I wanted to talk a little bit about the interface / flow adjustments I've been working on after collecting feedback from alpha testers. It's quite a changelist! - Almost everybody told me they didn't know what was going on with the numbers, some suggested visual feedback when numbers change would help. I loved that idea so I went pretty hard on it. (when it's your turn, you gain 3 points in each category) (Selecting a card makes the card type glow up, playing the card makes it subtract the number and the icon rotates counter-clockwise) (deselecting a card- by tapping any other card- will stop the icon from glowing. Instantly playing a card will trigger the CCW rotation animation again and subtract the cost) Other stuff- note that I grabbed these images from mockups rather than in-game because laziness: (The health bar now shows your current health and max health- the latter is important because it can change in-game) (Cards have been redesigned to show: Cost Type (top left icon), Cost Amount (top right number), and Effect (bottom text). This should make it easier to read and quicker to make decisions.)
Thanks for sharing. I'm not in the test group so I can't really say, but as a first glance, while I appreciate the infos displayed and all those numbers, I liked the first screenshots a bit more (of course I didn't play anything). There was a bit more consistency in the first ones than in the last ones (cards in particular), if it makes sense. Still super interested in the game!!!!
Appreciate the feedback, and it's a valid point! I'm experimenting with the card design, removing the outlines to (hopefully) give them a more "painted" look, which might look jarring as it's the only element of the game that doesn't have outlines now. I'll play around with that a while longer and see how people respond to it.
I do not know really how to explain and mind you, maybe it's just me. But the original graphics immediately caught my attention....more than cards they looked like icons in a Nintendo DS RPG and had a tangible look. Now they look like...just cards. Something was lost in the process imho. I get gameplay is king...so maybe there could be different ways to display the informations without changing so much the look. Just my 2 cents!
Working on health today. (just testing the logic, obviously you wouldn't lose 20 health for playing a card yourself) @Pitta: I get where you're coming from but to be honest hearing "Now they look like... just cards" feels great, that's exactly what I'm trying to achieve Sorry if you like it less but c'est la vie!
I think I owe TA an update on Castles: Back in November, I decided to take a week off from Castles to work on something colorful and silly as a little break, which turned into a bigger game called Skatedog, which I'm currently finishingup. Somewhere along the line I got obsessed with 1 bit art and made another game called Magic Mansion which is completely done and will come out soon! After Skatedog, I'm going back to work on Castles, and you can expect to see a lot more action in this thread again. I know it's been a while but I hope you're still with me Basically, I make a lot of games. I LOVE making games. Sometimes that means that projects take more time than expected.
Both of the games look pretty cool. I'm particularly interested to see Magic Mansion. Has that been submitted to the App Store already?
Will definitely check out the other two for sure. But I'm really happy to see an update on this one, as the card mechanic is quite intriguing. .
Nothing major going on here, just wanted to share a little bit of behind-the-scenes-stuff again. Castles originally used a 4 color, Game Boy style palette, but I reduced it to an actual 2 color, 1 bit palette now. Due to really not a single person understanding what was going on in the original design, I'm now leaning towards only having one resource (instead of 3), essentially cards cost mana- or energy or whatever you want to call it - to play and cards with bigger impact cost more to play. I didn't want to get rid of the resource concept *completely* because it adds such a fun level of strategy to the game, so I'm hoping this hits the sweet spot. Those who have been following Castles early on will also notice the chat bubble is new; I'm super excited to attempt actual online multiplayer, which turns out to be less of a pain in the butt than I had expected, since it's all turn-based rather than real time. I still expect it to be a massive undertaking, but it's something I'm really eager to at least give a shot.
I have no words to say this but I'm going to try This is my all time game I feel I need to get into my hands. It's something I hope pops up and I read and Reread all the posts every time I open this thread. This, I really can't wait for!
