Hey there! Yes those are the forest boss, and they are definitely the hardest one in the game. A good strategy is to use a bow and arrow build to avoid thorns, and target the damage increase one first - also having some summon cards to take some of the damage will help 😊
I would balance third hand, one third hand and two deck swaps, lets you cycle infinitely i.e Graveyard: weapon, deck swap, third hand Hand: Deck swap
Play deck swap, play weapon, play third hand, and you have reset and can repeat. It does help that you are forced to take cards, making this setup hard to draw, but w/ 3 deck swaps and two third hands alongside a draw/knife build, I get this very often. You could change it to limit each third hand to one use per turn, or you could make it only playable once per game by putting it in a different zone after playing it; think Magic the Gatherings exile.
Oh, and I believe that enemies summoned by other enemies give gold; I have gotten a few setups that would have let me farm this infinitely, and I would change that too.
Thanks for those two suggestions! Deck swap with Third Hand does seem like a really powerful combo at the moment, I will have to look into how to balance that 🤔
Also I think it's smart to limit the amount of enemies that drop gold, so thanks for pointing that out! 😊
I'm glad you like the game! That's very frustrating! Do you remember what it had its damage set to when this happened? Or what enemy was in the discard pile? Thank you 😊
It was set to nothing! I had just acquired it, and I hadn't killed any enemies yet. The damage was showing up as "N", I used it by accident, and got stuck xP
Reloading the page got me back to the start of the fight, so I was able to continue playing though! You've really got me hooked :)
ok super awesome game (totally love it) but wondering if you could include a turn count or something on the lonely golem, so we can see the number of turns we have before an ethereal golem instead of trying to remember? :)
I'm glad you like it 😁 I definitely need to work on implementing some kind of tutorial, was there anything specific you think would need extra attention to explain? 😊
Currently the game only has two ways - you can sell a limited number of cards in a shop, or if you encounter the Card Altar event you will be able to sacrifice some of your cards!
I'm glad you like it!! 😊 It would be super helpful if you even Wishlisted it on steam! I will also be doing some free codes for the game on the Discord when it comes out, so take a look out for that 🙂
If you make a summoner hybrid build (you can use any second build) you will win, I love the summoner build so much, would recommend summoner mager, like pyro mage, it goes pretty hard
mechanical bow correctly returns to hand and uses no energy after dragging onto an enemy card with no arrows in hand; however, it still adds two temporary training bows each time.
I'm sorry you're having that issue!! Have you tried downloading it? That version might not have the same trouble - otherwise, what browser are you using so I can test? 😊
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!
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Is it normal to get three of these in a row? because if so they are kinda overpowered even if you have max health
Hey there! Yes those are the forest boss, and they are definitely the hardest one in the game. A good strategy is to use a bow and arrow build to avoid thorns, and target the damage increase one first - also having some summon cards to take some of the damage will help 😊
ok! that makes more sense, i usually take the caves so i never have seen the forest bosses haha!
I would balance third hand, one third hand and two deck swaps, lets you cycle infinitely
i.e
Graveyard: weapon, deck swap, third hand
Hand: Deck swap
Play deck swap, play weapon, play third hand, and you have reset and can repeat. It does help that you are forced to take cards, making this setup hard to draw, but w/ 3 deck swaps and two third hands alongside a draw/knife build, I get this very often. You could change it to limit each third hand to one use per turn, or you could make it only playable once per game by putting it in a different zone after playing it; think Magic the Gatherings exile.
It was a great game, though!
Oh, and I believe that enemies summoned by other enemies give gold; I have gotten a few setups that would have let me farm this infinitely, and I would change that too.
Thanks for those two suggestions! Deck swap with Third Hand does seem like a really powerful combo at the moment, I will have to look into how to balance that 🤔
Also I think it's smart to limit the amount of enemies that drop gold, so thanks for pointing that out! 😊
Each time I beat an round of enemies, the game goes black and I can't fix it.
Hey there! I've just uploaded a fix for this now (3.0.8) - let me know if it's still happening ☺️
The fix worked, thank you very much
Have fun!
how do you fix everything so quickly it takes me hours to find mistakes in my code
let alone fix it
Haha it also takes me ages to fix some of these issues! It's really helpful having other people play and point out where the issues are 😅
hey Bubbon how do you get past the door by spawn in nimrods again?
I had a lot of fun playing! Sadly, the card that "Has the amount of damage of last enemy killed" made my health become NaN, so the game cannot end xD
I'm glad you like the game! That's very frustrating! Do you remember what it had its damage set to when this happened? Or what enemy was in the discard pile? Thank you 😊
It was set to nothing! I had just acquired it, and I hadn't killed any enemies yet. The damage was showing up as "N", I used it by accident, and got stuck xP
Reloading the page got me back to the start of the fight, so I was able to continue playing though! You've really got me hooked :)
Okay, thank you that's really helpful ☺️ this has been such a hard one to fix because I've never been able to reproduce it, but this will really help!
Haha I'm glad you're enjoying it! 😊 Remember to wishlist it on steam so when I release the full version you'll be notified!
I think one more thing that would be cool, is a card folder, so we can see all the cards we have obtained, or used.
Like a collections page of cards we have obtained and collected to view in an archive.
I'm just gonna join the discord atp, I keep coming back to this game and I really enjoy it, I want to see it prosper.
Yeah awesome!! I have some big plans for being able to view cards outside of a game 😊
ok super awesome game (totally love it) but wondering if you could include a turn count or something on the lonely golem, so we can see the number of turns we have before an ethereal golem instead of trying to remember? :)
that's a good idea!! I'll add that in 😊
This has been added now 😊
Is it possible to have a settings menu to adjust volume in game?
Certainly! I'm working on putting in a settings screen at the moment
Sweet! I'm excited ^^
I've now added this in! 😊
This is dope! A little unclear on exact mechanics, but i was able to figure it out
I'm glad you like it 😁 I definitely need to work on implementing some kind of tutorial, was there anything specific you think would need extra attention to explain? 😊
when i click the run game, the background turn black. but the game title and the card is not black. :/
Oh no! You still have the same issue?? Are you able to try the downloaded version?
How do you remove cards from your deck?
Currently the game only has two ways - you can sell a limited number of cards in a shop, or if you encounter the Card Altar event you will be able to sacrifice some of your cards!
great game! hope it gets huge world for full game on steam. also higher difficulty unlocks and a unlimited enemy one might be cool.
I'm glad you like it!! The full game will have many more levels, and different game modes is something id like to see too! 😊 Thank you for playing!!
The game is pretty fun
If I had money I would buy this on steam (when it comes out of course)
Keep up the good work
also bunny summon? (that would be cool)
ok bye bye have a good day :)
I'm glad you like it!! 😊 It would be super helpful if you even Wishlisted it on steam! I will also be doing some free codes for the game on the Discord when it comes out, so take a look out for that 🙂
Haha a bunny summon sounds fun!! Good idea 😊
If you make a summoner hybrid build (you can use any second build) you will win, I love the summoner build so much, would recommend summoner mager, like pyro mage, it goes pretty hard
Yeah the summons are super useful!! Not sure if they need to be weakened a little or not 🤔 pyro mage is a good idea! That would be a useful summon!
Are you planning to add Russian localization and is there any way to help you with this?
Yes I would love to add localisation - if you join our discord I will post there when I plan to do it, and I would love any and all help 😊
bug report (v2.5.2)
mechanical bow correctly returns to hand and uses no energy after dragging onto an enemy card with no arrows in hand; however, it still adds two temporary training bows each time.
screenshot
playing on Safari / Apple MacBook Pro
Thank you ! 😊
This has now been fixed 😊
Maybe due to the new "arrow cancel" mechanic, this bug still exists. I like the continuing graphics improvements!
ah true! That's a good pickup 😅 I'm glad you're liking it 😊
This is fixed now?? 🤞
This was very close to working on mobile but it doesn’t
Yes it shouldn't be much of a change when I release a mobile version!! ☺️
Dear devs. i have found a bug, if you use the mechanical bow without any arrows, no turns wasted, it returns, and does its ability, basically a dupe
Ah, thank you for letting me know! I'll make sure to fix that 😊
Btw i won the game :D
That's great!! Well done 😊 It seems the Beach deck is significantly easier than the forest or cave!
This has now been fixed 😊
When i click the run game button, the screen turns black. :(
and can you please add fullscreen :D
I'm sorry you're having that issue!! Have you tried downloading it? That version might not have the same trouble - otherwise, what browser are you using so I can test? 😊
Google Chrome
Hmm, that's what I normally play on 🤔 I'll look into it for you!!
Alot of fun!
Thank you! Im glad you like it 😁
Enjoyable game although knifes felt a bit stronger than the other paths.
Well done!! You crushed it 🥳
I'm glad you like it - knives are definitely one of the stronger build options, especially if you get the right cards for it!
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!