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Cards sharing names with Slay the Spire (Letter B part 1)

Backstab card in WtC was “reverse inspired” by StS, since I felt that “Innate + Exhaust” fits “ambush” rather than “backstab” theme. So WtC version is “hit hard when enemy is distracted”. It is significantly more situational, since listed statuses, although not rare, still need additional pieces to be present in build, while StS Backstab is pretty universal. On the other hand, it does relatively more damage (On average, WtC damage and HP are scaled down ~2-3 times compared to StS).

There is no exact equivalent to StS Backstab in WtC, but “First Blood” card is probably the closest.

This is another co-evolution example. There is no direct analogue to orbs / Defect in WtC (“end of turn” effects on cards come as a nearest, but still distant candidate). So the only similarity is “multi-hit” theme, which is obvious given the name.

StS Barrage is quite straightforward, but WtC version needs some explanation. Similar to StS, WtC has multiple defensive statuses. Most relevant in this case is “protected” status, which can be described as “gradual intangible” in StS terms. Specifically, incoming damage is divided by (positive values of) ‘protected’, and then protected decreases by 1. So enemy with ‘protected 5’ will receive 20% of damage, and protected becomes 4.

This means that ‘protected’ enemies (which become more common during late stages of the game) are very resistant to high damage, but vulnerable to multi-attacks. Barrage card in this case works as “attack enemy without damage to spend its ‘protected’ status”. It also works in similar manner, although to a lesser extent, against ‘defence’ and ‘evasion’ statuses.

Finally, remember that WtC cards have stacking and always-available upgrades, so upgrades are even more important for card evaluation compared to StS. To compensate for upgrade abundancy, many upgrades are very small (for example, most attack cards just get +1 damage per upgrade). However, in some cases upgrades are more interesting. In particular, Barrage upgrade increases “repeat” count by 1, so investing into 3-4 upgrades makes WtC Barrage into almost-guaranteed “clear enemy defensive statuses” card.

On the resource themes and ‘color pie’

Way to Crown has multiple card resources, heavily inspired by Magic: The Gathering (abbreviated to MtG henceforth).

There are 4 (rather than 5) basic “colors” (HP, MP, St=stamina, Wp=willpower) plus Gold, which is mostly used between the stages, but some rare cards do use gold as secondary resource.

As in MtG, player is not restricted from taking any combination of resource costs in deck, but since resources do not replenish automatically, each additional resource requires corresponding generation (similar to MtG lands).

There are lots of strategic considerations and synergies around mixing resources and using multi-resource cards. However, in this post I would like to discuss “flavor / theme” of each resource (and perhaps expand to combinations later). WtC does not have a rich and detailed backstory, but some “soft” themes are nevertheless present.

Resource: HP (health points)

HP is unique in that it represents both player health and the cost of cards, so “HP replenishment” is the same as healing. This makes HP-based heroes both simpler (no need to manage HP separately) and more risky (easier to lose by spending HP recklessly). Here is a list of HP-based card themes:

• Self-damage and “revenge” mechanics
• Unarmed combat
• Strength / toughness
• Vampirism
• Melee attacks
• Healing
• Mutation / evolution / adaptation
• Aggression / burst damage

Resource: MP (magic points)

MP is a typical “generic mana” resource, with the least flavor and largest pool of associated cards.

Here is a list of MP-based card themes:

• Elemental attacks: poison, fire, ice
• Ranged attacks
• Fear and eldritch
• Defence and protection
• Intellect and knowledge
• Mental power and mind control
• Mechanisms and “auto-playing” effects
• Slow-playing and stalling

Resource: St (stamina)

St represents agility and resilience, but also cunning and trickery of all kinds.

Here is a list of St-based card themes:

• Mix of ranged and melee
• Weapons and bows
• Evasion
• Dexterity and athletics
• Greed and treasure-hunting
• Luck and gambling
• Mischief and deceit
• Card discarding, card cost manipulation
• Traps and ambushes
• Disabling enemies

Resource: Wp (willpower)

Wp represents general self-control and mental endurance, but also has heavy religions connotations. Religious themes are plentiful, but deliberately vague, avoid overtly referencing real-world pantheons and leave deity interference “morally neutral”. Wp also serves together with HP as a buffer against “insanity”, which is a loss condition based on combined “insanity statuses” (fear, confusion and guilt) overcoming the hero’s HP+Wp value.

Here is a list of Wp-based card themes:

• Prayers and piety
• Wisdom and philosophy
• Lightning attacks
• Rituals and conditional effects
• Guilt and penance
• Conversion / proselytism
• Self-weakening
• Public speaking and government
• Concentration and focus
• Prophesy and clairvoyance

Cards sharing names with Slay the Spire (Letter A part 2)

Today I would like a compare two pairs of cards which are named by slightly differing forms of the same word, still close enough in my opinion.

Both cards are rather simple and straightforward, and, in contrast to previous post, I did not think about StS version when creating Alchemy card in WtC. So these may be considered ‘co-evolution’ case, where generic card name naturally results in broadly thematic effects.

Although WtC does have potions, they actually are a subtype of cards and not a separate entity. Similar to StS, WtC potions are “Single use” and are more powerful compared to normal cards. However, they have to be drawn, and take space both in hand and in deck, which is a significant drawback. On the plus size, there is no specific limit on number of potions and all card-based synergies apply to them. StS potions serve as a risk management tool, while in WtC this role is severely diminished.

WtC Alchemy gives gold amount which is potentially scaling through the run, which is unlike any StS gold-giving card. This is connected to the fact that in WtC, costs grow as well, so income needs to keep up to stay relevant.

Anticipation card is another interesting case since it was in WtC before StS2 release, so I can say with confidence that it was not influenced by StS in any way. The card also illustrates why WtC is more complex and harder to learn, since id toes not shun from longer formulas and multiple effects on card.

In case it is not clear, Anticipation “invests” half of current defence to gain full amount next turn. There is no direct analogue in StS, the closest one is probably Blur. This card can be very useful in “slow tanking” builds. The “colors” of WtC resources have minor thematic significance, and Wp (Willpower) in Anticipation cost does tend a bit towards the defence.

For reference, ‘protected’ status which is also affected by Anticipation works like “multiplicative defence”, i.e. it reduces incoming damage by division instead of subtraction.

Finally, “Postpone fixed” keyword means “Postpone effects with fixed current values” as opposed to bare postpone, which means “Execute effect as written, re-evaluate formulas at the moment of execution”. In this case “Pospone (Defence 1xdefence)” would do nothing, since at the start of next turn current defence would already be zero.

Also keep in mind that WtC does not (by default) clear player’s hand at the end of turn, so cards like Anticipation can be easily kept in hand until the right occasion arrives.

Speaking briefly of StS Anticipate, I think it’s design is good in principle, but in my limited understanding the card is far too weak, requiring at least 3 blocking cards in hand to just break even compared to standard Defend.

While randomly browsing, I stumbled on this page:

/t/2793482/trembling-essence-a-horror-gamedating-sim-visual-novel-which-focuses-on-survival?after=20

The page does not show any content, while previous and following pages do.

Also (perhaps unrelated), brief inspection of the source reveals this piece of code, which indicates possible failure of template engine (note angular bracket/percentage):

<script id="vote_counts_tpl" type="text/template"><% if (up_score > 0) { %><span class="upvotes">(+{{up_score}})</span><% } %><% if (down_score > 0) { %><span class="downvotes">(-{{down_score}})</span><% } %></script>

Cards sharing names with Slay the Spire (Letter A part 1)

After the introduction above, it is time to move to the more entertaining part. Since Way to Crown’s strongest influence is Slay the Spire, it would be interesting to compare and discuss cards which share a name. (I shall abbreviate game names as WtC and StS henceforth).

I obviously in no way imply that my versions of cards are somehow “better” or “worse”, especially since the games are different enough that even copying card text verbatim would result in significantly altered actual effect. However, I have had lots of fun matching card name / flavor with its actions, and in some cases my matching feels (for me at least) interesting enough to worth sharing.

I also briefly discuss in-game power / balance of some cards, but again it should be taken lightly, since there is no way to truly compare such disparate things.

Finally, I’d like to re-check myself to make sure I did not just lazily copy some card, but made sufficient effort to re-interpret it to merit inclusion.

Acrobatics is a staple Silent card in StS. My version is completely different, but also related to Rogue hero, with vaguely corresponds to Silent. On its face, this is a weird 10-cost “do nothing” card, since “Weight -1” basically means “when drawing this card, draw 1 more card” and “St +10” just pays back the cost of card in Stamina (St), making it neutral overall.

Despite all that, there are multiple ways to utilize Acrobatics in WtC, which IMO neatly illustrates several key differentiating concepts of the game:

• The “dexterity’ status makes all St card cost less, so if hero gets dexterity=2, Acrobatics becomes a net gain of 2 St
• Some items multiply resource gain, so for example picking Sack of Grain item makes Acrobatics give 15 St instead of 10
• Cards in WtC can be upgraded at any moment, and multiple times. To balance that, most individual upgrades are much weaker than StS. Acrobatics gets +1 more St per upgrade, so in principle can become even better St source.
• Some cards use other card costs as a basis for their effects, making expensive cards valuable. For example “Flaunt Riches” doubles the cost of leftmost card in hand, and then reimburses cost of target card back to hero (with some additional limitation). In other words, combo of Acrobatics + Flaunt Riches may give hero 20 St, which is quite large amount (starting max St for Rogue hero is 15).
• Even better, “Fair Trade” card discards 1 card and draws card with total cost up to the cost of discarded card, making Acrobatics + Fair Trade into “refill the hand” combo.
• In a similar manner ‘devotion’ mechanics calculates total amount of each resource in hand to use as a basis for effect power. For example “Trained Lungs” card reduces hero fatigue proportional to devotion to St. Without delving into too much detail, it is sufficient to say that “fatigue -10” is extremely powerful in late game, since it greatly helps “infinite” builds.

Adrenaline is another very powerful StS Silent card. In this case, I would say that WtC version is “flavor win”, even though it is much more specialized and does not fit just any build. While hard to quantify exactly, StS seemingly takes significant effort to smooth out card choices, making sure that no card would be totally useless regardless of the rest of the deck. As stated in the first post, WtC, either boldly or foolishly, takes opposite stance, so that many cards can either be completely useless or extremely overpowered depending on deck composition.

Returning to example of Adrenaline, WtC version approximately says “Gain X strength this turn, where X = amount of ‘afraid’ status on hero” (getting burst of strength from fear is a good flavor IMO). For a quick reference, ‘afraid’ in WtC is similar to ‘doom’ status in StS: when it exceeds HP, hero loses.

Besides enemies which attack hero with fear, there are cards and items which self-fear as a (normally negative) side effect. There is even a dedicated hero (Dreamwalker), who specializes in applying bad statuses to himself and converting those into attacks and resources.

Also note that seemingly cumbersome use of “postpone: strength -X” actually gives card an extra layer of flexibility (“postpone” means “execute affect at the start of next hero turn”). For example, “Momentary Lapse” card removes postponed effects, while ‘redirect’ status can even point strength loss to enemy instead.

Overall, WtC Adrenaline is very niche card which can become win condition when fit into right build.

In the upcoming days, I will continue this series, moving through cards alphabetically. Until next time :)

Resource management

One significant and relatively rare in genre feature of Way to Crown is an approach to card costs resources.

Instead of usual ‘3 energy per turn’, Way to Crown uses four different resources: HP, MP, Stamina and Willpower. Card cost may contain any combination of resources, very similar to Magic the Gathering. As a result, instead of usual grouping of cards per hero, they are grouped by ‘color’ of resource used, with four ‘basic’ heroes (Warrior, Mage, Rogue and Priest) representing simple ‘mono-colored’ decks, while other heroes use various combinations of colors/resources.

Note that Way to Crown does not place any restrictions whatsoever on hero/card combinations, but heroes have built-in perks and starting decks which make their ‘preferred’ resources easier to obtain and more efficient to spend. It is a common strategy to ‘splash’ (borrowing Magic the Gathering term) a card or two from non-primary resource in the deck to achieve some specific narrow effect (such as healing or protection from poison), or to complete a strong combo.

Another fundamental difference of Way to Crown resource management is that all resources are persistent, and do not change between turns and even between battles. For example, Mage starts with 15 MP, and it is player’s responsibility to find ways to replenish that pool. Game has many cards and items with ‘add resource’ effects, but most of them have some additional twist or requirement, forcing player to balance between sometimes contradictory goals of killing enemies and restocking.

Aforementioned Mage hero has “Gather Magic” card (and yes, the name is intended as a weak reference to Magic the Gathering):

Since Gather Magic restores 1MP per card played (this turn), it is best played as late during the turn as possible, but even then it is not net-positive unless you play 2 or more on the same turn. So player immediately is faced with several interesting choices: kill last enemy or delay for a turn to restore MP? Play cheap but situationally useless cards just to increase card counter? Dilute deck with weak zero-cost cards, making draws less consistent for the purpose of getting free counter increases?

Persistence of resources between battles (called ‘stages’) makes resource management even more crucial, since frequently used strategy of “spend everything just to barely get over the threshold of winning encounter” almost never works. On the other hand, much higher resource caps mean that, given sufficient justification, player can spend, for example, 15 MP in a single turn, so the overall variance of possible outcomes is increased both in positive and negative direction.

These are some of design decisions which in my view justify ‘hardcore’ epithet I used in game description.

On unlocks, meta-progression and ascensions

In my opinion, there are two main reasons for meta-progression in game:

• Slowly increasing player’s power to give additional incentives to play
• Smoothing learning curve by unlocking new mechanics and options gradually

In Way to Crown, meta-progression is heavily pushed towards second goal. The only way meta-progression increases player’s power is by giving more build variants, but that obviously cuts both ways since the consistency falls dramatically.

Main body of game content is unlocked extremely quickly and in large batches, giving players just enough time to skim over new things before plunging into full game. For even more impatient and self-confident players, game has a simple “Unlock everything” option in settings.

Several core mechanics of the game (card stash, card upgrades, quests) are also locked away, but the requirements to unlock are deliberately very low, so they serve as an extended tutorial.

The only part of unlocking which is somewhat slow is ‘advanced heroes’. The game has 4 basic playable heroes, similar to Slay the Spire, but the total of heroes is currently at 18. Additional heroes vary wildly in power, difficulty and depth, but any build possible with them is also available for main heroes, perhaps with lesser efficiency.

Thus, having few advanced heroes still locked does not affect the gameplay at all, since every other part of the game is already fully available.

Ascensions aka difficulty levels are not ordered in ‘ladder’ style like Slay the Spire, but instead are unlocked all at once and can be arbitrarily chosen before every run. I think this is much better design, and honestly wish that Slay the Spire (and many other similar games) would do the same.

Ascensions are softly grouped according to my own intentions of balance, with starting ‘zero ascension’ considered an easy mode, while the few ascensions tightening resource management are considered ‘normal difficulty’. Highest ascension is quite punishing, to the point that I myself prefer to play with the few of the harshest ascensions turned off.

In future posts, I will discuss specific examples of cards, items and heroes in game. It might be a spoiler for those who prefer to experience first-hand discovery of game content.

Way to Crown is a free deckbuilding roguelike, directly inspired by Slay the Spire.

While keeping very similar core gameplay structure, Way to Crown intentionally ignores or reverses many game design decisions of Slay the Spire, with the goal of making much more diverse, unpredictable and high-variance experience.

This inevitably creates much steeper learning curve as well as much higher amount of unexpected losses, especially for beginner players. Potential upside is increased game depth and “positive discovery” moments, where new crazy synergies regularly emerge, surprising even me as the developer. Thus, the cliche “no two runs are the same” motto becomes a bit more realistic, since the number of substantially different deck archetypes is actually higher.

Way to Crown embraces many elements which are considered undesirable by modern roguelike game design, such as stalling / grinding, various infinite loops, arbitrary card modification, complex and precise documentation of every game entity and concept. So, this game is aimed at experienced players, who want deeper and more challenging experience, but also ready to suffer more setbacks and spend more mental effort during the run, especially in learning phase.

Game is fully playable and has lots of content. This post is marked as “50%” since I do not plan to stop development, but instead continue slow and steady stream of updates.

Regular per-release devlogs are published in game-specific forum. The reason for posting here is to share some insights and perspectives which may be of interest to wider audience, who might not like my game but still be amused by some of my ideas and decisions.

Soon, I plan to post some more detailed articles in this topic. Meanwhile, if there are already questions or feedback, I am eager to discuss.

Regarding the “Boulder” enemy, I feel like it is too random. On my run, it just exhausted all attacks I had, leaving no chance to do anything.

Maybe let it exhaust at the end of turn instead, and add some HP to compensate?

Options page has a funny typo: “System cursEr”

Sometimes I even pick a random range card just to have more chances to get a monocle

I enjoy this part of strategy, and this is the reason I normally play on a few ascension levels below maximum. I usually do not pick ‘remove affinity’ and ‘reduce reward options’ ascensions.

I have vague plans to visually rearrange / group ascensions to better communicate their intended severity.

As a small example, with affinity, you can also play in the opposite direction – picking Monocle will increase the chance of encountering cards with random ranges.

I’d prefer having a monocle over fireproof gloves when going to the lava pit.

On high stages, Fireproof Gloves do help significantly against enemies’ Burn damage. In fact, I had to nerf them a few versions ago since they previously prevented 100% of Burn damage, completely countering hardest fire monsters.

Conversely, there are cases when controlled small self-damage is beneficial (Enduring Fist, Embroidery Needle, Pipette, Pythos Dwelling, etc), and Burning with Monocle is a potential synergy in these cases.

I always avoid abacus, since it’s not really that useful to have

Interesting. I almost auto-pick Abacus with Mage, since increased Ivory Tower block is (usually) enough to offset the spikes of enemy damage. Also, I feel I was punished for having Abacus by Frozen Giant / Ice Dragon far more often than by Eye of Dilemma.

I agree that Abacus is less useful in other scenarios. My second-place in frequency is probably in dexterity-scaling Rogue builds for Juggling. I also remember using it with Immolate and Bird of Hermes with some success. In theory it should be very good with Thermal Fracture, but I never once encountered that combo.

fumble floor(greed * 0.03) effects I don’t think it has the same expected average value, because it doesn’t depend on the amount

I meant floor(greed * 0.03 * number of effects) effects

Isn’t it spelled “symptom”?

Yes, noticed it too when posting my previous message. Fixed.

So roaches are now mostly dangerous when you have the monocle.

Interesting catch. Thankfully, at least for me the most common usage of Monocle is to combine with Rogue’s Quick Shot, which increases the chance to draw enough attacks to kill all roaches in one turn.

I wonder if all item traps like this are intended

I consider anti-synergies with the same attitude as positive synergies, which is that they are good in general as they make more interesting things to decide / think about, but may need balancing in the most extreme cases.

On the ones you indicated, here is my opinion:

vestigal bone vs krampus

That one is ok. Vestigal Bone is very powerful, and has some other similar interactions with forced discard and malus cards. For example new Infected Rat + Scavenger Rat may become quite problematic if left unchecked. Slightly unrelated, but Krampus is also countered by new Shining Armor.

thick tome/abacus vs eye of dilemma

Thick tome negative effect is relatively minor in this case, but with Abacus it is indeed a serious danger. I did suffer with Abacus against other enemies as well, especially Efreet / Ice Dragon. It is mitigated slightly by the fact that most common usage of Abacus is for Mage / Ivory Tower.

Maybe Eye of Dilemma is just generally a bit too strong compared to other eye monsters, but I still think this falls into acceptable range of danger.

mittens vs ice shards

This one I think is most problematic, mostly because the positive effect of Mittens was intended to give power exactly for Frozen cards, so the item contradicts itself in a way. Also, I want to add more ice cards which add Ice Shards to hand, in a similar manner to Burning. The ‘Frozen’ on Ice Shard is intended for such scenario (as well as to buff Ice Dragon a little).

My plan for Mittens was to have another way to enable ice-based builds besides Snowflake, but I am still not quite satisfied with its current version, so open to change it and/or add another item with that goal.

snake eyes vs burning

I did intentionally pick Snake Eyes with Firebreathing once, and it was almost game-winning, so this one can cut both ways. Still, I often like to pick Ember Log in fire builds as a safeguard against unintentionally overflowing hand with Burning.

IMHO the strongest “oops, that was a trap” moment currently is Burnt Pancake vs sigils. Thankfully, it is easily avoidable once you’ve burned (pun intended :) ) yourself once.

Another similar, but more obvious trap is Spiked Collar + Dragon Lance, which is remarkable to me since I did fall for it several time just because I forgot having one of the items.

(Moving ‘greedy’ discussion here for convenience, since it is about balance anyway)

It’s never insignificant and always can potentially fumble all important effects in your remaining hand. So regardless of how much greedy you have, you shouldn’t rely on your remaining hand.

I was actually concerned that low greed values will be too weak / easy to ignore. My preferred design was “fumble floor(greed * 0.03) effects, then fumble 1 extra effect with probability of frac(greed * 0.03)” in other words, keep expected average value, but make random value to differ by at most 1. However, I found it to be too cumbersome to explain in game.

I will think more about it. Also, currently greedy does not interact properly with Sturdy Clamp / Magnet. I will fix it (unless greedy rework will make it unneeded).

Also, what is your opinion on diseased status? In particular, I debated whether Sympthom card should exhaust.

I reworked Cockroach to “move” the decision point of random choice so that player can see the outcome before killing.

Now besides mass-attacks and insanity, valid strategies for killing cockroaches are:

• Wait until vitality randomly reaches zero, and kill individual Cockroach at that moment
• Reduce vitality by cards like Draining Aura (but still kill on player’s turn)

As for Dragon Hoard, I reworked it by changing “on damaged” condition to “protected > 0”, with corresponding adjustments. Player is now limited by both number of turns and number of attacks, and gets only 0..1 gems. Overall ‘gem output’ dropped dramatically, to the point that I would now recommend taking the quest only if hero has luck.

That change also introduces very rare and crazy synergies with combos like Spiked Collar + Vulnerability Mark or Mind Control + Duty Call, which I always like.

I did give gems unique negative effect, which is designed to be insignificant when played once, but accumulate quickly when playing multiple and/or “stacked” gems.

Still not 100% sure if that is sufficient downside, but at least it should make player hesitate a bit when acquiring/playing gems.

“additional enemies” ascension, adding roaches scales too differrntly compared to other monsters added this way.

Not quite, ‘add cockroach’ is a random encounter modifier, similar to chests, butterflies, etc. It is comparatively rare, 3 times less likely than Wooden Chest, for example. “Additional enemies” ascension currently always adds fixed monsters per terrain type.

Simplest fix would be to reduce respawn to 0..1, thus preventing “population explosion” outright. But that would be less interesting both flavor-wise and from gameplay perspective. I will try to rework them to make respawning less random while keeping the potential danger of drowning in roaches :)

cleanse affects positive good statuses

Yes, already found and fixed that.

freeze when indirectly playing a precious card (using curiosity and vestigial bone). curiosity has a visual bug when it persists while being leftmost

Ugh. I have messed up commit and published version with a dumb typo. Fixed. I will probably make next release smaller and sooner, since these bugs are quite frequent.

I’d say, each gem could have one less effect, and it’d be enough if Dragon Hoard only added the base form of the gems to your deck.

I will definitely reduce benefits of Dragon Hoard, but maybe not as much. At least will change to 0..1 gems per damage instance.

As for gems themselves, I would like to make them harder to use / have interesting downside rather than less powerful. One idea is to prevent “stacking” of gems by adding “If not gem” condition to the splice effect, but maybe that is still too small downside.

feint considers maximal critical reduction the unlucky outcome Conserve reads BAD TAG: “temporary”

Fixed

dragon hoard has no mental immunities

Added. BTW, what do you think of gems / Growing Druse? It feels a bit too strong to me, but maybe I was just lucky to quickly find the combo pieces every time I acquired gems.

turmoil visual bug with persistent cards happens again (or still?)

Oops. I did fix that bug, except the case when persistent card is leftmost in hand. Hopefully more thorough fix now.

Will make new release soon, finishing up some touches.

Hmm, none of them match that.

Sorry, it is triggers.cardPlayed=o (triggerS)

this stage freezes if you kill a whirlpool

Already fixed that. Until next version, avoid killing Living Whirlpool with targeted attack (the bug is that animation could not handle attaching an detaching cards at the same time).

Oil Can preserves non-clockwork cards

Fixed

‘Watch a rainbow’ doesn’t count turns with no cards played, while ‘Publish your own biography’ does.

I have unified those two as well as “Devise workout plan” to require at least 1 card to be played, since all these quests are currently very good and making them a bit harder is preferable.

filtering “on card played” only shows Matryoshka.

For now, you can use trigger.cardPlayed=o as a search string. Equal sign means ‘search specified internal field of the game entity’, ‘o’ letter is a substring of ‘object’, you can also search ‘u’ for ‘undefined’ if you want the reverse condition, etc.

Of course, this is all undiscoverable from UI, so I will probably add ‘trigger titles’ into a search pool anyway.

If you indirectly play a Second Chance in your hand, it discards all but one card

Fixed, same problem also affected Brainstorm and Clear Mind

So far it seems good to me.

In my own playtesting the only potentially troublesome new monster is Cockroach, especially for unsuspecting player who have not yet added enough damage / draw to the deck. The good thing is that it really rewards AoE attacks, which were previously somewhat underutilized. For the next version, I have added quite powerful item+quest combo for fighting Cockroaches.

This icy prison … deck here is maybe a bit too minimalistic

To be honest, if not for the “start turn fatigue” ascension, this fight would be trivial to win just by spamming confusion. I am thinking about adding some “soft” resistance to insanity for final bosses (as opposed to total immunity, which is comparatively boring).

encountered a Sphinx or Unquenchable One anywhere.

It just so happens that both would also be vulnerable to Prestidigitation, especially since it bypasses Sphinx’s ‘concealed’.

The batch of new monsters in this release covers all terrains and power levels and uses new mechanics such as card attachment and monsters triggering by playing cards.

Some of the new encounters are quite deadly for unsuspecting player, and hopefully require novel tactics to win against (or a strategy to avoid).

I would like to hear the opinions on the balance, in particular:

• Are some new monsters too hard for the stages they appear?
• How new final bosses compare to existing ones in terms of difficulty and entertainment?
• Is the nerf to infinite indirect playing too harsh?

Of course, any other feedback is also welcome.

… giving it a more thematic downside instead, like giving 1 confusion every time it successfully triggers.

I also would like more interesting downside for Paradoxical Figure, but adding confusion, while indeed thematic, still feels not quite right. I will try to think of more ideas.

Un-upgraded carnival trick reads like you can upgrade the stamina cost to 0. After you upgrade it, suddenly it has minimum stamina cost of 1.

Yes, this is the problem I described / fixed. It worked like this: normally “max upgrades” is a fixed number either intrinsic to the card or from ascension. However, cost reduction upgrade tried to estimate the maximum number of upgrades by looking at the current card cost, so in fact it displayed “upgrades remaining” instead of “maximum”.

Now, the UI will display something like “upgrades: (2 left)” instead of “upgrades: (max 2)”, and both the absolute maximums and cost upgrades will (I hope) be correctly taken into account during calculation.

I think turmoil, failure, oppression, and blaze are the more generally difficult ones.

I usually play with larger deck, so ‘blaze’ is not so punishing for my style (BTW, I hope to some day pick it while having Pendant of Amnesia, thus vindicating that otherwise rarely useful item).

I agree that ‘hailstorm’ is often the easiest, except for very “flimsy” builds. I am thinking of buffing hailstorm to Shoot 3.

I often pick turmoil/failure to add “spice” to my final battle when I feel that my deck is truly broken the barrier and the fight would be boring otherwise.

show “max total upgrades” … or … “upgrades remaining for this instance of card”

After some experiments, I decided to go with the second option, since it also avoids some rare corner cases when adding/removing upgradeable effects on a card changes upgrade limit.

Thanks for detailed report, as always.

Wool Thread doesn’t work with Paradoxical Figure.

Yes, it was oversight of earlier effect implementation not updated until now. I am now debating whether to apply similar change to few remaining items, mostly related to reimbursing, like Shimmering Robe. It would make Paradoxical Figure even stronger, but since it is already hopelessly busted, maybe it is ok.

BTW, despite what I said earlier about leaving Paradoxical Figure as is, what do you think of adding counter to it, say 1 per turn? Would it be enough nerf to make it somewhat “fair”, or is it better to leave it to player’s self-imposed limitation to pick or avoid that item?

’Get individual curriculum’ doesn’t count a play if it triggered pea pod

It also did not work if Ivory Tower already persisted by some means, such as Burnt Pancake. Fixed.

unupgraded Carnival Trick says max: 3 for upgrades, while upgraded says max: 2

This one is a bit tricky. The issue is that some upgrade limitations are absolute (e.g. imposed by ascension), but some are relative (e.g. cost reduction only works while cost is >0, but if you increase card cost for some reason, upgrade will be available again).

So do you think it is a better fix to always show “max total upgrades” (but that number would in very rare cases grow after modifying the card by other means), or to show “upgrades remaining for this instance of card” (or maybe both, at the cost of cluttering UI?).

then loading a different reward screen, results in different rewards

That bug was devious. The savefile you sent triggered two unrelated bugs, one of which was the problem you faced (caused by Porcelain Dove bans leaking into next savefile and messing up random choices), and another you probably did not notice (very similar leak, but for ascension effects).

Either problem would be not so hard to debug, but since they occurred at once, it confused me for quite a while. Fixed.

endless turmoil discarding a persistent card that you just played

Fixed

BTW, did you manage to win that battle? Looks hard to me, especially as Proselytize is not very useful on transforming enemies without Grafting Knife.

What are your opinions on the final quests overall and their individual level of difficulty?

persist does nothing if you have 0 fatigue and the new ascension

Oops. Fixed in next version

typos

Fixed

“Invent magic deflector” quest shows up even though the prereq aren’t fulfilled

Fatigue on Austerity is ‘bad’ status and the prerequisite does not distinguish positive and negative values. Will add ‘redirectable’ requirement and probably remove ‘bad’ requirement, since fatigue is not redirectable, but, say, -vitality from Screeching Tune or Stigmata is.

chest randomly spawns in chaos realms, but “all monsters” menu says otherwise

Both “View possible monsters” button and “Encountered in” line in monster hint do not take into account so-called “encounter modifiers”, such as randomly occurring chests, bushes etc. As well as small monsters added by ‘May encounter additional enemies’ ascension.

I think adding those will be too much noise, since they can appear at basically any stage.

Maybe I will document algorithm of generating encounters, even though there are not many impactful details there.

I have published new release, with changes based on this discussion.

Pawn’s Move

I used “cards played < 5, upgradeable” condition instead, which on the one hand is even harsher than Persists 5 since it requires playing Pawn’s Move before other cards, but OTOH resets every turn, thus making it more “stable” when hand manipulation is needed frequently.

Rally with three upgrades … pray+heartiness

I removed fatigue improvement from Rally upgrade, and also changed Rune of Heartiness to “Fatigue -1”, BUT upgradeable. This hopefully works towards the goal that player must “earn” OP build, by spending more efforts and resources.

Ribcage Armor … Draining Touch

Duh. I internally debated a lot whether to include vampirism in Ribcage Armor anti-healing effect, and just forgot about that decision. For now, I opted for simply nerfing defence value, which maybe makes it a bit less interesting but also increases the risk.

Vampirism itself is rarely a threat. Maybe Garlic could inflict some stun or a fumble effect

I gave minor buff to most vampiric enemies (they now all have Max HP a bit higher than initial one, so can heal on the first attack). I also added minor buff to Garlic (vampiric enemies strength -1) which is not as powerful as stun, but still decent when fighting multiple/multiplying vampires.

Diamond Ring … Censor History

Besides updated Patience (which turned out to be very good, maybe even too good), I added an item with similar “protect if <=1 cards played” effect and a quest for Censor History. Hopefully these changes together give enough boost to Diamond Ring

I also feel that most of “too strong to be interesting” infinite builds are currently centered around Persist effect (as opposed to infinite draw / fetch or infinite defence and multiple turns), so I added new ascension which penalizes such builds.

I guess I played some noname clone of this game, since it was on PC, but gameplay and UI were very similar.

What Lanista name did you use? Did you give him a name?

Don’t remember, maybe something like a1

if you move the logic to the client cant it be easily hacked?

Yes, but why should you care? It is a single-player game anyway, there is no downside if somebody cheats for his own local game.

the freeze screen shouldnt happen

I was able to work around the problem by removing session token from local storage. It seems there is some real deadlock-like bug.

do you mean you expect a kind of “spinning wheel” while waiting for network?

There are many ways to indicate it visually, but important point is not to accept new command from UI until the previous one is processed. Otherwise, player clicks on button, thinks it did not work, click again, and gets unintended duplicate action when the server finally responds.

Here is typical result of above-mentioned problem

I played a bit. Few notes:

• You do not need to ask for e-mail, it scares off casual players for no reason. Just name it “login”, since you do not verify it anyway. Maybe provide optional email field in profile if for some reason you want it.
• The music is very beautiful, but perhaps just a bit too slow / morose
• The art is good. However, I noticed that all gladiators (who are slaves) are depicted as black, which could offend some people (not me, I am just saying).
• The game is somewhat laggy, you may consider moving to less network-heavy architecture. TBH, I do not see much reason for this game to be so network-centric, it seems that all the logic could work just as well on client
• It seems that UI does not lock while waiting for network, which sometimes leads to user accidentally pressing same button multiple times, duplicating game actions
• After pressing “New game” the UI has frozen, displaying “crossed swords” icon. Refreshing the page does not help, so my testing stopped there

Thanks for your feedback. I hope to also hear your impression about the game itself.

Tutorial indeed explains very basic things, but there are subtle differences from the “normal” expectations of many players (e.g. persistent resources, “mixed” enemy targeting) which cause confusion for players who think they know how things work based on other games. This was actually the reason I added tutorial at all.

Can you point out some specific small improvements, to maybe give me a better idea of direction you suggest?

explain how things like shield … work … it after the player experiences these things

Hm. This is a novel idea. I am afraid this can be inconvenient since the player will miss the interaction and would be frustrated by the fact that game did not tell beforehand where to focus his attention. (I.e. “the defenca icon which just disappeared meant that some damage was prevented”)

it would also be good if the info from the tutorial could be viewed at any time through a ? menu or something

There is indeed “info” window accessible by clicking “?” on the right-side menu, and also “?” icon on rewards screen allows to repeat rewards tutorial (which may be useful since that tutorial changes as you unlock new gameplay mechanics). Although currently “info” windows does not directly repeat tutorial, it documents lots of other, more complex elements of gameplay. Do you think adding “Basic info” section there is worthwhile?

Wow. THAT is a sort of information which would get you much more attention if mentioned in the original post.

Do I understand correctly that your app requires to use phone camera to capture the real-world image, and adds some post-processing to it to obtain a texture? Perhaps a few examples of “normal” + “processed” photos would be good to explain / promote your app?

I played your game a bit. Here are few notes:

• The font is very hard to read (letters like H-K, U-V a practically indistinguishable, X looks like a solid block for some reason). Since you already have UI options like palette, I suggest adding “normal” font option (or maybe some more readable pixel font).
• “Enter” for rotation is very strange, I repeatedly mixed up controls when playing. Something like “S” to rotate, “Space” to drop would be more natural for me. Maybe just add changeable control settings.
• Holding down “drop” key continues dropping next piece after landing the first one, which is frustrating.
• Conversely, auto-repeat on left/right movement would be welcome
• The fact that diagonal matches also work is not obvious at first, maybe worth mentioning in the description
• Maybe add point bonus for dropping pieces
• Fully same-color pieces feel “too good”, maybe remove them
• Please add lines indicating field limits it is awkward to play without them
• I maybe noticed that sometimes when a piece completes multiple lines at once, some lines are not destroyed. Not sure though, as it is hard to test/reproduce.
• When the game progresses to “new stage”, I suggest adding some message / indication.
• I am quite sure that I played very old game with this exact gameplay, but can not remember the name. Did you also play it?

I think that Android is not a well-suited platform for this kind of tool. Why not create a web version and put in itch? You will surely get much more feedback.

The quality is quite professional. I think this level of work is indeed worthy of selling.

Looking at fire sprite animation, perhaps you could provide smaller “stride” variant(s), so that developers could synchronize sprite leg position with movement speed without “sliding” effect. Current versions supposes very fast movement.

You may think of offering additional optional layers, such as shadow of items in hand, or maybe a few pre-made palettes.

Here is (very exaggerated) example of what I am suggesting: https://kingbell.itch.io/

I am a hobbyist developing free roguelike deckbuilder: https://alsoknown.itch.io/way-to-crown

I would be great if you could playtest it.

The game is quite complex and has rather steep learning curve, so while “first impressions” testing on tutorial and UI is also welcome, I would really appreciate more in-depth feedback on balance and replayability, which could take a little bit more of your time.

You can look at existing feedback / discussion on our forum and discord, or DM me directly in discord: alsoknown1.

Played a bit, here are some notes:

• The graphics is excellent
• Maybe make fruit icons on cards larger?
• Animations are mostly smooth, but card dragging unexplicably lags sometimes
• Please implement volume controls
• It seems that the game does not have save/load capability?
• When playing in browser, console contains errors: <color=#0099bc>DOTWEEN ► </color>Target or field is missing/null (Void ThrowNullReferenceException(System.Object)) ► Object reference not set to an instance of an object. at UnityEngine.Bindings.ThrowHelper.ThrowNullReferenceException (System.Object obj) [0x00000] in <00000000000000000000000000000000>:0
• Cross-pollinating rare crops drops rarity back to 1, which feels like somewhat of a letback
• Maybe put harvest value on the card
• I understand that game is supposed to be “cozy”, but lacks of goals / possibility of defeat significantly reduces appeal, at least for me
• Basic game loops feels like a bit of busywork, at least until late-game upgrades which make crop placement meaningful
• I think there is a lots of unexploited potential for deeper mechanics, which could turn this game into a formidable contender on the market

Good luck with development!

experience the untold horrific atrocities committed multiple times through history, only you get to experience them firsthand, you have no idea how absurd a human can get.

Besides valid points mentioned by previous posters, the lines above do not feel enticing, to put it mildly. Are you playing as a victim of some historic genocide being slaughtered? Why would I want this experience?

Maybe I implied too much of a reaction,

Not at all, “very good player stops using item because it makes game too easy” is an excellent indicator of imbalance, so this feedback is exactly what I want.

Lament

This is outright bug, I forgot to add “exhausts” and effect condition. Funny thing, I played Lament a few times since then, but somehow failed to notice that actual card is different from the one I have in my mind. Fixed by adding both exhaust and “have enough piety” condition.

Now the impact of Lament is rather similar to Inquisitor Seal, as both allow to refill the resource once per battle.

pawns move + gather magic

Pawn’s Move is a tricky card. It is supposedly intended to facilitate hand manipulation, but I myself noted that I use it mostly for creative exploitation of infinite persist. In particular, weird “if effects <= 1” condition is added to avoid making too good of a chassis for card construction with Idea.

Another example is Pawn’s Move + Rewind, which completely bypasses fatigue since “return from discard” effect is not affected by it.

Perhaps just using fixed “Persist 5” would be better?

more than 2 effective fatigue reduction … e.g. fatigue rune + pray

That’s still just effective -1? Even though Pray persists, it still increases fatigue normally. Nitpicking aside, I understand the general issue. Maybe nerf Rune of Heariness to Fatigue -1 …

Ribcage Armor … avoid it when playing Renevant

Indeed, this item is custom-made for Revenant, especially on high ascension where you are limited in Lichform upgrades. However, I thought that poison, fear, and recently guilt, pose high enough risk to push this item into “powerful but prone to sudden death” category. How do you usually mitigate those when using Ribcage Armor?

Paradoxical Figure

This one is intentionally “too broken to balance, but fun to use occasionally” item, so the only thing I considered changing is to make it ever more rare in some way.

Burnt Pancake

I significantly reworked this item by changing the counter increase condition to “played card had zero effects”, same as Large Basket. This makes an item potentially even more powerful, but adds significant requirement / downside (and even some danger of forced infinite self-stalling), so now both picking and using it hopefully require some thought.

I think the Burnt Pancake counter gain should be on start stage instead of start turn.

Yes, this is most logical fix, but I hesitated since it would be so much of a nerf. I will probably still do that, but try to “soften the blow” by adding some compensation.

I usually pretend it doesn’t exist.

Wow, that is even stronger reaction than my own. Are there other items which you feel are similarly overpowered? Long ago, Blowgun and Scythe were IMO in the same category, so I actually added first version of item counter mechanics in part to limit those items.

an idea for scales is to also let them sort your draw pile

I have already implemented different Delicate Scales buff, and I am working of Crude Scales, which will probably be total rework. My current plan is to add “self-synergies”, so these items by themselves have small benefit from sorting.

Current Delicate Scales addition is ‘Playing Precious increases equal-valued Precious on adjacent cards’, which is very minor, but at least hopefully improves this item’s chances from “never ever” to “very rarely”.

But the idea of sorting draw pile is interesting. What benefits / synergies do you see? Initiative effect on cards already does draw pile sorting, but adding secondary sorting mechanism currently feels even more niche than hand sorting.

Diamond Ring, another option is to buff Censor History or give it more things to combo with

Agreed, this is what I shall do. I have already buffed Patience card (which was also too niche before) to give defence on end turn, helping to make skipping turns move viable play for Wp-based heroes, and will add more changes / additions towards that goal.

Mittens could have the general utility vs freezing enemies by persisting one frozen card per turn.

Question is whether it should synergize with Snowflake, which is currently the “make-or-break” item for Frozen builds. If it synergizes, then this change would make Mittens into another Burnt Pancake, although admittedly much harder to achieve, so perhaps it is ok. But if it does not, it “feels bad”.

Vampirism itself is rarely a threat

I think this is the “problem” in a sense that currently vampirism on hero is good and interesting, but vampirism on enemies is insignificant and boring. I will think about this more.

the second character once, which i find much more intuitive and fun to play

I am glad you liked Mage. Interestingly, while many players agree that Mage is fun to play, some also find him less intuitive, since Warrior is just straightforward “burst damage” character, while Mage requires player to plan across several turns and stall to regain resources right from the start.

If you have a rule for - i want this behaviour and for + i want this behaviour… for me a second word would help…

I understand your point, and indeed “perfectly additive” status like strength is best suited for going negative. However, even for more complicated cases, negative status may be simpler.

Consider the defence status. Currently it is “subtract from incoming damage, if was >0, spend amount equal to damage reduction”. Suppose I split it into “defence” and “vulnerability”, both of which work only if >0. Then the rules must additionally state:

• If both defence and vulnerability are present, smaller one is subtracted from larger one and the difference is actually applied (which is one more thing to calculate mentally).
• Cards which change the sign of statuses, like “Adapt”, must explicitly list all pairs of “opposing” statuses.
• “Defend X” for non-constant X must be re-formulated as “if X > 0, apply X defence, else apply X vulnerable”
• Cards which base their effects on defence, like Bash, need to be re-formulated to “Melee 1*(defence - vulnerability)” etc, (or rebalanced around new defence system).

Overall, the amount of text needed to explain the defence mechanics will grow. The radical solutions is, of course, just to remove “negative” statuses from the game, which many other similar games do. However, I specifically think that added depth of interactions is worth additional complexity here.

map of slay the spire is mostly there to reduce complexity and not to increase it

It is debatable, and StS map is of course a good design, with is why it is copied by most modern games. Still, consider that:

• Right from the get-go, the map offers player to plan the entire route, which is about 4-5 decisions even before the first battle.
• Possible future encounters and their relative probabilities play approximately the same role in StS and my game, but calculating probabilities is much harder in StS, since you have to account for multiple encounters at once
• Opportunities like card upgrade and removal are rarer in StS, but it makes planning for them harder. Basically, you have to decide beforehand whether you want a path allowing to upgrade a card, while in my game upgrade is always available, so the decision is simpler.

All of the above is not a negatives for StS, as it is just another level of strategy, which is simpler in my game. Naturally, beginner StS players can ignore the complications and just click on next stage randomly, but that is also true for my game.

take a look at the coming opponents (it’s good that it’s there in some sense and i only noticed recently)…

That feature is very new, was just added in latest release (see devlog). You may look at the neighbor thread on this forum for a discussion which lead to this feature.

expect the player to … read the description of every possible opponent

Probably the most jarring difference is that my game explicitly exposes the complexity which is hidden in other games. For example, experienced StS players actually do the same, the difference is that they remember all the enemies and their strengths / weaknesses either in their mind or on a separate spreadsheet (see, for example, Jorbs videos for examples of the latter).

Maybe hiding information like the possible enemy list from beginner players may help…

it feels like the process of creating it was “putting a lot of rules and cards in very fast” …

You can read devlogs to gauge development pace. Looking now myself, I see that over the last year, I introduced about 120 cards, so 10 cards per month on average. Not sure how this speed compares to other games.

a game which has more complex card rules … magic the gathering … more similar to your game.

Another keen observation on your part, MtG was indeed second-largest influence after the StS. Multi-color card cost and persistent hand between turns are most obvious MtG similarities.

Regarding your suggestion of slower unlocks: although I long resisted it, it seems like the way to go since many beginner players request it.

compared to the first version I played the warrior plays better now

Perhaps the main difference is that you are now more experienced. When I watch your video, I can see that after trying and learning certain cards and items you have already improved your play (which is the intended player progression).