Universal I Keep Having This Dream (by Fireflame Games)

Obviously you don't have to take any suggestions. But the game is not enough fun as it stands for me to keep playing. I think I'm pretty sympathetic to this type of thing but currently it feels significantly too constrained. The exit, for sure. I feel like there would be more "interesting tactical opportunities" if it weren't so limited. But of course it's your game and you should do what you think will work best. Good luck with it.


P.S. Computing whether and which tiles the Nemesis will consume if I discard is not part of my play and I doubt it ever will be. For one thing, it takes a long time just to scroll all of the way back to the start of the chain just to see what the situation is. And I can't think that it matters in more than the most very general sense. Perhaps I'm missing, or failing to appreciate, some of the depth that you have designed in. Again, I think I'm generally pretty sympathetic to and appreciative of complex, intricate strategies. But if the Nemesis mechanism is about carefully calculating exactly how many tiles the Nemesis will eat each time I do something, and that's going to be central to play, I'm probably not going that far.

 

Maybe not, but it looks cool!

It would be nice to have a counter or something. Like T:N D:N for tiles and droplets between you and Nemesis

Gifted this to my dad yesterday for his birthday. Not sure if it will click with him or not, but I sure hope he enjoys it.

 

Hi guys I need some help. Can somebody please explain to me how you find the exit to a level?
When I play Im just placing tiles with no idea what direction I should be heading or what I should be looking for on the board.

 

Hey Nergal, when you press one of the tiles in your hand, it will show you a little yellow compass arrow that points in the direction of the exit, and with a number that shows about how many hexes away the exit is. Check it out:

 

You've convinced me on this point, so I rescind my request to have any tile work on the exit. I agree with you that it should behave the same way as any other tile. My real issue is being confused as to why I couldn't proceed, and then being annoyed that I died while trying to figure it out. In the same situation during a second game, I had no trouble and did much better.

I ran into this as well - glad it was just a bug and that you're on it!

Someone else suggested adding a line to the tutorial that says something along the lines of, "nearly everything can be tapped to find out more information about its behavior", and I think that's a good idea. I've tapped on many things to view the tooltips, but doing so on the exit tile, exit keys, and Nemesis didn't occur to me.

Maybe some sort of subtle indication of Nemesis's current attack range might be good, like a sphere of influence? A faint red glow that shimmers around the edge of where it will go based on its current level, so you don't have to do the math.

I've figured out a shortcut to get back to the leading edge of the path (simply tap one of your held tiles), but is there a shortcut to go look at Nemesis/the beginning of the path?

This is a little more subjective, but maybe when placing a tile and the destination is red, some sort of popup that gives a hint as to why you can't place it there? That would've helped me with my exit tile issues before. It could fade in when you drag the tile over the red spot. "A path exit already connects here", for example. Your point is well made that the rules are simple and it doesn't take forever to internalize, so maybe this only needs to be on during the tutorial, or the first few times it happens to the player.

Finally, I tried playing a game on Easy, and no surprise, it was my best game yet:


Thanks fireflame! I'm having so much fun with this.

 

If the intention is that every tile location that has an exit onto it from a tile other than the current (last) tile is a permanently unplayable location (at least until the Nemesis eats that tile) then you could have some sort of graphic that grays out all of those locations to indicate you can never play there. There's no need to wait until someone selects a tile to indicate with the red border that it can't be played there, because no tile whatsoever can be played there.

I continue to think the game would be significantly better if you relaxed that.

 

It would be nice if this were always on screen. It could also be at the edge of the screen rather than near the center as it is now.

 

1.0.1 update is out already, with the fix for the red X button not showing up, along with the rotation changes fireflame mentioned before, some new specials, and some balance changes.

 

Great update. The tiles auto rotating toward the exit is a huge time saver.

 

Totally agreed. It makes the game a lot better at being a "waiting in line" distraction, since I can easily get a few tiles placed quickly now.

 

Yep, by popular request, the 1.0.1 tutorial now gently suggests that the player should try tapping all the interface bits and icons for an explanation of how they work.

Some combination of these might be a good idea, I'll have a think about it. And no, I probably won't be changing the core tile placing rules to allow for connecting to existing exits (to maintain the clarity of a non-intersecting path and to keep exiting somewhat technically challenging), but it is a cool idea and I think I've got a good place for where to implement it.

Sadly, you can't play as any of the instant classics like Golden Bell or Segmented Green Worm, all the avatars are intentionally mundane

 

Thanks to zebe for answering me, that really clarifies things. Now I can get back to enjoying this game.

 

Couple of things that might be helpful. A way to easily see how far away nemesis is. I think someone already mention having a faint red fog on the map if he's in your range. Also, a way to see how many experience drops you have on the map. Sometimes it's helpful to advance nemesis with the red x if you'll level up. I'm still a little puzzled as to how far he moves with discarded tiles.

I finally got a few games where I was fairly geared up. Had items with multiple abilities. Was gaining ATK, DEF, and health every turn no matter what tile I played, and I still hit the super snag brick wall about halfway through the 5th level. I guess that's just the luck of the draw, but it feels like you have to get extremely favorable draws around that point to be able to proceed any farther. Becomes almost all luck and zero skill at that point, in my experience.

I still think a snag/event/skill encyclopedia would be nice. Or at the very least a way to see the details of the snag/event you just unlocked.

EDIT: Forgot to add that maybe some sort of health, ATK, DEF boost on leveling up might be nice. Could give you a little breathing room when you hit the super snag brick wall, and it would still be a little challenging, because you'd still have to be able to advance nemesis with the red x instead of dying.

 

I could not agree more! The game basically breaks down to a purely mathematical affair, to nothing but a "bar-filling game". Each turn either add to one of three resources or subtract from them. Put in a bunch of RNG, lots of content, a neat visual style and tiles with paths on them and it seems like there is something more to it, but there really isn't. The core gameplay system is devoid of any tactics, and interesting decisions arise once in a blue moon (if ever).

 

I think there are pretty interesting and significant decisions about whether you fight enemies or you build up your strength. That's the main tradeoff in the game. Your skill choices and events can also add additional choices. So I do think there's a fair amount to strategize over in the game (although I didn't play enough to hit the wall that others have talked about, where the enemies get almost impossible to beat, so I can't say how much there is at this point). But I don't think the tile placement rules are the interesting part of the game and so I would still rather they be less constrained.

You could easily have the rule that you can place any tile that connects to your current position, and just ignore how that tile does or doesn't match up with previously placed tiles. So, in that case, there would be a single path, that you actually moved along, which could be highlighted, and there would be branches off of it not taken, it wouldn't matter whether those run into other tiles or run off into space. I am pretty sure I would find that more fun and would let me focus on the game. But the designer obviously has a different opinion and his opinion certainly prevails over mine.


I still have this on my device but I think I'm not too likely to play it any more after the first couple of tries. But who knows? Maybe I will feel in the mood to pick it up again.