TIGSource Forums

aww yeah! downloading.

It's amazing :o

random thoughts:
I got hit with some kinda of upside down heart thing and I had no idea how to get rid of it, so I figure some more detailed messages or descriptions of things like that could get in

I think you should guarantee a fighting coin gets in your hand every time, or make it more obvious when one isn't so that I can know i should switch hands or something, cuz I died a lot just trying to figure out what coins i was holding atm

I like that the game is fast paced but it's hard to be when reading is necessary for the coin details, I think you should try to make more visual-oriented cues on what coins do so players can react quicker and have a better chance at winning

random control thoughts:
right click should be same as back button in menus

random bug:
I tried scrolling w/ the mouse scroll to view coins and I got this error:

I liked it! I have a few comments:

I like the graphics. Although they can get a little claustrophobic eventually, I like minimalism.

Holding the mouse button continuously doesn't seem healthy for my mouse or finger. Maybe some other control scheme?

About the gameplay mechanics. I think it's missing something, I played for a while, thought "this is nice", but I didn't keep playing. There was nothing drawing me back in. A story and a sense of progression could help, it's something to keep the player curious about what's deeper and makes him want to explore. also, upgrades and character progression could probably get me addicted to this. It could allow the player to upgrade after dying, which allows him to go even deeper the next run.

This is so good!

I'm surprised at how compelling I find this, even without much in place to push you to play further beyond a level-score and a collection-completion rate. I have so much else I should be doing, but I'm finding myself playing this more and more instead.

I agree with diegzumillo, above, that it could use an alternate control scheme. I'd probably still be playing right now (instead of writing up these notes) if my wrist hadn't started hurting a bit. There doesn't seem to be any reason not to allow WASD or arrow keys in addition to the mouse-only control, right?

I also think there are a few not-quite-perfectly-fair situations that can crop up, particularly getting hit with a Sap toward the end of a fight, clicking on one of the two counteracting coins in response, but having it not take effect because the opponent has run out of coins or HP before its timer completes. If I had to pick, I think I'd rather have attack coins clicked on just before a fight ends be wasted after the bell than have healing/etc. coins not take effect, assuming the behavior needs to be symmetric.

I admit I haven't really delved into the deck-building aspect much, maybe because I haven't played many deck-building games. (The one exception is when forced to do so by a situation like that from the previous paragraph; so in this sense I see how you could argue the current end-of-fight ruleset encourages a wider set of player behaviors.)

I might as well point out: One little issue with the deck-building screen is that it's really difficult to tell the difference between a coin-type that's fully available and one that's fully held in reserve, since both end up as a single solid color.

I think that's it for now. I'm excited to see where you go with this!

That's an example of a status effect--there are lots in the game, and they're sort of the third major type of attack next to dealing damage and healing (or at least that's how I'm trying to build them now). There are certain coins that remove them, but for the most part you just have to live with them and work around them, there's mostly no direct action you can take to remove them. But there's lots of ways you can deal with them--the damage from the upside down heart, for example, can be soaked up by a shield coin, or counteracted with one of the rightside-up green hearts. Anyway. I'll add some information on the status effect on mouseover--thanks!

Yeah, I'm entirely sure how to deal with this. Part of me wants to replace key text with pictoral elements, so instead of "deals 10 damage" you'd see a starburst and the number 10. But that might also create more readability issues rather than less. I think if you play enough you'll start to learn what each coin does, and get sort of engrossed in the "language" of the game and not need to read descriptions so much. But I think I could also do more to create a visual language for that. Just, the exact nature of what should be currently eludes me. Will keep pondering.

I've been building the game for touch, so a lot of elements are sort of archaic... this included. Making keyboard-optional control would be an easy addition.

This is definitely one of the most important questions to me right now. I plan to include a listing of every coin in the game, so you can see empty slots for coins you haven't yet found, and work in lots of secrets and coins that are exclusive to certain events. More worlds with a defined ending level are also a definite plan here. I'd like to do player upgrades, but the precise nature of those eludes me at the moment.

I thought about giving you options for your starting deck of coins, but that wouldn't really have an impact on the game past the first level. I could also make characters to select with different attributes, binding of isaac style. Run speed, coin cast speed, hand re-draw speed, health, hand size, etc are all things which can already be upgraded in the game, but could also make for interesting variations. I just don't want to steal too directly from BoI. I liked Spelunky's shortcuts too, but, again, I'd also like to find my own voice for this. Permanent character upgrades I don't like, since that creates a straight and narrow linear progression--I definitely like the "upgrades" really being more like "options." It's just what those options ought to be that I'm not settled on yet.

Interesting idea! I think this would make you a lot more careful about what you do at the end of a fight, but that tension may also feel pretty good... I'll try it out and see.

The "deck-building" I feel is currently the weakest piece of the pie right now... I think it needs a big adjustment in some way. A friend once suggested forcing the player to choose from a pool whenever you defeat an enemy or open a chest instead of automatically getting everything, which is interesting, but I don't think I like interrupting the flow of the game for something like that.

What I'm thinking about doing is making shops a lot more frequent, and add in more opportunities and ways for the player to spend and throw away coins so that you sort of build your deck out of deconstruction. For example, a statue that heals you 5 HP for every $10 you give it, or something. Forcing the player to give away coins makes them make choices about which ones are valuable to them, and I think that could help put an emphasis on deck makeup.

Been playing this and loving every minute of it

I just updated the builds. Keyboard movement is in, as are a few bugfixes and a new song on the title screen. I also made the game slightly easier by making common enemies act a little slower, and shops are more common (trying to test out my hypothesis on deckbuilding by deconstruction).

There's still a lot of ideas here I've yet to try out yet. But do keep 'em coming! :)

Maybe consider getting this moved to devlogs since you seem to be updating it? Devlogs gets a lot more love than feedback too :)

I played a bunch more this morning, and may have sort of broken the current state of the game, either by playing too well or by lucking into enough momentum to hit upon what feels like unloseable encounter/level after unloseable encounter/level. Which probably just means I've reached the point at which more content/novelty is needed to support further play? (I left the game running with the computer in sleep mode; I'd guess I'm at at least level 10 or so, and it's felt a bit same-y since level 5? I'd previously never made it past 3.)

But some thoughts separate from that:

As I mentioned before, worrying about health/status at the start of a new fight is the only time I've been really tempted to manage the deck-building. I'm not sure if this is something to bother addressing, but when deck-building for that purpose it becomes a bit tedious to go through and tidy things up whenever new coins come in from a chest or opponent. Maybe a slight indication of which coin-types have just received new numbers? Or the ability to mark an entire coin-type as in-reserve, thus causing new coins of that type to be automatically Saved as well? Or a way to make choices based on larger categories, like, for example, choosing to Save all offense coins and Unsave all Health-restoring coins before going in and manually adding some offensive coins back into the mix?

Obviously adding anything along these lines means trading higher interface complexity for streamlined player activity, so take this with a grain of salt.

On the other hand, at least for my tastes it would probably take some sort of streamlining for me to enjoy playing with the deck-building aspect. As it stands, I find myself not wanting to bother (even, occasionally, when doing so would be clearly beneficial) because it's such a slower, more fiddly activity compared to the rest of the game's pace.

(This holds true for the shop-purchase screens as well: I'm probably missing some telltale signs, but I'm finding it really difficult at a glance to see which coins are actually going to be traded in. Again, being able to make broad choices like "prioritize paying with gold coins and, after that, status coins" might be a boon. Or, from the other side, the ability to quickly zero out the automatically chosen coins so you can choose one-by-one, knowing exactly which you've added. [I confess I haven't rigorously tested: if you raise the amount of one coin-type as chosen payment, does it currently automatically lower another so you're not overpaying?])

I think that covers everything for now. These notes probably contain nothing you don't already know, but I'm enamored enough with the game that I felt it was worth typing these out, however sketchily.

Oh, one more small thing: I've encountered situations where navigating with the WASD keys has meant not being able to make it through a one-square-wide passage, I believe only ever the sort in which a room's inner chamber and outer wall forms a narrow corner to go around. (Is that at all clear?)

It hasn't happened particularly commonly, and switching momentarily to the mouse has always let me clear the route.

Updated the game again. There's a lot more done with visual cues for the coin types and effects, plus a few bugfixes, shops are more common, other small small tweaks.

---------------
Yeah, that might be in order...

Somebody on the public Google doc actually worked out an optimum play method using the save feature that renders the game trivial, so, as I've said before, the deckbuilding definitely needs a major overhaul. My plan right now is two pronged.

1) Increase opportunity to spend coins (shops and other environmental interactables)

2) (more importantly) Take out the ability to "save" coins and change the loot system to incorporate deck options. With my next update what I want to try implementing is having it so that when you open a chest, you get a screen much like a spoil screen, and you have to choose a limited number of coins to take from a possible pool. So you can direct your deck in certain ways--focus on healing, or attacking, etc--but you don't have absolute control over your deck. This would integrate the deckbuilding in a way that every player would have to acknowledge (though I'll also have an auto-fill like the shop).

There are a lot of things that I think I won't know about until I implement this. One thing I'm nervous about is that without the ability to save coins, it will be too easy to get into a situation with being low on HP and having to rely on a random first hand to save you from a dangerous enemy. I may end up doing some tinkering behind the scenes, making healing coins easier to draw when your HP is low. However i play it, I do think this aspect of the game needs a dramatic overhaul of some variety and this is the best idea I have for now.

In the shop, the default coin view shows you how many of each coin is being spent (x0 means none are being used) and the coins are also color-coded, sort of, filling from the bottom as more are used. I thought it's pretty clear?

SIGH, KEYBOARD CONTROLS ARE DUMB ANYWAY.

Your hitbox doesn't change or anything... the way to clear that is to move diagonally at the corner, I think, and you'll squeeze through. That's basically what you end up doing with the mouse. It's a limitation of WASD that your directional options are pretty limited, and I'm not sure how to correct that, really.

Oops, totally clear. I think I was just facing some self-induced blindness there, not even looking at those numbers and assuming they were the same count as on the inventory screen. (That most of them are "x0" at any one time makes me feel pretty silly for not having caught on.)

I just updated the builds with the new loot/deckbuilding mechanics. Check it out, see how you feel about it, maybe!  ;D

I like the new loot system but I have no idea how the deckbuilding mechanics work anymore.

Wow, this sounded like so not my thing but the video is superb. I'll have to make time for it sometime.

They're one and the same. You build you deck by selecting your loot. :)

I think the game might be easier now, but only because of improved playability I think. Definitely starting to feel the need for more worlds and enemies. I have some more environmental elements I want to put in, but I might hold off on another update till I have a decent chunk of new content.

Yeah you should totally do updates TF2 style!
I liked the old one better then, since now you have to leave behind precious money / last resorts for life.

I think I like this new system, though I haven't played enough to feel out its full implications. At a minimum, I'm not bothered at all by the interruption upon reaching each chest; a less patient player can just hit the big green button and clicking above or below the line to add/remove chosen coins is super quick and painless. (I wonder if the purchase screen could have a similar interface? Obviously it presents a lot more coins on-screen to design around, but clicking once to add/remove feels a lot smoother than clicking into a category and then clicking on +/- buttons to do the same.)

On a separate note, this divide-by-zero error popped up upon hitting the purchase button after fiddling with the coin selection interface in the shop:

___________________________________________
############################################################################################
FATAL ERROR in
action number 1
of Draw Event
for object oControl:

DoDiv :: Divide by zero
 at gml_Object_oControl_Draw_64 (line -1) - <unknown source line>
############################################################################################

@poe the output of every chest is now double what it was before, so you get the same number of coins ultimately; but you get to control the flavor of what coins you get.

I could split each coin in half vertically, left for - and right for +. But I would like this to also be friendly for phones, and those buttons would probably be too small (and would prevent you from clicking on the coin to get its details, which is the only way to inspect things on touch).

Well... I can always have it adjust based on the OS... I'll squirrel this away for later.  ;)

Ah yes, line -1... wonderful. I'm glad you got this though, I've seen the game crash on Mac at the same screen and had no idea what the error was. This at least narrows it down.

Awright, set up an official Devlog (http://coincrypt.tumblr.com) and Twitter (https://twitter.com/coincrypt). I guess I ought to move this to the devlog forum as well since that's really more how I want to run this. Any idea who I should get in touch with to do that?

wooow , the concept is amazing  :crazy:

bug ... When taking loot from chest , and when a battler gets you , it freezes

Very cool. Some suggestions

* Slow down the game just a bit at the coin-holding stage. Having trouble keeping track of what coin does what
* have coins with the same effect have the same color (example: healing - gold, hit - silver, status - green, mixed - other colors)
* combo 3 coins of the same size with different effects / 3 coins with same effect in different sizes
* change chest size according to size of loot
* what does the hat/monocle/etc do?

@Whiteclaws will work on fixing that!

* Slow down the game just a bit at the coin-holding stage. Having trouble keeping track of what coin does what
The speed the game moves at is something I'm acutely aware of, and I'm still trying to find a nice sweet spot for these first few levels. I do think it's ok if it's a little fast, because once you know what you're doing, slower battles become trivially easy. I need to watch some new players, I think, and see how it works now since I've slowed it down from the original build.

* have coins with the same effect have the same color (example: healing - gold, hit - silver, status - green, mixed - other colors)
You'll notice when selecting and casting coins that there's a colored ring which does just this--red for damage, green for healing, blue for status. I'd rather keep the effect color coding in the sort of meta-level, and give myself more freedom with how the coins look (they still tend to stick to certain rules, with healing coins usually being greenish, and that sort of thing).

* combo 3 coins of the same size with different effects / 3 coins with same effect in different sizes
Sorry, not sure what you mean by this?

* change chest size according to size of loot
Great idea! I implemented this. This will be in next time I update.

* what does the hat/monocle/etc do?
Another upcoming change is that items in the shop now tell you what they actually do. The monocle speeds up the time it takes to draw a new hand; hats boost your casting speed.

I mean, if you have Hit 3, Hit 5 and Hit 10 in your hand, they'd combine. Also, for example, Hit 5, Heal 5 and Shield 5.

One idea for a temporary status effect: Snatch (acquires coins after they're used by the enemy)

Maybe there should be some floors with an area to trade and manage coins. That'd be a good place i feel for people to thoroughly analyze their coins and give them a chance to understand when they want one over another which'll teach them about the game quicker and such

The fact that coins only stack with their particular type is important to the way the game works, I feel; it forces you to single out specific varieties to build your deck from. Plus, individual types have different rates of growth based on stacking, and reconciling that with mixed types would only get more vague. But it's an interesting idea. I may revisit it down the road if the game feels too saturated with varieties to reasonably focus on specifics.

The snatch idea is keen, though. Putting that on my list!

I've been posting a bit on the dev log (http://coincrypt.tumblr.com/) with some new features, including objects and items tailored specifically for this. Most level features will involve some form of coin donation, I think, which gives you an opportunity to optimize your deck (or ignore those opportunities and stick with what you have).

This game is reaally cool, gonna play it again later to give you a better feedback. I also have been thinking about some coin mechanics but yours is best haha

Wow, just by looking at this/watching the gameplay vid it looks really nice. Gonna try now!

First thoughts on game: Great. Loved the mechanics so far, the battle is great and having to consider to use coins versus collecting them is intriguing.

Some things i didn't like: you can't avoid battles, everything is too tight to try and do something; when you get to the chest you don't get everything, even though you are in for the coins (what would make sense was if you had a limit of coins to carry overall).

Those three things I think you will address it later but still a reminder: the dungeon is not interesting; lack of buyables and/or good reason to save money;  lack of inventory.

Ideas: Coins that do something to the map, like open up a route, makes the player faster,etc.

really cool game, the gameplay hard to get, but catchy and addictive. Keep like this

For some reason I love the minimalistic level geometry, but don't like it when it comes to the characters.

Still, looking good!

Yup, this is the thing I'm focusing on most for now. I've added a few new level features (documented @ the game's tumblr (http://coincrypt.tumblr.com/)) though I'm nervous it still isn't enough decoration over the pretty basic loop of collection and then battling. I'm also trying to not steal directly from the games that inspired this (wouldn't it be cool to have a chest that starts a boulder-chase sequence?? GAH).

Ideas of this flavor have been kind of floating around, though I never thought of coins that could be used as "keys" (nice one!) I just want to be sure that coins like these don't muddy up the currently-interesting function of permanent, purchaseable item upgrades you get from shops. And that their precise function and interaction with the rest of the game is still clear, with the decreased focus on inventory management.

That's a shame! :/ Other have said they liked the characters. Honestly, I don't think there's much about the game that's terribly pretty, but I've been more focused on sticking to a particular style that's easier to work with, so I can put my efforts towards creating more quantity than quality. That's sort of the sacrifice I have to make to create a game like this without a dedicated artist.

I want to put up an update pretty soon with the new overworld stuff pretty soon. Just waiting to get some sound. :)

Just updated the game! There's not much new content per se, it's mostly just new features and polishings within what's been there already. There are secret rooms and other level pieces, and it's possible to get at least 2 new coins (so you can get 22/20 (!!!)). A new shop item or two, with descriptions now, and more are reflected on the player's body when equipped.

Next time I do an update like this I want t have world 2 in there as well. There's just a big fat pile of content that needs to come with that to fill up a whole world, so it's not as easy as just leaving on what's done so far with it.

Have fun, keep mancin'!

Updated the game yesterday with World 2! :) There's now 40 coins and 15 enemies, about double what was in before. Totally looking for any feedback I can get.

I updated the game again, changing a lot of stuff that made it hard to understand for newcomers. People who have never played the game before, I'm most interested to hear *YOUR* thoughts, if you're out there!

Well here I am :) After long time of lurking I finally made an account here for this. Looks really fun! But unfortunately I'm getting an error in this version after jumping into the hole so I can't say much yet:


The tutorial worked fine, though it crashed at the end as well.

@Chuckek
I got the same problem too.

GAH!  :crazy:
Can you re-download and try now?
It has to do with the fact that my developer mode and the public builds load levels differently (which is also why I didn't catch it).

Okay, so I played this for a bit (working alright now) and here's what I think:

- first of all, the whole coin mechanic is really cool. At start it's indeed a little hard to tell what coin does what in a battle and I had to read descriptions and waste precious time, but I don't think it will be that much of a problem. All coins are shape- and color-coded nicely enough that after a while you use them instinctively, so good job there. Battles are definitely fun and the whole game already looks good.

- however the whole thing feels a little snowbally. Or rather, if you get in a bad situation it's kinda hard to get back on the track. Mainly when you lose all your damage coins there's not much you can do - no real way to fight anymore, and in chests you find too few damage coins to reciprocate your enemies (IF you even find any).

- further to this contributes the fact that later enemies have few coins with them. That was main issue for me - most of the time, fighting enemies doesn't really pay off. Especially in 2nd world, where foes often have only 2-3 coins. I don't know if that's the intention, but battles aren't profitable when you need to throw several coins to get 1 or 2 (and just maybe, because if you get a bad hand they will just ran out of coins and you wasted precious damage). In such situations you can try and just defend or heal instead of wasting damage, but it isn't really fun and you still use up your coins without getting anything back. In 1st world there are encounters with foes that have ~9 coins and they feel good - you can go at them with all you've got and you still know that there will be a reward. But maybe I'm missing something. Still, it makes the player wanting to avoid the most fun element of the game, since he knows that whatever the result, it will most probably be overall loss for him.

- because of this I also found starting from world 2 rather hard, since battles are harder and less profitable and you don't start with more coins.

- I feel that stacks are a little too powerful for what's essentialy random mechanic. Not only can you play several coins in a single turn, but there is some bonus amplification on top of that. If you get a stack the battles are far easier; if not then you need to throw a lot of coins at tankier foes. And the more coins you have, the harder it gets to get them. I saw something in this thread about deck-building, but I didn't feel it's currently possible - no one wants to give up a chest of coins only for sake of maitaining unity in his bag :P And you can't choose drops from enemies anyway.

- as for bugs:
# a bandit got stuck between wall and a chest: https://www.dropbox.com/s/w3hkcju9q48hi56/banditstuck.jpg I could still go and fight him though.
# sometimes a direction you're going in gets stuck and your character follows it until you bash arrows on keyboard or something. But it may be just because of minimizing game window.
# edit: oh, I have one more, I just used a stack of 2 stealing coins on gentleman that had only 2 coins left and the game froze. The music is still playing though ...even after i closed it.
# you can also go and give all your coins to one of these statues/whatever-it-is, the game then crashes.

- oooh, I just actually used one of these for the first time, since I thought they need a lot of coins to activate and i never had them. They exchange some of your coins for other? Well then that invalidates some of my earlier points ;p I will need to play some more then.

- I'm also not a huge fan of current lighting. And whole dungeon feels a little too claustrophobic.

Other than that, it is really cool game and I look forward to future updates. I probably forgot ton of things I wanted to say but whatever =p My main grips with it are just some balance issues, but I didn't know how these statues worked, so it may be actually not that bad.

Very like visual style.  :beer: Sad, but game has crushed, after I came to "start game" pit.  :'(

There was a problem with my initial upload; if you re-download it should be fine.

@Chuckek lots of good thoughts! Just some misc. responses...
I don't think it's necessary for enemies to be a benefit to the player. In fact, it makes most sense that they are an unambiguously negative element for the player, just as in other roguelikes like Spelunky, Binding of Isaac, Rogue Legacy, etc. I see it as a unique twist that you can turn enemies into profit instead of loss with really fast play. I've been doing some thinking on the tumblr (http://coincrypt.tumblr.com/) about ways to expand on that a bit with a class system.

I think there is enough variation in the chest drops that you can definitely build your coin deck in a particular direction by selectively taking coins (ie as many attack as possible, or heal, etc). You definitely can get to a point where victory is impossible by mismanaging your deck, but I think the game is mercifully quick in offing you when this happens.

About the enemies that had 9+ coins: occasional enemies will be super-charged with double coins, and those can happen in any world. World 2 is definitely not meant to be very playable as a starting point; the entrance there is mostly for my own testing at this point.

So basically: lots of deflection of your criticism! :) That's not to say I don't think you have a point, or else you wouldn't have thought to mention this stuff. I'll keep playtesting and re-examining elements like these to make it as smooth as possible. Though on some level I think a game that works in such an extreme way like this is going to have some necessary "roughness."

Yeah, re-downloaded it just now, same situation. https://app.box.com/s/f4jo94sgu0a1gx2yg0v3 - is that right link?

OMG I love this game.

I have to weigh in and say that I like enemies being a variable profit/loss thing. I've played as a lot of characters, and I like how whether fighting enemies is a good idea or not depends on your class and situation. Sometimes you want to murder everything you see, othertimes it's better to avoid every fight you possibly can. Really liking the inherent balance in the design here.

Really excited to announce that the game's transitioned into paid beta, and is on Early Access :)

Site: http://coincryptame.com
Steam: http://steamcommunity.com/app/264690

Thanks to everyone who's contributed their feedback so far!

I don't have much to say other than to point out how awesome the game looks!

Congrats on getting on Early Access.

Congrats,Banov. I'm definitely buying it as soon as I get some money in.