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[dimoniy]

Hello everyone,
Guess it's time for to ask for feedback...
Just like the title says, the game is about terrible magic users who like to pretend that they are not.
The game is in alpha stage, but I dared to submit it to IGF yesterday, so I really, really need feedback to do some last-minute changes for glaring issues.

Screenshots





Gameplay video (sorry for commentary quality - it's made by yours truly)  :





Things I'm interested hear about:
- Is game any fun?
- Is tutorial good enough to teach the game properly?
- Is tutorial easy to understand?
- Glaring balancing issues?
- Technical difficulties?

I know that signing up for a test is a drag, so here is login information just for this playtest:

Username: [email protected]
Password: tig1234

Please note that this is a shared account. Multiple people can be logged in at the same time on this account, but they not be able to play each other. Also, I will disable it at some point in the future, so don't grow too attached to it  

The game is in open alpha so feel free to create your personal account!

[[PLAY HERE]]

Thank you!

[dimoniy]

Damn, I was wondering why no one was playing... Apparently I forgot to include the link to the game... I'm such a doofus 
The link is at the bottom of original post, login credentials are just above it. Thank you!

[debugchicken]

Damn, I was wondering why no one was playing... Apparently I forgot to include the link to the game... I'm such a doofus  
The link is at the bottom of original post, login credentials are just above it. Thank you!

;-; I didn't play because I don't want to register in order to test it..

Also the interface, although really neat, is so, so full of stuff, I get became lazy to learn everything ;_;

In my opinion you shouldn't show it promptly, first show like a neat logo of the game, so when the player realize is not a so simple game, he is already in the game - he is more prone to continue, since the sunk cost (entering the game) is already paid.

ps. Wow, I didn't know I knew the word "prone". It really came from the depths of my mind.

[Torfi]

This may be the strangest card game I have ever played. The art and the in-game interface is very impressive but they are completely incongruous with everything else. Why the horrible MS Paint star in the tutorial? Why the terrible (intentionally?) misspelled names? Why is the inventory interface so completely bare and unintelligible? There isn't even a label to tell you which side your deck is on. Why is the button to open settings in game and quit so hidden inside the interface?

As for the design of the game itself my first impression is that it seems very limited in terms of strategic depth and isn't very fun. It also seems like the person who designed it hasn't played very many card games. There are basically three types of cards, those that deal damage, those that increase defense and those that destroy other cards. For each of these types there are variations which act immediately, over time or allow you to pay to get their effect later but only for a few turns but they are all pretty much doing the same thing and offer very little player interaction or possibilities for synergy. The morning/day/night timing mechanic is interesting but there are very few cards that do anything interesting with it.

I apologize if this seems overly negative but it is my honest opinion. I do think it has some potential but I would focus on getting the basics right before polishing the UI and art any further.

I am quite curious about this game's background, are you developing this on your own? How long have you been working on it? What other card games have you played?

[dimoniy]

;-; I didn't play because I don't want to register in order to test it..

You don't have to register, test account credentials are in the first post... I should make those bigger probably.

[debugchicken]

;-; I didn't play because I don't want to register in order to test it..

You don't have to register, test account credentials are in the first post... I should make those bigger probably.

oh, ok, sorry ;-; but its your fault too XD~

finally...

Well got to play it, seemed really nice in fact!

The tutorial felt great. It was one of the best tutorials I ever played.

I liked the game very much, the timeline is very cool, made me remember of zelda majoras mask.

Problems I found:

I think, after the card is maximized too see detail, another click on the card should get it back, clicking on the "cancel" button feels weird.

The card destroy animation (when sabotage is used) is too simple.

This is bad:


The, "Your Opponent is defeated" message is with default-arial ugly font.

Its strange, some times I do damage to enemy life directly instead of his defense although I don't think the card I used has any special effects (I see that some do).

Its strange that the card with the sleepy sun came after the wake up sun. Maybe It was a bug, its supposed to be the other way right?

----------------

I would like this game to focused on a single player adventure XD
I don't like playing online this kind of game very much

[dimoniy]

Hey there Torfi, honest feedback is exactly the think I need. I really appreciate that!

Why the horrible MS Paint star in the tutorial?

Last piece of programmer's art in the game. I'll make sure to remove it with something else..

Why the terrible (intentionally?) misspelled names?

Because Mages are bad spellers (get it? SPELLERS... oh, well). I'll remove misspellings for the next version and maybe re-introduce those when I think of the way to present that properly. Maybe with corrections and stuff?

Why is the inventory interface so completely bare and unintelligible? There isn't even a label to tell you which side your deck is on.

Because version 0.0.6b  . Working on new UI as we speak.

Why is the button to open settings in game and quit so hidden inside the interface?

Yes, it kind of blends in. This is the reason why I make sure to point player to that at first page of tutorial. I'll see what I can do to make it stand out better.

As for the design of the game itself my first impression is that it seems very limited in terms of strategic depth and isn't very fun.

Well, this one is a bit harder to address. The main strategy element comes from which cards to play and when you play it. There are 2 stages when you can play cards: during planning and during response. During planning cards are much cheaper, but you don't know what you opponent is up to. During response, you get the idea of what opponent did and can react to it, but cards cost twice that. Also with activatable effects you almost guaranteed to have more cards than you have money for, so you have to prioritize which cards you play. As you said, there are three type of cards: attack, defense and support. The support cards are not about about destroying enemy effects (in fact, there are only two cards currently that do that), they are more about manipulating timeline, providing buffs and restricting what other person can do. Effects are rarely killed, rather, they often just expire on their own.
Maybe the problem that you are facing is that twice the cost on response might be too punishing and rather than waiting to see what other person did, you can just play more cards. I'm thinking about making card cost be completely independent on planning and response, so there would can be cards designed to play in reaction to your opponent... Still thinking about it.

I apologize if this seems overly negative but it is my honest opinion. I do think it has some potential but I would focus on getting the basics right before polishing the UI and art any further.

Well, the inventory needs fixing right now, other than that, yes, I'm going to focus on core mechanics. Those are still pretty fluid and I play with things a lot.

I am quite curious about this game's background, are you developing this on your own? How long have you been working on it? What other card games have you played?

The art and music I contracted out (and with the Star in the tutorial, you can see why , the rest of it is me. Server, client, website, AI, you name it. This has been my passion project for last three years, all part time after my day job. Card games? Yeah, I didn't play that many. Lots of MTG and clones. With this one I decided to really do something different rather than creating another clone. The result you can see here

[ferretter]

I played through the tutorial and a few matches against the AIs. The art for the game (backgrounds, menu, cards) was very nice, and the theme/idea was interesting. I agree with many of the other points brought up in this thread, but here's a few of my other thoughts while playing;

• The first thing I noticed were the long initial & tutorial load times. I don't have the best internet speeds, but these still seemed a little excessive.
• The tutorial did mention the time of day system, but there was no graphic explaining the actual order of the sun symbols. I didn't actually realize the chicken was a time-related symbol for quite a while.
• I'm not sure if you've played/seen Hearthstone but one thing it does really well is feedback. The dragging to play cards in this game was functional, but never really felt great; Perhaps looking at HS's animation/design could be good inspiration.
• For cards which affect others (eg Alhemy), there's no indication of which card on timeline is going to be effected. A simple arrow when hovering over the card would be nice.
• There seems to be no logic to the card order for same time-of-day cards. This can make First Strike pretty frustrating; Perhaps First Strike could be changed to 'if opponent hasn't played an earlier time-of-day card'. Also on the subject of First Strike, the Alhemy copy ability seems to copy the First Strike status of the copied card. This makes it more of a 'copy the effect of the card' rather than just 'create a copy of the card'.
• The ability to take a closer look at the card was a nice touch. It would feel nicer if the player could click anywhere off the card to go back to the game. Also, perhaps information could be better presented in this mode. For example, Hearthstone has a few 'keywords' (equivalent to First Strike) which aren't fully explained on the card text, but are described when inspecting the card; This removes meaningless card-text clutter.
• Do cards cost double to activate on the response phase? I don't think that this was introduced in the tutorial, and was a little confusing at first. It also seems like it could be a little steep cost increase for some cards.
• There seems to be no full-exit button off the main menu. I'm not really sure what's correct for an in-browser game, but I found it a little odd.
• 'Saide djob' card has incorrect number of days listed.
• How many cards do you draw each turn? It seems like you draw one if you have 3-4 cards, but two if you have less than that?
• If both players are dead at the end of a phase, you lose. A 'tie' state might be nice, or the phase should be interrupted when someone goes below 1 health.
• When the opponent is playing cards, your displayed gold value decreases by the cards they play.
• For the card which removes "Effects which target you" it really seems to  mean "Effects on your side of the board". This is not completely clear when there are effects which will actually damage (target) you on the opponent's board side.
• It's not always intuitive that I have to click the next turn button to advance at the end of turn 3, a highlight (or more visible highlight) on the next turn button would be nice. This could also be highlighted when no other plays are available.
• If you already have 5 cards at the end of your turn, you just discard the furthest to the left. This isn't necessarily bad, but seems to remove player choice without really adding anything. Not having any cards to play on turn 1 and having no choice but to lose a nice card isn't a great feeling.

Overall, I think the gameplay (& game) has potential, though I haven't really looked that deep into the deck-building (after seeing the interface) nor competitive play. I'd probably be interested in giving it another play once it's closer to a complete version.

[dimoniy]

Thanks for the feedback! Yeah, credentials were easy to miss, so I've made the BIGGER.

The tutorial felt great. It was one of the best tutorials I ever played.

Thank you! Were you bothered by Rage Star aesthetics? Is is the last of my own art left in the game and it doesn't fit too well IMO.

I liked the game very much, the timeline is very cool, made me remember of zelda majoras mask.

Thank you!

I think, after the card is maximized too see detail, another click on the card should get it back, clicking on the "cancel" button feels weird.

Agreed, adding to TODO list.

The card destroy animation (when sabotage is used) is too simple.

Again, agreed, but there is so much stuff to work on, I din't have time to spend on fixing this

This is bad:

Yup. Still trying to figure out how to present it better. The problem is that there are basically two cards in one. One you play to but effect on the board and then you can activate the effect to get the card in description to timeline. Tricky one indeed.

The, "Your Opponent is defeated" message is with default-arial ugly font.

Yup. I have art for proper YOU'RE WINNER in the works:

Its strange, some times I do damage to enemy life directly instead of his defense although I don't think the card I used has any special effects (I see that some do).

Dark (alley) magic and Poison go around defense, the one you saw is probably poison since it attacks multiple times and often blends in with other attacks.

Its strange that the card with the sleepy sun came after the wake up sun. Maybe It was a bug, its supposed to be the other way right?

Sleepy sun is evening, morning is a rooster

I would like this game to focused on a single player adventure XD
I don't like playing online this kind of game very much

I plan to add something more single-player friendly. The game should be fun on it's own, since indie game are often haunted by empty servers.

Thanks for the feedback!

[dimoniy]

Thank you very much for detailed feedback,

ferretter!

• The first thing I noticed were the long initial & tutorial load times. I don't have the best internet speeds, but these still seemed a little excessive.

Very first thing game does is downloads about 7Mb to get the core started. Then it streams music from the server and lazily loads battle music. When you start the game it loads all of the card art for both players. As you can see there is already a bunch of streaming and on-demand stuff to make the game feel more responsive and cut loading times. Maybe I can lazily load card art as well? Anyway, the problem should go away with standalone version.

• The tutorial did mention the time of day system, but there was no graphic explaining the actual order of the sun symbols. I didn't actually realize the chicken was a time-related symbol for quite a while.

Good point, I'll add  this to TODO list.

• I'm not sure if you've played/seen Hearthstone but one thing it does really well is feedback. The dragging to play cards in this game was functional, but never really felt great; Perhaps looking at HS's animation/design could be good inspiration.

Juicer animations are on the TODO list, but there are more pressing issues right now. With me being the only person making the game sometimes it gets really hard to prioritize

• For cards which affect others (eg Alhemy), there's no indication of which card on timeline is going to be effected. A simple arrow when hovering over the card would be nice.

Yes, the plan is to have target show up on mouse hover.

• There seems to be no logic to the card order for same time-of-day cards. This can make First Strike pretty frustrating; Perhaps First Strike could be changed to 'if opponent hasn't played an earlier time-of-day card'.

There is order, it's just never properly explained. If cards have same time of day cards from player with priority will go first. Priority is indicated by gem on top of player portrait.

Also on the subject of First Strike, the Alhemy copy ability seems to copy the First Strike status of the copied card. This makes it more of a 'copy the effect of the card' rather than just 'create a copy of the card'.

Yeah, it's a bug. Fix incoming.

• The ability to take a closer look at the card was a nice touch. It would feel nicer if the player could click anywhere off the card to go back to the game. Also, perhaps information could be better presented in this mode. For example, Hearthstone has a few 'keywords' (equivalent to First Strike) which aren't fully explained on the card text, but are described when inspecting the card; This removes meaningless card-text clutter.

Good idea. I'll definitely make it so click anywhere will close the  card details. Keywords explanations are a good idea too.

• Do cards cost double to activate on the response phase? I don't think that this was introduced in the tutorial, and was a
  little confusing at first. It also seems like it could be a little steep cost increase for some cards.

This is exactly the case. As I said to Torfi , I'm considering completely separating cost during planning and response stages so card cost will show up something like 2/3 which means it would cost 2 during planning and 3 during response. You need cards have to cost more during response otherwise, there would be no point to play anything during planning stage.

• There seems to be no full-exit button off the main menu. I'm not really sure what's correct for an in-browser game, but I found it a little odd.

I guess I can add it, but where would it lead to? Site home page?

• 'Saide djob' card has incorrect number of days listed.

Good catch! I'll take a look.

• How many cards do you draw each turn? It seems like you draw one if you have 3-4 cards, but two if you have less than that?

Yes, exactly! I did this when there weren't any activatable effects and card starvation was a big problem. No longer the case mostly.

• If both players are dead at the end of a phase, you lose. A 'tie' state might be nice, or the phase should be interrupted when someone goes below 1 health.

Draw is in the game but a little bugged. Now whoever does kills opponent fists wins, but the intention is for draw to be possible.

• When the opponent is playing cards, your displayed gold value decreases by the cards they play.

Well, it's your own card cost being deducted twice, another bug

• For the card which removes "Effects which target you" it really seems to  mean "Effects on your side of the board". This is not completely clear when there are effects which will actually damage (target) you on the opponent's board side.

No, it's really effects which target you. But as you noticed with Alchemy cards, card targets are not currently shown

• It's not always intuitive that I have to click the next turn button to advance at the end of turn 3, a highlight (or more visible highlight) on the next turn button would be nice. This could also be highlighted when no other plays are available.

Should already be pulsing when you got no other actions available. This doesn't work for you?

• If you already have 5 cards at the end of your turn, you just discard the furthest to the left. This isn't necessarily bad, but seems to remove player choice without really adding anything. Not having any cards to play on turn 1 and having no choice but to lose a nice card isn't a great feeling.

This is by design. You can play a card to not loose the good card essentially sacrificing card of your choosing to preserve the card you like.

Overall, I think the gameplay (& game) has potential, though I haven't really looked that deep into the deck-building (after seeing the interface) nor competitive play. I'd probably be interested in giving it another play once it's closer to a complete version.

Thanks! Hope to see you in game some time!

[ferretter]

I completely understand that this is a work in progress and that many things aren't in their final forms. I just wanted to make sure I tried to mention everything I thought of while playing the game, but it seems you already have most of it under control.

• It's not always intuitive that I have to click the next turn button to advance at the end of turn 3, a highlight (or more visible highlight) on the next turn button would be nice. This could also be highlighted when no other plays are available.

Should already be pulsing when you got no other actions available. This doesn't work for you?

After checking it out again, it does seem to light up but I don't see pulsing (though I'm sure I did at some point). I suppose I just feel that with the current design this effect (even pulsing) isn't very prominent. The same could be said for the playable card highlights. If you wanted to make the game a bit more intuitive, I'd suggest making the possible actions more visually obvious (including activatable effects).

[debugchicken]

Thanks for the feedback! Yeah, credentials were easy to miss, so I've made the BIGGER.

Well I would suggest not needing to log in for testing purposes ....

Thank you! Were you bothered by Rage Star aesthetics? Is is the last of my own art left in the game and it doesn't fit too well IMO.

Not at all. I liked it very much in fact. I know the star is out ot place but I like very much that it is grumpy.

Although I felt that the wrong words on purpose are not cool.

Yup. Still trying to figure out how to present it better. The problem is that there are basically two cards in one. One you play to but effect on the board and then you can activate the effect to get the card in description to timeline. Tricky one indeed.

I actually was talking about the "." in other line than the sentence. The "." is lost at the beginning of a line. XDD

Dark (alley) magic and Poison go around defense, the one you saw is probably poison since it attacks multiple times and often blends in with other attacks.

This needs to be explained better.

Sleepy sun is evening, morning is a rooster

Sleepy sun is evening? Well IMO this _needs_ to change. You need another icon for afternoon XD

[dimoniy]

After checking it out again, it does seem to light up but I don't see pulsing (though I'm sure I did at some point). I suppose I just feel that with the current design this effect (even pulsing) isn't very prominent. The same could be said for the playable card highlights. If you wanted to make the game a bit more intuitive, I'd suggest making the possible actions more visually obvious (including activatable effects).

Might be another bug, I'll check it out. Thank you!

[dimoniy]

Well I would suggest not needing to log in for testing purposes ....

Not possible unfortunately. All of the game logic is handled by the server, even for AI and Tutorial games. You need an account to communicate with the server.

Not at all. I liked it very much in fact. I know the star is out ot place but I like very much that it is grumpy.

The feedback has been really mixed about this one... Not sure what to do. Maybe polish it so it does not look as ugly?

Although I felt that the wrong words on purpose are not cool.

You mean misspellings? Yeah, I'll remove those for the next version.

I actually was talking about the "." in other line than the sentence. The "." is lost at the beginning of a line. XDD

Haha, nice, I dint's notice that. I thought you were complaining about wall of text in the card description.

Sleepy sun is evening? Well IMO this _needs_ to change. You need another icon for afternoon XD

Uhm... What would represent afternoon then? Sleepy sun is confusing I agree, but the rooster is definitely morning, so you can kind of tell that if rooster is morning then sleepy sun is evening, right?

[debugchicken]

Not possible unfortunately. All of the game logic is handled by the server, even for AI and Tutorial games. You need an account to communicate with the server.

Well make an auto-login script!! Something like that!! Or are you using some non customizable solution? In that case its a pitty indeed.

The feedback has been really mixed about this one... Not sure what to do. Maybe polish it so it does not look as ugly?

I don't know what to do too. I like it ugly and with the design style completely different from the rest of the game. But I would at least try to make the star on the game design style to see what happens.

Uhm... What would represent afternoon then? Sleepy sun is confusing I agree, but the rooster is definitely morning, so you can kind of tell that if rooster is morning then sleepy sun is evening, right?

I don't think so. I mean, if someone tells you a whole day, you end up memorizing.

I would go to something like this:

http://t1.ftcdn.net/jpg/00/53/09/66/400_F_53096649_Yw0mWqpf9J0sg1IG90n89HlBvhLPzIxN.jpg

Orange sun in orange background, almost the same color.

[dimoniy]

Well make an auto-login script!! Something like that!! Or are you using some non customizable solution? In that case its a pitty indeed.

There will be access token login coming along with facebook and g+ login support. You'll be able to login by just clicking on a link.

I don't know what to do too. I like it ugly and with the design style completely different from the rest of the game. But I would at least try to make the star on the game design style to see what happens.

I'll redo the star in the style closer to everything else...

I don't think so. I mean, if someone tells you a whole day, you end up memorizing.
I would go to something like this:
http://t1.ftcdn.net/jpg/00/53/09/66/400_F_53096649_Yw0mWqpf9J0sg1IG90n89HlBvhLPzIxN.jpg
Orange sun in orange background, almost the same color.

Not sure what you mean... sun setting looks same as sun rising, I found no clear way to differentiate the two. Maybe I should just get rid of evening since it has the same purpose as day...

[debugchicken]

Maybe I should just get rid of evening since it has the same purpose as day

You bet!
Inutilia Truncat.

[jscottmiller]

Really impressive so far. Snap impressions:

• I understand the desire to force logins, but having some way for people to jump in without an account makes a huge difference. Maybe allow the tutorial or games against the computer to work without an account. If you want to entice people to sign up, maybe limit the set of cards available to unauthenticated users.
• Make sure you test with oddball viewport sizes! My chrome windows run with a viewport of 1521x1353. At this resolution, about a third of the game was cutoff (horizontally). The UI should scale to the minimum of the horizontal and vertical size (adjusted by aspect ratio).
• I don't think the charm of the misspellings is worth the annoyance it causes. I need to read UI text  to myself to figure out the meaning.
• Along the same lines, you should find someone to copy-edit the text. I had trouble parsing some of the descriptions.
• The morning/day/night icons are not distinct enough. I could not distinguish them at a glance.

Most of these comments are nit picks and are easily fixed. I'm interested to see this move forward!

[debugchicken]

• I understand the desire to force logins, but having some way for people to jump in without an account makes a huge difference. Maybe allow the tutorial or games against the computer to work without an account. If you want to entice people to sign up, maybe limit the set of cards available to unauthenticated users.
• The morning/day/night icons are not distinct enough. I could not distinguish them at a glance.

See! jscottmiller knows whats going on!

[dimoniy]

Really impressive so far.

Thank you!  

• I understand the desire to force logins, but having some way for people to jump in without an account makes a huge difference. Maybe allow the tutorial or games against the computer to work without an account. If you want to entice people to sign up, maybe limit the set of cards available to unauthenticated users.
  

I'm going to introduce guest account in near future. This will allow to play against the AI and tutorial, but no persistence of any kind (deck manipulation) and no PvP. This along with Google Plus / Facebook login should help with the problem.

• Make sure you test with oddball viewport sizes! My chrome windows run with a viewport of 1521x1353. At this resolution, about a third of the game was cutoff (horizontally). The UI should scale to the minimum of the horizontal and vertical size (adjusted by aspect ratio).

This is less than 4:3 and game assets are not designed for that resolution. 4:3 is the minimum aspect ratio I had in mind when designing the game. Everything less than that and you have too little space to work with.

• I don't think the charm of the misspellings is worth the annoyance it causes. I need to read UI text  to myself to figure out the meaning.

Yup, all of the misspelling will be removed in the next build.

• Along the same lines, you should find someone to copy-edit the text. I had trouble parsing some of the descriptions.

Thanks, will do. Any particular examples off the top of your head?

• The morning/day/night icons are not distinct enough. I could not distinguish them at a glance.

Not sure what can I do. They are already color-coded, and have different shapes (not different enough maybe?). I'll take a closer look.

Most of these comments are nit picks and are easily fixed. I'm interested to see this move forward!

Thank you very much for your feedback![/list]