itch.io

I think I've reached a point where 99% of games require no "risk", in the sense that I never have to click a tile unless I'm sure it won't kill me. 

There are a lot of patterns to find, and logic tools to use to map out the game. But I think the biggest piece is strategy: surviving and/or getting a high score without guessing requires that you explore as much of the map as you can while using as few health scrolls as possible. This allows you to find the gold, gnome, and necromancer to boost your mas health before using up most of your health scrolls.

You can explore without using health by marking the values of tiles and *not clicking them*, but instead using them to determine the value of neighboring tiles. You click any zero value tiles, and continue until you can't anymore. Then you click the lowest-cost tile that will bring you closer to the next corner you haven't explored yet. Repeat.

If you feel that way, you may not have figured out all the secret patterns and ways of using logic to deduce monster locations. It's almost always possible to beat the dragon (but not necessarily to get the achievements) with no unsafe guessing (i.e. no guessing where you might die based on the result).

There are patterns that predict the locations of:
Gargoyles
Egg
Walls
8-slime and slime sorcerer
Necromancer
{6-monster}
Rat King

Combine them and you can slowly chip away at the dungeon without risking a loss.

It's especially useful to understand that the 8s have specific placement rules, and there are only two 9s and one 11. That means you can pretty quickly reach a point where you can say "These three tiles have 15, but none of them can be bigger than 7, so I can safely make this the first click of my 7-health turn." 

There are a couple of sites hosting the game. If I knew it was from the dev, I wouldn't mind watching the ads to support, but it's not the most recent version, so I assume it isn't the dev.

Then again, that means you can still play on mobile! (to the extent you want to play without flags)

Yes, one of the recent version broke the game on safari for sure (including ios).

Chrome on ios is just a skin for safari, so breaking safari means breaking "Chrome(iOS)".

I think this combo is the hardest achievement, great job!

Rat pacifist is too random for me to want to try it again. It's ironic that the game is actually much less chance-based than minesweeper, but rat pacifist brings back that minesweeper risk factor. (I still think it's a great achievement to incentivize replayability).

Edit: I figured out the (ch)easier way to get it. 

It's broken on safari, and on iOS all browsers use the safari backend.

Really amazing game - minesweeper levels of fun and replayability, but with a spicy twist. This is way more than a retheme.

Dev: FYI I think either your update or an apple update broke your game on safari (which also means it is broken on ios/ipad, like, more than just not having right-click functionality). I *think* based on the graphics that the game hangs when it tries to load assets. OTHER OSX USERS: still runs great on firefox and chrome.

This game is really something. It would be so cool to have a version for mobile, but I imagine that would be a ton of work on your end. FWIW I think people would pay for a quick replayable game like this. This is like the vampire survivors of simple puzzle games.

New high score! (Stage 12, round 2)

I think I could've beaten stage 12 if I hadn't spent 16 on pointless relic bags just before this round. There's definitely room to optimize, but I think some version of this setup is the best that you can do.

This game is great, but the aesthetics are next-level, incredible animation and attention to detail.

Because of that, I wanted to highlight two visual glitches and two bugs:

1. Butterfingers' "dropping the trays" animation is probably only supposed to play once, since the second time you earn more than 50% you defeat her. This means her "dropping" animation interrupts the "fear (more than 100% score)" animation.

2. The policeman's arm disappears for one frame of animation.

3. At least one relic that should not require being placed in a category slot does not function if placed in the general relic slot: wild card. A few others are unclear from their text that they require a category slot. 

Both ladders only function in a category slot, but the text "once per round" implies that they should function in the general slot (presumably for your first used category). I'm pretty sure there is one other relic that mysteriously only function in a category, but I don't remember which.

4. The 20-sided die seems to activate randomly; I have seen it activate when neither my scored dice nor my total dice add to 20.

Wow, this was great! No notes really.

It would be nice to have a little more sugar in the post-game (a few more new tiles, some new text when the lore piece whose name I forget is made via alchemy), but that's asking a lot for a free game-jam game.

A great game! Took me 50 minutes or so.

Microvanias always seem to bring out the devs with heart.

It would be really nice if you found a way to leave up the current build when you release the update. I imagine a number of people still playing after a year find it pretty meditative, and it's a bit sad when the specific balance and flow that you're used to disappears.


I know the windows and android versions are available for download, but as an OSX player it's a bit of a bummer. Still, you can't do all things for all people! Good luck on the new update!

Yeah, that would be great!

Very beautiful! Loved the visuals and music.

So nice to see an update to the web version (demo)! I bought and finished the steam version, but I more often play the web version in idle moments on my Mac. Great game, love the new look!

Very cool! Sadly programming in C has been way too much for me, but I'll look into the current state of PD-Lua -> Love conversions!

Woah, how did you port to playdate? I would love to make games for playdate that allow people to play who don't own the system

I have played this (great) game more than anyone should, and I even learned how to hack Pico-8 games just to see how some rare RNG scenarios would play out. I think I've played enough to say:

The game has a balance problem. Specificially, it is almost impossible to win the game with something other than melee weapons *without getting melee weapons that would win the game faster*. The RNG probability on melee combos is so high, that any other combo only arises if the player intentionally chooses the hard path for fun.

The other balance issue is the launcher spider. It's a very cool design, but it sucks. It is so much weaker than many preceding bosses, setting aside that its flamethrowers could be effectively countered by that anti-flame shield. I think you could double the output of the weapons and add some special boosting item in the middle (all items increase by 1), and it would still be beatable.

Re:Buzzsaw
1. Impressive. I never managed it.
2. Buzzsaw still feels broken, because from what I've seen two daggers (which you get really early in the game) is 100% always better than buzzsaw. By the time buzzsaw is running as fast as 2 daggers,, you could have been dealing 100dmg/s with daggers.

I actually did get the RNG for grenade launcher: 2 upgraded grenades, and grenade launcher. But guess what! That takes up 7 vertical slots, leaving just 1 more slot for other useful stuff.  100 damage every 8(?) seconds isn't that great for taking up the space of 4 weapons.  4 upgraded daggers (with no other melee buffs) deal almost exactly that amount of damage. 

I would call this a "fake" cannon victory. I was able to beat launcher spider, but I used a melee build to beat every other battle.

I totally forgot about shotguns. There doesn't seem (to me) to be any item that would really seal the deal on them, even with minor buffs.

For cannons, I *think* that if you got that 3x Damage cannon with 3 of those cannon-buff items (and 24 heal, 24 shield), you could probably survive. Unfortunately, any other cannon wasn't good enough for me to beat the final bosses (that you can't avoid).

I'm really surprised about the buzzsaw! I wonder if you had built up a ton of health. I tried swapping the buzzsaw into a melee build, and I just found that it took up too much space. I found I dealt more damage without it than with it.

I'm going to jump on here and say that, even with the RNG, a lot of builds are just...not viable, which is sad. For example, the "Take one second off the pistol to the left/right" pistols are impossible to make into a winning build. That's sad, since they are among the coolest.

I even tried putting those two pistols facing each other with multiple ".5 seconds off pistol charge time" blocks, but no luck.

I think you should consider rebalancing if you have time. Like, if a player gets perfect RNG and draws four pistols (two "left" and two "right") and four "-.5" blocks, they should be easily able to beat the later enemies.

Edit: Welp, I guess it was a skill issue (or a need for luck), because I've won the last few games in a row using fire, pistol, rust, and of course melee. I believe I've done Shock, though it was super hard.

Cannon and Grenades seem impossible right now, and many of the "Unique" and "Exceptional" items seem almost impossible to use, even if you're lucky. The upgraded Superior weapons are generally better than the Unique weapons, I think. Some tinkering might make those cool end-game weapons a bit more usable.

I was in the same boat (and *mostly* still am), but I found that if you get the shock-set (including the "boost all shock items by 2 each time this fires" weapon), you can beat the game.

But, to do that I had to change my enemy selection strategy. I found that, with melee builds, it doesn't really matter what enemy you choose, but with any other build, it's extremely important. You have to memorize the buildouts for later enemies.

Edit: I now think I've cleared it with every major paradigm except Cannon- Shock, Fire, Melee, Rust, and Pistol.

I hit the same soft-lock error.  I didn't have a wormhole potion, but I explored the whole map and bumped every wall  to see if maybe there was a new type of secret, but no. The game ended there for me.

More than 50% of the time, I get my wish and "increased exit cost" comes after Tuesday, so the current state isn't terrible!

The newest revision is really hard, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. 

I think it's pretty broken that "increased exit cost" happens randomly; if that happens Monday night you might as well restart. Personally I think it should be either set to always happen on Wednesday (would create a great game flow) or to never happen before Wednesday (maintains randomness as concept).

Ha, fair point.

Wow, this is so cool. I thought this would just be a goofy toy, now I'm thinking of coming back to beat heroes of sunshine. I was not expecting a full game with music and bosses.

Really nice job! Rare to see such a creative set of mechanics, really required some thinking to create a strategy.

For me, it was somewhat easy (won on first try), but I did lose a few villagers. It *felt* hard, but actually losing was difficult.

It might be worth laying out how the sickness mechanic works. The text was really hard to read (on my browser, the mouse obscures the explanation text no matter how you move, Safari OSX), but also I don't think anywhere explains how the sickness is distributed. Same for disbelief. Even if it's random, it would be nice to know what kind of random. Randomly in the night? Randomly upon losing faith?

Also, the nights were confusing. Why did some villagers not come to see me during the day? I often had someone die because they did not come to see me (maybe for multiple days in a row? Unclear).

Amazing. “Tiny metroidvania” can mean “almost no playtime” or “plenty of play with all the charge cut away.” This is the latter.  Really fun, and simple enough to pick up and put down on the go. A classic.

Dev, this is the best solitaire implementation I've seen since Windows 95. BUT

You fucked up Klondike, the basic solitaire game. Like, game-breaking fucked up. 

You're not supposed to be able to play any card but King into a blank space.This is the only reason that it matters that the cards are piled in the 1-2-3-4-5-6-7 pattern. If you take from a lower pile, you make space for a king, but potentially end up with a dead, empty row if you don't need a king. If you take from a higher pile, you keep revealing cards, but you might not have the space you need for a king.

Without this rule, every pile is functionally equivalent to every other pile, and you just start revealing cards from the left every time (because if you empty a row you can always just pull the top card from another row into that empty spot).

The result is that the game is way easier than it should be, and (if the player thinks it through) loses some of the bare-minimum strategy that's part of solitaire. I would humbly request you consider changing this small deviation from standard play, especially since it is in the mode most players prefer.

With that fix, I think you could call this the perfect playdate game, one which should belong on every device.

FYI I had the same bug happen to me, and I’m till in the “doesn’t appear but isn’t inventory” state. If it would be helpful I can dump my memory state or share my save files.

I think there’s a bug on the library level that causes the player to fall into a pit and die - over and over again.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5

Same. Some of those jumps I had trouble making even when the cat wasn't chasing me (because it was waiting ahead to eat me).

Let me know if you'd be interested in collaborating. I would love to try my hand at adding pass-and-play to Clash Cards!

👀

One of the top games on Playdate for people that like the "quick fix" style of play. Very deep, insofar as the game is inherently fair (because it is symmetrical), but very hard!

Dev, why not submit this to the catalogue? It's perfect.  Ah, your game is already on the catalogue! I never saw it while browsing. Too bad it isn't included in the "quick plays" or "crank free games" categories.

Also, bumping the request for pass-and-play.

If you added https://pdportal.net/ support, you would be the first game to do so, and I think you would shoot to the top of the charts.