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[Orymus]

odd, I was considering a similar mechanic where I would govern monster's relative levels based on a loose concept of time (where inns would thus increase monster power within the region).
You have a much neater approach which seems instinctive enough for any player to quickly understand.
Keep going!

[JasonPickering]

yeah, I basically looked at the limited resources I had in game and I though about what would put goals in conflict, but guys having bonuses by region is pretty cool. there is a game called Breath of Death VII (I think) and each round of combat the enemies get stronger, it would be strange if for each monster you killed in an area each one got stronger.

Update: (big post coming)

got a lot going on at the moment, and getting closer to an alpha release. so here is a game overview at the moment.


Player Card: so all Heroes have names now. they have a mana bar to level up. they have an attack power and an attack button. the second button is blank and you can see on the side the character has 4 heart max but only 2 available. all heroes will also have two sprites so when you level up it is obvious, above is Alaric's final form before he is just a lowly monk

Monster Card: much the same as the hero card except with the Boss bar, the mana and boss values, and a shuffle button.

Gameplay: the player will face 3 monsters and hitting the shuffle will cycle to the next one. There will be an option to discard a monster, but it will come at a price. they must choose which one to battle. filling the boss bar makes you fight the Big Bad Boss. (luckily the above scorpion will actually lower the boss bar.) there will always be 3 monsters to choose from.

enemy types: while most enemies might belong to the normal category. there will be special enemies. the above scorpion is a poison type. when killing a poison enemy you will be poisoned and your attack will be -1 for the next term. I have added these types of enemies to get the player to think past their current attack. if your next attack is a lower value, or boss amount is worth double you better think ahead and save an enemy. the other type of enemies will be support enemies. these guys will give bonuses to the other 2 enemies so if a war drummer comes in and gives everyone +1 attack, might be a good idea to get rid of him.

also I will be trying to use my twitter more and hope to have some contests to get the community involved. like ideas for Heroes, Monsters, and Areas.

As always I would love any feedback you can give

P.S. I love this font.

[gimymblert]

Look like you are finally onto something solid, waiting to see how it plays out.

[JasonPickering]

UPDATE!!!

GIVE IT A TRY!!!

Alright so this is like a Pre-Alpha build/Engine Test. there is no boss at the end, and none of the helper cards are in there. probably once I get closer to having an actual alpha I will send out a call for testers. I will keep everyone posted.

Instructions:
- press swords to kill the current card.
- press the deck symbol to shuffle to the next card
- hold the deck symbol to discard that card (you will see a purple flash, and then you can release)

and if you attack someone with a higher value then you, the extra will be made up by your hearts. if you loose all hearts you don't die. I need something better then hearts.

be warned discarding doubles a monsters Boss value (no lower then zero so dont discard the sprite)

so here are my questions I hope to get some answers to
1. Is the player attack anim stupid? I think it is and I would much rather see something happen to the enemy card.
2. Any Enemies you hate/love
3. Any Enemies that are to strong/weak
4. were you able to make it to level 2
5. do you like Alarics level 1 sprite
6. how does the level up effect feel
7. did the controls seem intuitive
8. any idea for a symbol I can use instead of hearts
9. do you find yourself using an strategy right now, or is it just finding the best kill?
10. should I update the first post in this thread?
11. any suggestions, comments, bitches, or gripes?

thanks guys, this will be really helpful.

[Giaddon]

Feedback!

1) I think it's fine. The dude points his stick ominously -- that part's good. The fact that the enemy card simply disappears is a bit jarring. Maybe slide it off the screen? Flip it over? A simple card-like animation I think would work well.

3) The mouse seemed pointless, easy kill and no experience. I guess it adds to the boss meter.

4) Yes, but after one attack the level 2 sprite was replaced by the level one sprite and he lost the two extra hearts. He kept the 4 attack power, though.

5) Yup.

6) ? Not sure I understand... Leveling up feels good, as usual. Everyone likes to get buff.

7) Swords = attack - intuitive, shuffle = switch enemy - not instantly obvious but once I did it it was clear and made sense, hold shuffle = discard - I would never had known if you didn't tell me.

8 ) Well, what's it supposed to represent? I guess it's like... Bonus attack power or something, maybe lightning bolts?

9) I find the most powerful thing (= most experience) I can kill, and then I kill it. If everything is too powerful, I discard. What other strategy is there?  (at this point)

10) Probably!

11) How do you lose?

Maybe have a numerical count somewhere for the boss bar? The bar's slick, but I can't tell how many points away from waking up the boss I am, which makes pin-point planning tough. Maybe that's intentional?   

I think this is a really neat foundation, and with some extra complexity built on top, this will be a fun little game!

EDIT: If possible, new monsters (either through discarding or killing) should come to the top first. As it is, there would be two monsters I couldn't beat, I'd kill the other one, and then have to scroll down through those other two every single time while I was trying to get enough xp to lvl up.

[JasonPickering]

Thanks Giaddon

1. I plan on adding some card animation, but wasn't sure if it would look better with jsut the card being destroyed.

3. the mouse was originally just to bump up the boss meter, originally it was +4 boss. but that made it super crazy. these will be probably be relegated to minion cards eventually. there will be certain cards that when killed add minion cards to the deck. so if you defeat the "Rat King" 4 mouse cards will be added to the draw deck.

4. yeah I noticed this but I didn't want to fix it, if I was just going to drop the attack animation anyways.

6. I meant the actual effect. like the glow and flash with the new sprite there.

11. yeah this is a problem at the moment. I guess not being able to go any further, but I think maybe I should add back in combat, so you can actually die. the main problem is there is no chance in the game attack wise. you will always know if this combat will kill you. so that causes a problem. the main thing right now is you can get to the boss and have no way of beating him.

extra:
I wanted the boss and mana bars to be some what blind to the player. I will make new draws replace the current killed card, that will work much better.

[gimymblert]

I get stuck there was only 3 enemy to my 02 cleric (no heart left)

Also you might look at a game like dungeon desktop, it similar in the spirit, you just don't have the map (you have card shuffling which serve the same function).

edit: okay I can discard

discarding does not feel right

I see a strategy of discarding or using heart, but heart sink and does not refill.
Maybe more type of card instead of enemy? shop card, treasure chest, shrine, tall grass (like zelda) pot, npc, village, etc...

edit:

here is a wtf review of dungeon desktop, i put there not much for the game but it show the reasoning of the player which I think is similar to what your game might provide, instead of moving you shuffle card and have a more limited and random choice (basically killing/discarding is like moving from one card to another).

For example the player could "milk" some bonus card but with a drawback so you might want to discard it (which is permanent) for exemple a town refill heart each time you use "action" on it but also double the amount of all boss point. You might also have a card that double all the boss point but also card with negative point, so you might need to keep it if you have an enemy with negative point, quest/curse card which you need to keep until you fulfill his condition (killing a particular enemy for example) which discard both card, some yugioh like trap, or even face down card you don't know what they hide (discard or attack?), etc...

oh and curretly heart work like ammo, maybe if you have little sword instead of heart (extra power)

edit: it would also be cool to have a preview of the next card

edit: also it not balance as is too. I can only bit animal that don't have much xp and I have to discard strong monster with huge amount of boss progression!

[JasonPickering]

Thanks guys this feedback is tremendously helpful

@Gimmy
What about discarding exactly does not feel right?

so i never even realized the similarities design wise between desktop dungeons and my own game. this definetly got me looking at the design choices they made. you make a great point with not being able to heal your hearts. so I am going to probably do a change. if you lose all hearts you die. hearts will probably be more zelda-ish, as I will use halves, next the player will heal over time, perhaps every 3 cards you gain a slice back. this makes weaker monsters more important

I have a long list of helpful cards to add to the game and here are some examples
1. Fairies
    - they follow you around you can have 3, they are one time use
    - they do everything from heal you, to remove boss stats to even banishing cards
2. NPCs
    - they will do an overall stat increase for the rest of the game
3. Witch Doctor (name will probably change)
    - an evil individual who can lower the boss bar, but he takes hearts as payment

I love the ideas of treasure chests, which also means Mimics maybe like 1 in 5 are actual monsters and the idea of quest cards is awesome and are now on the to do list!

final question for everyone: right now I have two arrays that act as card decks. a draw deck and a discard deck. when you defeat a monster it is sent to the discard pile, and when you discard a monster it also goes to this pile. when the draw is empty the discard is reshuffled and it is the new draw deck (standard card game stuff). so here is my question, when you discard a monster should I send it to the discard deck or just remove it altogether. I feel like I should just remove it altogether.

Edit: do you think I need to show a players health as a series of hearts. would perhaps a number work better, of course this would mean the player would not know their max health.

[sonicblastoise]

First off, to answer your latest question, just discard it. I think it feels disingenuous to the player if it says "discard" and lo and behold, here it is again. Although with a limited # of enemies it may just feel like luck. Either way though, it kind of defeats the purpose of the discard to actually have it come back. In physical card games it makes sense, but here there's no reason to limit yourself in that way.

As for the game in general, I'm still a bit frustrated at how it plays out. I like that it looks like a living card game; The animated sprites, the dynamically changing stats, and the level up animation. The only problem is that there doesn't seem to be any reason for progression yet, since there aren't any enemies above lvl 3 (and you can't level off of lower lvl enemies it seems). I haven't run into any kind of boss monster either. I just feel very...lost when playing this game. Once I run out of hearts I can no longer attack enemies above my level, which forces me to discard cards until I get the right enemy (which can be a lot of cards, which, if I understand the discard correctly, can mean I'm making the boss extremely powerful), at which time I can then level up. It feels really anxiety-inducing knowing that I HAVE to discard a card to get somewhere, but I don't want to discard too many because then I decrease my chances of winning.

The fairies idea can probably mitigate this a little bit. I'll keep trying it out, and I know that this is an alpha build, so I'm keeping an open mind.

But like I said, I love the way it looks and the idea behind it. I also liked the original idea of a roguelike-runner, but this is cool too.

[JasonPickering]

@sonicblastoise yeah the level progression is messed up at the moment but I may have fixed it by using a suggestion from Gimmy (although this now raises more problems)

Update

alright so I went in and added a new heart bar. ever 5 cards you defeat, your person will gain 1 heart. this makes the game widely different and in fact, I have added a much larger range of enemies because with more hearts you can do more damage. This has really varied the combat. I also now enjoy the smaller enemies and save them as fodder for when I am close to healing.

The main problem is now with player focus. before the players main focus was watching his attack and comparing it to the enemy. with the healing, this puts more emphasis on the hearts.

originally the player would usually see it as (attack + hearts) vs (attack), but now they see it as (hearts) vs (enemy attack - hero attack) you worry much more about your hearts then you do any sort of attack power. and this got me thinking. if the player is more focused on their hearts maybe I should actually make the hearts the focus. maybe get rid of player attack power and just do Hearts vs Monster Attack power. I mean what seems better 6-3 or (6+2)-5 they are both equal and the first one is far easier. and mechanically nothing would have to change except players would have one less stat to worry about, a stat that never really changed anyways.

EDIT: okay so I built a prototype of this and I found out that it will not work. I was taking attack power out of the equation and I found out why it needs to be there. it allows you to kill enemies without losing hearts. in the prototype there was no way to keep up because you healed slower then you fought. so now I am looking at solving that, or going back to the original idea.

[gimymblert]

the heart is more like the resource for strategy than the mean, I think you should keep attack and the heart as a risk/reward mechanics about long term and short term benefit. Basically heart act like magic + mana. Will you kill a monster faster and loose future opportunities or save it for a tougher decision? as enemy are a way to replenish heart it also lead the player to manage enemy in a rewarding way (save weaker enemy to refill heart when needed).

Now on top pf that you should strengthen the boss/exp mechanics, don't fix something that is not broken. For exemple weaker enemy also double the boss point, so it might be a risk too. It's all about balancing the number now, i see this s a very strong system and original. balance it, do not change it, save idea for a future version or a sequel, but now you have a formula keep it and find the fun.

[JasonPickering]

Yeah I have gone back to my original idea, although flipped UI wise. the player still focuses on the hearts, so I put them up top, and then the attack power(now defense power to simplify things for the player in their head "defense helps health") and I am currently adding in some of the other cards. I was thinking about coins to buy stuff, but I might switch it back to the items fill the boss meter, making items a risk/reward type card also. I am also adding traps. Main problem now is the game is horribly broken, as all enemies need their stats tweaked.

Main thing now is card design.



top one all cards are the same. bottom one the cards now have borders. Green for hero, red for monsters, blue for items, and yellow for traps. these colors are in no way final, but I wanted to see about the player instantly knowing what type they were given. what do you think? I tried Tinting the cards in the top one, red for enemy, blue for item and it looked rather silly so I went with the border idea.

[JasonPickering]

Hey guys. So I am going to try and update this at least once a week. I will try to either give game updates, new art, or even new builds.


well I started to add in the other cards aside from the usual monsters and hit a huge problem. My engine was only built to handle monster cards and nothing else. so I opened up a fresh flash document and started from scratch, canabilizing older code to speed up the process. in about 3 hours I got the game up and running with traps in and working. Next I added in the Boss. This is where problems occured. right now you fight a mouse hit it with your stick and its on to the next one, but i didn't want the bossed to feel like this. so I set up rounds. the main problem with this was, it seemed like the whole game should be like this. so since I am so early with the engine I have been trying lots of different prototypes(controls, UI, everything). Right now I am trying out (paper prototype) a more "traditional" battle system. you attack, the monster attacks. you each have health and an attack stat. no frills. this seems way more puzzle like now because of the status effects. I had a Monster that on death gave me an attack bonus, which I used to kill a much stronger Lich. which on death gave health to the other 3 monsters. I am glad I am so early in development, that I can really iron out these kinks and get the best battle system I possibly can.

[sonicblastoise]

Wow, that idea about defeating monsters giving you buffs for the next battles sounds like a GREAT idea. It really plays off the idea of cards having an effect on the game aside from simply housing enemies, powerups, or bosses (and even yourself).

Sounds like it's coming along! I'm excited

[JasonPickering]

thanks its an idea from a long time ago. in old RPGs you had that train of guys, and I thought about doing it for the enemy giving you this conga line of enemies to defeat and each monster giving a bonus to the one in front.

[JasonPickering]

hey guys. I got a problem.





so working on getting the inventory in. the inventory will consist of only potions and edible items. so here is what I have so far. the big icon is on the player card and is used to open and close it. the white one is the selected on and you can see what it does. so here are 2 questions

1. does the "use" icon actually read?
2. which explanation do you like better? the icons or the words.

[sonicblastoise]

1) I'm not quite sure what this question is asking.

2) Could you do a combination of both? Perhaps have it say "Heal 4<3" (<3 is heart)

[capn.lee]

The mouth is a little hard to read as a use button (i assume that's the use button)
Maybe if it animates and/or becomes full colour when you hover over it it would make it easier to read

[JasonPickering]

yeah that's the main problem I face now, I am not very good at using symbols and I was hoping to use static images in a similar black and grey color scheme. the problem is I need symbols for

Attack
Shuffle
Inventory
Eat/Consume
Purchase

its pretty hard and I am having trouble finding symbols. it seems most low res games go for words instead of images.

[Hangedman]

Attack: Sword
Shuffle: Recycle (rotating arrows)
Inventory: Bag
Use: Checkmark
Purchase: Dollar