The scaling of the health values on the bosses are bananas, especially in comparison to how hard it is to create truly effective synergies. A reroll mechanic of some kind is necessary for a game requiring this level of efficiency, as is a more reliable way to remove unwanted pieces.
And the pool of pieces is insane! I love how much variety there is in potential builds and synergies, but unless you get crazy lucky you're never going to see anything come to fruition. You have to take huge swings in the early game (getting a zombie, hoping for a priest/paladin; get some scrap; hoping for a tinker; etc.) or win through no fault of your own (GET A HELL PORTAL ON TURN ONE!)
There needs to be a way to hedge against luck. Either by creating a "weight" system that makes certain pieces more likely to appear when other certain pieces are present, or have certain pieces only appear when other pieces exist (i.e. having Daar only show up and be automatically acquired when you have both a ferret, a bird, and a panther would be pretty neat).
I love the flavor and mechanics and style and effort behind this game, but it has some obscene balance flaws. Too many pieces feel like trap options, while too many others feel like "too little, too late" if you haven't been building specifically towards them.
I had a run with two sirens, two game devs, two thieves, a bunch of humans, and a tax accountant. I got really lucky in my ability to really make my humans do some real work on the field, but it still wasn't nearly as effective as getting a single item (hell portal) on the first boss. It wasn't even enough to get me more than halfway down final boss.
My experiences with the diversity demon were similarly frustrating. I worked to get one of each kind of unit, only to realize that I had only seen one single "structure" in the game that stuck around permanently, making the demon practically useless.
Oh, and some of the destruction mechanics just don't work. I saw books destroy themselves at least three or four times and only saw one bookshelf created as a result. I think it has something to do with there being more than three adjacent to each other creating an overlap in triggers or something.
True the books have a bug or two (sometimes they don't make a bookshelf at all, really annoying)
Diversity demon is still pretty good without structures and items (Monster + Human + Beast + Undead + Construct + Demon is not too bad for early game)
I've found the agency is pretty good for destroying stuff. Not reliable, however.
All concerns voiced here are very valid and the game needs balancing and a less random form of randomness. Starting characters may also be great (those starting civilians really bloat the build and are especially a headache early on). Also some rarities should definitely not be showing up earlier in the game
Very fun idea, that will need some balance changes for it to work out great. I love the randomness. In the end after about 20-25 runs i made it to the 10k health boss and died there. My observations are:
There are a few pieces to your militia that get your far automatically. There is A LOT of pieces that just wont work at all, i was skipping so many additions to my deck, because they would not synergize or just hurt me.
I think a kind of weighting system and a slight priority weight for essential key synergy pieces is needed.
E.g. i get a thousand ferrets but DARRRRRR is never showing up (doesn't matter if i take a ferret early or wait to see if he shows).
Few times the first boss rolled me, because i just couldn't get anything. Well, that's rogue for ya i guess. But just adding blindly until the third boss and realize there is zero synergy but i could not improve it by my choice is frustrating. That happened a lot in those runs. When i got a synergy rolling, suddenly nothing would appear that makes sense (like having a bunch of hellhounds on the board but nothing to remove unnecessary additions and/or nothing to improve my situation beyond the "One part" hellgate addition.) Sure, my sample is small. But it feel like it could have some work done to enable runs. Not to make them easy and always work. But to nudge it a little to the synergies.
Another problem was beating the first bosses to fast as it limited the additions i got. No reward for a victory sucked too.
Bosses stack health a LOT quicker, than there is any gained defenses or my offense can deal. The pacifist seemed weird to me and the only other real one is a medkit that shows up rarely.
Androids didn't give each other the +1 for the one time I managed to recruit 3. (bug maybe)
Else, loved the art. Was laughing about the hell hound corgis. Beauty of an idea. Keep on working
6.5/10 no reroll mechanics. Okay, maybe not that low of a score, but in games like this if there aren't some kind of reroll or locking mechanics or their equivalent, it feels more like the game is playing you versus you playing the game.
The other main problem I'm feeling right now is that it almost feels more like a punishment to beat each enemy. You not only get no reward other than moving on, but also lose a chance to upgrade your militia.
Other than those two major points, I think it's a great game and hope to play more in the future.
...I got the hell portal really early and that just won the game on its own. Bioweapon to take out most of my starting humans, and before long the field was full of hellhounds and I was doing 1500-2500 damage per turn.
Suggestion for the dev: The probabilities for the pieces seem pretty unbalanced now. It's not that it's too hard or easy, but there are too many pieces that are essentially non-viable because they only work in combination with other extremely rare pieces.
For example, there are at least three common/uncommon pieces that explicitly work together with Daaaar, who is "very rare." There are other pieces (rat, sheep, dire wolf) that are only viable with Daaar. I have not seen Daaar in the last two hours of playing.
Other examples of statistically nonviable pairings include librarian/author, mecha (tinkerer/soldier/scrap), vampires (succubus/...paladin?), Djinn (Whale/Sheep/Red Dragon?).
You might consider weighting the probability of certain pieces appearing based on the pieces that are on the board. Increasing the likelihood of scrap if you have tinkerer or alchemist, for example, or increasing the likelihood of red dragon based on the number of sheep or weredragons.
Considering i almost always get offered Darrrr befre even beating the first boss, i'd say Darrrr shows up quite frequently. All these other ones are very valid tho (haven't ever seen a vamp or djinn lol)
This game is so much fun! I had fun trying to find a way to deal as much damage as possible. I can only imagine how strong later bosses are. Great Job!
I’m jealous. I kept taking sheep and never getting Darr. I finally managed to get him after like, three hours, cloned him twice…and lost because he never ended up next to quite enough beasts on the final boss.
Yeah I feel you. 90% of my runs start with finding 2/3 cool combo units and then getting stranded with a half-baked strategy. Zombies with no paladins, librarians with no books, gold and no gold dragons... This game has a lot of potential but it can be really frustrating sometimes
I've never summoned the Djinn (water+fire->steam; steamx4->Djinn), and I doubt anyone has. That's despite the steam being broken so that it doesn't actually evaporate
Oh my god, that is so ass. If I had spent the hours necessary to get the Djinn, and wound up with that, I might scream. It makes mutant colony look like a great combo reward.
I think this is my biggest problem too. There are just too many dead-ends. I'm thinking a few simple ways to fix this would include the ability to "see ahead" to what pieces you'll get in the future (allowing you to devise a strategy) or giving you 6 choices instead of 3.
This is amazing! Something really special and so fun and addictive!
A few pieces of feedback:
1. the core gameplay is a bit too random - I would like to feel like I have a chance to win if I make the right decisions but I think for most runs the win is impossible because of factors outside of my control. I wonder can you add more choices (lock and reroll options after each fight? A special ability/unlock which allows you to swap a limited number deployed units on the field.
2. Right now feels way too hard to win!
3. books don't seem to work as described... I get 2 books next to each other often and they just destroy each other.
4. can we get an awarded unit after killing a boss? right now sometimes its optimal to take a worse unit so as to get another upgrade.
5. would love to see more ways to remove units other than the IAO
6. any thoughts about giving the player something to start the run off based off a previous run?
1. more thing. I don't think ascetic works as intended.
right now if you get him near the end of a fight and kill a boss that's already at half health in the following turn he dies anyway and I think he should stick around for the next fight (unless thats a one-shot!)
This game is super fun and I managed to find a combo that dealt quite a significant amount of damage! However I don't actually know how it worked so unfortunately when the damage went back to double digits I couldn't figure out why. Really cool and addictive game!
i love the art style and the sheer wildness of this game, although i had a doctor, a medkit, and one health, but the medkit didn't heal me to full like the doctor said it would!
Is the endgame sequence another text scroll? It's possible I just didn't read carefully enough to realize it's different text. I'd suggest no skipping for the end game sequence. It happens rarely enough that it's probably worth making sure the player sees it.
I found a bug in the game, it's giving me the "Internal Affairs Officers" affect even after i've started a new game. It seems it did it when I closed out intentionally? Idk. I love your game by the way!
FYI, the books don't transform into bookshelves. Maybe I don't understand how the interaction is supposed to work, but the books are just self-destructing without adding any bookshelves into my militia.
Great game otherwise!
Edit: I got a bookshelf, so it does work, but I'm still not sure why it only worked after destroying around 8 books.
Second Edit: the book strategy feels extremely weak. You need the writer, who deals 0 damage to generate a bunch of books. The books also deal 0 damage, and you need them to generate a bookshelf. And then the bookshelf, finally... deals 0 damage but increases the damage of your librarians! I haven't even found a single librarian yet! The strategy requires you to jump through a lot of loops for a very strange payoff.
if I can provide some more feedback, I think there should be more ways to remove your troops. Especially those 5 civilians at the start of the game, it feels like you're permanently playing with 20 free spots because you couldn't find IA
Grey Goo + Golden Goo is by far the best combo i've seen. I beat every boss in about 2 rounds and the last boss was like 4 rounds. Each Golden Goo was dealing about 200 damage.
they also grow up to create more OP cockatrice, or eat their eggs to gain power, its very OP, I once got it on Kull, then fumbled the run, made it to sixth boss. Deathworm and replicating spider would also be a good duo
What build did you finish the game with? As far as I can tell there are only 2 or 3 pieces that can possibly beat the game, because only those pieces scale exponentially. Grey goo+Gold Goo, Hellhound...???
With Hellhound alone I eventually had almost every space filled with hellhounds, and still couldn't get past level 10. That makes every other "good" piece look worthless.
It seems like one of the only builds that can do the 1000 dp/turn that you need to beat the 10th boss. If you got enough webbing you could theoretically do it with the Arakh, but I think your damage would accelerate too fast and you would end up facing the final boss without enough webbing to consistently deal 1000+ (you need 10 contiguous webs+arakh), or you would accelerate too slow and die on an earlier boss.
do you know what actions you did to glitch it? i.e. could you reproduce it? Would love to know if its a bug, I haven't had any reports of this. Thanks!
To be honest I wasn't expecting too much of this game, but this is one of the best roguelikes that I've played. Definitely would play the full version.
If you planning to doing some translation for PT-BR I can help you.
This game is a blast! The massive amount of different units you can have allows for a large variety of potential strategies. It also makes for some very funny combinations. The different terrain and constructs you can have also adds a lot of depth to the game. I really like the art for units and bosses as well, it's a great retro throwback! I’m definitely going to be playing this a lot more! Awesome work on this!
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The scaling of the health values on the bosses are bananas, especially in comparison to how hard it is to create truly effective synergies. A reroll mechanic of some kind is necessary for a game requiring this level of efficiency, as is a more reliable way to remove unwanted pieces.
And the pool of pieces is insane! I love how much variety there is in potential builds and synergies, but unless you get crazy lucky you're never going to see anything come to fruition. You have to take huge swings in the early game (getting a zombie, hoping for a priest/paladin; get some scrap; hoping for a tinker; etc.) or win through no fault of your own (GET A HELL PORTAL ON TURN ONE!)
There needs to be a way to hedge against luck. Either by creating a "weight" system that makes certain pieces more likely to appear when other certain pieces are present, or have certain pieces only appear when other pieces exist (i.e. having Daar only show up and be automatically acquired when you have both a ferret, a bird, and a panther would be pretty neat).
I love the flavor and mechanics and style and effort behind this game, but it has some obscene balance flaws. Too many pieces feel like trap options, while too many others feel like "too little, too late" if you haven't been building specifically towards them.
I had a run with two sirens, two game devs, two thieves, a bunch of humans, and a tax accountant. I got really lucky in my ability to really make my humans do some real work on the field, but it still wasn't nearly as effective as getting a single item (hell portal) on the first boss. It wasn't even enough to get me more than halfway down final boss.
My experiences with the diversity demon were similarly frustrating. I worked to get one of each kind of unit, only to realize that I had only seen one single "structure" in the game that stuck around permanently, making the demon practically useless.
Oh, and some of the destruction mechanics just don't work. I saw books destroy themselves at least three or four times and only saw one bookshelf created as a result. I think it has something to do with there being more than three adjacent to each other creating an overlap in triggers or something.
True the books have a bug or two (sometimes they don't make a bookshelf at all, really annoying)
Diversity demon is still pretty good without structures and items (Monster + Human + Beast + Undead + Construct + Demon is not too bad for early game)
I've found the agency is pretty good for destroying stuff. Not reliable, however.
All concerns voiced here are very valid and the game needs balancing and a less random form of randomness. Starting characters may also be great (those starting civilians really bloat the build and are especially a headache early on). Also some rarities should definitely not be showing up earlier in the game
Very fun idea, that will need some balance changes for it to work out great. I love the randomness. In the end after about 20-25 runs i made it to the 10k health boss and died there. My observations are:
There are a few pieces to your militia that get your far automatically. There is A LOT of pieces that just wont work at all, i was skipping so many additions to my deck, because they would not synergize or just hurt me.
I think a kind of weighting system and a slight priority weight for essential key synergy pieces is needed.
E.g. i get a thousand ferrets but DARRRRRR is never showing up (doesn't matter if i take a ferret early or wait to see if he shows).
Few times the first boss rolled me, because i just couldn't get anything. Well, that's rogue for ya i guess. But just adding blindly until the third boss and realize there is zero synergy but i could not improve it by my choice is frustrating. That happened a lot in those runs. When i got a synergy rolling, suddenly nothing would appear that makes sense (like having a bunch of hellhounds on the board but nothing to remove unnecessary additions and/or nothing to improve my situation beyond the "One part" hellgate addition.) Sure, my sample is small. But it feel like it could have some work done to enable runs. Not to make them easy and always work. But to nudge it a little to the synergies.
Another problem was beating the first bosses to fast as it limited the additions i got. No reward for a victory sucked too.
Bosses stack health a LOT quicker, than there is any gained defenses or my offense can deal. The pacifist seemed weird to me and the only other real one is a medkit that shows up rarely.
Androids didn't give each other the +1 for the one time I managed to recruit 3. (bug maybe)
Else, loved the art. Was laughing about the hell hound corgis. Beauty of an idea. Keep on working
for androids the description is confusing but it only works if there are 4 total androids on the field (3 OTHER androids plus that one)
6.5/10 no reroll mechanics. Okay, maybe not that low of a score, but in games like this if there aren't some kind of reroll or locking mechanics or their equivalent, it feels more like the game is playing you versus you playing the game.
The other main problem I'm feeling right now is that it almost feels more like a punishment to beat each enemy. You not only get no reward other than moving on, but also lose a chance to upgrade your militia.
Other than those two major points, I think it's a great game and hope to play more in the future.
After a bunch of trying...
...I got the hell portal really early and that just won the game on its own. Bioweapon to take out most of my starting humans, and before long the field was full of hellhounds and I was doing 1500-2500 damage per turn.
1 more bug:
I had an upgraded thief with about 68 base damage that was eaten by a venus mantrap. the damage of the man trap did not go up (it remained at 5 base).
thank you , will look into this!
Suggestion for the dev: The probabilities for the pieces seem pretty unbalanced now. It's not that it's too hard or easy, but there are too many pieces that are essentially non-viable because they only work in combination with other extremely rare pieces.
For example, there are at least three common/uncommon pieces that explicitly work together with Daaaar, who is "very rare." There are other pieces (rat, sheep, dire wolf) that are only viable with Daaar. I have not seen Daaar in the last two hours of playing.
Other examples of statistically nonviable pairings include librarian/author, mecha (tinkerer/soldier/scrap), vampires (succubus/...paladin?), Djinn (Whale/Sheep/Red Dragon?).
You might consider weighting the probability of certain pieces appearing based on the pieces that are on the board. Increasing the likelihood of scrap if you have tinkerer or alchemist, for example, or increasing the likelihood of red dragon based on the number of sheep or weredragons.
Considering i almost always get offered Darrrr befre even beating the first boss, i'd say Darrrr shows up quite frequently. All these other ones are very valid tho (haven't ever seen a vamp or djinn lol)
garbage collector is a bit op with the mimic lol
I've only beaten the game (10th boss) with Hellhounds and now Arack:
How did you get that much damage?
Every piece of webbing touching another creates a chain, with total bonus to adjacent Arack of 2^(number of webbing in the chain).
I got lucky because all of my webbing was touching, and all three Arack were touching the massive web.
Oh okay, that explained the crazy damage (But man you’re lucky as hell).
Just beat it with Darrrrr and Goo
This game is so much fun! I had fun trying to find a way to deal as much damage as possible. I can only imagine how strong later bosses are. Great Job!
wow this is super super super cool very nice addition to the genre
Arguably superior to felines.
I'd like to report a bug: giant fungus doesn't seem to be triggering damage as expected
I’m jealous. I kept taking sheep and never getting Darr. I finally managed to get him after like, three hours, cloned him twice…and lost because he never ended up next to quite enough beasts on the final boss.
Yeah I feel you. 90% of my runs start with finding 2/3 cool combo units and then getting stranded with a half-baked strategy. Zombies with no paladins, librarians with no books, gold and no gold dragons... This game has a lot of potential but it can be really frustrating sometimes
I've never summoned the Djinn (water+fire->steam; steamx4->Djinn), and I doubt anyone has.
That's despite the steam being broken so that it doesn't actually evaporate
Oh my god, that is so ass. If I had spent the hours necessary to get the Djinn, and wound up with that, I might scream. It makes mutant colony look like a great combo reward.
I think this is my biggest problem too. There are just too many dead-ends. I'm thinking a few simple ways to fix this would include the ability to "see ahead" to what pieces you'll get in the future (allowing you to devise a strategy) or giving you 6 choices instead of 3.
This is amazing! Something really special and so fun and addictive!
A few pieces of feedback:
1. the core gameplay is a bit too random - I would like to feel like I have a chance to win if I make the right decisions but I think for most runs the win is impossible because of factors outside of my control. I wonder can you add more choices (lock and reroll options after each fight? A special ability/unlock which allows you to swap a limited number deployed units on the field.
2. Right now feels way too hard to win!
3. books don't seem to work as described... I get 2 books next to each other often and they just destroy each other.
4. can we get an awarded unit after killing a boss? right now sometimes its optimal to take a worse unit so as to get another upgrade.
5. would love to see more ways to remove units other than the IAO
6. any thoughts about giving the player something to start the run off based off a previous run?
Awesome stuff!
1. more thing. I don't think ascetic works as intended.
right now if you get him near the end of a fight and kill a boss that's already at half health in the following turn he dies anyway and I think he should stick around for the next fight (unless thats a one-shot!)
This game is super fun and I managed to find a combo that dealt quite a significant amount of damage! However I don't actually know how it worked so unfortunately when the damage went back to double digits I couldn't figure out why. Really cool and addictive game!
Cycad tendril's bugged
Ok, it isn't. the thing that evolves from the sprout is named wrong
Says +1 base damage for each deployment but am somehow getting 18 deploys with 1 base damage.
i love the art style and the sheer wildness of this game, although i had a doctor, a medkit, and one health, but the medkit didn't heal me to full like the doctor said it would!
I can NOT get past Diabeet, dudes massiv
10/10 game I play it on my pc but I would love it to be playable on mobile
PSA: This game is actually 10 levels long.
If you beat the final boss it gives you the same transition as if you died, so it's easy to think you lost on the 10th level of 50.
it should go to the end game sequence, unless you mash through it, I can make sure it waits a little before letting you skip.. thanks!
Is the endgame sequence another text scroll? It's possible I just didn't read carefully enough to realize it's different text.
I'd suggest no skipping for the end game sequence. It happens rarely enough that it's probably worth making sure the player sees it.
I found a bug in the game, it's giving me the "Internal Affairs Officers" affect even after i've started a new game. It seems it did it when I closed out intentionally? Idk. I love your game by the way!
oh I see, you closed out. Got it! yeah that makes sense, will fix that in the next patch! thanks!
FYI, the books don't transform into bookshelves. Maybe I don't understand how the interaction is supposed to work, but the books are just self-destructing without adding any bookshelves into my militia.
Great game otherwise!
Edit: I got a bookshelf, so it does work, but I'm still not sure why it only worked after destroying around 8 books.
Second Edit: the book strategy feels extremely weak. You need the writer, who deals 0 damage to generate a bunch of books. The books also deal 0 damage, and you need them to generate a bookshelf. And then the bookshelf, finally... deals 0 damage but increases the damage of your librarians! I haven't even found a single librarian yet! The strategy requires you to jump through a lot of loops for a very strange payoff.
thanks for the feedback! we are trying to collect data on balancing. Yeah sounds like they might need a small tweak.
if I can provide some more feedback, I think there should be more ways to remove your troops. Especially those 5 civilians at the start of the game, it feels like you're permanently playing with 20 free spots because you couldn't find IA
we are looking into adding more mechanics...
portal + demon slayer for the win
Grey Goo + Golden Goo is by far the best combo i've seen. I beat every boss in about 2 rounds and the last boss was like 4 rounds. Each Golden Goo was dealing about 200 damage.
woah!
combine that w/ replicating spiders :)
cockatrice egg best unit. undebatable
they grow up mean to hunmans!
they also grow up to create more OP cockatrice, or eat their eggs to gain power, its very OP, I once got it on Kull, then fumbled the run, made it to sixth boss. Deathworm and replicating spider would also be a good duo
i got to lvl 10 after hours of playing
Great game, I love you Dejobaan Games, please make more stuff.
Finally after 3 days I finished the game. It was very fun.
Tried to make the build Demon's Slayer + Hellhound but no luck to pick these two together.
What build did you finish the game with? As far as I can tell there are only 2 or 3 pieces that can possibly beat the game, because only those pieces scale exponentially. Grey goo+Gold Goo, Hellhound...???
With Hellhound alone I eventually had almost every space filled with hellhounds, and still couldn't get past level 10. That makes every other "good" piece look worthless.
Yeah, I did with hellhound portal. It's the easiest build if you get in early game
It seems like one of the only builds that can do the 1000 dp/turn that you need to beat the 10th boss. If you got enough webbing you could theoretically do it with the Arakh, but I think your damage would accelerate too fast and you would end up facing the final boss without enough webbing to consistently deal 1000+ (you need 10 contiguous webs+arakh), or you would accelerate too slow and die on an earlier boss.
the "internal aifairs officer" is pretty risky due to glitching but its an amazing fun game .
The glitch prevents the game from moving foward, and sometimes persists even after resetting the run.
For me it's the best deployment for fix messed up builds haha.
do you know what actions you did to glitch it? i.e. could you reproduce it? Would love to know if its a bug, I haven't had any reports of this. Thanks!
I got to #9 🥺
"Death Worm Central!"
I like the way you think about Garbage Collectors...
Amazing game! One recommendation would be providing descriptions of things monsters turn into, so I know if I want to use it!
yeah, the chaos of this work of art is like a good acid trip. very confusing but fun. 10/10
Cycad and Cycad Tenndril have their descriptions exchanged
Very good game!
good catch!! and thank you!
Also, the description page for Diabeet shows the name Chonk Monster instead of the correct name
A lot of fun, really impressed with the variety of interactions. I must suck though cause I can't seem to make it past the 5th boss, my rng sucks...
Haha y'all made it harder since I last played. Congrats on getting it out there, great game!
looks great, cant wait for a full versio
To be honest I wasn't expecting too much of this game, but this is one of the best roguelikes that I've played. Definitely would play the full version.
If you planning to doing some translation for PT-BR I can help you.
Awesome game seems a coplete release, would love to buy it on a store
This game is a blast! The massive amount of different units you can have allows for a large variety of potential strategies. It also makes for some very funny combinations. The different terrain and constructs you can have also adds a lot of depth to the game. I really like the art for units and bosses as well, it's a great retro throwback! I’m definitely going to be playing this a lot more! Awesome work on this!