly (but not in this upgraded version) by working only if all followers were unique. Since Faith is buying power, it needs to be nerfed in order to create balance. Still, it was a very hard architype to pull off as you needed the follower that gains faith per attack (Seeker) and the follower that attacks again each time faith is gained. (Never got Crusader to be good enough)
e. "Defense" - Try to make the Templar, Herald, etc (+1 attack damage per attack) to work by having high levels of defense. Not easy in the slightest since the final boss attacked 3 times. This is much easier in this version of the game.
You have added some new architypes that I really enjoy. I'd love to make a broken "random" damage team. But it seems so random what followers I receive and I really don't have any control over it. And I love that you have made "Medic" actually viable. Medic was terrible before. It allows for a weanie win team comp like seem below.
Old winning sets examples (0 losses):
Current winning sets (0 losses):
I'd be a game tester for this game any day.
Thanks for the feedback! Glad you love the game and like, these are all really valid feedback and I really appreciate it! I want to follow up on several points you raised: not to say a certain piece of feedback is good or bad (they're all good!), just to provide some context as to how we made some of the decisions for the new version.
A lot of your feedback is somewhat tied to the faith/core health rework, which is probably the most impactful change we made. In the old game, faith is intended as a checklist mechanic: the player will have different faith caps at different points of the run, and are expected to more or less cap their faith; although they can achieve that through different means, and maybe increase their faith demands with certain cards like apprentice, but the game is designed around the player having a specific amount of faith income each round.
But this created a lot of problems when we tried to expand the game and add more cards. If we balance the game around a faith cap, then it means that the player should always have ways to reach their current faith cap, which will force us to design the faith generation cards and non-faith cards separately, and always keep them at a consistent ratio (which is exactly how we designed the cards in the old version). While it's easy to design a bunch of unique non-faith cards (with mechanics like random damage or summon), the design space is very limited for faith generation cards. I suppose we COULD have gone the route of having temporary/permanent faith, having followers interact with faith cap, or using other means to make faith more complicated, eventually, the decision is to make faith, or at least those generated by followers, to have the same weighting as other mechanics.
So the idea of the new faith system is that recruiting faith generation followers should be a strategic choice rather than a necessity and that the player should be able to beat the game without any faith generation from followers. We tried to achieve this with enemy faith drop being more substantial and random event options. Ideally, there should be builds where the player will buy high-value cheap cards with enemy faith drop and afford expansive core cards through skipping and faith injection from random events; or, to recruit tons of faith generation followers, BARELY winning every fight due to recruiting another supplicant instead of a templar, and get to big tech cards while still in early game (we'll still need to analyze the playtest data from the past few days to see how viable these playstyles are). We want to get to a place where we can design faith generation cards just like any other type of card, and don't need to worry too much about having an imbalanced number of faith and non-faith cards.
Only showing affordable cards is a byproduct of the rework. If I remember correctly, in the old version the game would occasionally show one card that costs more than current faith but less than faith cap. The assumption in the old version is that the player will be able to afford that card next round if they try. At some point, this feature existed in the new version as well, but I removed it because it constantly made me feel pressured to have a positive faith income, which is not the goal. But this 100% makes locking and planning build worse. I'll probably need to try a lot more things before I can decide how to solve all this. Maybe like occasionally having a recruit event that only shows high-cost cards or something.
Refresh is another thing we struggled with. Having refresh as a basic mechanic works best if the player knows what exactly is in the pool. But we really don't want to pressure the player to memorize every card, or even to constantly check a menu listing all the cards. This is one of the design goals for this project: to create a card game that is more fast-paced and free-form than, say, a deckbuilder. The current plan for refresh is to make it like Hades 1, where you can use tokens to refresh. For example, maybe a follower with "When recruited, gain +3 refresh tokens", so it's less of a basic mechanic and more of a situational/preference thing.
Tbh permanent buff and support follower is more or less the same as faith rework, where we are trying to make something not a necessity. Permanent buff followers definitely still need a lot of tuning -- it seems like they are still somewhat necessary for perfect runs. For support followers, the idea is that we want the player to keep getting more capacity throughout the run, but also want to make follower count part of the build, so that aoe effects like flagbearer can have variable value in different builds. We end up with summons and support followers, which is essentially trading 1 capacity for passive effects. This idea will definitely be further explored when we get to factions, where we plan to create archetypes with maybe just one or two active followers.
Art style, gameplay and design well done.
Very promising.
good damage from vengeful frontline being casted across my adaptive backline. found that vengeful’s +3/+3 buff can be wasted on “dead” units.
mods
oops! Will fix vengeful targeting next patch!
40 statues center guy got copy 1/1 xD
that is nutty. try building a 40+ hp stinger and watch him go daka daka at enemies.
you can get 3 damage from the gatling support for each shot
Love the style, 10/10.
Insanely fun. Here are some of my runs:
Generated around 15 faith per round by itself lol. Fourth card from the left (forgot its name) had the duplication effect. Somehow managed to kill the dragon without losing any core healths by having the three cards on the right all have double stats.
Funny moment when the firework master killed my last follower upon his death
Very op run where the 4/6 had aspiring so it would gain the attack of the 20/20. Then the 13/15, which had double attack, would kill the buffed 4/6 and gain all its stats. Dragon was absolutely shredded.
Gladiator my beloved...
this is a really cool upgrade to the first version of the game, can't wait to see how it progresses! (also, have you considered making a discord for the game?
Glad you enjoy it! We decided against having a community discord because managing that will likely be a lot of extra stress :( Maybe when the game is in a more complete state!
So, uhm, I beat the dragon the very first time I played this. I don't think that was meant to happen. I did over 350 damage. Uhm.
Yeah.