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[Tangleworm]

Menus sound less exciting than AOE cards, but what needs to be done, needs to be done

Indeed! I'm learning a lot as I go.

I've got at least a sketch of the run-end and return-to-start flow:

And because working on cards is a smaller ask, I've been adding more ideas to that space too.

Devlog 7 -- Costs and Resources

Turn-based games are ultimately about strategizing around resources and effects. The strategic possibilities should be deep and expressive, but not overwhelmingly complex. I approached this from two angles:

• Card-based games have the advantage of managing complexity load on the player. Even if the game has a huge possibility space, the player only has to consider the cards they have in their hand.
• DnD's various resources -- actions, bonus actions, spell slots, and class-specific feature charges -- enable strategic depth, but it can feel arbitrary what is considered an action versus a bonus action. In addition, there is a lot of memorization of which resources enable which tactical options, and many are only differentiated by when they recharge.

I knew I wanted more interesting ways to pay for your cards than just deducting action/gambit points. With the two things above in mind, I settled on making cards affect your other cards.

Overheat cards are mostly carried by Mighties. They lock down your Actions, representing physical strain.

Bane cards are mostly carried by Magicals. They gum up your Gambit deck, representing mental strain.

...and there's also cards that cost HP, inflict debuffs, and discard other cards when played.

Hopefully, these additional costs add more depth to each turn, allowing the player to strategize around their detrimental effects, or even turn them to their advantage. For example, minor self-damage can burn vulnerability stacks that may have been used by strong enemy attacks, and discards can remove Banes from your hand.

The ultimate goal is to have additional costs hook back into the other gameplay systems, instead of becoming deductible resources running entirely parallel to them.

[Tangleworm]

The game is now technically playable without debug commands!

I have a few more elements I want to get in before presenting it for playtesting, but that time should come soon.

[Tangleworm]

I may have made these enemy cards too cute.

In other news, path choices are now in the game. Just a little bit more enemy variety and it should be playtest-ready.

[Tangleworm]

A logo!

Getting very close to a playtestable version now.

[Tangleworm]

I think I can call this a playable build now! https://magnesiumninja.itch.io/nomia
I've tried to make the controls self-explanatory. Please let me know if anything is unclear.

Thanks for taking a look! Feedback is appreciated at https://forms.gle/6sbZKVA4ZWFkPwgZ9.

[Tangleworm]

Hi, everyone! I've released v0.1.2 of the game based on feedback received last week. Thanks for taking the time to write it!
This update has some game-feel tuning -- particularly how a run progresses -- and more clear in-game info, like how far until the next boss wave.

I'm not sure what pace I want to target for updates, but I'll be continuing development as much as I can.

Changelog
v0.1.1 -> v0.1.2

Bug Fixes

- Fixed edge case where enemies would have no points to spawn.
- Fixed coordinate sorting issue when moving players into next room.

Gameplay

- Knockback is now only consumed by movement, not collision, making chain knockbacks easier.
- Party now recovers 90% of lost HP after defeating a boss.
- Made Actions and Golden cards show up more often in drafts, especially if you haven't seen one for a while.
- Made swarm battles happen less often, and especially less often consecutively.
- Max number of enemies reduced from 10 to 8, to reduce information clutter.
- Bosses now happen every 12 rooms rather than 15.
- Doubled the number of rooms that can stay before oldest rooms get deleted.

Clarity

- Added path descriptions on run start menu.
- Removed unit mouseover flavour text to reduce information clutter. Will probably put this in a codex or inspection window later.
- Gave self-targeting cards an arrow indicator.
- Reload cards no longer gray out when they can be reloaded.
- Made it clearer when cards were unplayable by graying out the cost icon too.
- Made Purge banner red and Improvement banner blue.
- Indicated when the next boss encounter will happen on the path choice menu.
- Added a record of chosen paths to expedition summary screen.

Quality of Life

- Allow selecting units and tiles even when activity is happening.
- Straightened out cards when hovering and made their movements snappier.
- Time dilation effects no longer override slow-mo/fast-forward.
- Vsync is now on by default.
- Minor performance improvements.

Cards

- Butterfly:
  - Spear now does 8 damage instead of 10.
  - Halberd now does 20 damage instead of 25.
  - Determination now overheats for 1 rather than 2.
  - Erosion has been reworked into a card that pulls aggro in a wide radius and then buffs your block gain.
  - Added a new card, Pressure, to be the attack-oriented equivalent of Momentum and Balance. Turbulent Flow, Typhoon and Shaft Strike now add copies of Pressure to your deck.

- Seagull:
  - Mend now removes a stack of all debuffs rather than healing.
  - Foresight no longer has a cooldown.
  - Optimism now gives Grit rather than Recovery.
  - Protectiveness now gives 15 Block rather than 12.
  - Shards of Light no longer inflicts Exposed.
  - Dazzle no longer pushes.

- Cricket:
  - Tackle now lunges and knockbacks 3 instead of 2.
  - Sand the Plank now has a range of 2, and pulls the target 1 tile.
  - Ripcut now removes 5 stacks of all buffs instead of 3, and pulls the target 1 tile.

- Crow:
  - Cloak of Feathers now grants 20 stacks of Resist instead of 10.
  - Flight no longer exhausts.

[Tangleworm]

Alpha v0.1.3 is released!

This week, I've focused on implementing camera rotation, and started to rebalance encounter generation. Fewer but more interesting enemies, combined with the ability to see behind vertically stacked game pieces should hopefully reduce the amount of information overload that was making repeated encounters tiring to play through.

Changelog
v0.1.2 -> v0.1.3

Bug Fixes

- Fixed incoming-damage changes not appearing in battle log.
- Fixed tile hover-over timing.
- Fixed cards with charges not persisting upgrades to charge count.

Gameplay

- Rebalanced enemy definitions to focus on fewer, stronger, more interesting foes rather than many filler enemies.
- Reduced max number of non-swarm enemies to 4 to reflect the above. Swarm enemies can still push the total count up to 8.
- Reworked swarm enemies so that they all only have a single ability, reducing information load.
- Made stage generation a little more varied.
- Implemented scaling cards.
- Implemented special card play effects (cards can do more weird things now).

Clarity

- End Turn button now has a hover-over message when player units still have unspent AP/GP.
- Enemy intent lines/circles now have dark ends/outlines to be more visible on bright floors.
- Ephemeral cards are now marked by a faded backing.

Quality of Life

- You can now deselect cards by right-clicking.
- You can now rotate the camera with Q and E (remappable).
- Camera panning now defaults to WASD (still remappable).
- As a result of the above, the slow-mo keybind now defaults to C rather than S.
- Added clickable buttons for toggling slow-mo/fast-forward.

Cards

- Butterfly: Added some scaling versions of her normal abilities to represent her straightforwardness.
  - Added Purification, a weak attack gambit which permanently scales when played.
  - Added Catharsis, a weak block gambit which permanently scales when played.
  - Added Flair, which adds a random assortment of Pressure, Balance and Momentum to your draw pile.
  - Nerfed Spear and Halberd upgrade scaling (they were overpowered).

- Seagull: Added some more synergistic cards to represent their tactical fighting style.
  - Added Barrier Storm, an attack gambit that scales with how much Block you have.
  - Added Examination, a gambit which gives Block according to the number of cards you have.
  - Added Thoughtstream, which makes all cards in hand gain Draw 1 this turn.
  - Invulnerability, Instability and Indomitability now give 30 stacks of their respective statuses rather than 99.
  - Radiance how has a radius of 3 rather than 5.

- Cricket: Added some cards that "build up" over time to symbolize his craftsmanship.
  - Added Hyperfocus, a copy gambit that copies more cards every time it's played (this battle).
  - Added Hardened Fist, a 1-damage attack action that permanently scales when played.
  - Added Construction, which creates bridge props over all impassable terrain in an area.
  - Added Hone, which increases the potency of all cards in hand for the rest of battle.
  - Copying a card spawned as part of a cycle (i.e. Crow's moon cards) now gives you the card that begins the cycle.
  - Copying certain abilities that would be useless or overpowered may now return a more balanced version of the same card.

- Crow: Added some cards that are strong upfront but degrade over time, to offset how her card cycles take time to spin up.
  - Added Concentrated Rive, a powerful Fray gambit that becomes less potent when played (this battle).
  - Added Secrecy, a powerful attack gambit that becomes less potent with each card exhausted (this battle).
  - Added Dream Fracture, which explodes all walls in an area for AoE damage.
  - Added Stare Daggers, which turns all pillars in an area into spikes.
  - Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter now have a radius of 3 rather than 5.
  - Spring is now added to your deck through a "booster pack" card that gives a one-time buff before destroying itself, just like additional copies of the moon cycle.
  - Fireball now Overheats for 1.
  - Doom, Float and Prime now have Draw 1.
  - Nest Egg now takes 2 upgrades rather than 3.

[Tangleworm]

Alpha v0.1.4 is released!

This week, I've implemented a hover-over highlighting/lowlighting system to make encounters more clear. You should now be able to see exactly where your foes intend to move, and who they intend to attack.

It's been fun designing cards now that I've fleshed out their coding a bit -- hopefully Cricket and Crow will catch up in card count to the other characters soon.

(I'll leave the detailed changelog for the Itch post and the in-game changelog; might as well save posts in this forum for more in-depth devlogs.)

[Tangleworm]

Alpha v0.1.5 is released!

These two weeks, I rewrote the enemy behaviour code and implemented ground AOEs that are very powerful, but non-tracking. My hope is that this will emphasize the movement aspect of the game more, and create opportunities for smart counter-plays. In accordance with this, Cricket and Crow now have a movement card in their starting decks.

Five new enemies have been added to the mix which take advantage of the new behaviour code in order to buff their allies and lay down danger zones. Eleven new cards have also been added to further fill out the deckbuilding side of the game.

I'll be taking a short pause from regular updates in order to work on features that take longer than 1-2 weeks to fully flesh out. Hopefully I can call the next update v0.2!

[Tangleworm]

(Alpha v0.1.6)

...Pretend I didn't say last week that the next update would be 0.2. This week's changes felt too significant to hold off until then -- players now show an incoming damage summary, making turns much easier to sight-read, and debuff warnings have been visually deprioritized so it's easier to see when damage is coming in.

I'll likely continue to make tweaks to the UX of the game since the presentation of information is critical in tactics, but the bones of the game are solidifying.