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Quicksand-S
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« Reply #1 on: July 19, 2015, 09:20:24 AM » |
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At first, I didn't even notice the quest goals. I was just trying for groups of the same symbol and just thought "quest" was your word for the current round. The goal is pretty small.
I like the sort of "optional" complexity of the additional symbols on the cards, but the game is far too random for me.
Having quests that require the randomness to work in the player's favor doesn't seem ideal. I had a quest that required X's and didn't get any at all. Having cards fill in empty spaces in my hand instantly also increases the feeling of randomness because I can just hope that the card I get will be usable this turn. I feel like the more common approach of having empty spots filled in after each turn is over might work better (although it would likely require a bigger hand).
Personally, I hate large amounts of randomness in card and board games, so this obviously isn't the game for me. It just feels pointless when completing or failing quests depends solely on chance. I kinda feel like the quest idea should be removed (or completely altered), so people are free to use any cards they have and just try for a high score while trying not to get stuck with too many subtraction cards. That way, the random hands are less likely to cause failures on their own.
Anyway, it seems to be technically well-made. It works well and, while I'm not a huge fan of the grey backgrounds, it looks pretty good even in this prototype stage. It comes across as surprisingly polished.
Note that Google Chrome no longer supports Unity by default. You may want to add a downloadable version for the many people who use that browser.
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ngzaharias
Level 0
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« Reply #2 on: July 19, 2015, 08:02:24 PM » |
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Initial impressions without reading the rules: - Making potions of the same type of colour/shape was intuitive.
- I avoided using the skulls as much as I could, this led to a situation where all I had was skulls so I just slammed them all into a single potion.
- I worked out how to do pairs and triples, it may be confusing for others if they don't always put them next to each other. I didn't think of doing 2 pairs.
- I worked out that the quest was on the person, however not that I only needed 1 of it to pass.
- The symbol on the right side of the screen still has me stumped.
Gameplay: - After completing a potion there isn't any real distinction from doing a successful one and an unsuccessful one.
- Placing the cards could use a little more umph. Adding onto this, I feel like you could replace the person with something that fills up as I play my cards.
- I was a little unclear on how the small symbols on the card worked, the best I could workout was that it added 1 to the card if you placed it next to the corresponding symbol. But then I also had the urge to match them together so they connected (right circle to left circle)
You definitely have an awesome loop, but I think small choice hurts the player a bit. I would be interested it how it changes if you have a fifth deck but keep the 4 slots. Card combinations I think are en excellent aspect that you should keep and expand on more (How does it change if you get the combinations only at the end?). Note: I couldn't get it running on chrome |
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Arnold
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« Reply #3 on: July 20, 2015, 01:09:48 AM » |
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Thanks for the feedback.
Some thoughts:
Have you understand that you can raise the individual score of cards by using the little arrows?
There is no explanation of them right now.
There are 3 types of modifiers "in", "out" and "all“. An in-arrow means that the played card will get the values of it's neighbor (type needs to match). An out-arrow means that the played card will give it's value to the adjacent card. A single symbol in the lower-mid of the card (all) means that this card will get the values from all cards in the play area independent of their position. A special case is the skull all-type which means that this card will give it's value to all skull cards independent of position. The modifiers are semi-randomly picked each game. There are no fixed cards.
I will try out if i can change the ways quests are handled and see if that makes it more approachable.
Right now i'm personally missing something to make games more individual. I was thinking about "special" cards/ingredients that interact in a unique way with other cards. Or have special recipes that can create special potions which can than be used to do special actions.
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« Last Edit: July 20, 2015, 01:17:57 AM by Arnold »
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ngzaharias
Level 0
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« Reply #4 on: July 20, 2015, 05:40:54 PM » |
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Okay that makes a lot of sense now.
I didn't even notice the difference between an in and out modifier, I thought they were the same. Perhaps making the shape different? Or changing their length so at a glace they really do look different to each other? That's a hard one, now that I know there is a difference it makes sense how you've laid it out.
The all modifier had me completely stumped and I didn't pick up on it at all, maybe give it a coloured background similar to the other ones so that all modifiers have some commonality between them?
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Arnold
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« Reply #5 on: July 21, 2015, 07:36:34 AM » |
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Yeah sorry. Since the visual design is subject to change it will be explained better in a later version.
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twoeyedcyclops
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« Reply #6 on: July 26, 2015, 05:35:31 PM » |
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I gave this prototype a try and just wanted to echo many of the things the others said. I agree with Quicksand-S about the high level of randomness being a problem, especially with the quests. I instantly lost a number of games because I just didn't happen to get a single card required for the quest. One quick fix for this might be to make the quest optional and have it grant bonus points if you do it, so at least this way the player isn't repeatedly losing for something they can't do anything about. I also found the arrows a bit confusing even after reading the description multiple times but I think I get it now. Like a few of the others, I still have no idea what the little symbol in the white box on the right means.
You asked about the base mechanic of placing and combining cards to score points, and I think it has potential but also like Quicksand-S was saying, maybe there needs to be more cards available to draw from so the player has more options, or allow the player to place more cards on the board than five. Have you played Reiner Knizia's Deck Buster? (There is a free version on iOS that may be worth checking out.) There are some similarities between this game and that, but in Deck Buster, the player can place 15 cards on the board, allowing for quite a bit of flexibility in scoring. One thing I was thinking was if you had a larger area to place the cards, you could have those in and out arrows pointing up and down as well so cards could get points from the cards above and below them. You could end up with a lot more interesting scoring possibilities at that point, but that also might make it slightly less accessible, which brings me to another point. I wasn't sure from playing this whether this is targeting a casual solitaire audience, or going for a more hardcore one. My suggestion would be to go for both, with a casual mode for players who just want to kill a few minutes and play a quick game of solitaire, and a more hardcore mode for players who have mastered the basic game or who want a higher challenge. Right now it seems in between.
The description on the web player page says "there are no fixed cards". I'm assuming that means there is not a set number of cards that are drawn from (like a 52 card deck that is always made up of the same 52 cards). If so, I think that may be a problem leading to even greater randomness. For an extreme example, I would guess it's unlikely, but the player could get all skull cards for the entire deck, which would not be fun to play. A deck with a set number of symbol cards in it that has been thoroughly play tested is just going to end up with better results.
One other thing I was going to mention is I don't get the alchemy theme. When I think of alchemy, I think of people mixing things together to try to make gold, not potions. I'm only mentioning it because I'm not sure if it's a great fit for the way the game plays.
Overall I like what you have so far and hope you keep going with it.
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Developer
