Of all the deckbuilding games on itch.io, this is definitely my favorite. The cost/power ratio of the cards is very well thought out, and I enjoy the strategy between building a low vs high cost deck. I hope you make this into a mobile game!
Some random thoughts/suggestions:
1.
Once I have bought all the cards, I have a bunch of coins saved up with nothing to do. Perhaps have the character skins (in profile) cost coins, or have an unlockable recoloring of the background.
2.
Achievements would be nice to have in the future. Not just simply "kill x amount of a certain monster" but have achievements provide challenge such as "reach 20 attack in a game" or "complete a run without losing health" or "spend x energy in one run" or "kill every monster (with health) in one run using weapons" or "only use cards costing 5 energy or less in one run" or "win 5 runs in a row". These achievements should inspire different deck builds and adds replayability.
Maybe have a gamemode with 2x the deck size or somehow incorporate different "levels" that you progress through.
3.
Speaking of replayability, it may be possible to add different player classes that would either start with different stats or have different restrictions. (Ex. a class that cannot gain more than 3/5 health but all weapon cards have double effects)
4.
Have a "beastiary" button that shows a collection of the monsters. This would help when deck building and understanding some of the card effects.The bard card, for example, references the rogue monster, but players have no idea what the rogue monster does until they encounter one in a game. There are other cards too that reference monsters/hazards in their description that could be reworded.
5.
A few of the card wordings are unintuitive. Last stand says that it plays from the deck, but it will also trigger from the discard pile (a good thing). Would also be nice to have a "status" bar to see which react cards are waiting to be triggered so I don't have to keep a mental note that a bard/last stand is in my discard pile.
Robes of faith should be reworded. "Prayers will always be answered" makes sense once you understand the game, but maybe reword or change mechanic so that prayer cards always roll the highest amount. This will make the card worth it (currently one of the weaker cards).
Bandit king wording should be reworded.
Hardcore game mode should have a description (are there more hazard cards or are enemies stronger?)
What is the "A" in the corner of some cards? Perhaps it is obvious and I don't realize; I have been playing perfectly fine without knowing.
The pass button colors are confusing at first. The grey and blue colors should be switched so that blue means you can trigger pass and grey means it is "greyed out" and unable to be used.
6.
Cards should have a different color depending on their class. (Ex. all react cards, all alchemy cards, etc).
7.
Cards that could be buffed:
Bard:not worth taking up a constructed deck slot, should change to normal card that costs energy that removes all rogues.
Death: could also add attack when triggered.
Ring of reflexes: not enough react cards to make it interesting
Bandit king: cost should be lower, since you are only getting 6-12 attack from killing the bandits after. Weak compared to other high cost weapons.
Life: Does not work after using death (ironically), meaning the +10 health doesn't add.
Ring of curses / Staff of curses: seems like cost should be lower, but I haven't used them very much to say if they are balanced.
Skeleton key: cost could be lower. Again, I haven't used this one much so it could be overpowered in certain builds.
8.
My favorite mechanics/cards:
Lucky clover: Building up a high energy base and using this card 6+ times in a game is very fun.
I enjoy the RNG of the rewards with Armory, Summoning, and Ring of Wealth/Fortune.
Staff of charming: very cool concept
Sword of sacrifice: fun to decide whether it is worth it to make the sacrifice or not. I would love more sacrifice cards in the game.
Boots of silence/Robes of stealth: strong cards and fun to use.
9.
My current build. Goal is to build up energy quickly to trigger the strong cards (armory, lucky clover+reward). Once these have been used, trigger "Life" as the win condition near the end of the deck to tank any remaining monsters if I have no attack. This build may need another early game card.
Last Stand
Mushroom, Loaf of bread (health to stay alive before getting armory)
Energy tome x2 (to build up energy quickly)
Boots of silence x2 (to remove curses, poison, rogues)
Lucky clover: fun and powerful when having a high energy pool to use the rewards
Armory: enough attack cards for the rest of the deck
Life: enough life to survive the rest of the deck
Like I said, this game is incredible, thanks for making it.
Thank you for the feedback! I really appreciate it, and I’m glad you enjoyed playing.
1. I'd really like to implement a lot of the features you mentioned. There should be more to unlock besides cards (and there should be more than 75 cards to unlock). Classes would be a great way to add replayability and specialization. I like the idea of achievements being able to tutorialize some of the more confusing mechanics, as well as encourage deck building.
2. The wording of cards needs a ton of work. I agree that there are a lot of confusing descriptions. I’ll probably need to overhaul the ui and rethink how tags, descriptions, etc. are explained to the player in game. Your point about bard/rogue is a perfect example. Situations like this are too common and can only be learned right now through trial and error. I need to give players more information and make cards less confusing.
3. “A” on a card indicates it has an ability beyond a simple stat damage/boost. The intention was to be able to see the general capability of a card at a glance. If a card has two sword icons, but no “A” or additional tags, you can know right away it is simply a two attack card.
4. Thanks for all the miscellaneous feedback like hardcore description and confusing pass button. All noted!
5. I also really like boots of silence and robes of stealth. I tried out your build and lost with 9 HP because the very last card was Vampire and I had no WP (maybe that card needs a change :)) I really enjoy early energy rush with high value finishers. You can do some goofy things like guarantee 11 energy in the opening 2 deals with Alchemist, Lucky Hat, Silver, 2x Energy Crafting (though of course that’s half your specials). I’d like to add more expensive cards to support these sorts of combo builds.
I've been playing this game for a couple of days. Here's my review:
I have this really bad habit of skipping the description when I'm about to play a game on itch. Maybe because a good game shouldn't need an explanation, but mostly because I'm lazy. Either way, it took me a good amount of time to understand what the game actually was. It's not the most intuitive of games, but once it clicks it's not hard to play and understand.
I feel like 10/64 is just too small, IMHO. Also, 64 is a strange number: I got the feeling that you reused a Poker deck as the base (52+2 jokers) and added 10 cards, but there's no reason to do so in a digital card game. 65 with 50 dungeon cards and 15 from your deck or, maybe better, 50 with 40 dungeon cards and 10 personal ones.
I feel like you could easily forget to watch your energy (or, at least, it happened a lot to me). In any case, you should probably put something on cards that can't be played, since once you start recognizing cards from the artworks only you will be playing them without reading the "insufficient energy for effect" box. Something like changing the color of cards without enough energy would work, too.
By the way, I'm kinda hooked to the game: are you still planning on bringing it to mobile?
You’re absolutely right about card descriptions. The game is simply not explained well enough. Though I’m glad it clicked for you eventually.
You know, now that I think about it I can’t remember where 64 came from. Maybe you’re onto something with 52 cards + 2 jokers :p. I’d be open to playing with the game balance through the number of cards. 15 player cards really interests me. It could be fun to have more flexibility to form strategies in the deckbuilder.
I mentioned this in a comment above, but I think I might need to overhaul the ui, which could include improvements to viewing energy (or lack thereof).
Unfortunately, I have not been actively working on the game for a while. I’m very tempted to rebuild the game from scratch with Unity or Godot rather than Libgdx. It would be quicker for me to develop during free time with a fully fledged game engine rather than a set of libraries. Edit: If I make this switch to a game engine, mobile would be the goal for primary platform
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Of all the deckbuilding games on itch.io, this is definitely my favorite. The cost/power ratio of the cards is very well thought out, and I enjoy the strategy between building a low vs high cost deck. I hope you make this into a mobile game!
Some random thoughts/suggestions:
1.
Once I have bought all the cards, I have a bunch of coins saved up with nothing to do. Perhaps have the character skins (in profile) cost coins, or have an unlockable recoloring of the background.
2.
Achievements would be nice to have in the future. Not just simply "kill x amount of a certain monster" but have achievements provide challenge such as "reach 20 attack in a game" or "complete a run without losing health" or "spend x energy in one run" or "kill every monster (with health) in one run using weapons" or "only use cards costing 5 energy or less in one run" or "win 5 runs in a row". These achievements should inspire different deck builds and adds replayability.
Maybe have a gamemode with 2x the deck size or somehow incorporate different "levels" that you progress through.
3.
Speaking of replayability, it may be possible to add different player classes that would either start with different stats or have different restrictions. (Ex. a class that cannot gain more than 3/5 health but all weapon cards have double effects)
4.
Have a "beastiary" button that shows a collection of the monsters. This would help when deck building and understanding some of the card effects.The bard card, for example, references the rogue monster, but players have no idea what the rogue monster does until they encounter one in a game. There are other cards too that reference monsters/hazards in their description that could be reworded.
5.
A few of the card wordings are unintuitive. Last stand says that it plays from the deck, but it will also trigger from the discard pile (a good thing). Would also be nice to have a "status" bar to see which react cards are waiting to be triggered so I don't have to keep a mental note that a bard/last stand is in my discard pile.
Robes of faith should be reworded. "Prayers will always be answered" makes sense once you understand the game, but maybe reword or change mechanic so that prayer cards always roll the highest amount. This will make the card worth it (currently one of the weaker cards).
Bandit king wording should be reworded.
Hardcore game mode should have a description (are there more hazard cards or are enemies stronger?)
What is the "A" in the corner of some cards? Perhaps it is obvious and I don't realize; I have been playing perfectly fine without knowing.
The pass button colors are confusing at first. The grey and blue colors should be switched so that blue means you can trigger pass and grey means it is "greyed out" and unable to be used.
6.
Cards should have a different color depending on their class. (Ex. all react cards, all alchemy cards, etc).
7.
Cards that could be buffed:
Bard:not worth taking up a constructed deck slot, should change to normal card that costs energy that removes all rogues.
Death: could also add attack when triggered.
Ring of reflexes: not enough react cards to make it interesting
Bandit king: cost should be lower, since you are only getting 6-12 attack from killing the bandits after. Weak compared to other high cost weapons.
Life: Does not work after using death (ironically), meaning the +10 health doesn't add.
Ring of curses / Staff of curses: seems like cost should be lower, but I haven't used them very much to say if they are balanced.
Skeleton key: cost could be lower. Again, I haven't used this one much so it could be overpowered in certain builds.
8.
My favorite mechanics/cards:
Lucky clover: Building up a high energy base and using this card 6+ times in a game is very fun.
I enjoy the RNG of the rewards with Armory, Summoning, and Ring of Wealth/Fortune.
Staff of charming: very cool concept
Sword of sacrifice: fun to decide whether it is worth it to make the sacrifice or not. I would love more sacrifice cards in the game.
Boots of silence/Robes of stealth: strong cards and fun to use.
9.
My current build. Goal is to build up energy quickly to trigger the strong cards (armory, lucky clover+reward). Once these have been used, trigger "Life" as the win condition near the end of the deck to tank any remaining monsters if I have no attack. This build may need another early game card.
Last Stand
Mushroom, Loaf of bread (health to stay alive before getting armory)
Energy tome x2 (to build up energy quickly)
Boots of silence x2 (to remove curses, poison, rogues)
Lucky clover: fun and powerful when having a high energy pool to use the rewards
Armory: enough attack cards for the rest of the deck
Life: enough life to survive the rest of the deck
Like I said, this game is incredible, thanks for making it.
Thank you for the feedback! I really appreciate it, and I’m glad you enjoyed playing.
1. I'd really like to implement a lot of the features you mentioned. There should be more to unlock besides cards (and there should be more than 75 cards to unlock). Classes would be a great way to add replayability and specialization. I like the idea of achievements being able to tutorialize some of the more confusing mechanics, as well as encourage deck building.
2. The wording of cards needs a ton of work. I agree that there are a lot of confusing descriptions. I’ll probably need to overhaul the ui and rethink how tags, descriptions, etc. are explained to the player in game. Your point about bard/rogue is a perfect example. Situations like this are too common and can only be learned right now through trial and error. I need to give players more information and make cards less confusing.
3. “A” on a card indicates it has an ability beyond a simple stat damage/boost. The intention was to be able to see the general capability of a card at a glance. If a card has two sword icons, but no “A” or additional tags, you can know right away it is simply a two attack card.
4. Thanks for all the miscellaneous feedback like hardcore description and confusing pass button. All noted!
5. I also really like boots of silence and robes of stealth. I tried out your build and lost with 9 HP because the very last card was Vampire and I had no WP (maybe that card needs a change :)) I really enjoy early energy rush with high value finishers. You can do some goofy things like guarantee 11 energy in the opening 2 deals with Alchemist, Lucky Hat, Silver, 2x Energy Crafting (though of course that’s half your specials). I’d like to add more expensive cards to support these sorts of combo builds.
Thanks again, cheers!
I agree that making this into a mobile would be cool
I've been playing this game for a couple of days. Here's my review:
By the way, I'm kinda hooked to the game: are you still planning on bringing it to mobile?
Thanks for the review!