Yet another update with some big fundamental changes to the core of the game. Hopefully this is a much better and more enjoyable game, even though it’s still very much a prototype.

Card-first Design

In previous versions, there used to be a number of different ways to interact with the game: “basic movement”, playing cards, waiting to draw cards, and discarding cards. This was quite confusing and felt unlike other card games. This has seen a complete overhaul with what I’m calling “card-first design”:

• Draw 5 cards each turn
• 3 energy to spend on playing cards every turn
• Cards can cost anything from 0 to 3 energy to play
• End of your turn: discard all your cards (and draw 5 more for next turn)

This means the primary way of interacting is by playing cards onto the grid. This should be a lot simpler to interact with, and hopefully make more intuitive sense once you get the hang of it. It should also hopefully feel a lot more like a card game now! This is a huge fundamental change and you have a lot more freedom to do stuff in your turn before the enemies react, so there’s been a lot of balance changes to try to compensate (see more below).

Fixed Deck Size

Another big departure from earlier versions: you start with 15 cards in your deck and when you add a card you must remove another card to make space. Your deck will therefore stay roughly fixed in size, so it should feel a lot leaner and meaner. You can more quickly draw and use your new cards, but you’ll also have to think more critically about what you replace.

The exceptions that don’t trigger a corresponding removal are: once-per-game “scroll” cards that get permanently removed after playing once; and additional temporary negative cards (Idle and Fatigue), meant to clog up your deck.

This was inspired by a similar concept from Signs of the Sojourner.

Status Effects

The game now has four new status effects that can be applied to you and/or enemies:

• Energized (X): +Energy at the start of the next X turns
• Poison (X): Take X damage at the end of the turn and then decrease X by 1
• Focus: Reduce card energy cost by 1 until end of turn
• Frozen: Frozen units cannot act. They are temporarily invulnerable and thaw when receiving any damage. If they fall, they thaw and take 3 fall damage

Energized already existed in a previous form, but the rest are all new! There’s a host of new cards that can use and manipulate these status effects, and one enemy (Spitting Bat) that will try to poison you. When a player/enemy has one of these statuses, you’ll see a small icon on them and you can tap them for more info.

The hope is that these will create more interesting synergies between cards and the state of the grid, and therefore more interesting deckbuilding. More of these will probably be added in the future.

Gravity

Gravity has also seen a big change: anything affected by gravity will now fall as far as possible in one moment, landing on the ground or another support. Gone are the days of slowly falling one grid cell at a time. There are some new ladders and platforms throughout the depths of the caves to help support you. This is hopefully a bit more intuitive, and a bit more balanced for the 3 energy you have every turn.

Enemy Instant Reactions

In previous versions, enemies would strictly plan their actions, give you a chance to react, and then execute on their plans if they still could, without any deviations That meant nothing would change during your turn and you had a lot of freedom to plan around the enemies. However, with card-first design and 3 energy per turn, it was relatively easy to dance around the level, with enemies completely unreactive.

As such, some enemies, like the Disk, will in some situations instantly react to your actions, even in your turn! It should be fairly predictable and easy to plan around if you’re careful, but this is a departure from before. Remember: there’s always the undo button if you get surprised.

Balance

There has been a huge number of balance changes in this version, including:

• Final boss: now considerably more difficult with: 3 phases, health gates to prevent steamrolling, lots of shielding, some enemy spawning, and big AoE attacks. Still very beatable, but should put up more of a fight.
• Shorter length: the game has been reduced to 8 depths to try to streamline it and make it a shorter and sweeter experience.
• More shrines have been added throughout the caves.
• Many new cards have been added (we’re now up to 40), and many existing cards have been re-designed or balanced. Remember to look at the in-game Compendium if you want to see what new cards there are.
• Many enemies have been re-designed or balanced, and some similar enemies have been removed.

Essentially almost everything has had a balance pass. This version has some fundamental changes to the core of the game, so undoubtedly more balance passes will be needed.

Other Changes

• Added some floor decorations to try emphasize verticality
• Added new Shrine of Choice on depth 4
• Show damage detail on cards
• Popup message when repeatedly trying to play a card without enough energy
• Use keyboard number hotkeys even if selection mode is disabled
• Differentiate quick tap/click from long hold
• Shade some cells for the card reference info to make it clearer
• Final level only spawns exit portal on boss death
• Updated splash screen art
• New config system to make it easier to add more content, which might make an appearance as a open source library in the future
• More minor polish and bug fixes

Feedback

Any feedback or advice is appreciated, but I’m specifically interested in:

1. Does the deckbuilding feel better?
2. How does it feel to have to remove a card to make space for new cards?
3. How is the difficulty? How far did you get and how much did you struggle?
4. Did you come up with any fun/interesting combos?
5. General impressions?