Thanks for the interest in Lost Portal. Given the sales generated thus far (after a year and a half), I am not considering a port to Android. With (much) more sales, I would have definitely considered it, but this has to remain a part-time project as is.
I wish blue/black wasn't so ridiculously overpowered, the card advantage by drawing extra/destroying enemy cards is so overwhelming and quick to get going that running any other colours feels so slow and crippling yourself - throw in those 1 red mana generating birds and it feels like including any other green or black cards ultimately just slows you down, which you don't want considering the dozens of trash enemies you gotta wade through. even on max difficulty you need incredibly bad draws to not come out ahead with black&blue, which makes the game devoid of meaningful decisions once you got enough black&blue dual lands
New player feedbacks Hi LordFoul! I registered an account here only for the purpose of this post. I really like your game. Only got it recently and still puzzled at how, in the world, I didn't sooner. It's right my alley, searched the internet a lot for this kind of game. Sorry to ask, but did you even try advertising it? I bet you did. What went wrong? I can't wrap my head around this one. Is it too late? Have no idea how it actually works. Might be relevant, the way I found it was a reddit post, seems it got listed a bit more recently. But no actual reddit community. I'm really curious about this and can't believe that someone with the know-how wouldn't manage to get you way, way more sales than it seems you got. It's engaging and runs smoothly. I have only one save so far. Started with black on normal. Turns out I'm playing on "cheater" difficulty as I like to get those avatar cards. What I mean is I do reload scum, especially against bosses, to the point I wish it was actually a legit option. It allowed me to build decks that didn't look like the result of a draft anymore, but constructed rather. And deck building is the most fun to me, would scum again. Somewhat on topic, I'm trying to get that one avatar card from a boss in the Norther Wilds (Zarkan). I probably wouldn't have if it worked as it is worded. But every time that boss throws an aeon at it, it resurects a creature from my graveyard to his side. Never triggers the Flame Blast listed instead on the card. That being said, doesn't look like he wanna let go. Lost track of how many times I spanked him and didn't get the card to try it myself yet. EDIT: Landed a Master's Will on it and behaved as I described, the aeon power got the top creature in his graveyard to play on my side, no Flame Blast. Looking forward to you getting more sales and the drive to deliver more content. Or better yet: a sequel; with the shortcomings you identified being addressed. I wish you, and the game, the best! Both deserving!
@Lulero I am glad you are enjoying Lost Portal and thanks for finding that bug with Unstable Warmage (the Avatar card for Zarkan), as well as Zarkan not giving the card up as an Avatar card. I've already fixed and tested it, so that will be in the next update, whenever that may be. Also thanks for the kind words regarding Lost Portal. As my first game, it has been a great learning experience, and I have been happy to see it get positive reviews and see folks enjoying it. I agree it could have used better promotion/advertising and ideally enough polish to get noticed by Apple. I designed it so that it is unlikely to get all boss avatar cards by the end of the campaign, although you do get additional chances by traveling through the ancient portal, which provides an endless number of random dungeons to go through. I am working on an update that will provide a 'survival' mode that will allow for quick gameplay. A sequel is in the works, but that will be quite some time.
And reactive at that. Thank you for taking the time! Anyway, mind if I share some more thoughts? Well, no matter, here I go. First of, if you add a survival mode with faster pace, I'd get in touch with an experienced marketer or two. Might be worth a shot! Very glad to hear that a sequel is in the work. You most likely drew ideas from Dream Quest and MtG. I do believe that what you got from the former doesn't match your game mechanics. Exploration, as it is, seems quite useless. And I don't think adding more tactical element to it (like life regen on uncovering tiles) would do your game much good. I can think of two designs for what's on the side of fights that might or, most likely, not help you. Option 1: Did you try Hex: Shards of Fate? It has a single player campaign scheme that would fit better than the Dream Quest approach in your case I think. Basically, you move from node to node on a global map. Each node means an encounter, meaning a fight in most cases, sometimes a merchant or a quest trigger, and last but not least the entrance to a dungeon. You can repeat most fights at will but what you get is much less likely to be good after you won for the first time. They also feature an arena, which would be your "survival" mode. Basically at most 20 fights in a row with 2 allowed losses. Rewards get better the deeper you go, or if you are lucky enough to meet one of the super rare opponents (much stronger with guaranteed loots and cosmetics if you win). Reason I think this is better than the Dream Quest approach is related to deck building. One more or one less card makes a big difference in this other game, so you have to plan in which order you want to tackle ennemies. In your case, much more like MtG or Hex, you fast reach a point when you are unlikely to change anything to your deck unless you saved enough gold or get lucky. Hence, going for one opponent or the other first doesn't matter. Option 2: Something I have yet to see properly done anywhere. An e-sport simulation with your CCG as its center. It's challenging to get right. You need a dynamic world revolving around tournaments spread over space (areas varying in scale) and time (one in-game year or so). Meaning card bans/lift based on meta (and a bit of randomness), hence meta-analysis, enough cards to release a set every now and then as game progresses (eventually rotating out and in), a challenging AI since they will most likely have access to the same cards (give them special abilities over the player if need be, but be transparent), deck-building AI (that's not as hard, go fancy with a genetic algorithm or similar, it's fun to code and a great tool to tweak the balance), news generator (players should want to make it to the headlines), a lot of stats (tons of them). Basically asking the impossible am I not? But that's it, players want to be on top in an environment that feels like the real thing, but most won't be able to unless it's single-player. That's second option is where I'm trying to get with my own project, but who am I kidding? I never finished anything outside of what I'm paid for at work. My hat down to you for managing that! It really impresses me. So here I am, pushing on you ideas that I'd love to see live in a game hehe. Just ignore me. Thank you, again, for Lost Portal. Will spread the word to whoever I can.
@Lulero Lost Portal was inspired mainly by the old Shandalar (MTG) PC game along with other games that were out when I first started working on it: Sword & Poker 2 and Orions. I loved the quick pick up and play aspects of both, but wanted the deck-building aspects of a CCG, and I am also a D&D fan, so adding RPG elements was fun and added some unique aspects. I did not know about Dream Quest until after I released and started hearing some comparisons. I like the game very much, as well as other card games like Card Crawl and Solitarica, which are both incredibly polished and unique. The next game will also be single-player and will have even more RPG elements and a more compelling story mode. Beyond that, it is too early to talk about too much, as I am still experimenting and I don't know exactly where it will end up.
I too agree that this game unfortunately has not been recognized as much as it should be. It's absolutely great. I love that you are working or planning on a sequel with improved rpg mechanics and story. One of my favorite things about Lost Portal is the fact that it is a single player campaign CCG; there just really aren't that many SP CCG out there worth playing. I do agree with card crawl, card thief, and solitairica being other great similar games though. Honestly, I would LOVE to see the sequel to Lost Portal somehow take place in an alternate Sci Fi universe, or a new game like lost portal with a sci fi setting. There is only one sci fi CCG on mobile I can think of, and its pretty horrible lol. Anyway, thanks Lord Foul for all you do and I can't wait to see the next game, whether it's sci fi or a return to the same theme I'll definitely be in!
@Tychaeus - The title of the new game will be Star Portal... ...so there will be aliens, robots, bugs and of course humans getting into trouble! Just keep in mind this is going to take me a long time to complete.
LordFoul, do you think the colours are balanced (see my rant earlier on this page)? did you have a beta/extensive playtesting for Lost Portal? I think just rebalancing them would add replay value by itself - fundamentally ramping/card advantage is strong in any energy based card game, and in this one there's no effective counter to it. I'd he curious how decks would look if there was pvp!
Awwee! Niiice! I have no unrealistic expectations of you...releasing before Christmas or anything lol. My guestimation woulda been around 1 year or so from now. But that is so awesome regarding the planned theme!
I've personally played through the game many times with each color, and get fairly similar win/loss records. If you have certain cards you think are overpowered, I've been known to tweak the cost or nerf a card or two to try to help balance things. Regarding card advantage, all four colors have card draw capabilities of various types and rarities, and it is easy to splash the common Logic Storm into any color deck to get some excellent card draw. Discard is certainly focused in black. As for countering, I've actually given every color some form of disruption, although blue has a distinct advantage on that front. Plenty of play-testing over many years, but not a large beta pool by any means. As I said I am open to specific suggestions for cards that may lead to overly powerful decks that ruin the fun. I'm not looking to nerf every powerful card, of course.
It appears iOS 11.2 is causing an issue with Lost Portal. The green border that appears around the cards in your hand that indicates they can be played is not appearing after this update. The cards can still be played, but that is a major help that is missing. I am investigating.
I've not played in forever, but the blue 1 mana creature (forgot its ability even, but a 4-of must have in every deck) and the red 1 mana creature (I think it generates 1 red mana when played) let you get the upper hand right from the start that you can get out some crippling disruption like that blue active card removal dragon out way ahead of curve and there's also that black knight/horse rider card which gets +1/1 or so for every kill - there's just no coming back from that combo of early & mid game power, you can get up to 15-20 damage per turn very quickly, before the enemy can build up enough mana or recover from you having emptied his entire hand. In my experience, focusing on blue and splashing into black higher mana creatures once you get more black/blue dual lands gave me, on the hardest difficulty, a 90% winrate at least - red and green were much lower and dependent on luck of the draw. the abundance of dual lands themselves might be a problem, perhaps limit the number of dual lands allowed per deck? if enemies play a normal land even once you've gained an advantage of 1 mana for free after a certain point right now
Version 1.1.8 is now released to the app store that fixes this issue with iOS 11.2, along with a couple of other bugs. The Unstable Warmage card (from Aerahym expansion) has been fixed and the enemy Zarkan is now more likely to give it up as an Avatar card when defeated. You can now press on cards in your opponent's hand if they are flipped up due to Wizened Visage.
I'm hoping this will still get cloud saving.. i would love to put this on one of my other devices. Or maybe at least open file sharing on the app so we can transfer save files that way.
Sorry, no progress on cloud saves. I do have four new rare cards coming in an update shortly. The update is through review so look for it soon, after I do a little more testing.
Can you at least open up file sharing then? Other developers have done this when they don't want to work on iCloud. It's really simple to do and just lets the user access the documents where the save files are from. Before Apple decided to lock out all document access, this is how a lot of people backed up their game files.
