I'm a bit disappointed that you block picking up cards when the deck runs out - most games will shuffle the deck at that point. Score would have been higher but I kept having to end turns early beacuse I ran out of cards.
Oh man. I love this game, played it a bunch in beta, and now it has so many improvements!
The good - More cards! I enjoy the balance of the cards, it feels a lot less easy to win.
Being able to buy an extra turn is nice, and I'm currently working on beating it with out buying an extra turn at all. 4 is the lowest I've gotten.
The game in general is wonderful. I enjoy the rouge like deck building, the score and money system, having to take risks sometimes when you need a certain card and have 6+ left to draw.
The bad -
Not really bad, just things that aren't good.
The reroll feels bad, since card prices go up with each level, there is a tipping point of spending the reroll not allowing you to buy any more cards.
I'm colorblind. Tools/action look the same. Thats frustrating to work with.
The "this is my opinion and doesnt reflect the mechanics, or game play since its just an opinion"
I struggle with the only 6 cards per shop, if i want to try new strategies, its next to impossible to do so with any of the cards that will require other cards to sync with.
Lastly other ideas-
Honestly just a mode where you have a certian amount to spend, and you have to beat the last level, or a sand box to test out new strategies and see how the cards work. could be cool.
Honestly all in all Amazing game, and i will keep working on getting the 3 turn victory
great game, love your general set up and theres a lot good going on. the music is fantastic, awesome choice i love it.
my only real complaint or critique, would be that the game feels extremely limiting, like when you know what you're supposed to be doing the games not HARD but it honestly feels like 80%+ of the card pool are either useless or actively detrimental to your ability to win.
if that was how it was on brutal sure, i wouldn't have a problem that's how it's supposed to work, but no that's how it is regardless of difficulty. even on relaxed you really can't fuck around if you want to get far/win. you have a bit of room but god forbid you pick up anything that isn't a cantrip, i got to the point where i honestly think prospect isn't worth it. the game is fun and interesting and worth it but boy does it need to be loosened up a bit.
my suggestion? increase the number of stops, so that you can allow the player a bit more leeway, on lower difficulties give the player more rounds and/or more energy to work with. make it so relaxed becomes hard to lose, and brutal really tests the limits of a players ability. and consider adding in a sort of infinite mode so you can see how far you can go with a deck.
one of my favorite things to find in games like this is broken strategies that let you push the game past what anyone thought plausable. i think that is here but i think some of the cards should probably be ballanced out a bit more because again as is, most of the cards just arn't really playable.
GL and TYVM for sharing this, its a great game with lots of potential that absolutly scratches that itch.
He's going Lens almost every turn + lots of Prospect along the way too. You can see he ended the run with over 200 ore remaining, so probably a lot of that upgrading came during the final stage as well.
He has 6 cards that don't draw cards, so occasionally the minecart will be on the bottom and he doesn't get to play his whole deck. But usually he'll have the option to play the whole thing each turn. So once he finishes the final stage score he has the option to go "draw whole deck, play Ore, Prospect Scorium" to run up the numbers for the screenshot. Maybe he will reply but I would guess something like 15 or 18 of the buff points came from the final stage, and probably 12 in the stage before. Once you get the deck very streamlined you can strongly accelerate the size of the resources because you can buff your best one (and play it if needed) every turn.
If you look at my gem and cube posts i use a combo that you get axe or in theory compass you draw your big card then prospect your big card then play it with trowel (0 cost tool play a resource) alternatively energy generation to play your big resource works too, lenses also are very helpful for it too but i didnt get offered them in my shops
"It honestly feels like 80%+ of the card pool are either useless or actively detrimental to your ability to win." I had the same initial impression but gradually more of the card pool opened up to me.
My picks for "Trash tier" either Quartz Ore that costs energy / wants lots of buffs (Quartz Ore is my pick for single worst card) Treasure Map Wrench
Semi-Trash Upgraders not named Prospect/Lens Axolotl, Pet Rock
Everything else I think is fine (or at least interesting to make work & feels good when you get there)
I think you'll find a wider range of cards than you realized are good for Prospect grinding (especially +Energy, buff targets & enablers), and many of the others can be built into viable decks that are not mostly about Prospect grinding.
First time trying out cube, to be honest i think cube is kinda meh even though i won with it I feel like overall its kinda weak because to work it needs tool support and other ores have comparable upsides or are better ( the +1 per upgrade seams to be similar numbers while not needing tool support, score pando has ore that also kinda scales with it, kaz support is stuff you basically always want anyways meteors and geodes and draw). Drill theoretically has good synergy with it but every time you use it you arnt going to have energy to upgrade the cube and feels bad to not upgrade it and also has its on energy issues that are harder to resolve because you cant cheat it out with a tool so you basically need a super thin deck or get really lucky with the most expensive card in the game? minecart. Corkscrew in theory works well with it to but corkscrew feels to similar to prospect for me to really want to add it, and seams like it would make prospect turn into a brick knowing theres a better version in my deck
I have a long post below talking about card balance and strategy. I will write a long post here about the systems / design of the game.
Prospect: The most consistent strategy I've found so far (see my long post below) is to rely heavily on Prospect, buy useful cantrips like Ingot or Lens, buy a very small number of enabler cards like Amber(s) or The Creature and nothing else. Unless I'm trying to make a build work just for the fun of experimentation I am ignoring the vast majority of non-cantrip cards as well as the expensive minerals. I think starting with Prospect in the deck pushes me in this direction. If my 10th special card were randomized from a special pool of unique starter cards (or maybe I get to pick 1 of 3 which are drawn from a larger random pool), it would be fine for Prospect to power a very consistent strategy, because I wouldn't always get the Prospect to use. I think it would be more interesting if my special starter card has different synergies depending on which one I get and which pushes me in different directions in terms of shopping and how I play my turns right from the start. If I get Prospect every run it has to be powerful enough to really make a difference, but this risks it becoming the entire focal point of the game. If I don't get it every run it's fine to warp certain runs around it because I have plenty of other runs that are about other things.
Re-rolls: I didn't even see the re-roll shop button for the first few runs. I think it should be a large icon in the row with the cards. Even after I saw it, I almost never use it because it's just too expensive. I think it should have a fixed and mounting cost within each shop visit (maybe 5 -> 10 -> 15 etc) so that it's tempting to re-roll a bit but you might not find anything and it's expensive to re-roll a lot digging for particular cards. It's also nice if I get to feel rich later in the game when I am rich. If you scale up the costs of almost *everything* I never get to really feel rich. Maybe the cards scale up more in cost than they do at present but the re-roll stays cheap. (edit: as depth increases) The high cost of re-rolling contributes to my "no synergy" Prospect approach, since I know it's very risky to take cards early on that will require specific synergy later. If I post a victory screenshot and it shows re-rolls it's usually because I was about to start The Core and there's no more reason to save Ore, so I might as well roll for Helmet, Scorium Geode, etc.
Shop presentation: I really like the way that the shop gives 1 random Ore and 1 random Scorium. I apologize if this is already the case & I just didn't realize, but I think it would be nice if the shop had "slots" for Tool and Action plus a wild slot that could be anything. If certain cards are really unique or powerful maybe they only show up in that wild slot so they don't appear too often. (Edit: Also if re-rolls are cheaper you don't need to give so many slots of Shop).
Utilities: The utilities all scale up in cost. For Hourglass as you get more Hourglasses probably there's some diminishing returns, but it's such a powerful effect and I get so few that I don't think this is a problem at all. I think 350->999 is pretty steep and it's more interesting at like 500. If you just want it to max out at 350 then just don't give me the option to buy it again at all. (edit: maybe it says SOLD OUT instead of a price) Showing Hourglass at 999 when that's not intended to really be an option is kind of spiteful. For Dynamite it's not a super powerful effect but the value scales up as you get more (first you eliminate 10% of your chaff, then 11.1% then 12.5% etc) For Hammer, though, the value scales down (the buff is a smaller and smaller proportion of the value of the deck; initially I have 3 energy twice on 5-point cards so 30 points and the 3-point Hammer is 10%; quickly this reduces to negligible). In most builds I could play, I'm taking the 15-cost Hammer on my best Ore for early economy, then I'm only ever touching Hammer again if I'm rich or I really need to buff a particular card. I think it would be more interesting if Hammer was at a fixed cost (maybe 20) and its declining usefulness came from the fact that it's a smaller and smaller % contribution to the deck's power. A fixed-cost Hammer would also reduce the reliance on Prospect for upgrading cards. (Edit: also you might consider allowing multiple Hammer uses in a single shop visit similar to what I'm proposing for re-rolls, either at a fixed cost or an increasing cost within that 1 visit, ie 20->30->40 but then if you come visit the shop at the next Depth it's 20 again).
UI Maybe I'm just dumb, but it took me a lot of runs to understand the Depth and Hourglass icons. I was surprised for a while that I kept getting extra turns until I figured out that 0 counts as a turn, so the hourglass icon on the HUD is how many extra turns you have not counting the current turn (rather than how many total turns you have counting the current one). This might just be my fault - you have to do it one way or the other and either can be interpreted wrongly. When shopping it wasn't always clear to me what depth I'm about to start. Unless I'm mistaken I think it shows the depth of the level I just beat rather than the one I'm about to start, so when a run was going really smoothly and I wasn't thinking about depth sometimes I was surprised to start The Core. We also go from fight to shopping without seeing the world map (which saves a screen compared to doing map both before and after). I think if the a certain depth is map -> shop -> fight I get all the relevant information when I need it in the same number of screens as current at the cost of the flavor hit of separating the map and the expedition. I would much rather be told to prepare for a certain flavor of level with a certain score goal then do my shopping. Maybe I can check the map from the shop screen? (Edit: maybe the go-to-fight button has the difficulty icon from the map screen?) I think the Hourglass icon and Depth icon are kind of in conflict (assuming I've remembered and interpreted them correctly). The turn counter shows how many future turns I have, while the depth counter shows my previous depth.
Edited to add: Another thing - I think it would be cool to track "overkill" on level score so I can see that I did 250/225 or whatever. Even if this isn't tied to any reward in the game, it feels good to see how powerful my Scorium is getting. Right now my major power fantasy reward is from making lots of Ore but not really from making lots of Scorium. "Woah, I've got 500 Ore to spend, that's crazy" feels really good. "Woah my Huge Scorium beat that level in only 3 turns" feels good but there's not a lot of gradation of experience, especially once you get good at the game and something like that is a routine event. It's also helpful to the player to know exactly how strong he is, but that's quite secondary IMO; the player needs to be challenged so not everything that helps him is the right design.
thank you so much again for the thoughtful feedback! i can't implement it all right away but i can definitely use this to help improve the game a lot. i'm curious to hear what you think after the next balance patch as well so please check back soon!
I played the previous version of the game and could barely make it without gloves and radars. This version I beat only once, in relaxed mode, and not sure how I got there. I try to keep my deck slim and upgrade the resources but it requires a lot of luck the way I do it. I can't seem to grasp how to play this game. How does one build a 50+ value resource? Could you explain me the general meta?
I've had great success with the upgrade-heavy small-deck style.
If you scroll down to my long post you'll see a winning run on Adventure with a Scorium Amber as my only purchase, and several other variations powered almost purely by Prospect.
Prospect usage: Focus your Prospects on 1-2 cards of each resource as much as possible rather than splitting them around. Do use Prospect to buff both resource types. Do buff your starting resources; I am typically leaving the opening expedition with one buff on one Ore and on one Scorium. Early on you want to prioritize using Prospect again on your already-buffed cards over actually playing multiple buffed cards, unless you're going to miss a Scorium goal or you're trying to hit a particular Ore threshold (like 50 for the first Hourglass). Do consider moves like Prospecting one resource card but playing a different resource. Do focus buffs on special resources (in your screenshot that Geode should be at 10 and once you get 1 Scorium Pandorite almost all the buffs should be on it).
Shopping: I very rarely re-roll the shop. I like the 15-cost Hammer early on my most-buffed Ore but I'm not taking further Hammers unless I have a specific reason or I'm mega-rich. I take as many as I can get (in roughly this order) of Hourglass, Lens, Ingot (until the last few rounds), Dynamite, Brush & both Geodes (but only once the Geodes I already have are buffed to 10). If I'm rich or struggling for Score or starting Day 10, I consider Helmet. I'm also looking for a few build-defining cards like either Amber, Scorium Pandorite, Scorium Meteorite, Smelt or The Creature. I don't necessarily take more than 1 copy of any of these and usually my build will end up with 1-2 total of these cards. I often end with a deck that is effectively 5-7 cards plus however many cards I can play for free and which replace themselves (like Ingot and Lens).
Mineshaft isn't ideal for this style of build but as an effectively 10/10 mineral that *might* turn into a self-replacer it's worth considering also. It provides good economy early in the run so if you're running out of steam in the middle turns a 1st or 2nd shop Mineshaft might help.
Unless I'm deliberately trying to make some other build work I'm generally not taking any cards except the ones I just listed. Instead, almost all my money is going into Hourglass, Dynamite and cards that replace themselves for free while giving some benefit along the way.
The fewer non-replacers you buy the smaller your effective deck and the more money you have for Hourglass/Dynamite, both of which will mean you get to Prospect more often.
I basically start the game Prospecting every other turn and often by midgame I am able to Prospect every turn. It only takes a few combats of putting out +18 upgrades to get a couple of resource cards very large.
I think you are overlooking axe it doesnt play as nice as compass with amber but playing a resource for free with the draw is huge especially early before you have your deck super slim and i also think you are underestimating kaz (score in particular) it basically solves score in the early rounds letting you focus almost entirely on ore or upgrades and gets stronger as you add cards like geodes that are very cheap and upgrades on them are almost never a waste because you will play them every time you see them similar story on meteorites but not quite as good because they dont replace themselves
Thanks for all the tips. I focused on devising a strategy and managed to get a couple of wins by pushing ore in early game and spending extra on upgrading the scorium. I also had a some succes with Jeroba since it takes up less energy than Prospect, and the creature really seems to help with going through the whole deck each round.
I love this game but for some reason the full screen option doesn't exist for me this meant that my winning screenshot doesn't have my ore amount ore score amount. I won brutal purely based on only using "zero effect" cards: ingot, helmet, minecart, mineshaft (with enough of the other ones), and being basically capable of cycling through my whole deck each turn. I was done with 2 turns left on the core.
Hello! Thank you for making this Mr. ccdg; I've tried it this weekend & had great fun exploring your game.
I've only tried Adventure difficulty so far, and I've gotten to the point where I can almost always win. I'll post some screen shots below to discuss.
My thoughts on the game as it stands now... I am not necessarily advocating for any nerfs or buffs. I think it's fine to have stronger and weaker cards/strategies.
The zero-cost cantrips (Helmet, Ingot, Geodes, Brush and Lens) are quite strong and can go in basically any deck. If I don't have any direction yet or I have a completed build these can be close to auto-purchase for me. Ingot in particular guarantees good ore economy while asking very little of me in terms of deck construction or game actions (unlike say Ore Geode where I have to upgrade it or the tools where I might not always have the right mineral in hand).
You start the game essentially flooded on cards with insufficient energy to play everthing. This makes the card draw less than stellar, and it seems you really need to assemble some sort of synergy (like Sword or Mineshaft) to justify investing in card draw.
I've had very poor results with most things that cost 2 or more energy, including the Cat, Corkscrew, Drill and the expensive minerals. I think the culprit here is what I was just discussing with card draw - you start the game essentially flooded on cards and choked on energy. If you need special synergy (like expensive minerals + tools to mine them for you) you run the risk of not finding the cards at all plus the risk of failing to draw the right combination of cards.
I've tried several times to use the sits-in-your-hand minerals (that give you half the value and are retained across turns, sorry I forgot the name). Blocking a draw slot is such bad celerity that I've never had this look promising.
I've generally had bad results with the upgrade tools other than Prospect/Lens. I don't think there's anything objectively wrong with Screwdriver, Corkscrew, Aquifer or Jebroa but the fact that I already start with Prospect and it's already so energy-hungry makes it hard to justify other upgraders. If I'm building a big deck (so Prospect is lost in the shuffle and I might like to have other upgraders) probably I'm looking to spend resources on other things like Shield or Cat and I'm going to run into situations where I upgrade something and don't get to play it that turn.
Axolotl is my pick for the weakest card. Early on you shouldn't really need +Scorium and later on the card typing (no mineral synergies) and lack of scaling are issues.
*** On to some results (with screenshots)
I think the starting deck is close to winning. My opening plan is to Prospect both ore and score, trying to get one or two of each large while I dynamite the rest of my starting minerals throughout the game. If I can get an early The Creature, any Amber, Scorium Meteorite or Scorium Pandorite (which cover in various ways the heavy energy cost of Prospect) I consider that a complete build (or close to it) from a single purchase. I haven't played around much with pure Smelt but perhaps that's sufficient to make the starting deck winning also.
Prospect: You can see in the screenshot below I struggled with ore economy (700 is incredibly low for a winning build in my limited experience), but with Amber Scorium as my only purchase I was still able to buy some hourglasses and dynamite and take a comfortable win.
The Creature: Here's another victory with low economy, this time with a Meteorite + The Creature to help offset the cost of Prospect. I think The Creature is quite strong even without Meteorite, but the Meteorite helps keep up the tempo by allowing me to Creature and then Prospect and still have energy to play the Prospect-buffed card. In contrast if my only build enabler is The Creature I'm frequently going Creature then Prospect on a card that I don't get to play that same turn.
Scorium Pandorite: This isn't my best Scorium Pandorite run (you can see barely 2k income; I know I've had over 3k) but it ended on the biggest Pandorite. I think Scorium Pandorite is incredibly strong since your mineral upgrades effectively give you both score & ore. If I get an early Scorium Pandorite I commit to upgrading it heavily, which can lead to a bit of a lull in ore economy before it surpasses the base ore (which I'd have been upgrading before as you can see here), but then it really launches. The fact that I'm upgrading a Score mineral heavily tends to make this whole process feel pretty safe.
Sword: I haven't played a lot of tools so I was surprised at how smoothly this went the first time I tried Sword/Axe. The Wrenches were quite bad because my other tools put the minerals in play where the Wrenches can't see them anymore.
Mineshaft: This was a fun run but felt very unusual in terms of shop RNG. By the time I got more than 1 Mineshaft the challenge was already gone. I don't think the Mineshaft "combo" can be assembled particularly easily/consistently. More frequently Mineshaft is an early-game play for 10+10 resource generation and I just accept that it's going to fall off as the game goes on.
Again, I do think it's fine to have stronger and weaker cards/strategies.
If you wanted to even out the overall power level (while leaving some things stronger and weaker depending on the situation)
These are the changes I would test: Axolotl - current effect + draws 1 card Screwdriver - cost 0 energy for current effect Corkscrew - cost 3 energy but gives an absurdly large buff, like +7 or +10 Aquifer - current effect + if you only have minerals in hand +2 energy Jebroa - cost 0 energy, give a random resource +3 (or even +4) then discard a random resource Scorium Pandorite - (but not Ore Pandorite) either current effect + cost 2 energy or at least current effect + premium price in shop. Katzite - cost 2 energy + gives bonus equal to its own resource value for each prior mineral (so you can scale the bonus). Ingot - current card + premium price in shop Amber - current effect + cannot be upgraded beyond 30 Cave Cat - current card + cheap pricing in shop Compass - current card + cheap pricing in shop Pet Mole - current card + cheap pricing in shop
thank you so much for such a well-worded and thoughtful comment! i can't respond to it all but i can respond to some. but i definitely read all of it and will be taking it all into consideration when making the next balance patch!
on cantrips: totally agreed, both the amount of 0 cost cards in the game and their power level warps the rest of the game around them in an unhealthy way. they also don't really provide any meaningful decision making in the shop or expedition, which is pretty much the core point of the game. i will be reworking their abilities completely, while still keeping that core of the build (spamming action cards in droves) but hopefully making it a niche instead of a dominant strategy
on prospect: yes, this has been a hugely difficult balancing problem while making the game as you can imagine. i have some plans for how to lightly address this in the next update and i will be adjusting it as development continues. eventually i hope to add different starting decks so that will also help. i still think it takes quite a skilled and experienced player to actually carry out this strategy regardless
on sword: i am adjusting this card in the next update!
Nah it probably is the right length. Especially due to how many times you give it a go.
Video game sounds tracks are so great these days. I hear Kavinsky influences obviously (grrr what Drive did to games XD) but also Peaking Lights and Washed Out : )
My best run so far axe is still a top teir card but i actually saw its downside of having the draw being conditional I mitigated it when possible by doing stuff that would normally feel dumb like using a axe on a geode a few times but well the results speak for themselves
I am not really sure I like it. The only thing I figured out that work was ugprading your starting resources, stack card draw, buy two extra turns and be on the look out for strong cards lategame.
Whenever I tried to get fancy, buy resources or card that have synergies, I end up with a bloated deck that falls appart entierly if I dont draw the correct combination of cards, and with so few turns to draw what you need, and so many cards in your base that just turns into filler, its almost impossible to get them rolling.
Resources arnt always bad to buy but it makes sense that adding to many would be bad, theres many zero cost effects and anything that doesnt draw makes it take longer to get repeated value out of them.
Score is way more important then ore, its more brick resistant if you waste a bit of energy getting too much score while not ideal it wont lose you the game unlike if you greed to much on ore, more score makes you more free to upgrade cards and focus on ore while being ahead of the score curve.
Geodes while not as good as helmet or ingot are very cheap to buy so if you can afford them even if they suck technically theres very little downside to taking them they are cheap cost 0 and replace themselves they add potential synergy later for example kaz resources ( the +5 per resource played) or from mole and just general little bonuses and when upgrading they are a decent target because every round you see them you will play them.
Meteorites are good basically just a resource that you will always play when you see it, great synergy with draw.
Kaz resources are very good (esp score) in paticular early but also late, good synergy with meteorites geodes Axes are very good with them to play a resource and also look for more zero cost resources with them
Amber resources are generally good (tiny amount of anti synergy with axe but still playable even then)
Gems are good if you commit to them but they wont fit into every deck they play nice with tools to bypass the energy cost and cheap upgrade options (lenses and aquifer)
I think quartz is a noob trap though because good decks basically play every card in the deck every turn and your upgrades are half value if not playing them but i could see them working i just think they are weak overall
sorry to hear that. this is the very first version of this demo, and now that i have way more playtesting data than before, i can hopefully improve the balance. i am looking to reduce the reliance on super specific draw orders for certain builds too.
what difficulty were you playing on, and which cards were you buying that felt weak?
the existence of synergies makes the optimal strategy much less rng focused by allowing multiple options to hone their strategy. Also, increasing the base value of ores with a lesser increase in the amount of base ore scaling encourages multiplicative scaling in the early game, as opposed to additive scaling which would previously be best for the first few rounds.
also, I like the new ore synergy! and making wrench scale on tools makes it much more interesting, since it is no longer naturally synergetic with actions (typically most actions give energy and card draw). similar things can be said about waterfall.
If we press the “End Turn” button and immediately restart the run by pressing “Settings → Restart Run”, then 10 cards will be drawn from the draw pile at once periodically
The cards used to have "tool" or "action" written directly on them. I am colorblind, so now they look identical. (I'm assuming the strip of color around the edges are blue and purple?) Every time I want to assess the difference, I have to mouse hover or memorize a card. The shapes and borders of the ore and scorium aren't far enough apart either.
Visually, it looks good, but it needs to be functional too.
you are correct that tool cards have a purple outline and actions have a blue outline. I think having a colorblind option with the full word or first letter on the card makes sense. Though if you didnt memorize what the card did you probably shouldn't be playing the card without double checking what it does. Tools all need to be used directly on a resource and actions are all used without targeting anything for example even though aquifer upgrades your resources because you dont target anything its a action.
thank you, this is super helpful - i have a colorblind friend who helped me with the accessibility of the new art style, but i understand that it's not enough yet. in the final version, i would definitely like for you to be able to have a totally smooth experience playing the game.
in the next big patch, i'll include a new option to add a symbol onto cards that indicate their type with shape language instead of just color. then hopefully, down the line, i will have time to add full colorblind mode options. is there anything else that would help you? or it is just differentiating card types that give you trouble?
Double coding. You need something that's not a color to help distinguish. Artwork is a big part of it, and the ore / score both look very similar.
The difference in the diamond and the circle are only the pixels that make up the tips of the corners of the diamonds. They don't have incredibly distinctive silhouettes. Triangle and circle? Star and square? Try some different combos of shapes.
As for the artwork, they both have a blue core, and some small specs that give their color. (which... the bronzy yellow and muted red are vaguely similar). I wish the overall shape of the ores were much different, or just different objects all together. But they don't have to be similar; and this is your world to make. One could be rocks and the other jewels. Go even more out there; one mushrooms and the other diamonds!
There's an app I always like to recommend people; Chromatic Vision Simulator. You can use your smartphone and see a little more clearly (or not :P) what I'm talking about with regard to colors. I always recommend double coding things; if you put it in black and white, how can you tell them apart? If the answer is "you can't" then you're making something 1 in 20 people will struggle with.
You're welcome to reach out here or another platform, same username. Happy to discuss and help where I can.
Drill go brr also i really should have had some draw and energy to make it more consistent but i wanted energy before draw because otherwise it would brick me from the drill combo also was really focusing on removal
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I'm a bit disappointed that you block picking up cards when the deck runs out - most games will shuffle the deck at that point. Score would have been higher but I kept having to end turns early beacuse I ran out of cards.
I finally beat it!
love the game but i wish rerolls didn't cost so much initially
Agree! I find the game has quite a bit of RNG, so this would be an easy way to feel more agency.
The good -
More cards! I enjoy the balance of the cards, it feels a lot less easy to win.
Being able to buy an extra turn is nice, and I'm currently working on beating it with out buying an extra turn at all. 4 is the lowest I've gotten.
The game in general is wonderful. I enjoy the rouge like deck building, the score and money system, having to take risks sometimes when you need a certain card and have 6+ left to draw.
The bad -
Not really bad, just things that aren't good.
The reroll feels bad, since card prices go up with each level, there is a tipping point of spending the reroll not allowing you to buy any more cards.
I'm colorblind. Tools/action look the same. Thats frustrating to work with.
The "this is my opinion and doesnt reflect the mechanics, or game play since its just an opinion"
I struggle with the only 6 cards per shop, if i want to try new strategies, its next to impossible to do so with any of the cards that will require other cards to sync with.
Lastly other ideas-
Honestly just a mode where you have a certian amount to spend, and you have to beat the last level, or a sand box to test out new strategies and see how the cards work. could be cool.
Honestly all in all Amazing game, and i will keep working on getting the 3 turn victory
great game, love your general set up and theres a lot good going on. the music is fantastic, awesome choice i love it.
my only real complaint or critique, would be that the game feels extremely limiting, like when you know what you're supposed to be doing the games not HARD but it honestly feels like 80%+ of the card pool are either useless or actively detrimental to your ability to win.
if that was how it was on brutal sure, i wouldn't have a problem that's how it's supposed to work, but no that's how it is regardless of difficulty. even on relaxed you really can't fuck around if you want to get far/win. you have a bit of room but god forbid you pick up anything that isn't a cantrip, i got to the point where i honestly think prospect isn't worth it. the game is fun and interesting and worth it but boy does it need to be loosened up a bit.
my suggestion? increase the number of stops, so that you can allow the player a bit more leeway, on lower difficulties give the player more rounds and/or more energy to work with. make it so relaxed becomes hard to lose, and brutal really tests the limits of a players ability. and consider adding in a sort of infinite mode so you can see how far you can go with a deck.
one of my favorite things to find in games like this is broken strategies that let you push the game past what anyone thought plausable. i think that is here but i think some of the cards should probably be ballanced out a bit more because again as is, most of the cards just arn't really playable.
GL and TYVM for sharing this, its a great game with lots of potential that absolutly scratches that itch.
What was your strat on that run to get such high scorium card? Minecart to repeatedly get the lens and upgrade a lot of times in one round?
I'm not Capri but my biggest resource was a 167.
He's going Lens almost every turn + lots of Prospect along the way too.
You can see he ended the run with over 200 ore remaining, so probably a lot of that upgrading came during the final stage as well.
He has 6 cards that don't draw cards, so occasionally the minecart will be on the bottom and he doesn't get to play his whole deck.
But usually he'll have the option to play the whole thing each turn.
So once he finishes the final stage score he has the option to go "draw whole deck, play Ore, Prospect Scorium" to run up the numbers for the screenshot.
Maybe he will reply but I would guess something like 15 or 18 of the buff points came from the final stage, and probably 12 in the stage before.
Once you get the deck very streamlined you can strongly accelerate the size of the resources because you can buff your best one (and play it if needed) every turn.
If you look at my gem and cube posts i use a combo that you get axe or in theory compass you draw your big card then prospect your big card then play it with trowel (0 cost tool play a resource) alternatively energy generation to play your big resource works too, lenses also are very helpful for it too but i didnt get offered them in my shops
"It honestly feels like 80%+ of the card pool are either useless or actively detrimental to your ability to win."
I had the same initial impression but gradually more of the card pool opened up to me.
My picks for "Trash tier"
either Quartz
Ore that costs energy / wants lots of buffs
(Quartz Ore is my pick for single worst card)
Treasure Map
Wrench
Semi-Trash
Upgraders not named Prospect/Lens
Axolotl, Pet Rock
Everything else I think is fine (or at least interesting to make work & feels good when you get there)
I think you'll find a wider range of cards than you realized are good for Prospect grinding (especially +Energy, buff targets & enablers), and many of the others can be built into viable decks that are not mostly about Prospect grinding.
I made a gem that draws my whole deck when i play it
Great game!
This game is a lot of fun! I wish there was an option for fullscreen for the browser version though. Below is my favourite winning deck so far :D
There is you just didnt find it :P
First time trying out cube, to be honest i think cube is kinda meh even though i won with it I feel like overall its kinda weak because to work it needs tool support and other ores have comparable upsides or are better ( the +1 per upgrade seams to be similar numbers while not needing tool support, score pando has ore that also kinda scales with it, kaz support is stuff you basically always want anyways meteors and geodes and draw). Drill theoretically has good synergy with it but every time you use it you arnt going to have energy to upgrade the cube and feels bad to not upgrade it and also has its on energy issues that are harder to resolve because you cant cheat it out with a tool so you basically need a super thin deck or get really lucky with the most expensive card in the game? minecart. Corkscrew in theory works well with it to but corkscrew feels to similar to prospect for me to really want to add it, and seams like it would make prospect turn into a brick knowing theres a better version in my deck
Game is fantastic but is waaay too difficult. The Easy mode doesn't appear to have any difference other than the lower requirement for leveling up.
It's like the modes are Blue Stake vs Purple Stake Balatro (If you don't mind that comparison I'm sure you're getting a lot of.)
Easy should have an extra turn as it stands now it seems like 2+ extra turns is required to complete the easy mode.
Adventure and Relaxed just feel identical in terms of difficulty.
I have a long post below talking about card balance and strategy.
I will write a long post here about the systems / design of the game.
Prospect:
The most consistent strategy I've found so far (see my long post below) is to rely heavily on Prospect, buy useful cantrips like Ingot or Lens, buy a very small number of enabler cards like Amber(s) or The Creature and nothing else.
Unless I'm trying to make a build work just for the fun of experimentation I am ignoring the vast majority of non-cantrip cards as well as the expensive minerals.
I think starting with Prospect in the deck pushes me in this direction.
If my 10th special card were randomized from a special pool of unique starter cards (or maybe I get to pick 1 of 3 which are drawn from a larger random pool), it would be fine for Prospect to power a very consistent strategy, because I wouldn't always get the Prospect to use.
I think it would be more interesting if my special starter card has different synergies depending on which one I get and which pushes me in different directions in terms of shopping and how I play my turns right from the start.
If I get Prospect every run it has to be powerful enough to really make a difference, but this risks it becoming the entire focal point of the game.
If I don't get it every run it's fine to warp certain runs around it because I have plenty of other runs that are about other things.
Re-rolls:
I didn't even see the re-roll shop button for the first few runs.
I think it should be a large icon in the row with the cards.
Even after I saw it, I almost never use it because it's just too expensive.
I think it should have a fixed and mounting cost within each shop visit (maybe 5 -> 10 -> 15 etc) so that it's tempting to re-roll a bit but you might not find anything and it's expensive to re-roll a lot digging for particular cards.
It's also nice if I get to feel rich later in the game when I am rich.
If you scale up the costs of almost *everything* I never get to really feel rich.
Maybe the cards scale up more in cost than they do at present but the re-roll stays cheap. (edit: as depth increases)
The high cost of re-rolling contributes to my "no synergy" Prospect approach, since I know it's very risky to take cards early on that will require specific synergy later.
If I post a victory screenshot and it shows re-rolls it's usually because I was about to start The Core and there's no more reason to save Ore, so I might as well roll for Helmet, Scorium Geode, etc.
Shop presentation:
I really like the way that the shop gives 1 random Ore and 1 random Scorium.
I apologize if this is already the case & I just didn't realize, but I think it would be nice if the shop had "slots" for Tool and Action plus a wild slot that could be anything.
If certain cards are really unique or powerful maybe they only show up in that wild slot so they don't appear too often.
(Edit: Also if re-rolls are cheaper you don't need to give so many slots of Shop).
Utilities:
The utilities all scale up in cost.
For Hourglass as you get more Hourglasses probably there's some diminishing returns, but it's such a powerful effect and I get so few that I don't think this is a problem at all.
I think 350->999 is pretty steep and it's more interesting at like 500.
If you just want it to max out at 350 then just don't give me the option to buy it again at all. (edit: maybe it says SOLD OUT instead of a price)
Showing Hourglass at 999 when that's not intended to really be an option is kind of spiteful.
For Dynamite it's not a super powerful effect but the value scales up as you get more (first you eliminate 10% of your chaff, then 11.1% then 12.5% etc)
For Hammer, though, the value scales down (the buff is a smaller and smaller proportion of the value of the deck; initially I have 3 energy twice on 5-point cards so 30 points and the 3-point Hammer is 10%; quickly this reduces to negligible).
In most builds I could play, I'm taking the 15-cost Hammer on my best Ore for early economy, then I'm only ever touching Hammer again if I'm rich or I really need to buff a particular card.
I think it would be more interesting if Hammer was at a fixed cost (maybe 20) and its declining usefulness came from the fact that it's a smaller and smaller % contribution to the deck's power.
A fixed-cost Hammer would also reduce the reliance on Prospect for upgrading cards.
(Edit: also you might consider allowing multiple Hammer uses in a single shop visit similar to what I'm proposing for re-rolls, either at a fixed cost or an increasing cost within that 1 visit, ie 20->30->40 but then if you come visit the shop at the next Depth it's 20 again).
UI
Maybe I'm just dumb, but it took me a lot of runs to understand the Depth and Hourglass icons.
I was surprised for a while that I kept getting extra turns until I figured out that 0 counts as a turn, so the hourglass icon on the HUD is how many extra turns you have not counting the current turn (rather than how many total turns you have counting the current one). This might just be my fault - you have to do it one way or the other and either can be interpreted wrongly.
When shopping it wasn't always clear to me what depth I'm about to start.
Unless I'm mistaken I think it shows the depth of the level I just beat rather than the one I'm about to start, so when a run was going really smoothly and I wasn't thinking about depth sometimes I was surprised to start The Core.
We also go from fight to shopping without seeing the world map (which saves a screen compared to doing map both before and after).
I think if the a certain depth is map -> shop -> fight I get all the relevant information when I need it in the same number of screens as current at the cost of the flavor hit of separating the map and the expedition.
I would much rather be told to prepare for a certain flavor of level with a certain score goal then do my shopping.
Maybe I can check the map from the shop screen?
(Edit: maybe the go-to-fight button has the difficulty icon from the map screen?)
I think the Hourglass icon and Depth icon are kind of in conflict (assuming I've remembered and interpreted them correctly). The turn counter shows how many future turns I have, while the depth counter shows my previous depth.
Edited to add:
Another thing - I think it would be cool to track "overkill" on level score so I can see that I did 250/225 or whatever.
Even if this isn't tied to any reward in the game, it feels good to see how powerful my Scorium is getting.
Right now my major power fantasy reward is from making lots of Ore but not really from making lots of Scorium.
"Woah, I've got 500 Ore to spend, that's crazy" feels really good.
"Woah my Huge Scorium beat that level in only 3 turns" feels good but there's not a lot of gradation of experience, especially once you get good at the game and something like that is a routine event.
It's also helpful to the player to know exactly how strong he is, but that's quite secondary IMO; the player needs to be challenged so not everything that helps him is the right design.
thank you so much again for the thoughtful feedback! i can't implement it all right away but i can definitely use this to help improve the game a lot. i'm curious to hear what you think after the next balance patch as well so please check back soon!
Will do - thanks for the reply.
It's good to know you've seen it.
Score panda (pando) is great
I played the previous version of the game and could barely make it without gloves and radars. This version I beat only once, in relaxed mode, and not sure how I got there. I try to keep my deck slim and upgrade the resources but it requires a lot of luck the way I do it. I can't seem to grasp how to play this game. How does one build a 50+ value resource? Could you explain me the general meta?
I've had great success with the upgrade-heavy small-deck style.
If you scroll down to my long post you'll see a winning run on Adventure with a Scorium Amber as my only purchase, and several other variations powered almost purely by Prospect.
Prospect usage:
Focus your Prospects on 1-2 cards of each resource as much as possible rather than splitting them around.
Do use Prospect to buff both resource types.
Do buff your starting resources; I am typically leaving the opening expedition with one buff on one Ore and on one Scorium.
Early on you want to prioritize using Prospect again on your already-buffed cards over actually playing multiple buffed cards, unless you're going to miss a Scorium goal or you're trying to hit a particular Ore threshold (like 50 for the first Hourglass).
Do consider moves like Prospecting one resource card but playing a different resource.
Do focus buffs on special resources (in your screenshot that Geode should be at 10 and once you get 1 Scorium Pandorite almost all the buffs should be on it).
Shopping:
I very rarely re-roll the shop.
I like the 15-cost Hammer early on my most-buffed Ore but I'm not taking further Hammers unless I have a specific reason or I'm mega-rich.
I take as many as I can get (in roughly this order) of Hourglass, Lens, Ingot (until the last few rounds), Dynamite, Brush & both Geodes (but only once the Geodes I already have are buffed to 10).
If I'm rich or struggling for Score or starting Day 10, I consider Helmet.
I'm also looking for a few build-defining cards like either Amber, Scorium Pandorite, Scorium Meteorite, Smelt or The Creature. I don't necessarily take more than 1 copy of any of these and usually my build will end up with 1-2 total of these cards.
I often end with a deck that is effectively 5-7 cards plus however many cards I can play for free and which replace themselves (like Ingot and Lens).
Mineshaft isn't ideal for this style of build but as an effectively 10/10 mineral that *might* turn into a self-replacer it's worth considering also. It provides good economy early in the run so if you're running out of steam in the middle turns a 1st or 2nd shop Mineshaft might help.
Unless I'm deliberately trying to make some other build work I'm generally not taking any cards except the ones I just listed. Instead, almost all my money is going into Hourglass, Dynamite and cards that replace themselves for free while giving some benefit along the way.
The fewer non-replacers you buy the smaller your effective deck and the more money you have for Hourglass/Dynamite, both of which will mean you get to Prospect more often.
I basically start the game Prospecting every other turn and often by midgame I am able to Prospect every turn. It only takes a few combats of putting out +18 upgrades to get a couple of resource cards very large.
I think you are overlooking axe it doesnt play as nice as compass with amber but playing a resource for free with the draw is huge especially early before you have your deck super slim and i also think you are underestimating kaz (score in particular) it basically solves score in the early rounds letting you focus almost entirely on ore or upgrades and gets stronger as you add cards like geodes that are very cheap and upgrades on them are almost never a waste because you will play them every time you see them similar story on meteorites but not quite as good because they dont replace themselves
Thanks for all the tips. I focused on devising a strategy and managed to get a couple of wins by pushing ore in early game and spending extra on upgrading the scorium. I also had a some succes with Jeroba since it takes up less energy than Prospect, and the creature really seems to help with going through the whole deck each round.
I love this game but for some reason the full screen option doesn't exist for me this meant that my winning screenshot doesn't have my ore amount ore score amount. I won brutal purely based on only using "zero effect" cards: ingot, helmet, minecart, mineshaft (with enough of the other ones), and being basically capable of cycling through my whole deck each turn. I was done with 2 turns left on the core.
Hello! Thank you for making this Mr. ccdg; I've tried it this weekend & had great fun exploring your game.
I've only tried Adventure difficulty so far, and I've gotten to the point where I can almost always win.
I'll post some screen shots below to discuss.
My thoughts on the game as it stands now...
I am not necessarily advocating for any nerfs or buffs.
I think it's fine to have stronger and weaker cards/strategies.
The zero-cost cantrips (Helmet, Ingot, Geodes, Brush and Lens) are quite strong and can go in basically any deck. If I don't have any direction yet or I have a completed build these can be close to auto-purchase for me.
Ingot in particular guarantees good ore economy while asking very little of me in terms of deck construction or game actions (unlike say Ore Geode where I have to upgrade it or the tools where I might not always have the right mineral in hand).
You start the game essentially flooded on cards with insufficient energy to play everthing. This makes the card draw less than stellar, and it seems you really need to assemble some sort of synergy (like Sword or Mineshaft) to justify investing in card draw.
I've had very poor results with most things that cost 2 or more energy, including the Cat, Corkscrew, Drill and the expensive minerals. I think the culprit here is what I was just discussing with card draw - you start the game essentially flooded on cards and choked on energy. If you need special synergy (like expensive minerals + tools to mine them for you) you run the risk of not finding the cards at all plus the risk of failing to draw the right combination of cards.
I've tried several times to use the sits-in-your-hand minerals (that give you half the value and are retained across turns, sorry I forgot the name). Blocking a draw slot is such bad celerity that I've never had this look promising.
I've generally had bad results with the upgrade tools other than Prospect/Lens. I don't think there's anything objectively wrong with Screwdriver, Corkscrew, Aquifer or Jebroa but the fact that I already start with Prospect and it's already so energy-hungry makes it hard to justify other upgraders. If I'm building a big deck (so Prospect is lost in the shuffle and I might like to have other upgraders) probably I'm looking to spend resources on other things like Shield or Cat and I'm going to run into situations where I upgrade something and don't get to play it that turn.
Axolotl is my pick for the weakest card.
Early on you shouldn't really need +Scorium and later on the card typing (no mineral synergies) and lack of scaling are issues.
***
On to some results (with screenshots)
I think the starting deck is close to winning.
My opening plan is to Prospect both ore and score, trying to get one or two of each large while I dynamite the rest of my starting minerals throughout the game.
If I can get an early The Creature, any Amber, Scorium Meteorite or Scorium Pandorite (which cover in various ways the heavy energy cost of Prospect) I consider that a complete build (or close to it) from a single purchase.
I haven't played around much with pure Smelt but perhaps that's sufficient to make the starting deck winning also.
Prospect:
You can see in the screenshot below I struggled with ore economy (700 is incredibly low for a winning build in my limited experience), but with Amber Scorium as my only purchase I was still able to buy some hourglasses and dynamite and take a comfortable win.
The Creature:
Here's another victory with low economy, this time with a Meteorite + The Creature to help offset the cost of Prospect. I think The Creature is quite strong even without Meteorite, but the Meteorite helps keep up the tempo by allowing me to Creature and then Prospect and still have energy to play the Prospect-buffed card. In contrast if my only build enabler is The Creature I'm frequently going Creature then Prospect on a card that I don't get to play that same turn.
Scorium Pandorite:
This isn't my best Scorium Pandorite run (you can see barely 2k income; I know I've had over 3k) but it ended on the biggest Pandorite.
I think Scorium Pandorite is incredibly strong since your mineral upgrades effectively give you both score & ore. If I get an early Scorium Pandorite I commit to upgrading it heavily, which can lead to a bit of a lull in ore economy before it surpasses the base ore (which I'd have been upgrading before as you can see here), but then it really launches. The fact that I'm upgrading a Score mineral heavily tends to make this whole process feel pretty safe.
Sword:
I haven't played a lot of tools so I was surprised at how smoothly this went the first time I tried Sword/Axe. The Wrenches were quite bad because my other tools put the minerals in play where the Wrenches can't see them anymore.
Mineshaft:
This was a fun run but felt very unusual in terms of shop RNG. By the time I got more than 1 Mineshaft the challenge was already gone. I don't think the Mineshaft "combo" can be assembled particularly easily/consistently. More frequently Mineshaft is an early-game play for 10+10 resource generation and I just accept that it's going to fall off as the game goes on.
Again, I do think it's fine to have stronger and weaker cards/strategies.
If you wanted to even out the overall power level (while leaving some things stronger and weaker depending on the situation)
These are the changes I would test:
Axolotl - current effect + draws 1 card
Screwdriver - cost 0 energy for current effect
Corkscrew - cost 3 energy but gives an absurdly large buff, like +7 or +10
Aquifer - current effect + if you only have minerals in hand +2 energy
Jebroa - cost 0 energy, give a random resource +3 (or even +4) then discard a random resource
Scorium Pandorite - (but not Ore Pandorite) either current effect + cost 2 energy or at least current effect + premium price in shop.
Katzite - cost 2 energy + gives bonus equal to its own resource value for each prior mineral (so you can scale the bonus).
Ingot - current card + premium price in shop
Amber - current effect + cannot be upgraded beyond 30
Cave Cat - current card + cheap pricing in shop
Compass - current card + cheap pricing in shop
Pet Mole - current card + cheap pricing in shop
thank you so much for such a well-worded and thoughtful comment! i can't respond to it all but i can respond to some. but i definitely read all of it and will be taking it all into consideration when making the next balance patch!
on cantrips: totally agreed, both the amount of 0 cost cards in the game and their power level warps the rest of the game around them in an unhealthy way. they also don't really provide any meaningful decision making in the shop or expedition, which is pretty much the core point of the game. i will be reworking their abilities completely, while still keeping that core of the build (spamming action cards in droves) but hopefully making it a niche instead of a dominant strategy
on prospect: yes, this has been a hugely difficult balancing problem while making the game as you can imagine. i have some plans for how to lightly address this in the next update and i will be adjusting it as development continues. eventually i hope to add different starting decks so that will also help. i still think it takes quite a skilled and experienced player to actually carry out this strategy regardless
on sword: i am adjusting this card in the next update!
This was extremely fun and the music is great!
These are of the same run btw, I just had a big deck.
Beat me!
Do you mean total resources or more ore, ill post my good runs both ways though
I like the graphical update!
finally beat it
Great game, the update looks really good and the graphics, as well as gameplay, have improved a lot. 10/10 would play again.
Wish it would go on longer : (
Nah it probably is the right length. Especially due to how many times you give it a go.
Video game sounds tracks are so great these days. I hear Kavinsky influences obviously (grrr what Drive did to games XD) but also Peaking Lights and Washed Out : )
It was good, was able to play my deck almost every time if I didn't get all ores and a spade in starting hand
My best run so far axe is still a top teir card but i actually saw its downside of having the draw being conditional I mitigated it when possible by doing stuff that would normally feel dumb like using a axe on a geode a few times but well the results speak for themselves
I am not really sure I like it. The only thing I figured out that work was ugprading your starting resources, stack card draw, buy two extra turns and be on the look out for strong cards lategame.
Whenever I tried to get fancy, buy resources or card that have synergies, I end up with a bloated deck that falls appart entierly if I dont draw the correct combination of cards, and with so few turns to draw what you need, and so many cards in your base that just turns into filler, its almost impossible to get them rolling.
Resources arnt always bad to buy but it makes sense that adding to many would be bad, theres many zero cost effects and anything that doesnt draw makes it take longer to get repeated value out of them.
Score is way more important then ore, its more brick resistant if you waste a bit of energy getting too much score while not ideal it wont lose you the game unlike if you greed to much on ore, more score makes you more free to upgrade cards and focus on ore while being ahead of the score curve.
Kaz resources are very good (esp score) in paticular early but also late, good synergy with meteorites geodes Axes are very good with them to play a resource and also look for more zero cost resources with themGeodes while not as good as helmet or ingot are very cheap to buy so if you can afford them even if they suck technically theres very little downside to taking them they are cheap cost 0 and replace themselves they add potential synergy later for example kaz resources ( the +5 per resource played) or from mole and just general little bonuses and when upgrading they are a decent target because every round you see them you will play them.
Meteorites are good basically just a resource that you will always play when you see it, great synergy with draw.
Amber resources are generally good (tiny amount of anti synergy with axe but still playable even then)
Gems are good if you commit to them but they wont fit into every deck they play nice with tools to bypass the energy cost and cheap upgrade options (lenses and aquifer)
I think quartz is a noob trap though because good decks basically play every card in the deck every turn and your upgrades are half value if not playing them but i could see them working i just think they are weak overall
sorry to hear that. this is the very first version of this demo, and now that i have way more playtesting data than before, i can hopefully improve the balance. i am looking to reduce the reliance on super specific draw orders for certain builds too.
what difficulty were you playing on, and which cards were you buying that felt weak?
it would be interesting to add a special resource that you get for each ore you put in before meeting the score requirement. maybe just more ore.
the existence of synergies makes the optimal strategy much less rng focused by allowing multiple options to hone their strategy. Also, increasing the base value of ores with a lesser increase in the amount of base ore scaling encourages multiplicative scaling in the early game, as opposed to additive scaling which would previously be best for the first few rounds.
also, I like the new ore synergy! and making wrench scale on tools makes it much more interesting, since it is no longer naturally synergetic with actions (typically most actions give energy and card draw). similar things can be said about waterfall.
thank you, glad you are enjoying the new version <3
Yay a new version!
I found a bug!
If we press the “End Turn” button and immediately restart the run by pressing “Settings → Restart Run”, then 10 cards will be drawn from the draw pile at once periodically
thank you! i will have this fixed in the next patch
The cards used to have "tool" or "action" written directly on them. I am colorblind, so now they look identical. (I'm assuming the strip of color around the edges are blue and purple?) Every time I want to assess the difference, I have to mouse hover or memorize a card. The shapes and borders of the ore and scorium aren't far enough apart either.
Visually, it looks good, but it needs to be functional too.
you are correct that tool cards have a purple outline and actions have a blue outline. I think having a colorblind option with the full word or first letter on the card makes sense. Though if you didnt memorize what the card did you probably shouldn't be playing the card without double checking what it does. Tools all need to be used directly on a resource and actions are all used without targeting anything for example even though aquifer upgrades your resources because you dont target anything its a action.
thank you, this is super helpful - i have a colorblind friend who helped me with the accessibility of the new art style, but i understand that it's not enough yet. in the final version, i would definitely like for you to be able to have a totally smooth experience playing the game.
in the next big patch, i'll include a new option to add a symbol onto cards that indicate their type with shape language instead of just color. then hopefully, down the line, i will have time to add full colorblind mode options. is there anything else that would help you? or it is just differentiating card types that give you trouble?
Double coding. You need something that's not a color to help distinguish. Artwork is a big part of it, and the ore / score both look very similar.
The difference in the diamond and the circle are only the pixels that make up the tips of the corners of the diamonds. They don't have incredibly distinctive silhouettes. Triangle and circle? Star and square? Try some different combos of shapes.
As for the artwork, they both have a blue core, and some small specs that give their color. (which... the bronzy yellow and muted red are vaguely similar). I wish the overall shape of the ores were much different, or just different objects all together. But they don't have to be similar; and this is your world to make. One could be rocks and the other jewels. Go even more out there; one mushrooms and the other diamonds!
There's an app I always like to recommend people; Chromatic Vision Simulator. You can use your smartphone and see a little more clearly (or not :P) what I'm talking about with regard to colors. I always recommend double coding things; if you put it in black and white, how can you tell them apart? If the answer is "you can't" then you're making something 1 in 20 people will struggle with.
You're welcome to reach out here or another platform, same username. Happy to discuss and help where I can.
Drill go brr also i really should have had some draw and energy to make it more consistent but i wanted energy before draw because otherwise it would brick me from the drill combo also was really focusing on removal