At last! An influence by the old Magic game. Such a wonderful title. We are tired with all these f2p and internet connected games. Even all the new magic the gathering titles are very slow in gameplay in comparison to the old one. I have played orions 1,2 too but not sword & poker 2. LordFoul = FTW !
Nice game, clear rules, very good background (original M:TG game!). That said: terrible balancing. I'd consider myself a good card gamer, but I keep losing two out of three games due to the fact that a) I distributed my stats randomly (which is so incredibly stupid you probably should remove that randomiser and tell players that they should specialise) and b) some opponents right at the beginning either have cards or abilities that require me to have perfects draws in order to just somehow keep up with them. This in combination with the fact that losing costs money makes it incredibly hard. Unfortunately not hard in a Dark Souls kind of way, because TCGs have a heavy dose of luck involved. After somehow making it to the rat lord, I just quit after seeing his abilities. Never, EVER make opponents more difficult by just giving them special superpowers (in this case stats) the player doesn't have. Improve their AI, give them a small edge, but no outright "40 % chance of summoned creature getting +1/+0". There's no way in hell my puny blue deck will ever make it past that rat. So here's to balancing. The game is good enough to save it.
I'd suggest you try the game on easy difficulty, where you will see the stats lowered for all enemies; that is currently the only difference between easy and normal. I've had a few comments with people upset over the gold loss when defeated. That is a part of the game I don't plan to remove, but I may make a change to lessen the losses on easy. I may consider adding an additional difficulty level, between what is now easy and normal to give people more flexibility.
Wow, thanks for those comments! Can I quote you on that? For those with iPads - I've made a lot of progress already. I still have a few screens to go and then a bunch of testing to make sure I didn't break anything.
You know what's actually kind of a fun way to play (if it wasn't fun already). I stumbled upon this: I made a second deck, thinking I'll make a dual colour deck. I populated deck two with all of my good blue cards. But then couldn't decide what the other colour was and had to put the game down at that point anyway. Came back to the game and loaded up the campaign for next dual. I started getting red cards amongst my blue...what!? Was actually kind of interesting playing with a deck I half knew but other half was a mixed bag. It does say that in the deck editor it will populate your deck at the next match if your deck is under the card limit. Not sure how the population is done exactly. Whether it uses your other unlocked cards or not. Was kind of fun. But not great for campaign at all as its experimental. It would be great some time in the future if we could get just a vs mode against any deck, where we can draft any deck at all out of the library. Even a draft mode where you build a deck from say 15 booster packs to play against the AI decks.
When your deck is below your deck minimum, it fills up your deck to the minimum with random commons. Definitely not a road to success, of course, thus the warning. I like the idea of other game modes down the line, like a draft mode, quick play, etc.
Actually, no, I don't want to do that; I'd suggest balancing the game so that the terrible AI (seriously, the AI does not know how to play the game at all) doesn't get saved by superior stats without players using the lowest difficulty. Tune up the AI so I'd actually have to think instead of just lowering the difficulty. Give balanced stats some kind of meaning. The bare bones are there, but I really can't be bothered to hack through mobs giving me 10 gold each just to fail against some mage who manages to deny me my only aeon before he even had a turn and then goes on to take 80+ gold from me.
I do appreciate your positive comments; makes it worth it knowing other folks are out there enjoying the game. An update on iPad support - all screens have been converted, so just some additional testing left to do before I submit for App Store review. After that is done, I'll have to look at the list and figure out what's next.
Having bought this on day 1, only today have I managed to take some dedicated time to look into this. I suppose I was kind of waiting on the improved manual and tutorial (though I find a manual, I'm not sure there is a tutorial?). Either way, the game isn't extremely difficult to grasp so there's that. I wanted to chime in that so far it is surpassing most of my expectations! Based on the feedback here, some people kept commenting on a lack of polish or something, but I find the game tremendously well put together. Good artwork, good gameplay, a single player campaign... Really, congratulations on launching this! I will hopefully have some time to play it in the coming weeks! In terms of some previous comments and requests, definitely a random quest/campaign would be helpful, even if it's implemented as "daily quests" you could get inside the current campaign, from a tavern or something where travelers would gather. In the deck editor, I'd probably benefit from the ability to both cycle through cards by swiping left and right when one is zoomed in, as well as acting on it (I.e. Adding it to the deck or removing it from the deck). I share some of the comments on multiple colored decks so far. I'd probably enjoy playing with such decks, but right now it does seem to be tailored to specialization. Would it be possible to get, by default, an unlimited (or limited to 15/ whatever limit all have) selectable aeon colored cards in the editor, so that you could add as many of them, of whatever colors you'd want, to your deck from the get go? Right now I have several cards on my editor that I do not have any incentive to try out because they're too expensive in terms of other color aeons. Maybe that's something that will change as I make more progress? Either way, excellent game. Thank you for releasing it!
Also, a question: what's the difference between spells and creatures? Or, in other words, I didn't expect my Mind Fog to disrupt a Poison Dragon as it seems to be a creature. Is it because it case an "on cast" effect? Thanks.
@pjft Thanks for all of the feedback, I appreciate it! A few responses to your questions - Manual vs Tutorial I added a manual and targeting assistance in the last update, but not a full-blown tutorial/walk-through, which would take longer to design/develop. Random Dungeons / Side quests That sort of thing is on the list! I just started thinking through some of the possibilities today. Deck Editor Yes, some good ideas there. i've thought about adding buttons that pop up when you zoom the card so you can quickly add/remove them. The ability to quickly move to the next card is a good idea too. Multicolor It is definitely not as easy to play multicolored decks right out of the gate. You can splash colors, particularly with a higher wisdom, but a full two color deck requires many dual-aeons cards to play smoothly. Something that could be addressed in expansions down the road. Spells vs Creatures I should reword Mind Fog (and Confute) to indicate "card" instead of "spell", since they disrupt any card regardless of type. I will make sure all the disruptions are consistent in their wording for the next update.
Thanks, great to hear you're thinking about these things! Hope the game is doing well, it definitely deserves so As for Mind Fog, would it affect any card that's played, or any card that's played that would trigger an effect on being played? Also, does the game auto save mid battle? Thanks!
@pjft Mind Fog disrupts a card that is cast from the opponent's hand, it doesn't disrupt an ability. The red disruption (Aeon Syphon) does disrupt aeon-triggered abilities though, since it disrupts the playing of the aeon card. No, the game does not auto save in the middle of a duel. As long as the app is still running you can pick up where you left off if it gets backgrounded. That is better than some games that require network connection to servers. Thanks for the well wishes! The jury is still out on whether this will be successful, but it has only been a couple of weeks, so we'll see.
Having restarted with red instead of blue and the required stats maxing (AGI) and paid my dues (currently at 103-116); here's my latest two cents: Yes, the game gets easier once you're over the hump; I'm still not really sure whether I could have defeated that hump with my previous build, but that's that. There's not a whole lot of deck customisation options due to the low card count and the fact that true dual or even multi colored decks aren't feasible right now. I'm playing with all my multilands and a sprinkle of blue cards (familiars and card draw) for the golden super ring, but I can't imagine putting anything above cost one in my off color in my deck. MY biggest problem is still the incredibly incompetent AI. I have no problems at all losing against a superior player, but the AI isn't that, not by a long shot. The amount of harebrained mistakes it makes (nuking creatures that their own creature would have killed this turn, overnuking small alibi creatures, throwing weak creatures in front of your creatures without any rhyme or reason etc etc etc) is just baffling. I'll keep on playing, but please keep on working on that AI
@heretik Improving the AI is on the list; I'll try to get some into an update soon. I am also looking forward to adding more cards to expand the deck customization options. It will take some more time for me to see if sales support it. It has only been a couple of weeks, so too soon to say.
