Meteorfall - Roguelike deck builder

Discussion in 'Upcoming iOS Games' started by slothwerks, Jul 1, 2017.

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  1. sinagog

    sinagog Well-Known Member

    Aug 15, 2014
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    #101 sinagog, Sep 26, 2017
    Last edited: Sep 26, 2017
    Killer game! Also getting the bug where the Start button becomes unresponsive after finishing a game and going to start a new one. Happens fairly often, actually.

    Will suggest a sound effect, or sad descending guitar notes, whenever you lose a game. As it is it feels a little abrupt, "You lose, here're your gems, bub-bye". Just a quick sound effect would sort that feeling out, I reckon.

    Unsure what those diamonds/gems go towards at the moment, but I guess I'll figure it out after a) more playing, or b) reading the thread. Perhaps a hold-over for later unlockables?

    Additional lore on each of the characters could be cool. Perhaps it could be unlocked after defeating each boss with a character.

    Having a card's info coming up from holding on the card, rather than just swiping it right, feels like it would be appreciated. Although that might undermine the whole left/right Reignsiness of it all.

    Will chime in with more notes after further playing, but I do think you've nailed it so far. The Wiz is also my favourite character, though I like the idea of potentially getting to have almost endless turns so I'm sure I'll warm up to the Rogue, too. (Apologies for the skimpy book report).
     
  2. Avaniar

    Avaniar Well-Known Member

    Jul 26, 2016
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    The diamonds are used to buy cards. If you look at the character selection screen on the top right corner there are three blacked out icons. If you click them you can select new cards to buy :)
     
  3. Avaniar

    Avaniar Well-Known Member

    Jul 26, 2016
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    The music

    I loved the music. The intro reminds me of Firefly :)
     
  4. sinagog

    sinagog Well-Known Member

    Aug 15, 2014
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    #104 sinagog, Sep 26, 2017
    Last edited: Sep 27, 2017
    Thanks! I did notice that before, but I know what I did now. I clicked on the diamonds, rather than the blacked-out icon to the left of it. Probably the kind of mistake only I would make, but may be worth making the entire thing lead you to the purchase screen just in case, diamonds and all.

    ETA: Bought a couple of cards and defeated the uberlich. I felt nigh on unbeatable with some of those upgraded cards- especially Inferno, full Zaps etc. I would increase the difficulty of the final boss a little. I know his popping up right after the previous battle could be tricky, but he went down pretty easily. Maybe add a wee bit more fanfare for when you win, too? Bit more text and a few wahoos is all I ask. :)
     
  5. slothwerks

    slothwerks Well-Known Member
    Patreon Silver

    1. That's unfortunate :( That scenario is basically a 'crash' but Unity doesn't actually crash in that case. One thing I think I'll do in the next build is enable my crash logs, so you guys can at least give me some info to help debug in that case. Sorry that happened!

    2. Yeah - I honestly didn't test the 'win the game' flow too much yet. Seems like I have some bugs to fix :)

    3. I've seen this in my own testing as well, need to find the repro steps. It's an annoying bug!

    4. I knew about Stab, but not Observe - will fix, thank you!

    5. I'll look into the issue with Iron Skin

    6. This bug was reported by some others as well. Seems like it's removing buffs - doh! Will fix.

    Thanks for all the suggestions as well! I have 2 sets of post-it notes on my to-do list right now: bugs and improvements, and I've added your other ideas as potential improvements.

    Thanks again for the detailed feedback, and congrats on your top score! You're ahead of me (6th - Lazypeon)!
     
  6. slothwerks

    slothwerks Well-Known Member
    Patreon Silver

    I missed it, but just responded! Can't believe you beat the game with all 4 heroes - even I haven't done that yet. That's seriously impressive :D I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on Rose (Priest) I have some ideas to 'juice' her starting deck to make the early game more interesting (eg: no more drawing meditate, meditate, heal and passing your turn)

    One idea I'm considering in general is that Meditate will read something like "Restore 1 charge to a spell. If you have no spells to charge, draw a spell and put it on top of you deck" or something like that.

    Bleed thing is a bug, and it's on my list of things to fix.

    Also, as someone who beat the game with all the heroes (seriously, WOW!) let me know if you have ideas about future cards/mechanics that you think would be interesting. In particular, I'd love to add some more complex cards in the future (like some of the unlockables) and I'd love to riff on any ideas you have about that. Any cards that add more weight to the turn-by-turn micro decisions you make in battle I think are great.
     
  7. slothwerks

    slothwerks Well-Known Member
    Patreon Silver

    Thanks for the great feedback!

    I'll pass on the comments about music to Evgeny (the artist)! He was in a blues band before and I'm sure he'd be glad to hear your comments :) More of his music here: https://www.youtube.com/user/Oburets

    re: 'Not enough gold' Good comment, perhaps I'll just center this text or something like that

    3. Good idea, I'll think a bit on this one! It might be a big departure in terms of technical implementation, but I do agree that previewing upgrades would be a nice-to-have

    4. Noted re: swiping ond ecisions

    5. Will look into this smite issue

    6. I've encountered this as well, it's pretty annoying :p We'll see if I can tighten up the hit boxes for the enemy card + settings button

    7. I'm OK with this - honestly, the AI is pretty simple and since the enemy's job is sort of to 'wear you down' through attrition, it seems like an acceptable way to end the monster's life :p

    8. I like this idea, even I am sometimes confused when I die. I'll add it to my list

    Congrats on #5! I'm at 174, and that's after 20+ hours of experience :p
     
  8. slothwerks

    slothwerks Well-Known Member
    Patreon Silver

    I like it, I'd love to juice the victory screen to be a bit more fun, because it can be a brutal game at times. I'll think of some ideas about this! I honestly haven't spent a ton of time on it thus far because I've so rarely seen it myself, but I do agree it should have some more pop!
     
  9. slothwerks

    slothwerks Well-Known Member
    Patreon Silver

    I think you'll love the rogue too! I think overall, the wizard (Greybeard) is my favorite, but the Rogue (Mischief) is super powerful. I love adding as many Stab cards as possible and finishing with Eviscerate - you can do some insane damage when you get the right draw.
     
  10. slothwerks

    slothwerks Well-Known Member
    Patreon Silver

    Thanks for the great feedback!

    The 'unresponsive' is basically a crash. In hindsight, I regret not leaving in the debug error message I had during testing, because it would've helped me a lot if you guys could send me a screenshot of that :p I'll enable it in a future build.

    re: Max health, there are a few places this can happen, so I'll see about fixing it.

    re: Stab/Observe descriptions, I've got these on my list to fix

    re: Decisions, I think this is a good point. I figured it's MOSTLY obvious given that everything else is swipe left/right, but making it more intuitive through some hint or other indicator could be good

    re: Number of actions, I think there are some bugs there :) I noticed it during my testing as well. I'll do some more testing arond this

    re: poison, freeze - tapping your hero when afflicted by these does bring up a dialog that explains these. Had you seen this, or you mean something in addition to this?

    re: Pickpocket/Boast, I have this on my improvement list, I think it would be more intuitive / exciting to get feedback that the effect was triggered, great idea

    re: Observe, I had similar thoughts, I need to play with it a bit more. I noticed some bosses (the tree - Elmer) use it to great effect. Other times I've taken it and found it useless, because I rarely skip cards.

    re: Difficulty - it should be pretty difficult. I don't have a real idea in mind of what % of runs should be successful, but the inspiration for this game (Dream Quest) and just roguelikes in general have a pretty low success rate, which I think is OK. I think the games in Meteorfall are relatively quick ~20 minutes for a full run, so I think it's easy to pick it up again with a new character and try again. Also, the upgraded cards are slightly stronger than the base attacks cards, but are mostly more complex. The idea is that unlocking these more advanced cards rewards players once they've learned more of the strategy and definitely help in the early game, but doesn't make the game a ton easier overall. I'm trying to avoid the trope where upgrading your character in roguelikes ends up trivializing the early content. I'd like to keep a relatively constant difficulty level, even after upgrading cards.

    Would love to hear more balance feedback as you have it! I get a lot of functional feedback (bugs) and UX ideas, but not much in the way of balance. If something is too good/too terrible, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

    Thanks again :D
     
  11. cbos0503

    cbos0503 Well-Known Member

    May 9, 2015
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    Yes, I did eventually notice it there. But it would be helpful to have that same dialog available while I'm finding treasure... or upgrading a card, etc.
     
  12. dreadnok

    dreadnok Well-Known Member

    Jun 8, 2011
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    I came here to kick ass and chew bubble gum I'm ou
    It's treasure be happy you found some :)
     
  13. Armadi

    Armadi Well-Known Member

    Mar 24, 2016
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    #113 Armadi, Sep 27, 2017
    Last edited: Sep 27, 2017
    beta testing

    Possible bug-

    Rejuvinate puts the blessings in the discard, not the deck.

    Thoughts on Rose- I really like her! All of her healing makes it easy to never avoid enemy encounters and gives her great high score potential... assuming high score is based on experience earned. How is high score calculated anyway?

    I'm currently second on the leaderboard with Rose. I think she can build a pretty good deck based around healing and smiting, she can always take health over stamina when leveling and can make pretty good use of Slam (deals damage based on current health).

    All 3 of her unlockables are interesting:

    Hana's protection there is a bit more of a decision on whether to play the spell or not- I only recently have started thinking about not playing spells to not spend charges to make sure my meditates "hit" the right targets- but banking charges on the card is also good just to be sure they're there to get full healing when drawn again.

    Shadow pact is the only spell I've seen that has a drawback if drawn without a charge.

    Shadowburn... I don't really like it, it feels weird to be punished for keeping charges on it. At the same time I'm glad it exists.

    She's the only character that can whiff a turn I think- well maybe the wizard can draw only spells with no charges but at least he would know it was his own fault. If heal gives an hourglass on full health that would fix it, it would be simpler if it just gave an hourglass but that might lead to a balance issue.

    Re: more complex cards-

    If a card had an effect when discarded other than just giving stamina that would pretty simply add to decisions. It would also open up a mechanic where the player self discards off the top of his/her deck to try to sift out the "when discarded" abilities.

    You can definitely use your "token on cards" system more- have cards that look to see what tokens are present and modify their effects. f.e. a shaman that summons spirits- each spirit card adds a token to play with no in-game effect, but the character also has a "commune" card that does an effect based on the spirits in play and an "unleash" card that has an effect based on spirits in play and then discards them.

    Cards that reward players for having large decks, probably coupled with cards that permanently add cards to a player's deck.

    Edit: argh, accidentally got a higher score with mischief on leaderboard. Rose score was 198.
     
  14. slothwerks

    slothwerks Well-Known Member
    Patreon Silver

    These suggestions are great!

    re: Shadowburn/Shadowpact - I think these are interesting cards because both do high damage relative due their level (compared to simple skills like Fireball) but come with a drawback. The 'lose health' penalty isn't such a big deal for Rose, given her heal spells.

    re: Healing giving an hour glass if your health is maxed. Really neat idea, I like this a lot. I think I might try this out. A few people gave feedback that they didn't enjoy Rose because of her propensity to whiff a turn, which I agree doesn't feel great.

    re: On Discard effects, this is great. I can imagine other cards which have penalties for discarding also. This could give cards some interesting choices, not unlike Druids in Hearthstone (eg: giving a choice of either/or effects, depending on the need)

    re: Token spells. I thought of this, but I think in general, later in the dev cycle I started moving away from having so many buff effects, because it's a nightmare to communicate how many effects/what they do/etc... If I end up exploring this space more though, I do like the idea of classes that use tokens to influence spells. DQ had some cool ideas here, like a Shaman that got more actions each time he added a token to his totem.

    re: Large deck bonus is very interesting. Reminds me of unorthodox 'highlander' decks in Hearthstone, like Reno, where you basically build the deck around an unconventional archetype like "have only of each card", "do bonus damage if no 2 cost cards" etc... Large decks would be an extension of that. I could imagine some cards that give a bonus if you have no upgraded cards, all upgraded cards, etc... Definitely some rich design space here, thanks for the idea :)
     
  15. mudrik

    mudrik Member

    Sep 27, 2017
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    It is not a feedback, just kind of support to others feedbacks – things I want to note too.

    When skipping a card in the battle that restoring Stamina and skipping monster card that restoring HP can you place a little tip under description - when Stamina or HP is full, that this action have no effect. - like it works in case of REST card.

    Attachments about "Not enough gold" position
     

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  16. cyllwynn

    cyllwynn Well-Known Member

    Jul 3, 2011
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    Probable wonkiness/bug :)

    When fighting a Kooltist he killed me with a shadowburn (?) (the spell that hurts him and me) and it killed me but also killed him and by killing him raised my level to level 3. So I died. But then the game said I had a game in progress and when I clicked it, I was alive again and now level 3 and picking my perk... lol.

    Minor... but interesting
     
  17. cbos0503

    cbos0503 Well-Known Member

    May 9, 2015
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    Bugs:
    - If ‘Lightning Storm’ kills an enemy by drawing it, that action doesn’t show up in the Recap.
    - Sometimes the cards don’t line up in the deck view (picture 1).
    - You can tap on a character card at different times to really make a mess of screen overlays (picture 2).
    - Sometimes the card gets shifted to the left (picture 3). When this happens you don’t get the tip for swiping right (picture 4).
    - The deck view doesn’t always show the correct number of total charges or available charges (picture 5). Lightning storm should have 3 total charges in this case. Other cases not pictured where the available charges were incorrect.
    - Inferno Roman_Error card (picture 6).
    - Resetting the tutorial, then force closing the app will start the tutorial in the middle of your saved game. I’m sure there’s an exploit abuse in there somewhere.
    - I feel like the deck view is bugged as well. Like it’s not showing me all the cards in my deck. Or maybe it’s showing me the stats (charges) from one card for the image of a different card, which might account for the total/available charges not being correct. How is the deck drafting done? Do you always get the same starting deck? Sometimes with the wizard, I’ll have 2 lightning storms, and others only 1… without cloning or getting another one. And I don’t know if I’ve actually got 2 or if it’s a visual bug (picture 7).

    That's all for now... :)
     

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  18. dreadnok

    dreadnok Well-Known Member

    Jun 8, 2011
    4,157
    7
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    I came here to kick ass and chew bubble gum I'm ou
    I was about to report the same thing. If the enemy killed you but died in the process triggered that same action where I leveled up and kept playing
     
  19. hceron

    hceron New Member

    Nov 13, 2014
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  20. mudrik

    mudrik Member

    Sep 27, 2017
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    #120 mudrik, Sep 27, 2017
    Last edited: Sep 27, 2017
    I have the same two bugs.
    Inferno bug was in the shop - see pic 1-3
    And one bug with two Continue buttons I make with some addition actions but can't remember what it were. I down one I push and it work. (pic 4)

    Just played -Inferno bug card unplayeble - left or right swipe gives no action, so I have to quit the progress. And even Quit button from Option does not help. I clear the app from phone processes and then start the fight again monster from the beginning
     

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