Short-term, all of this sounds like wonderful improvements (to an already brilliant product)! Long-term, an unlock system of similar intricacy, depth and variety as in Dungeon Raid is my (and I dare say quite a few old fans of Dungeon Raid's) fondest wish.
Yep, that's definitely the plan! I really enjoyed the metagame of customisable unlockable class stuff in DR, so I'm working on adding something similar to hopefully give IKHTD a bit more variety and longevity. More short-term, I'd like to add some in-game achievements that'll give keys for reaching milestones & doing advanced tactical moves, to reward experimentation & help with learning the game's systems.
Sounds great! Have to say I've been playing this a TON lately. Best score so far was 2186 on world 4 and I'm well on my way to unlocking all the events. If I had to make any quibbles, it would be that Infestation feels way more of a threat than almost any other special snag I've encountered -- discarding 12+ cards is no joke, especially when you're more likely than not to draw additional worms trying to beat it. The fact that the worms themselves convert tiles to more worms just rubs salt into the wound! I would suggest making the armor value of Infestation grow more slowly just because the amount of discard you have is pretty fixed from level to level. Procrastination can also end a run if you draw it on the first world -- if you're unlucky enough to have only 2 attack when its drawn, you must place a +1 attack per turn or not damage it through the healing. Oh! And the special snag that ignores armor still has crazy high attack -- that's always been one that I need an event to refill my HP, or else I'm going to not play it and pray that I don't get block tiles or something. In any case, Very excited for updates, and a fine return to form e: I also just remembered, Eventful is always a must-pick for the first level up, to a point where the other two options might as well not exist. I may have to experiment with the other upgrades more, but it's hard giving up a rotating platter of gear and experience bonuses, not to mention full heals or massive stat boosts.
NICE! I didn't know if you'd take my email seriously and get involved in the forum discussion. Great game and looks like it'll be even better shortly.
Thanks for dropping by fireflame! Great to hear what you have in store looking forward to it. I'd definitely support more classes and having special abilities for them. Now if we only would have some sort of mode with an end game, that'd be super, though I understand if you're not keen on it. Best!
Super happy to see you in this thread, fireflame; I think I'm not the only huge DR fan and it's good to know you've got plans for IKHTD. After my post yesterday, I had a great game (for me) where I earned 2 unlock keys and what felt like a lot of upgrades along the way. I actually made it to another exit, but what killed me was needing 4 keys to exit. I surrounded the exit with tiles, but when I went to place one on the exit so I could leave, it was tinted red. I think this is because all my held tiles had exits that would've touched an already placed tile? I used discards to cause Nemesis to come and clean them up, but that caused me to lose all my exit keys, essentially starting over. Since I already had a few special snags in my hand, it wasn't long before I was dead while trying to earn the keys a second time and then exit, without totally surrounding the exit. The short version is: I think it might be nice if the exit space ignored the requirements that you can't have an exit touching an existing tile. I should be able to place anything on the exit once it's unlocked, in my opinion. That small bit of feedback aside, I'm really getting into this game. It's taken a lot of willpower not to keep playing it all day today!
I figured this out, as it has happened to me before. You can never have more than ONE path that points into the center hexagon. If any of the existing tiles around the exit tile have a path pointing into the center besides your current tile, no tile will work. The solution is to simply have the Nemesis clear off any other tile with a path into the center, than your way is clear.
Nemesis eats away your keys as it does, so, though, so be prepared to dance around the exit and collect additional keys once you have. If it is anything like DR, "a bit" is a gross understatement Wonderful news, long- as well as short-term improvements!
Yeps, true, but at least you and I now know WHY sometimes every tile you attempt is rejected for the center space.
Yeah, I had something similar once and the red X didn't appear as an option. Seems to not work with the exit? I had to discard cards until I got something that fit. Just barely made it.
I've played a few "complete games" and I really still have no idea what the Nemesis does or what increases to its level mean or exactly what the effects of discarding are, etc. It shouldn't be this hard just to understand what the rules of the game are. If I have to play too many times just to figure out what's going on, I'll lose interest before I complete that. I feel like I should be able to place tiles that have exits onto previously placed tiles if those tiles "connect" with the new tile. Currently, it doesn't let me place a tile with an exit facing an existing tile (except my current tile) whether or not that tile has a connecting path. The special snags seem to vary widely in difficulty.
I'm not super worried about Procrastination being situationally powerful, there is a range of time where its deadliness peaks (I don't agree that it's hardest very early, because at that point it has a relatively low health stat and since attack never goes under 2 you can just attrition it by gradually placing attack tiles while fighting it), but at worst, if it's too hard to kill and too annoying to hold onto until the end of the world, you could always just feed it to Nemesis. I will have a look at Infestation and the armour ignoring snag, though. And yep, the Eventful perk feels the most useful out of the level 1 choices, the other two are technically not trap choices because you can still choose them after level 1, and taking Eventful at level 1 is not a clear advantage over taking it at level 2, but I will probably improve the other two perks to at least be more useful in a longer game. Yeah, the exit stuff still conforms to normal rules of tile placing, i.e. you can't have exits pointing into another tile and you can't place a tile if there's an exit pointing into it. The last part of each world is usually a scramble for the exit as the snags become too strong to fight off effectively and specials are swarming, so I like the tension of having to scrounge for the right tiles and place them in the right combination to not block off the exit while rushing to get out. Easing off the normal tile placing rules would somewhat deflate that, and also make the game's rules seem inconsistent. Sorry about this one, the red X button not coming up in this situation is a bug and has been fixed in the upcoming update. Also, you only need to cover 2 keys with tiles to exit the first world, one per lock on the exit spot (you can tap the exit & key tiles to get an explanation of them, in case you haven't) Have you checked out the nemesis tooltip (tap nemesis to show its rules) and the health tooltip (tap your health to show how it works)? Basically: - When you discard, Nemesis moves to the nearest XP droplet or 1 tile per level if there's no XP droplets - Nemesis gets 1 XP per snag you discard - When nemesis eats an XP droplet, it gets 1 XP, and you get XP at the value of the droplet - When you health reaches 0, Nemesis moves through a number of XP droplets based on its level (e.g. if it's level 5 it will move through the next 5 droplets). You don't get any XP during this It definitely shouldn't be hard to understand the core rules, that's why there's tooltips that explain attack, defence, nemesis, exit & keys, etc, if you tap the relevant icon. If you've got any suggestions on how to better explain the non-obvious stuff, I'm always looking to improve on that.
I didn't think to tap on the Nemesis for an explanation. I will try that. I did discover some of the other tooltips (only after quite some time) and I agree they are useful. Certainly there could be something in the tutorial that says "tap on everything in the game for tips". So the level of the Nemesis only matters when your health goes to 0? Not at any other time? The fact that you can't place a tile with an exit that is adjacent to another tile with no exit seems intuitive. But the fact that you can't place a tile with an exit that lines up with another exit on an existing tile is extremely unintuitive, to me. If the path forks, why can't I place a tile that joins one of those previous forks? That would help make exiting a bit easier, but in other situations too.
It might be more intuitive, but that change would make it a very different game, maybe one with much more complicated rules, e.g. what would happen in this case: Can't join that fork since that would create a dead end loop? Can join the fork but then need Nemesis to break the loop? Can join the fork only with a tile that also has another exit that doesn't result in the loop? Okay, how about this case: This fork is cool to join but you need to go back on the path to get out of it? What happens after you place a tile from that earlier exit, would Nemesis swallow up the loop and come back to your new path? Or just leave that loop's tiles stranded there forever? One more: Join this fork, but now there's 2 possible exits, do you just get to pick either one to leave from? Or can you leave from both, where does Nemesis go in those cases? None of these questions are unsolvable, of course, but answering them would lead to a very different set of rules to what's currently in the game. The current tile placing rules are super simple and consistent: you can never cross over a tile you've already placed, and maybe that's not initially intuitive, but it is very easy to internalise after a few games and there's no weird special cases to have to constantly keep in the back of your mind.
No, that's NOT the rule now. I agree that would be very consistent; that's what I in fact want. I want to be able to place a tile that (1) connects to an exit on my current tile, (2) also connects to a previously placed tile, and (3) has a new exit that I can follow. I agree with you it would be very confusing if I could close a loop so that I don't have any open exits on my current tile. But I don't want that. All that I want is to be able to place tiles that are compatible with my present tile and any previously placed tiles and which also leave me with at least one open exit from the newly placed tile.
True, the current rule is, more accurately, "you can never cross cross a tile you've already placed or attach to an exit of a placed tile", and I think that's pretty elegant and hopefully doesn't take a lot of playthroughs for a player to internalise and be able to take into account when making a trail towards the exit and grabbing the keys at the exit. As a downside to your rules, consider this - you come back to a game session a few days after pausing, to see this state that's legal under your tile placing rules: Can you, at a glance, work out whether discarding a tile will make nemesis consume the snag? The relaxed rules have added ambiguity and to what end, now you can cram more tiles into a tighter space in a game that's primarily about building a narrow path? More broadly, while intuitiveness is certainly something to strive for in game design, I don't think that should come at the expense of everything else. A chess knight moving in a wonky jump that goes through other pieces may seem counter intuitive and restrictive, and it may take a few games to work out how to use it effectively, but when you do, it's rewarding and creates for some interesting tactical opportunities. Whoa, how did you manage to get 5 blocks in what I assume was a few turns? Condolences if that's not a bug, press the Forfeit button in the top right menu to proceed
I don't have a problem with how the tile placement works. The tiles you place can form 1 path, and 1 path only. i.e. You can only place tiles whose paths only connect to the tile you're currently standing on. One thing I would like to see tweaked is the rate that some of the special snags stats grow. They are manageable in the first few levels, but after that their starting stats are so high and growing every turn gets overwhelming pretty quick. Maybe have some of the more difficult ones drop more XP or drop you some shield points or something. I had a game recently where I drew the snag that you can only play when it's shield gets to 0. And it loses 1 shield for every tile you discard (Infestation, I think is the name). I drew it on the 4-5 floor and it's starting shields were like 18 or something crazy high. With 2 or 3 other special snags that I couldn't discard, it was essentially a locked tile that prevented me from getting any more shields. And can you explain the way the stat increases work when you level up and when you improve your gear? A help file or manual would be helpful to have all the tooltip information in one place. Like other have said, I haven't thought to click on everything to learn all the rules. And a place to see the available events, snags, etc. would be nice. Overall a very fun game that I keep coming back too. I missed Dungeon Raid before, so I'm having a blast with that game as well.
