When I saw that screenshot the first thing I thought before reading anything was "whoa, he's doing a nice job with those textures!"

So yeah, you're doing a nice job with those textures!

Keep it up buddy

[Coin Crypt]

A roguelite deckbuilding adventure game about magical coins. You play as a lootmancer, who can unlock the hidden power inside of coins and use them in magical duels. The loots you take from chests and enemies also become your next moves, so plan carefully!

My game Coin Crypt launched on Steam a couple weeks ago! It started here, as a DevLog, a year and a half ago. Back then it was an ugly little prototype I was hosting for free as I gathered ideas to grow and improve it. In November 2013 we launched on Steam Early Access, and then spent almost a year gathering feedback (and lots of love) from Steam players. And now--the game's "finished"!

Here's our trailer.




Links:
Steam
Website

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!

Very like visual style.   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 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."

GAH! 
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).

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!

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.

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'!

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

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

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.

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

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.

So gratifying to see love here 3 years after I originally posted. Thanks very much. <3

GDC is in the early spring--you already missed it this year
But I'll most likely be at the next one in 2014.

[dev log]

* 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?

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)

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!

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

I've been posting a bit on the dev log 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).

@Whiteclaws will work on fixing that!

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
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.

[Devlog]

Awright, set up an official Devlog and Twitter. 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?

I love this idea, and I'd love to volunteer my game: http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=34742.0

Best of luck with the class.

@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 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.)

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. 

_____________________________________
############################################################################################
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>
############################################################################################

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.

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

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.

[new loot/deckbuilding mechanics.]

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

[Updated the game again.]

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.

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

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

Yeah, that might be in order...

[deck-building and shop stuff]

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?

h, 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?)

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.

You're doing PREORDERS ?? That's cool. Awesome to see how far you've come with this. It's really lookin' great. Do you have a sense yet of what the final scope is gonna be?