I'm glad you like the game! 😊 Haha yeah it's much harder to win without using any summons - My current balancing strategy is to make every option overpowered, and work from there!
Can you please explain the difference between the Launch files? The 2.4.0 version (with the little controller icon) does not run for me in Windows. It opens but when I click on the deck it doesn't do anything. The other versions run, but are limited to a fixed window size. Please advise, thanks
Hey there! The 2.4.0 file should be a Windows .exe, which should just run normally! I know that clicking on cards is not fully reliable at the moment, so maybe give it another shot to see if clicking on the deck starts the level!
The other file is a html file to run the game in browser 😊
I've never been able to run the Windows version. I can't get past the first screen where you select the Meadow. Nothing happens when I click it. Thanks
I have a good Idea for something to add as a item "pouch" what it could do is allow you to gain an extra card per turn but it destroys itself until the battle has ended. one of the downsides should be that you lose a move every turn
This is a really fun game and I love how many different card types there are! IDK if it is possible but it would be great if the game saved when the tab was closed.
A little bag to put them in might be nice. Doesn't even have to be auto pick up. Coin stacking is fun but I found the board getting a bit cluttered after a bit.
Finally beat it! Having seen the boss at the end of the beach, I think all my runs would have beaten the game if I hadn't run into crashes.
The game is pretty good, and seems to be getting better!
Thoughts on cards:
Third hand was too strong at +3, but it's too weak at +2. +3 with a cost or limitation-- perhaps having it set your current available moves to 3, for example-- would be better, but +3 is probably fine since the power creep from the new cards is pretty high (mitosis, as an example, is better than pre-nerf third hand, and copies most but not all of what you could do with it).
Draw two is always bad now, and that's probably fine. It's funny because in most games it's super OP. Used to be good iff you had third hand, now you'd prefer mitosis instead of course (strictly better).
Although discarding is usually good, discarding on hammers is bad for you. Hammers themselves are still good-- maybe even better-- but only if you have no more than one in hand per turn. Card forge helps them a bit, but since they are very anti-synergistic they are no longer an archetype distinct from swords, which is too bad. The novelty hammer suffers from this especially, since its niche (the forest boss battle) relies on the ability to stack several of them per turn to make up for being worse than the single-target hammers most of the time individually.
Bows are still, and have always been since I first played, the best archetype by far. Double shot crossbow is even more better than the viper gun now that there are a number of useful reasonably attainable arrows to choose from, and it's probably the best weapon in the game, though some of the other legendary bows can give it a run for its money with significant investment. Having to have projectiles is a cool downside, but a VERY manageable one.
Projectiles are good because bows are good, but mostly suck otherwise. It's notable that both darts would be quite decent even if they weren't projectiles, which has an outsized impact because they are the top-tier projectile-class cards. Bent arrow is very good early in the game when you can't just arbitrarily have whatever ammo:bow ratio you want, but trash later in the game when you'd much rather discard than keep it in hand, at which point crafted arrow is better if you need something more than just legendary ammunition. Wonky arrows are the worst starting items, except they go with the training bow, the best starting weapon.
Daggers are sad. They wish they were bows, but they are trying too hard. The main two advantage that daggers have over bows are that daggers can be used as singletons in a pinch and daggers can play any number of cards with a single action. Unfortunately, both these abilities are quite weak because normal card draw is extremely weak (costing 1 play per card and requiring you to dilute your deck with non-daggers) and diversity is essential, limiting the number of 'extra moves' compared to bows you might possibly get, and daggers are very poor weapons as solo options due to their low damage and lack of useful secondary effects. Daggers also mostly don't ignore thorns, which is very relevant because they rely on making 4-5 low-damage attacks per turn. Throwing daggers can help with this, but only a little due to their rarity and the number of them you'd need to outfit a deck. That's not to say that daggers are *bad* as an archetype, just that they are much worse than bows; they are still quite a bit better than swords and hammers!
Summons are meta-defining. Every deck benefits from a good chunk of summon cards, though throwing out *all* your other cards is usually rather suboptimal. Summon cards are unique in that they don't take up space in your deck while they are in-play, and without thorns it costs at least 1 enemy turn to get the summon out of play. The training dummy was always one of the best summons, and with the buff to 3 hp it's even better. I have yet to find a deck in which it isn't an auto-include, at least up to 3 copies. Lonely golem is a great design for a weak summon card to have available early in the game (even the starting cards would probably be okay if the code could handle it), but it's obviously not going to cut it in a late-game deck. I like clockwork golems (and I liked them before the buff, too), but they probably aren't very strong, even post-buff. If they returned to hand post-draw rather than taking up space when the ability activates, they'd probably be more competitive with the other golems, though they still fill the powerful attacker niche pretty well. Clay golems are bad, but work just as well as clockwork golems 99% of the time. Health insurance is a scam; get Forest Golems instead. Forest Golem is the best healing source in the game, and with the buff they are amazing tanks as well. The 1 dmg/turn can really add up with multiple copies as well. Armor golems are very good as well, with a different niche, surprisingly. Their purpose is to increase the effective MAX hp for allies (especially dummies), so that low-hp allies can survive enemy attacks in the middle to late game, which is, in fact, worth the small negative change to ones effective hp/turn modifier much of the time. Smoke golems might not be in the game any more, but they were cool. Card Forge is essential to the new Hammers+Swords archetype, but useless otherwise. The turn o matic costs gold which is a no from me, but I can see it being good, objectively.
Health items and shields are pretty interchangeable. You usually want at least 1 health item unless you have particularly good forest golem luck, and a couple of shields is often a good investment. There are no interesting heals or shields, so you just use steak and small shields, then later bread and tall shields. You don't normally want more than 1 health item (though 2 isn't a bad situation to be in, really, or more than 2 shields (though three is okay). This is because it's important to do at least moderate damage to enemies most of the time, and deck space is quite limited.
Vampire sword is good, because it is basically a healing item with a cool effect (damage), so you can swap bread for it, but all other swords are pretty bad.
Wow, thank you so much for taking the time to give your thoughts! This is some of the best feedback I've gotten so far 😊
I appreciate your thoughts on the hammers > I definitely think they need some work before they become viable again, potentially increasing the amount of weakness or damage they do so that you aren't reliable on multiple? Additionally exploring more combo cards to do with discarded weapons might tip the balance in making a club-heavy deck actually valuable? 🤷
I like your suggestion of making the third hand a reset moves card instead of an additional moves card - it also makes you not want to use it first thing in a turn, so you have to be careful not to discard it with another cards abilities.
Making healing, shields, and swords more interesting / viable is a big challenge. I'm open to all suggestions of how to improve them! Potentially making swords take the place of status effects, like fire and Blight, instead of some of the arrows, could "cut" a niche of their own?
All your other thoughts are also really helpful! I'm really glad you were able to finally beat the demo! 😊 Thanks again!
Decided to write a review on some of the things I noticed in my last run:
Cards:
- Card Forge: Good concept but seems to be a bit too weak at the moment. My idea to improve it is to either make it free to discard the blades to it effectively swapping the blade for a new card or to increase the drawn cards to two. -Training Course: +1 damage to a single summon also feels a bit too weak at the moment to use. My idea to improve it is to either make it apply to more than one summon (whether that be all summons like Thorn Growth does which might be a bit overpowered or a +1 increase to a random 2-3 units) or to increase it from +1 to something like a +2 or +3. -Fuzzy Armor: It seems like it would be good in a situation where you would need it but it’s not often that such a situation would arise making it a card that’s good but hard to ever use. The only idea I have to improve it is to have it able to go over the max health with a limit of around +10 added each use and have it only be able to be used once per battle though that may be too big of a change. -Clay Golem: A bit weak compared to other allies you can obtain. My idea to improve it is to either give it +1 damage or to halve its health and have it summon two on play. -Ethereal Deck: The cards it creates are good but using it derails your entire build up till this point making it tough to use even if you are aiming to use it from the beginning. My idea to improve it is to either have it add to/replace your hand or for it to add to your deck instead of replacing it. -Royal Flush: I haven’t tried it yet but based on the description it sounds like it would heal an average of 4 health when using it while plenty of other items (Juicy Steak, Bread, Vampire Blade, etc) could do similar or better without discarding the entire hand. My idea to improve it is either to have it heal 3 per card making it an average of 8-12 or to have it heal based on your number of cards without discarding. -Tall Shield: Pretty good but I would up the ally shield gain by one.
Enemies: -Swooping Gull: It discarding your hand doesn’t seem to matter much, maybe in some builds it could be a big problem but it seems to help more often than hurt.
Bugs/Mistakes:
- If an ally dies while you have it enlarged it turns the screen dark and makes most stuff no longer intractable, luckily it’s easy to fix just by going into the pause menu and back. - Snowball card use’s Mitosis art. I don’t know if it does this when you actually get the card but that’s what shows up when you unlock the card. -Warrior Rabbit has the ability to summon itself but when the new rabbit is drawn it doesn’t summon another unit itself. I don't know if this is intentional or not.. Edit: -Wooden Boomerang has overlapping text.
Areas:
-Cave: It seems a bit easier than the forest mainly due to the boss. My idea to improve this is to make the cave boss a bit tougher, i'll provide a further detailed method on how the boss could be made tougher once I battle it again. (I mainly play forest for the extra challenge though so I may have just been really lucky every time I went cave..)
Edit: Thought I should mention that although this comment is only talking about the bad stuff this game is phenomenal and I have absolutely loved playing it. 10/10 game you got here.
Wow, thank you so much for your feedback! That is so useful, and I agree with all the suggestions you've given!! 😊 I'll work on implementing some of them straight away, and look forward to hearing your thoughts about the Bear!
The Warrior rabbit doesn't summon if it is summoned by another Rabbit to try and make sure you don't end up facing too many enemies at once - I felt it could be unfair to have to face 3-4 enemies if a bunch of rabbits get summoned? What do you think?
Thanks for saying that 😊 I'm really glad you enjoyed the game! I am excited to see how much better I can make it!
Review two, Not as much as before but that was all the obvious stuff so now it's a bit tougher to find qualms with anything, that is a good thing though.
Cards:
-Card Launcher: It’s just a knife build/arrow cannon but worse. My idea to improve it is either to have it also redraw your hand after shooting or to change it to a summon which you can feed cards for no energy cost to attack which takes health off of it each use like with healthcare, it could also be fed coins instead of cards but at that point this is just a whole new card idea XD.
Enemies: -Centipede Spy: Good unit but it could use a slight increase in chance to summon another unit as often times I kill it before it even gets the chance. -Bear Boss: It was admittedly more difficult than I remembered it being but it still felt a bit weaker than the raccoon trio boss. My idea to improve it is either to give it a slight buff to it’s health/damage or we could go the cooler but unnecessary route which is to give it a large health buff and slight damage buff and have it start out sleeping and it wake up after it gets to around half health, this gives the player time to prep for the largely buffed boss. The sleeping phase could also make it slightly cheesable by just getting a crazy high shield amount before dealing the damage but that could be easily fixed by having the extra shield damage amount scale with the amount of shield the player has. As I said this is the cool route but it’s highly unnecessary XD. -Raccoon Trio Boss: Since I came up with a two phase boss battle for the bear boss, I thought I may as well come up with some for the raccoon trio boss as well in case you decide to choose that route. First Idea (Semi-Meme Idea): Three raccoons in a trenchcoat (with like 99 health). Deals high damage every turn for three turns before going into phase two where it turns into the normal three raccoons that we normally see. The first phase is just a survival phase and will likely leave the player weakened for the second phase. Second Idea: I don’t have a second idea cause three raccoons in a trench coat is pretty cul. -I can also come up with an idea for the Swooping Gull but i’m not going to do that quite yet as I don’t know if you’ll even use any of the phase ideas XD. If you like the phase ideas feel free to ask for changes to ‘em and if you want me to write a 2-3 phase battle for the Swooping Gull I'll get right on it. I kinda got carried away with the phase battle ideas lol..
Seems fine to me, only thing that i'd consider a bit complicated would be bows with projectiles but even that isn't all too complicated. (although adding a mention on projectiles that it needs a bow to shoot it could be helpful for beginner players)
You can't directly use an arrow, you first need to have a bow of some kind. When you use the bow on an enemy, it will prompt you to select an arrow from your hand 😊
Looks really fun but I can't play it because the text is microscopic, unreadably small. "What is this, a card game for ants?!" I hope you can find a way to fix it!
Great game very fun and addicting my only suggestions are
tell what the effects do (e.g. Blight, Fire, Poison)
and make it so its not overly hard to counter thorns most times your stuck with a melee only loadout and they get to attack you more than once essentially (also maybe make money a bit more useful like a 1 dmg attack for 2 coins that doesnt count as a turn hint hint)
Ooh that's an awesome suggestion! I definitely want to add that now haha. I'm glad you like the game! Hopefully the most recent update will address that first point - I've tried to include some more information about the effects 😊
1 more reply heres some of my ideas| FYI i dont have discord to suggest these things
the coin sack - throw at any point, doesnt count as a turn, and uses 2 coins (1 dmg)|
Present - when killed rewards the player with 1 temp card from defense to offense (6 hp, 0 dmg)|
GlI$T-Ch - does 1 random special card move at random (e.g. all daggers get thrown, random effect, ect) 1-2 dmg|
Spikey sandwich - heals 5 this turn, deals 4 dmg next turn unless no cards were used|
Flame Bow - all arrows used by this deal fire dmg, 3 dmg|
Ghost - stun an enemy for 1 turn that enemy cannot attack, heal, give dmg/thorns, ect|
(Not a card) alt path - instead of going the normal paths gives another path at the beginning that is harder but gives better cards to start and earn, shops have more cards|
Shredder - at shops you can destroy a certain amount of cards before jamming|
also arrow cannon + wonky arrow does 2 damage total so I dont think arrow cannon is applying the +2 damage. i got stuck fighting a turtle because that was my only damage lol
I'm glad you're enjoying it! That's helpful feedback. I was trying to balance out the Summon cards from being too over powered, but I might have taken it too far 😅
I'll try to think of a different solution!
(oh, and also that font definitely needs to change!)
Thanks so much for playing! I loved watching the video 😊 And it was super helpful to see the issues you ran into - not sure where your clay golems ran off to 😅
That's helpful feedback about the explanations! I'll have to think of a way to make them easier to read.
Thanks for letting me know! I think I've had a bit of feedback that in general the text isn't that easy to see! I will have to think of some ways to improve the readability 😬
Bug report: Clicking the deck before the opening animation completes can freeze the game; I wonder if this is caused by the same issue as the bug another commenter reported on "select next deck" screen.
My game usually crashes from lack of memory before completion :'(
On safari, quickly dragging a card to the center doesn't play it; the card falls back to the hand. Only dragging it to center and waiting a moment allows cards to be played consistently; this is true whether you drag it to the highlighted center of the board or onto the enemy.
Wow good job!! That looks like an awesome deck build 😁 Currently the Beach is the last deck of the demo, but feel free to try again with a different strategy! All feedback is needed 😊
oh yea I've noticed that when it shows that you've unlocked new items and you spam click to get out of there quicker it tends to makes the game freeze but then continues about 5-10 seconds later
I love this game. Here are a couple of potential balancing suggestions that I thought of:
- Reduce Third Hand extra turns to two maybe? Third Hand is incredibly strong with bonus cards. Especially paired with Hidden Sight and Reanimator. With a decent amount of Third Hands and Hidden Sights, it's possible to instantly play your desired deck from the start.
- Hidden Sight is incredibly strong. Maybe it should only allow for the player to select from a random portion of the deck rather than from the entire deck?
- Artist's Clay could maybe have a limit on the amount of uses it has on a specific summoned card. With multiple Artist's Clays and Armored Golems, it's very easy to get 7+ Armored Golems (which would give a total of almost 50 shield per turn).
- Armored Golem should have a limit on the amount of shield it can give. Because it applies shield to all player cards, the amount of shield that Armored Golems applies increases exponentially (because of the sheer amount of shields, I had like a 0.2 second game freeze every time the shields applying animation happened). Perhaps there can be a limit to the amount of shield that Armored Golem can apply (like shield closest 3 player summons or something).
- The Bear enemy is great because it counters Armored Golems.
Really really fun game concept overall. I can't wait to see this game grow.
Wow this is really great feedback!! Thanks so much 😊
I love your balance change suggestions, and I think you're right with the third hand card. In regards to artists clay, I think I could change it to being a summon card as well, so one artists clay can only duplicate on golem, until it is killed and returns to your deck?
I'm so glad you love the game! I'll hopefully post a balance update in the next few days 😊
for passives, I was thinking upgrades such as more starting energy, more default hand size, start with some etherial stuff... and also could you add a restart in the pause menu?
Those are awesome ideas! I think I'll include some passive cards with those abilities! And yes, I will add a restart to the pause menu. There's a lot that needs to be improved with the UI!
I had so much fun playing this! This idea of making the dungeons in the forms of cards is a really cool idea! My only complaint is that there's no way to discard cards besides from selling them at the shop. Other than that, I had a lot of fun playing! I might play again to see if I can get further! Good game!
Wow, thanks for making a video of Dungeon Deck! I'm enjoying watching it so far 😊
That's a great point about not having enough ways to discard cards - I'm hoping in a future update to address that to make the game more fun!! Feel free to keep tabs on it as I post future updates.
Wow, good job! I'm glad you were able to finish all the levels! This is currently just a demo version of Dungeon Deck, but in the final version of the game there will be many more levels!
After playing the game for about 10h these are my improvement ideas: 1. Make a circle around the main playing field that "pushes away" the coins from the middle of the playing field as often the coins hinder you from laying down cards. 2. There is not enough abilities to lose cards, at the third chapter at latest the deck is just getting too big and there is no way of getting rid of those cards (apart from the shop, but selling 3 is not enough - maybe unlimited sell (or 5,6,7) but only get money for the first 3?) . 3. A map would be awesome where you could see when you get to the next shop, generally there are not enough shops imo (mostly for losing cards) 4. It would be awesome to be able to skip taking a card after battle 5. Enemy thorns are overused, minion/arrow builds are OP compared to the knife builds imo. 6. Currently winning the game is too "easy" 7. It would be great to permanently increase hand size within a run 8. More special events would be nice (like a mystic trader that wants a specific card and gives you some bonus... health, armor, improve a card permanently...) 9. For the parts above maybe look at the games poker quest and die in the dungeon, if you need inspiration)
The game is truly awesome and addictive! I'd love to see this prosper!
Wow that's so awesome, thanks so much for playing the game that much! I'm really glad you like it 😊
Those are all really awesome suggestions. The struggle of trying to avoid making your deck too full is something I definitely want to improve, so hopefully in the next few days I will release an update to address that. all your other points are really valid too!
Thanks again! I hope the game will prosper too 😅 and I hope I can make changes that will mean you enjoy it even more!!
Things like a map (so the player has some control over events), items that only serve to buff other items, and modifiers to specific cards, are a traditional staple of games like this. Don't worry about being "generic" because this game is fundamentally pretty unique.
oh, also: - please consider Mac portability long-term thank you - "cripple" could offend somebody idk
That's my two cents spent, I won't suggest anything more except for bug fixes. Again, ditto on the "truly awesome and addictive."
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awesome game ill play it tomorrow and try to beat beach
Thank you! Good luck 😊 let me know how you go!
I unfortunately have no idea what triggered this glitch, but I was messing around with my coins in the cave and the darkness started flickering.
Oh and the flickering darkness continues to the beach
Ah thanks for letting me know! I'll mess around with some coins and see if I can work it out 😊
very good game
Thank you!! Keep a lookout for any future updates 😊
Summons are really strong currently
Great game by the way.
I'm glad you like the game! 😊 Haha yeah it's much harder to win without using any summons - My current balancing strategy is to make every option overpowered, and work from there!
My game crashed upon using the card that instatly finishes status effects
Here is log
___________________________________________
############################################################################################
FATAL ERROR in
action number 1
of Step Event0
for object oDeck:
Push :: Execution Error - Variable Index [0,1] out of range [1,1] - -7.l_stun(100027,1)
at gml_Script_scrPerformCardAction
############################################################################################
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
stack frame is
gml_Script_scrPerformCardAction (line -1)
gml_Object_oDeck_Step_0
Oh no! Thanks for posting that, I should be able to get that fixed quickly 😊
This should now be fixed 😊
You can right click on a stack and it will take a coin off! You can also do this while holding a stack
I found an error when you kill an enemy with club and there is another enemy you keep the club and keep the energy
Oh that's a good pickup! Thanks for letting me know!
That should be fixed now!
Can you please explain the difference between the Launch files? The 2.4.0 version (with the little controller icon) does not run for me in Windows. It opens but when I click on the deck it doesn't do anything. The other versions run, but are limited to a fixed window size. Please advise, thanks
Hey there! The 2.4.0 file should be a Windows .exe, which should just run normally! I know that clicking on cards is not fully reliable at the moment, so maybe give it another shot to see if clicking on the deck starts the level!
The other file is a html file to run the game in browser 😊
I've never been able to run the Windows version. I can't get past the first screen where you select the Meadow. Nothing happens when I click it. Thanks
Thanks for letting me know! I'll take a look at fixing that for you quickly 😊
I've tried to fix this in the latest version 😊
also one more idea if you can i would like to see how this would work in an endless mode
I like it! I am hoping for the final version for the level order to be a bit more random, which would also make an endless mode easy to add! 😊
I also like the newest update
I'm really glad you like it! I'm planning to keep making more updates, and eventually a full release with more levels!
I have a good Idea for something to add as a item "pouch" what it could do is allow you to gain an extra card per turn but it destroys itself until the battle has ended. one of the downsides should be that you lose a move every turn
Ooh that's a great idea! It sounds a bit overpowered potentially, but a temporary upgrade card could be really cool 😁
letssssss gooooooooo!!!
😎
This is a really fun game and I love how many different card types there are! IDK if it is possible but it would be great if the game saved when the tab was closed.
I'm really glad you like the game! That's a good suggestion, I will try to add that soon 😊
This should now work! 😁
suggestion: add a coin clean up
Ah, good idea! Just an auto stack feature? Maybe just at the end of a round?
A little bag to put them in might be nice. Doesn't even have to be auto pick up. Coin stacking is fun but I found the board getting a bit cluttered after a bit.
That's a fun idea! I might make it an item you can get from the shop, purely for convenience
Finally beat it! Having seen the boss at the end of the beach, I think all my runs would have beaten the game if I hadn't run into crashes.
The game is pretty good, and seems to be getting better!
Thoughts on cards:
Third hand was too strong at +3, but it's too weak at +2. +3 with a cost or limitation-- perhaps having it set your current available moves to 3, for example-- would be better, but +3 is probably fine since the power creep from the new cards is pretty high (mitosis, as an example, is better than pre-nerf third hand, and copies most but not all of what you could do with it).
Draw two is always bad now, and that's probably fine. It's funny because in most games it's super OP. Used to be good iff you had third hand, now you'd prefer mitosis instead of course (strictly better).
Although discarding is usually good, discarding on hammers is bad for you. Hammers themselves are still good-- maybe even better-- but only if you have no more than one in hand per turn. Card forge helps them a bit, but since they are very anti-synergistic they are no longer an archetype distinct from swords, which is too bad. The novelty hammer suffers from this especially, since its niche (the forest boss battle) relies on the ability to stack several of them per turn to make up for being worse than the single-target hammers most of the time individually.
Bows are still, and have always been since I first played, the best archetype by far. Double shot crossbow is even more better than the viper gun now that there are a number of useful reasonably attainable arrows to choose from, and it's probably the best weapon in the game, though some of the other legendary bows can give it a run for its money with significant investment. Having to have projectiles is a cool downside, but a VERY manageable one.
Projectiles are good because bows are good, but mostly suck otherwise. It's notable that both darts would be quite decent even if they weren't projectiles, which has an outsized impact because they are the top-tier projectile-class cards. Bent arrow is very good early in the game when you can't just arbitrarily have whatever ammo:bow ratio you want, but trash later in the game when you'd much rather discard than keep it in hand, at which point crafted arrow is better if you need something more than just legendary ammunition. Wonky arrows are the worst starting items, except they go with the training bow, the best starting weapon.
Daggers are sad. They wish they were bows, but they are trying too hard. The main two advantage that daggers have over bows are that daggers can be used as singletons in a pinch and daggers can play any number of cards with a single action. Unfortunately, both these abilities are quite weak because normal card draw is extremely weak (costing 1 play per card and requiring you to dilute your deck with non-daggers) and diversity is essential, limiting the number of 'extra moves' compared to bows you might possibly get, and daggers are very poor weapons as solo options due to their low damage and lack of useful secondary effects. Daggers also mostly don't ignore thorns, which is very relevant because they rely on making 4-5 low-damage attacks per turn. Throwing daggers can help with this, but only a little due to their rarity and the number of them you'd need to outfit a deck. That's not to say that daggers are *bad* as an archetype, just that they are much worse than bows; they are still quite a bit better than swords and hammers!
Summons are meta-defining. Every deck benefits from a good chunk of summon cards, though throwing out *all* your other cards is usually rather suboptimal. Summon cards are unique in that they don't take up space in your deck while they are in-play, and without thorns it costs at least 1 enemy turn to get the summon out of play. The training dummy was always one of the best summons, and with the buff to 3 hp it's even better. I have yet to find a deck in which it isn't an auto-include, at least up to 3 copies. Lonely golem is a great design for a weak summon card to have available early in the game (even the starting cards would probably be okay if the code could handle it), but it's obviously not going to cut it in a late-game deck. I like clockwork golems (and I liked them before the buff, too), but they probably aren't very strong, even post-buff. If they returned to hand post-draw rather than taking up space when the ability activates, they'd probably be more competitive with the other golems, though they still fill the powerful attacker niche pretty well. Clay golems are bad, but work just as well as clockwork golems 99% of the time. Health insurance is a scam; get Forest Golems instead. Forest Golem is the best healing source in the game, and with the buff they are amazing tanks as well. The 1 dmg/turn can really add up with multiple copies as well. Armor golems are very good as well, with a different niche, surprisingly. Their purpose is to increase the effective MAX hp for allies (especially dummies), so that low-hp allies can survive enemy attacks in the middle to late game, which is, in fact, worth the small negative change to ones effective hp/turn modifier much of the time. Smoke golems might not be in the game any more, but they were cool. Card Forge is essential to the new Hammers+Swords archetype, but useless otherwise. The turn o matic costs gold which is a no from me, but I can see it being good, objectively.
Health items and shields are pretty interchangeable. You usually want at least 1 health item unless you have particularly good forest golem luck, and a couple of shields is often a good investment. There are no interesting heals or shields, so you just use steak and small shields, then later bread and tall shields. You don't normally want more than 1 health item (though 2 isn't a bad situation to be in, really, or more than 2 shields (though three is okay). This is because it's important to do at least moderate damage to enemies most of the time, and deck space is quite limited.
Vampire sword is good, because it is basically a healing item with a cool effect (damage), so you can swap bread for it, but all other swords are pretty bad.
Wow, thank you so much for taking the time to give your thoughts! This is some of the best feedback I've gotten so far 😊
I appreciate your thoughts on the hammers > I definitely think they need some work before they become viable again, potentially increasing the amount of weakness or damage they do so that you aren't reliable on multiple? Additionally exploring more combo cards to do with discarded weapons might tip the balance in making a club-heavy deck actually valuable? 🤷
I like your suggestion of making the third hand a reset moves card instead of an additional moves card - it also makes you not want to use it first thing in a turn, so you have to be careful not to discard it with another cards abilities.
Making healing, shields, and swords more interesting / viable is a big challenge. I'm open to all suggestions of how to improve them! Potentially making swords take the place of status effects, like fire and Blight, instead of some of the arrows, could "cut" a niche of their own?
All your other thoughts are also really helpful! I'm really glad you were able to finally beat the demo! 😊 Thanks again!
I have tried a different approach to hammers based on your feedback 😊
Decided to write a review on some of the things I noticed in my last run:
Cards:
- Card Forge: Good concept but seems to be a bit too weak at the moment. My idea to improve it is to either make it free to discard the blades to it effectively swapping the blade for a new card or to increase the drawn cards to two.
-Training Course: +1 damage to a single summon also feels a bit too weak at the moment to use. My idea to improve it is to either make it apply to more than one summon (whether that be all summons like Thorn Growth does which might be a bit overpowered or a +1 increase to a random 2-3 units) or to increase it from +1 to something like a +2 or +3.
-Fuzzy Armor: It seems like it would be good in a situation where you would need it but it’s not often that such a situation would arise making it a card that’s good but hard to ever use. The only idea I have to improve it is to have it able to go over the max health with a limit of around +10 added each use and have it only be able to be used once per battle though that may be too big of a change.
-Clay Golem: A bit weak compared to other allies you can obtain. My idea to improve it is to either give it +1 damage or to halve its health and have it summon two on play.
-Ethereal Deck: The cards it creates are good but using it derails your entire build up till this point making it tough to use even if you are aiming to use it from the beginning. My idea to improve it is to either have it add to/replace your hand or for it to add to your deck instead of replacing it.
-Royal Flush: I haven’t tried it yet but based on the description it sounds like it would heal an average of 4 health when using it while plenty of other items (Juicy Steak, Bread, Vampire Blade, etc) could do similar or better without discarding the entire hand. My idea to improve it is either to have it heal 3 per card making it an average of 8-12 or to have it heal based on your number of cards without discarding.
-Tall Shield: Pretty good but I would up the ally shield gain by one.
Enemies:
-Swooping Gull: It discarding your hand doesn’t seem to matter much, maybe in some builds it could be a big problem but it seems to help more often than hurt.
Bugs/Mistakes:
- If an ally dies while you have it enlarged it turns the screen dark and makes most stuff no longer intractable, luckily it’s easy to fix just by going into the pause menu and back.
- Snowball card use’s Mitosis art. I don’t know if it does this when you actually get the card but that’s what shows up when you unlock the card.
-Warrior Rabbit has the ability to summon itself but when the new rabbit is drawn it doesn’t summon another unit itself. I don't know if this is intentional or not..
Edit:
-Wooden Boomerang has overlapping text.
Areas:
-Cave: It seems a bit easier than the forest mainly due to the boss. My idea to improve this is to make the cave boss a bit tougher, i'll provide a further detailed method on how the boss could be made tougher once I battle it again. (I mainly play forest for the extra challenge though so I may have just been really lucky every time I went cave..)
Edit: Thought I should mention that although this comment is only talking about the bad stuff this game is phenomenal and I have absolutely loved playing it. 10/10 game you got here.
Wow, thank you so much for your feedback! That is so useful, and I agree with all the suggestions you've given!! 😊 I'll work on implementing some of them straight away, and look forward to hearing your thoughts about the Bear!
The Warrior rabbit doesn't summon if it is summoned by another Rabbit to try and make sure you don't end up facing too many enemies at once - I felt it could be unfair to have to face 3-4 enemies if a bunch of rabbits get summoned? What do you think?
Thanks for saying that 😊 I'm really glad you enjoyed the game! I am excited to see how much better I can make it!
Review two, Not as much as before but that was all the obvious stuff so now it's a bit tougher to find qualms with anything, that is a good thing though.
Cards:
-Card Launcher: It’s just a knife build/arrow cannon but worse. My idea to improve it is either to have it also redraw your hand after shooting or to change it to a summon which you can feed cards for no energy cost to attack which takes health off of it each use like with healthcare, it could also be fed coins instead of cards but at that point this is just a whole new card idea XD.
Enemies:
-Centipede Spy: Good unit but it could use a slight increase in chance to summon another unit as often times I kill it before it even gets the chance.
-Bear Boss: It was admittedly more difficult than I remembered it being but it still felt a bit weaker than the raccoon trio boss. My idea to improve it is either to give it a slight buff to it’s health/damage or we could go the cooler but unnecessary route which is to give it a large health buff and slight damage buff and have it start out sleeping and it wake up after it gets to around half health, this gives the player time to prep for the largely buffed boss. The sleeping phase could also make it slightly cheesable by just getting a crazy high shield amount before dealing the damage but that could be easily fixed by having the extra shield damage amount scale with the amount of shield the player has. As I said this is the cool route but it’s highly unnecessary XD.
-Raccoon Trio Boss: Since I came up with a two phase boss battle for the bear boss, I thought I may as well come up with some for the raccoon trio boss as well in case you decide to choose that route. First Idea (Semi-Meme Idea): Three raccoons in a trenchcoat (with like 99 health). Deals high damage every turn for three turns before going into phase two where it turns into the normal three raccoons that we normally see. The first phase is just a survival phase and will likely leave the player weakened for the second phase. Second Idea: I don’t have a second idea cause three raccoons in a trench coat is pretty cul.
-I can also come up with an idea for the Swooping Gull but i’m not going to do that quite yet as I don’t know if you’ll even use any of the phase ideas XD. If you like the phase ideas feel free to ask for changes to ‘em and if you want me to write a 2-3 phase battle for the Swooping Gull I'll get right on it. I kinda got carried away with the phase battle ideas lol..
Oh awesome! Thanks for even more great feedback! I see you also posted on the Discord, so I'll reply to you there 😊
Too Complicated 1/5
Sorry to hear you didn't like it! What in particular was too complicated? Any ideas on making it easier? 😊
Seems fine to me, only thing that i'd consider a bit complicated would be bows with projectiles but even that isn't all too complicated. (although adding a mention on projectiles that it needs a bow to shoot it could be helpful for beginner players)
That's a good idea! I will add that to at least the wonky arrow as a way to teach! ☺️
how exactly do I use a arrow?
You can't directly use an arrow, you first need to have a bow of some kind. When you use the bow on an enemy, it will prompt you to select an arrow from your hand 😊
Discard pile no longer works.
it does, but the discard hitbox is a bit higher than what it shows
Ah thanks for pointing that out, I'll make sure to fix that one 😊
This should be fixed now!
Looks really fun but I can't play it because the text is microscopic, unreadably small. "What is this, a card game for ants?!" I hope you can find a way to fix it!
😂 haha I will try to fix the text for you!
this is incredible! had no idea what I was in for when I clicked on it
done quite a few runs now, very satisfying trying out the different builds.
Hit a crash after finishing the beach boss seagull
___________________________________________
############################################################################################
FATAL ERROR in
action number 1
of Step Event0
for object oDeck:
local variable l_rewardlist(100001, -2147483648) not set before reading it.
at gml_Script_scrGetBossRewardList
############################################################################################
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
stack frame is
gml_Script_scrGetBossRewardList (line -1)
gml_Script_scrLevelWonLogic
gml_Object_oDeck_Step_0
Thanks for playing!! I'm really glad you enjoyed the game so far 😊
That's super helpful, thanks for sharing that crash! I should be able to fix that quickly!
This should be fixed now 😊
Great game favorite strategy so far is weakened spam
I'm glad you like it! Thanks for playing 😊 Yeah that's a good strategy! Helpful when the enemy can't even attack you
Great game very fun and addicting my only suggestions are tell what the effects do (e.g. Blight, Fire, Poison) and make it so its not overly hard to counter thorns most times your stuck with a melee only loadout and they get to attack you more than once essentially (also maybe make money a bit more useful like a 1 dmg attack for 2 coins that doesnt count as a turn hint hint)
Ooh that's an awesome suggestion! I definitely want to add that now haha. I'm glad you like the game! Hopefully the most recent update will address that first point - I've tried to include some more information about the effects 😊
oh honestly if you need ideas i have alooot like an enemy that gives you a temp card if you kill it first
yes I'd love to hear all your ideas!! I'm trying to make the game as fun as possible, so all suggestions are welcome 😊
1 more reply heres some of my ideas| FYI i dont have discord to suggest these things
the coin sack - throw at any point, doesnt count as a turn, and uses 2 coins (1 dmg)|
Present - when killed rewards the player with 1 temp card from defense to offense (6 hp, 0 dmg)|
GlI$T-Ch - does 1 random special card move at random (e.g. all daggers get thrown, random effect, ect) 1-2 dmg|
Spikey sandwich - heals 5 this turn, deals 4 dmg next turn unless no cards were used|
Flame Bow - all arrows used by this deal fire dmg, 3 dmg|
Ghost - stun an enemy for 1 turn that enemy cannot attack, heal, give dmg/thorns, ect|
(Not a card) alt path - instead of going the normal paths gives another path at the beginning that is harder but gives better cards to start and earn, shops have more cards|
Shredder - at shops you can destroy a certain amount of cards before jamming|
Oh awesome, I love all of these ideas!! Thanks so much! 😊
why is artists clay free
Great question! It will not remain so for long, so seems like a good discount 😅 Thanks for letting me know that I missed that!
also arrow cannon + wonky arrow does 2 damage total so I dont think arrow cannon is applying the +2 damage. i got stuck fighting a turtle because that was my only damage lol
Oh great catch! I would have never noticed that!
Both of these should now be fixed 😊
pretty fun!
My two big notes are that I think the font could definitely be improved. Not very comfy to read the cards as is.
Also, feels odd that summons get attacked for free. I feel they are already weak as is, so having them not even save you some hp feels a bit bad.
Otherwise enjoying it!
I'm glad you're enjoying it! That's helpful feedback. I was trying to balance out the Summon cards from being too over powered, but I might have taken it too far 😅
I'll try to think of a different solution!
(oh, and also that font definitely needs to change!)
Added an image, in the chance it’s of any use
I had 2 clockwork golems up, fighting against a hedgehog monk.
When the hedgehog monk died so did the clockwork golem and the game crashed
Thanks for sending that through! That makes it very easy to fix quickly 😊 Sorry you ran into a crash, it's the worst when it happens
This should now be fixed 😁
Had a fantastic time in the game! I do wish the test was a little easier to read and the explanations were more thorough but otherwise amazing!
Thanks so much for playing! I loved watching the video 😊 And it was super helpful to see the issues you ran into - not sure where your clay golems ran off to 😅
That's helpful feedback about the explanations! I'll have to think of a way to make them easier to read.
Thanks for playing!
The issue where the card launcher hides your golems is now fixed 😊
loving it so far, but really hard to see. is there no way to increase the resolution? making it a full screen window doesn't scale the GUI. thanks
Thanks for letting me know! I think I've had a bit of feedback that in general the text isn't that easy to see! I will have to think of some ways to improve the readability 😬
I'm glad you're enjoying it regardless! 😊
Bug report: Clicking the deck before the opening animation completes can freeze the game; I wonder if this is caused by the same issue as the bug another commenter reported on "select next deck" screen.
My game usually crashes from lack of memory before completion :'(
On safari, quickly dragging a card to the center doesn't play it; the card falls back to the hand. Only dragging it to center and waiting a moment allows cards to be played consistently; this is true whether you drag it to the highlighted center of the board or onto the enemy.
Very fun!
Thanks for letting me know about those bugs! That's a big help 😁I will try and upload a fix for them soon.
I'm glad you've enjoyed the game!!
The only card left from the beginning was the good oldy lumpy club, it saved me like 6 times from death
-btw is this the end of the game?
Wow good job!! That looks like an awesome deck build 😁 Currently the Beach is the last deck of the demo, but feel free to try again with a different strategy! All feedback is needed 😊
oh yea I've noticed that when it shows that you've unlocked new items and you spam click to get out of there quicker it tends to makes the game freeze but then continues about 5-10 seconds later
Ah that's a great pickup! Thanks for letting me know 😊 I'll look into fixing that quickly
I love this game. Here are a couple of potential balancing suggestions that I thought of:
- Reduce Third Hand extra turns to two maybe? Third Hand is incredibly strong with bonus cards. Especially paired with Hidden Sight and Reanimator. With a decent amount of Third Hands and Hidden Sights, it's possible to instantly play your desired deck from the start.
- Hidden Sight is incredibly strong. Maybe it should only allow for the player to select from a random portion of the deck rather than from the entire deck?
- Artist's Clay could maybe have a limit on the amount of uses it has on a specific summoned card. With multiple Artist's Clays and Armored Golems, it's very easy to get 7+ Armored Golems (which would give a total of almost 50 shield per turn).
- Armored Golem should have a limit on the amount of shield it can give. Because it applies shield to all player cards, the amount of shield that Armored Golems applies increases exponentially (because of the sheer amount of shields, I had like a 0.2 second game freeze every time the shields applying animation happened). Perhaps there can be a limit to the amount of shield that Armored Golem can apply (like shield closest 3 player summons or something).
- The Bear enemy is great because it counters Armored Golems.
Really really fun game concept overall. I can't wait to see this game grow.
Wow this is really great feedback!! Thanks so much 😊
I love your balance change suggestions, and I think you're right with the third hand card. In regards to artists clay, I think I could change it to being a summon card as well, so one artists clay can only duplicate on golem, until it is killed and returns to your deck?
I'm so glad you love the game! I'll hopefully post a balance update in the next few days 😊
I have added some of these changes for version 2.2.0 - let me know your thoughts!
could you add cheats? i just wanna be able to see all the cards and use them or is there already cheats?
Hmm maybe adding a casual mode could be good in the future, to let you just teat the cards out. Thanks for the suggestion!
qestion how dose the cropse sowrd work for items like the card shooter
Corpse Sword looks at the damage of the last enemy you've killed 😊
Oh yeh, it looks like it's stuck for you! I'll have a look into that!
by the way, do you have a discord server?
Not yet, but I will potentially create one in the near future!
gameplay mechanic idea: what if there were passive upgrades you could get sometimes
Ooh that sounds interesting! I am hoping to add some kind of summon-like cards, that just add an effect each round, but open to suggestions! 😊
for passives, I was thinking upgrades such as more starting energy, more default hand size, start with some etherial stuff... and also could you add a restart in the pause menu?
Those are awesome ideas! I think I'll include some passive cards with those abilities!
And yes, I will add a restart to the pause menu. There's a lot that needs to be improved with the UI!
I had so much fun playing this! This idea of making the dungeons in the forms of cards is a really cool idea! My only complaint is that there's no way to discard cards besides from selling them at the shop. Other than that, I had a lot of fun playing! I might play again to see if I can get further! Good game!
Wow, thanks for making a video of Dungeon Deck! I'm enjoying watching it so far 😊
That's a great point about not having enough ways to discard cards - I'm hoping in a future update to address that to make the game more fun!! Feel free to keep tabs on it as I post future updates.
Thanks for playing!
I most definitely will! I most likely will play again to see if I can get further!
good game but needs more levels i made it to beach level in like three days of trying but there was nothing after beach level
Wow, good job! I'm glad you were able to finish all the levels! This is currently just a demo version of Dungeon Deck, but in the final version of the game there will be many more levels!
I hope you enjoyed the game 😊
I did. played it for a while and enjoyed it can't wait for the full game
is there a way to remove cards from the deck?
Currently the only way is by selling some cards at a shop, but I am planning to add more ways to do so! 😊
After playing the game for about 10h these are my improvement ideas:
1. Make a circle around the main playing field that "pushes away" the coins from the middle of the playing field as often the coins hinder you from laying down cards.
2. There is not enough abilities to lose cards, at the third chapter at latest the deck is just getting too big and there is no way of getting rid of those cards (apart from the shop, but selling 3 is not enough - maybe unlimited sell (or 5,6,7) but only get money for the first 3?) .
3. A map would be awesome where you could see when you get to the next shop, generally there are not enough shops imo (mostly for losing cards)
4. It would be awesome to be able to skip taking a card after battle
5. Enemy thorns are overused, minion/arrow builds are OP compared to the knife builds imo.
6. Currently winning the game is too "easy"
7. It would be great to permanently increase hand size within a run
8. More special events would be nice (like a mystic trader that wants a specific card and gives you some bonus... health, armor, improve a card permanently...)
9. For the parts above maybe look at the games poker quest and die in the dungeon, if you need inspiration)
The game is truly awesome and addictive! I'd love to see this prosper!
Wow that's so awesome, thanks so much for playing the game that much! I'm really glad you like it 😊
Those are all really awesome suggestions. The struggle of trying to avoid making your deck too full is something I definitely want to improve, so hopefully in the next few days I will release an update to address that. all your other points are really valid too!
Thanks again! I hope the game will prosper too 😅 and I hope I can make changes that will mean you enjoy it even more!!
Things like a map (so the player has some control over events), items that only serve to buff other items, and modifiers to specific cards, are a traditional staple of games like this. Don't worry about being "generic" because this game is fundamentally pretty unique.
oh, also:
- please consider Mac portability long-term thank you
- "cripple" could offend somebody idk
That's my two cents spent, I won't suggest anything more except for bug fixes. Again, ditto on the "truly awesome and addictive."
Okay awesome! I will try and add some more cards like that! The idea of a map could work well, at least to show a few cards ahead 😊
Hmm good point - I'll have to come up with a different thing to call it.
Thanks so much!