Very nice game, very creative with the mechanic that units are returned to how they were at end of preparations. Had more than one "aha!" moment thanks to that. Hope to see this game continue to be developed more in the future!
That said, not all indulgences or items felt equal, and I'm nut sure that was intended. Specifically, the items that gave a flat bonus at the start of combat for creatures in the same row felt very weak, and keys very situational. The jester hat was situationaly very useful, same thing for the pickaxe and poison, and the magical book had a fun minigame in trying to keep your unit alive so you could prock it more than once, but ultimately did not scale well. The items that change the way your unit targets others I couldn't quite figure out a way to make use of.
The indulgences that give a one-time bonus or +1 atriute to a random follower felt very weak when compared to the ones that grant +2/+2 to a creature in a specific spot, same thing for the one that buffs creatures without powers, since as far as I can tell you can only reliably get one of those, namely the fish, and it wasn't particularly impressive. Indugences that buff creatures on level up felt a bit better, but still sinificantly far behind the ones uaranteed a bonus every turn. The ones to buff summons also didn't feel significant, since summons tend to be weak, and so +1 health isn't onna save them
Also was a tad surprized that the underestimated doesn't start summining creatures of higher levels once you level it up. Could be intentional to keep it an early unit or as an aternative hermit that creates more, but worst, bodies and in vertical positions relative to itself, but made it so our blind friend did not scale as well into the late game as I hoped
Was able to win despite that thanks to stacking buffs on a brawler thou. Two indulgences that give +2/+2 to the creature at the center plus stacking one of those nurse ladies that permanently increases health onto him, as well as managing a couple of other upgraded creatures for support
I did come across a glitch thou:
My game froze after this. In case the screensht isn't clear, the madam lady dying activated the underesmated's ability, wich in turn summoned another underestimated, causing the original to level up and recieve a +2 from one of my 'relics'
I think it was the blond lady attacking, but now I'm not sure
So I played the new update and here is what I think: It feels quite a bit harder than the previous version, the enemy has some really strong units in the first battle which caused me to lose a few time. However, once I got the plus 2 buff on 3 tiles before the end of preparation it got a lot easier and I was able to breeze through much of the second battle and pretty much all of the third battle except for the last battle in which I tied and then won the game.
Here's what I think of the items:
not really good, honestly I don't think its worth investing in items except for the first battle they all seem kind of bad for the most part after you start scaling up your stats which you absolutely need to do to have any shot at winning.
Here's what I think of the units:
the disposable: might be okay early-mid game when you don't have a lot of stats or have a discard ability but overall it's not that good and there are better options.
The selfless: surprisingly quite decent, not that great early game but at mid and late game getting to plus 7 hp given actually isn't that bad since stats matter a lot late game.
the manifester: a bit of a weird one, he's actually pretty good early game all the way to late game if your smart and put him in the hold slot since when you sell him he sells for 3 gold and is an extra body on board which is nice. He does fall off a bit late game since the bonus is a bit redundant but is essentially free if you keep him in the hold slot for 2 round. I feel like if the game was a bit more balanced around wanting to hold units It would be more balanced. As of now he's essentially just a free body to sell whenever.
The brawler: not very good
The madame: for some reason I don't get this unit that often, the unit however, is very good from the beginning to the end of the game since the affect to use ability's on death is extremely useful.
The pig: not that great might be okay early game but besides that not really worth it.
The dog: didn't use it that much, maybe the affect scales a lot after a while but I'm not sure how good it would be since the starting ability isn't very good.
The underestimated: extremely good early and mid game, falls off a bit late game since everything is super overstated but it's still very good. Summoning units, even low stated ones is super helpful which leads me to.....
The hermit: definitely the best unit in the game due to it's ability to get very high unit stats mid to late game. I originally thought the underestimated was the best but after beating the game hermit definitely seems the best due to how much attack the spawned unit have after being upgraded.
the miner: not entirely sure how to use it? I think it just triggers the cell affect again which isn't that good.
the fish: not very good, would only be good if your trying to infinitely get gold abusing the item sell ability feature overall a bad unit.
the caregiver: I believe the stat increase is permanent so this card is really good, probably the second or third best unit in the game. Permanent stat increases are a must in this game.
Abilities: the stat increases ones for the tiles at the end of the preparation phase are definitely the best ones since you want to scale quickly. discard attack one isn't half bad either. pretty sure you can infinitely reroll if you get enough abilities where you get gold by selling items but it's not worth it since you really want the stat boosting abilities. the ability where it deals damage to an enemy equal to your gold is really good late game where your build is pretty much established. also, having the positive affect tile is nice.
In conclusion: pretty fun game but is probably way too hard early game right now, I think it took me like 5 attempts to get a good enough build going to endgame but the average player probably won't get pas the first battle or if they do their gonna lose pretty quickly in the second due to how RNG reliant the game is right now. most units seem not worth it and the game seems to be falling into a trap one of the previous versions had which is the unit spawning being so much better than the other options you have to pivot into that and nothing else. Overall it's a fun game and I look forward to seeing the future builds!
Items: what did you think of the target changing items? I'm surprised you don't like book of the true cell, i take that pretty often. Also pickaxe is extremely powerful : )
Madame: yes, that unit is actually more rare because it's so powerful. I will probably add a visual indication of this rarity at some point. Madame + other units is extremely powerful, and if you use poison on madame during the buy phase you can make a bunch of things permanent that aren't usually. This is something I really hope to be central to the game and plan to create more ways for that kind of strategy to occur.
Pig: I think madame/pig combo is pretty good. you can generate essence in battle that carries over to next buy phase.
Miner: This is great feedback. Miner is actually the other currently rare unit because it's so powerful. Essentially, miner triggers cell effects in a way that makes them permanent (where usually they are temporary). This is the same for the pickaxe item. I think I will probably just add to the descriptions something to tell players explicitly that it makes the cell effect permanent.
Fish: what do you mean by "trying to infinitely get gold abusing the item sell ability feature"?
Caregiver: Yes it's permanent. Overall, I really hope to better teach that anything in the preparation phase is permanent, so that people realize how powerful it is to trigger other abilities during the preparation phase.
Summoning: I think it's quite interesting how much you tend towards the summoning!In my playthroughs I actually tend to go for Brawler and Dog centered builds! I do think it's true that maybe the hermit can be nerfed a bit.
As always, I want to thank you so much for this feedback - it is incredibly valuable. I'd love to put you in the playtesting and feedback section of the credits if you'd like - I can use your username or whatever name you'd prefer. Just give me a confirmation in a reply if that sounds ok : )
for the book of the true cell it's not horrible, I used it when I won, but enemies just have such high stats on top of some enemies being buffed when damaged maybe? wasn't really sure about that. But it just doesn't really do much since 6 damage isn't super consequential on top of it being potentially unreliable with the negative cell effect potentially killing the useful unit. Target changing items are potentially useful, but are completely overshadowed by how affective unit spawning is. I considered using the attack changing ones but decided not to since there wasn't enough synergy reason to. I ended up just putting the attack +1 stat orbs on all the units along with a key since I didn't know how long the run would be. I definitely value attack more than defense this patch due to the enemy buffing if it survives. I have completely forgot how poison worked honestly, would be nice if you have a description for that.
Something I might have forgotten to mention was the cell effects you get. I just ended up choosing the negative cell one since I didn't know how many rounds there were going to be, the movement one is potentially a lot worse since you want to be matching units for the later levels. Overall the debuff cell could probably use some work since I ended up just having 2 future matching units die which essentially negated the debuff cell. For the positive cell affect it's not really worth it since your sacrificing scaling for a temporary win which could potentially snowball into a loss, I didn't use it my winning attempt since it seemed to be somewhat of a trap if you want to get to late game. Short term gain long term loss essentially.
Item abuse: essentially by getting 2 of the item selling ability that gives plus 1 gold upon selling it you can kind of infinitely reroll in theory. unit+key costs 4. fish/pig+key is 3. you get 2 gold from selling items I believe so if you get fish/pig+key that's 1 extra gold you can use to reroll till you get the item you want.
Brawler and dog at first glance don't seem that good so I am less inclined to invest in them. Brawler giving more attack on kill requires that you kill while in late game your essentially just trading everything and the the first stage feels very important in setting up a proper build. Since I didn't build dog I am not sure how big the attack increase gets.
Also, for pickaxe it's not clear what works with it and what doesn't since I don't think it worked with hermit or the death abilites.
I did also have the game crash once when quitting initiation unfortunately I am not quite sure how to replicate it
So I have played the new update and this is what I think:
the game seems to be suffering from problems I felt an earlier build of this game had in which unit summoning is the best strategy since it tends to generate a huge amount of points by using the hermit and the underestimated, but mostly the underestimated. This makes the mirror rituals mode feel kind of bad since you have to reroll till you have a decent shot at beating the AI's 2 hermits. Also, I have gotten an indulgence that is based off of how many non-effect units there are before preparation. I assume this was added accidentally. I also found a lot of the indulgences pretty useless since they required discarding a unit from the grid and without the movement indulgence that was there previously they aren't really worth taking since you need a key to move them.
Hey! Thanks so much for coming back again and leaving feedback.
I haven't gotten a lot of feedback on the mirror rituals in the new version so this is very helpful.
I definitely agree with all you're saying. I'll have to do some work on the team composition and balancing for fighting against same-unit teams like in the mirror rituals. I also think there's definitely a problem to be figured out with the difficulty of discarding locked units.
As for the non-effect unit buff indulgence, it is possible to use poison on The Hermit to create 2 bone men and then have this buff them. I'm not certain yet how viable of a strategy that is, but I'm still playing around with it!
I normally don't comment, but let me say what I think about each unit in the game and the best strategies:
1. manifester+ disposable combo is very overpowered since you can just hold disposable and distill manifester to get +3/+3 every turn or even +6/+6 if you can get 2 maifester.
2. zombie is too good, 5/5 start of game plus the various potential buffs make zombie way too strong should be nerfed.
3. most items in this game suck currently which is unfortunate, they just dont do enough to warrant the price.
4. selfless seems like best balanced card, giving aoe buffs is good and scales into the late game.
5. understimated is okay but zombie is much better.
6. attack buff guy is really bad, he doesnt keep his stat buff ad dies too easily.
7. trickster is bad doesnt scale well into late game.
8. hermits OKAY with a summon build I guess.
9. manifester is very good with the combo not very good otherwise
10. disposable is very good especially with the discard coin buff.
overall the game seems a lot easier compared to previous builds which is not a bad thing, unfortunantly stat buffs seem to be the way to go currently due to the limited spaces.
thanks for taking the time to write this out : ) i hope to keep improving the balance in future iterations. and thanks for playing multiple builds of the game.
i did make this build easier than previous builds to see how that felt. i'll have to keep experimenting with that.
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Very nice game, very creative with the mechanic that units are returned to how they were at end of preparations. Had more than one "aha!" moment thanks to that. Hope to see this game continue to be developed more in the future!
That said, not all indulgences or items felt equal, and I'm nut sure that was intended. Specifically, the items that gave a flat bonus at the start of combat for creatures in the same row felt very weak, and keys very situational. The jester hat was situationaly very useful, same thing for the pickaxe and poison, and the magical book had a fun minigame in trying to keep your unit alive so you could prock it more than once, but ultimately did not scale well. The items that change the way your unit targets others I couldn't quite figure out a way to make use of.
The indulgences that give a one-time bonus or +1 atriute to a random follower felt very weak when compared to the ones that grant +2/+2 to a creature in a specific spot, same thing for the one that buffs creatures without powers, since as far as I can tell you can only reliably get one of those, namely the fish, and it wasn't particularly impressive. Indugences that buff creatures on level up felt a bit better, but still sinificantly far behind the ones uaranteed a bonus every turn. The ones to buff summons also didn't feel significant, since summons tend to be weak, and so +1 health isn't onna save them
Also was a tad surprized that the underestimated doesn't start summining creatures of higher levels once you level it up. Could be intentional to keep it an early unit or as an aternative hermit that creates more, but worst, bodies and in vertical positions relative to itself, but made it so our blind friend did not scale as well into the late game as I hoped
Was able to win despite that thanks to stacking buffs on a brawler thou. Two indulgences that give +2/+2 to the creature at the center plus stacking one of those nurse ladies that permanently increases health onto him, as well as managing a couple of other upgraded creatures for support
I did come across a glitch thou:
My game froze after this. In case the screensht isn't clear, the madam lady dying activated the underesmated's ability, wich in turn summoned another underestimated, causing the original to level up and recieve a +2 from one of my 'relics'
I think it was the blond lady attacking, but now I'm not sure
Was playing on Google Chrome, on Windows
Thanks so much for your thoughts! It's all super helpful.
Sorry that that bug borked your run : ( Thanks for the details, I'll be looking into it.
So I played the new update and here is what I think: It feels quite a bit harder than the previous version, the enemy has some really strong units in the first battle which caused me to lose a few time. However, once I got the plus 2 buff on 3 tiles before the end of preparation it got a lot easier and I was able to breeze through much of the second battle and pretty much all of the third battle except for the last battle in which I tied and then won the game.
Here's what I think of the items:
not really good, honestly I don't think its worth investing in items except for the first battle they all seem kind of bad for the most part after you start scaling up your stats which you absolutely need to do to have any shot at winning.
Here's what I think of the units:
the disposable: might be okay early-mid game when you don't have a lot of stats or have a discard ability but overall it's not that good and there are better options.
The selfless: surprisingly quite decent, not that great early game but at mid and late game getting to plus 7 hp given actually isn't that bad since stats matter a lot late game.
the manifester: a bit of a weird one, he's actually pretty good early game all the way to late game if your smart and put him in the hold slot since when you sell him he sells for 3 gold and is an extra body on board which is nice. He does fall off a bit late game since the bonus is a bit redundant but is essentially free if you keep him in the hold slot for 2 round. I feel like if the game was a bit more balanced around wanting to hold units It would be more balanced. As of now he's essentially just a free body to sell whenever.
The brawler: not very good
The madame: for some reason I don't get this unit that often, the unit however, is very good from the beginning to the end of the game since the affect to use ability's on death is extremely useful.
The pig: not that great might be okay early game but besides that not really worth it.
The dog: didn't use it that much, maybe the affect scales a lot after a while but I'm not sure how good it would be since the starting ability isn't very good.
The underestimated: extremely good early and mid game, falls off a bit late game since everything is super overstated but it's still very good. Summoning units, even low stated ones is super helpful which leads me to.....
The hermit: definitely the best unit in the game due to it's ability to get very high unit stats mid to late game. I originally thought the underestimated was the best but after beating the game hermit definitely seems the best due to how much attack the spawned unit have after being upgraded.
the miner: not entirely sure how to use it? I think it just triggers the cell affect again which isn't that good.
the fish: not very good, would only be good if your trying to infinitely get gold abusing the item sell ability feature overall a bad unit.
the caregiver: I believe the stat increase is permanent so this card is really good, probably the second or third best unit in the game. Permanent stat increases are a must in this game.
Abilities: the stat increases ones for the tiles at the end of the preparation phase are definitely the best ones since you want to scale quickly. discard attack one isn't half bad either. pretty sure you can infinitely reroll if you get enough abilities where you get gold by selling items but it's not worth it since you really want the stat boosting abilities. the ability where it deals damage to an enemy equal to your gold is really good late game where your build is pretty much established. also, having the positive affect tile is nice.
In conclusion: pretty fun game but is probably way too hard early game right now, I think it took me like 5 attempts to get a good enough build going to endgame but the average player probably won't get pas the first battle or if they do their gonna lose pretty quickly in the second due to how RNG reliant the game is right now. most units seem not worth it and the game seems to be falling into a trap one of the previous versions had which is the unit spawning being so much better than the other options you have to pivot into that and nothing else. Overall it's a fun game and I look forward to seeing the future builds!
Thank you so much for writing this!
Items: what did you think of the target changing items? I'm surprised you don't like book of the true cell, i take that pretty often. Also pickaxe is extremely powerful : )
Madame: yes, that unit is actually more rare because it's so powerful. I will probably add a visual indication of this rarity at some point. Madame + other units is extremely powerful, and if you use poison on madame during the buy phase you can make a bunch of things permanent that aren't usually. This is something I really hope to be central to the game and plan to create more ways for that kind of strategy to occur.
Pig: I think madame/pig combo is pretty good. you can generate essence in battle that carries over to next buy phase.
Miner: This is great feedback. Miner is actually the other currently rare unit because it's so powerful. Essentially, miner triggers cell effects in a way that makes them permanent (where usually they are temporary). This is the same for the pickaxe item. I think I will probably just add to the descriptions something to tell players explicitly that it makes the cell effect permanent.
Fish: what do you mean by "trying to infinitely get gold abusing the item sell ability feature"?
Caregiver: Yes it's permanent. Overall, I really hope to better teach that anything in the preparation phase is permanent, so that people realize how powerful it is to trigger other abilities during the preparation phase.
Summoning: I think it's quite interesting how much you tend towards the summoning!In my playthroughs I actually tend to go for Brawler and Dog centered builds! I do think it's true that maybe the hermit can be nerfed a bit.
As always, I want to thank you so much for this feedback - it is incredibly valuable. I'd love to put you in the playtesting and feedback section of the credits if you'd like - I can use your username or whatever name you'd prefer. Just give me a confirmation in a reply if that sounds ok : )
you can use my username.
for the book of the true cell it's not horrible, I used it when I won, but enemies just have such high stats on top of some enemies being buffed when damaged maybe? wasn't really sure about that. But it just doesn't really do much since 6 damage isn't super consequential on top of it being potentially unreliable with the negative cell effect potentially killing the useful unit. Target changing items are potentially useful, but are completely overshadowed by how affective unit spawning is. I considered using the attack changing ones but decided not to since there wasn't enough synergy reason to. I ended up just putting the attack +1 stat orbs on all the units along with a key since I didn't know how long the run would be. I definitely value attack more than defense this patch due to the enemy buffing if it survives. I have completely forgot how poison worked honestly, would be nice if you have a description for that.
Something I might have forgotten to mention was the cell effects you get. I just ended up choosing the negative cell one since I didn't know how many rounds there were going to be, the movement one is potentially a lot worse since you want to be matching units for the later levels. Overall the debuff cell could probably use some work since I ended up just having 2 future matching units die which essentially negated the debuff cell. For the positive cell affect it's not really worth it since your sacrificing scaling for a temporary win which could potentially snowball into a loss, I didn't use it my winning attempt since it seemed to be somewhat of a trap if you want to get to late game. Short term gain long term loss essentially.
Item abuse: essentially by getting 2 of the item selling ability that gives plus 1 gold upon selling it you can kind of infinitely reroll in theory. unit+key costs 4. fish/pig+key is 3. you get 2 gold from selling items I believe so if you get fish/pig+key that's 1 extra gold you can use to reroll till you get the item you want.
Brawler and dog at first glance don't seem that good so I am less inclined to invest in them. Brawler giving more attack on kill requires that you kill while in late game your essentially just trading everything and the the first stage feels very important in setting up a proper build. Since I didn't build dog I am not sure how big the attack increase gets.
Also, for pickaxe it's not clear what works with it and what doesn't since I don't think it worked with hermit or the death abilites.
I did also have the game crash once when quitting initiation unfortunately I am not quite sure how to replicate it
Cool! I'd dig downloads if at all possible, incl. mac even if untested
hey sorry i'm not able to put downloads up here right now - the steam demo though is the same as this and downloadable, but no mac right now : /
Thank for replying and pointing to the steam demo!
So I have played the new update and this is what I think:
the game seems to be suffering from problems I felt an earlier build of this game had in which unit summoning is the best strategy since it tends to generate a huge amount of points by using the hermit and the underestimated, but mostly the underestimated. This makes the mirror rituals mode feel kind of bad since you have to reroll till you have a decent shot at beating the AI's 2 hermits. Also, I have gotten an indulgence that is based off of how many non-effect units there are before preparation. I assume this was added accidentally. I also found a lot of the indulgences pretty useless since they required discarding a unit from the grid and without the movement indulgence that was there previously they aren't really worth taking since you need a key to move them.
Hey! Thanks so much for coming back again and leaving feedback.
I haven't gotten a lot of feedback on the mirror rituals in the new version so this is very helpful.
I definitely agree with all you're saying. I'll have to do some work on the team composition and balancing for fighting against same-unit teams like in the mirror rituals. I also think there's definitely a problem to be figured out with the difficulty of discarding locked units.
As for the non-effect unit buff indulgence, it is possible to use poison on The Hermit to create 2 bone men and then have this buff them. I'm not certain yet how viable of a strategy that is, but I'm still playing around with it!
Anyways, thanks again : )
The game wanted me to use the true cell.
5️⃣5️⃣5️⃣5️⃣5️⃣5️⃣5️⃣5️⃣
nice :)
I normally don't comment, but let me say what I think about each unit in the game and the best strategies:
1. manifester+ disposable combo is very overpowered since you can just hold disposable and distill manifester to get +3/+3 every turn or even +6/+6 if you can get 2 maifester.
2. zombie is too good, 5/5 start of game plus the various potential buffs make zombie way too strong should be nerfed.
3. most items in this game suck currently which is unfortunate, they just dont do enough to warrant the price.
4. selfless seems like best balanced card, giving aoe buffs is good and scales into the late game.
5. understimated is okay but zombie is much better.
6. attack buff guy is really bad, he doesnt keep his stat buff ad dies too easily.
7. trickster is bad doesnt scale well into late game.
8. hermits OKAY with a summon build I guess.
9. manifester is very good with the combo not very good otherwise
10. disposable is very good especially with the discard coin buff.
overall the game seems a lot easier compared to previous builds which is not a bad thing, unfortunantly stat buffs seem to be the way to go currently due to the limited spaces.
thanks for taking the time to write this out : ) i hope to keep improving the balance in future iterations. and thanks for playing multiple builds of the game.
i did make this build easier than previous builds to see how that felt. i'll have to keep experimenting with that.
no problem, I like the game and hope it continues to improve, its a pretty unique concept
Pro tips: you can distill a poison (or key) then equip the weak distillation on The Disposable to get permanent buff on your character for free!!!
🤘🏽