Thanks for your hard work on this awesome game! My current save gives me 4 years to live and I'm probably not prepared. Just gave those 4 years a play and... died at 0. Maybe a warning should pop up at 1 saying "this is your last year." Edit: tried again, I'm going to need to start over if I want to beat the game. And want to play from beginning with the new prophecies anyway. Have all cards in almanac except the last 5. Noticed while looking through almanac- the text on canopic jar (not in the almanac description but on the card itself) looks like it destroys itself and not just the other card. But in game it does stick around. Have all achievements except Mighty Nile and Life Everlasting.
Ouch! How close were you to building your pyramid? I like the idea of a warning when you're getting close, but with prophecies in the mix, this could be a little tricky, since your last year could come earlier than when you have 1 year left. If you don't stay on top of them, they'll pile up and knock you out earlier. Yeah, the prophecies really put a fire under your feet to get that pyramid built and stuffed with mummies and treasures. I haven't played enough to know whether the number of years is reasonable, brutal, or forgiving. I'll be interested to hear how you do. Wow, that's pretty good! Three of those last five are the ones reserved for players who "tip the developer", so you're really only missing two. Nice catch! Yes, it used to be that the Canopic Jars would go away, but that didn't feel right, because it made you regret killing cards that you would normally like to cull "just in case" you have an opportunity to cull an important card. So I changed it, but I didn't update the almanac text. I should have that corrected in the next build. Nice! You're knocking back those achievements! Thanks for your thoughtful feedback and attention!
I had the pyramid built was just preparing. All of my endgame stuff has been from the same game using a certain chamber. Oh, I intend to get all the missing cards, just the last three will have to wait for full release I'm at 68 years remaining on my current playthrough- after several restarts that ended in failure. I think there is a tipping point where the game becomes much safer (basically when you have jewels in the bank to save yourself from strings of reign cards without gold to buy them), although prophecies may have changed that. Edit: argh, I lost at 67. Could have survived if I was less stingy with jewels.
Nice. Sounds like you jinxed yourself there! Yes, I view jewels as a gateway to another level of the game. Once you start banking jewels, it helps mitigate the vagaries of bad shuffles where reign doesn't show up alongside coin. You need to be able to mitigate that as you start to ramp up your other silos because you will change the makeup of your decks away from being mostly reign and coin. Once you get jewels, you can really start to focus on your other silos because you can consume reign where it appears. The temple is the other obvious gateway. Having a reserve lets you choose a strategy that you want to pursue and do so effectively, without relying on a shuffle to give you what you want. You still often need to make tough choices, since you can only bank one card reliably, but it opens up new avenues of strategy.
I've played a few more games. Made it to ~53 years remaining, saw my first prophecy card. Scary. Never got a temple built and lost. Played a few more without much progress. I'm not sure about the difficulty, it feels a bit too hard to me. But a hard game means victory is all the sweeter. My current game is ~50 years remaining, with a lot of progress including a built temple-- I'm hoping to build a pyramid with this one. I noticed that scribe counts as religion on the "cards remaining in deck" histogram and that fountains count as governance. Both time I ran into this I was burned by gaining reign expecting to be able to buy cards. I would suggest scribes be coins on the histogram and fountains be reign.
Hmm. I was thinking of putting them there thematically, but perhaps you're right - their function is more important. We'll try that for the next build. Good idea.
Hey, so i've finally played a few games. I must say i'm fairly casual and didn't make it past round 5 or 6. Here's my feedback so far, obviously skewed towards the view of a dev not necessarily a player: + This game and it's accessibility would greatly benefit from being a portrait game. It's easily playable with only your thumb and would make gaming on the go way more enjoyable. + You handle wording pretty loosely. Which means i'm often confused by the things cards do. I think it would help a lot to have very distinct keywords to describe actions, much like hearthstone has. For example it wasn't clear to me that buying a card means actually putting it in your deck vs. getting a temporary boost this turn. It would be much more clear if you would have a very distinct vocabulary for this. + The game is really dependent on luck as far as i can see. I had a similar problem in Card Crawl were the pure randomness of card draw would suck out all the fun. Having a draw of 4 coins or 4 reign cards is just plain bad. I think you should think about having a system that prevents those draws. + In regards to the last point: I think it would be interesting to see if the game would be a bit more forgiving if money would persist. I'm not sure why it depletes every round. I think this change could make the game way more accessible, but frankly i cannot oversee any implications this would have on the whole design. + Another idea would be to have a 3 card turn, meaning one card could be taken into the next turn. This way the player can reduce the bad draw luck effect a bit and this opens a bit of space for interesting decisions. + This may be a misunderstanding but in severals occasions options seems to be "non-decisions" that would neither worsen or improve my state. I would get rid of those immediately. More general: I think the main problem of the game right now is that it promises a cool thing but makes no effort to actually show it to me early on. What i mean is that there is this great promise of an expanding game in that i can discover more and more cool and intricate ways to combine cards and effects. But in order to actually experience these i need to go a trough multiple rounds of boredom and eventually just lose from bad draws. I think you need to find a way to hook the player earlier and somehow show him why this game is interesting. In todays mobile world people have the attention span of a 3 year old. If they won't get hooked on their first play you loose them. Another word to your business model (if you want to call it that). Donations won't work. If you have any ambition to make any amount of money from it you should go with another model. I could see for example that you replace you spinning wheel component with a one time retry video ad, or have some parts of the game offer something really interesting to the player that he can buy into. I do believe that if a player is interested in the game he is more likely to give you money based on something he thinks is worth his money, in opposite to hoping that he will be generous in general.
I agree. I think he will be working on a portrait build, and I've never made it past year 14, with a "wall" card. I also think $ should carry over, even if within the year. Also, the randomness is frustrating sometimes. I remember your first card crawl release when the cards were too random to win a lot of times. You fixed that quite nicely.
In my current game, with about 23 years remaining I thought I was in good position- had enough statues, obelisks and fountains to be completely independent of normal reign cards and started to concentrate on building my pyramid. But went about things too slowly and maybe concentrated harder on getting rid of fanatics over getting my act together. Had some difficulties with prophecy cards too. Right now I have 4 years remaining and checked the almanac- still have 4 stages of the pyramid to go. I cannot finish the pyramid before dying. Edit: One thought I had reading tinytouchtales comments above (big fan of card crawl btw) is that maybe a jewel should enter the deck early on. Having one would reduce difficulty and might help players to better grok coins not persisting.
Two quick comments: 1) All cards that let you buy another of themselves (that I've seen so far) have themselves listed first except the farmer. 2) I've been using the histogram not often, it does work pretty well, but in finding the hold-down bit tedious - perhaps a button below each deck might be easier to activate? I'm still only managing mid-20's... Any tips?
drelbs, I'm putting in some tips and kinda giving the dev feedback on playstyle all together, sorry I'm not directly responding but my middle game tips are towards the bottom. This is how I play from the beginning: year 1- my goal is to buy a reign card from one farmer and an extra farmer from the other. I use the scarab to reshuffle to make sure I can buy both those cards. I also buy a stonecutter from the quarry but I think maybe a new player should refrain from quarry cards to kinda get into the game and discover it. Mess with the quarry in future games after unlocking more cards from the almanac and having a better idea of how to survive. year 2- I want to buy all cards from farmers. Buying more reign and gold in every year is key to survival. You can miss reign and gold a few times but that's it. iirc starting deck has 8 reign and 12 gold cards. I also try to buy a mason from the quarry and a sandstone from the stonecutter. I would use the scarab/reshuffle to help me buy those cards. year 3- My card buying goals are: 2 coin from merchant, reign and coin from farmers (not an extra farmer), maybe another sandstone and/or mason from the stonecutter/quarry- but I wouldn't recommend it for newer players. What I most want is to get a 2 gold card from the merchant. That might not happen though. I would use my reshuffle for that to increase my chances. If you get unlucky and die this early well, nbd. At this point I stop buying extra farmers but you could go for 4 more, but it becomes difficult to find the extra reign for it and all those farmers can clog the deck. years 4-~8: I keep buying reign+gold from farmers, keep trying for upgraded coins from the merchant, and pick up temple guards from the priest to start- you're going to want many of them eventually, and I'd also buy a few more priests. At this point I would use my scarab to break up hands that are all reign- but you can play more dangerously and use it to help get your merchant to a hand full of coins or, I guess to try to get your sandstone and mason together. Eventually a high priest will appear and I usually try to get 1 more during a good year, one where reign is flowing well. You'll want any number of scribes and canopic jars too. One more thing about priests, you can buy a 2 reign card from them for coins. Almost all other reign producing cards cost reign and I think you'll really want to use these to increase reign during hard times when you're not sure you can meet reign goals. But early on they are dangerous- you need 2 coins to get the reign from them but you don't have a great coin economy. year 8?-20: Maybe you have a queen now? If so, I focus on buying jewels and hoarding them. I'd really like to have about 10 in the bank for hard times. You'll eventually want at least a few obelisks but I start with jewels. Before I have those jewels in the bank I always save my scarab to break up hands of all reign. This is a dangerous time and it's not so easy to restart and get back here. After I have the jewels I start using my scarab to help get my sandstone and mason together. Other card goals: merchant for better coins, priest can always pick up more temple guards but be careful, I usually have to buy double reign from priests at this time to add reign while being careful not to spend too much, at some point I would stop adding coins with farmers, the single reign cards are fine but be careful- it can be pretty hard to hit reign goals in this period. years 20+ once you have jewels in the bank you can focus on preparing for the afterlife. But I think with newer players your focus would be on discovering how to unlock the cards. Try buying extra copies of different cards, or combining different cards together. I haven't even mentioned the temple, it's required and you will find it eventually.
Other playtesters have mentioned this. I'm going to look into it. I've been wary of the portrait option because I wanted to be able to show all four cards of your hand without having to scroll sideways and still be able to read the text on the cards, but perhaps I can show a 2x2 matrix of cards instead of the "fan" layout. This is a good suggestion. It's clear I need to just sit down and do a full-on editing pass on all the text in the game. I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts or suggestions on more appropriate keywords or other places besides buying where you think there's not enough clarity. Were you using the Scarab? The Scarab mitigates those draws in the early game by giving you a "mulligan". You can still occasionally get two bad deals in a deck with the Scarab, but prudent use of the Scarab is how you save yourself from those 4-coin / 4-reign draws. Once you get your deck established, the randomness becomes less of a factor. Surviving the early game is about ramping up the quality of your deck before you get overwhelmed by the increase in the reign quota. Once you get established, you reign pressure goes down, and the year pressure starts ramping up. That said, if you have suggestions on what to do about unfair-feeling RNG output, I'd like to hear them. I don't think "stacking the deck" in favor of the player to avoid those draws is really an option, since then it would be trivially easy to survive. The challenge comes from a push your luck mechanic, where you have to decide whether to be safe and buy reign or risk buying other cards and hope you make up the reign later, so if we stack the deck to ensure that everything turns out right, we kind of take the teeth out of the challenge. Or that's what I'd be worried about, anyway. Maybe I could do something like do a pass through the deck and if I find four of the same type of card in a row, swap out one of them, so that you never get a truly 4-reign or a 4-coin draw. That just feels kind of like cheating, though. I'd rather find some other way to mitigate the rage quitting without having to interfere with what the player would understand as shuffling. That feels like it should be genuine. Once you unlock the Queen (which comes pretty early in the game - typically, after high priest), you will get access to the "Jewel" card. This is a type of money that does persist. It's very powerful, probably the third most powerful card in the game, because it heavily mitigates the reign quota danger and lets you focus on other strategies besides merely surviving in the middle game. In fact, one strategy for surviving into the middle game is to make a dash for the Queen - buy heavy on reign and religion, and only merchant/gold when it is convenient, to bring out the Queen early so she can start locking down your reign buys. Heh. Once you unlock the Temple (which can come before the Queen but typically after), you get access to a reserve stack that lets you hold a card in reserve and carry it between hands. I'd say it's the second-most powerful card in the deck, second only to the Oracle Chamber. So these ideas and mechanics are in the game, but they're things you need to unlock in the early game so that you can take advantage of them in the middle game. They're both really powerful, though, so it wouldn't really work to have them available from the start. Once they come out, they shift the feel of the game significantly, which is one of the things I really like about the current setup - the game has a dynamic feel to it that keeps it from feeling the same throughout. I've been thinking about this comment a lot, and I'm still a little conflicted on it. On one hand, I totally agree that I need to communicate the expansiveness of the game that's ahead to players. I've been working on that over the last couple of releases by trying to add "teaser" and "strategy" content that (I hoped) would make clear that there's a lot lying ahead of you. I think there's still more work that needs to get done, but that's definitely a direction I'm going. Things like having merchants, priests, Nile cards, etc., start dropping, having an almanac that shows just how many cards you have yet to unlock, and a histogram that has entire silos that you don't have any cards in should help with that, but I'd love to hear any suggestions you have to for drawing players along in the game. On the other hand, I don't really want to "water down" the strategy of the game to the point where it can be played casually in five or ten minutes. I realize I'm probably in the minority here, but I'm kind of tired of mobile games that are one-trick-ponies that don't give you something you can really sink your teeth into over a longer stretch. Pharaoh was kind of designed to be a long-form solitaire experience with high stakes and a "chasing ascension" mechanic, like in traditional roguelike games. The problem is that mobile players don't expect that, and I think your point about needing to draw them into it is spot-on. How do I effectively set those expectations? How do I convey this idea that you will need to diligently experiment and explore, failing many times, before you'll find the strategies that will carry you all the way through to ascension? I'd like to think that the problem is about presentation, about context-setting, rather than about mechanics. Or at least mostly. The players who have gotten through to the point of ascending are telling me that this is one of their favorite games. But it's asking a lot of players to trust me to get to that point, and if there's something I can do to help bridge those two areas, that would be great. I've also been thinking a lot about this. Originally, this was a personal passion project, and I just wanted to get it out there for people to play. I have a day job, so I don't really need to make money on it. It would be nice, but I'm not relying on this to put food on the table. But the response to the game has been so positive, I'm going to hire an artist and see if I can up the quality of the game and perhaps get some traction on the App Store. That costs money - y'all have seen my atrocious "programmer art" - so I've been thinking about making the game a semi-premium game, where you pay a price to get in, and then still keep the "tip the developer" model where you can unlock the special cards if you tip, but it's not necessary to rely on people willing to tip in order to recoup that investment. The other nice thing about this setup is I can experiment with pricing. Is a high premium price with low tip thresholds for the bonus cards good? Or is a low premium price with higher tip thresholds better? I can tweak both of those to experiment. Anyway, THANK YOU for taking the time to play the game and give me your thoughtful and insightful comments. It has given me a lot to think about, and I especially appreciate hearing it from someone who has already lived through this stuff and seen success.
I would love to test, I tend to like difficult games and roguelikes and visit these forums about 5 times a day lol. TestFlight ready to go iPhone 6+ =]
Just a few additional comments. Also keep in mind i'm just one person and not representative for anything. What you say here is spot on. Once you get in the game randomness (which is unfairness to me really) becomes less important. But if a new player never reaches this point and the game won't do everything in it's power to let the player get to that point you will loose him. That's why i was advocating for making the beginning of the game really easy, accessible and smooth. Later on in the game you can still shit on the player difficulty wise and they will love you for that. But the first few turns need to be stupidly easy. Just think of them as the tutorial where there's absolute no need to throw obstacles in the players way. Then again how you do this (i think there are multiple ways) is up to you. Also another comment on your plan of experimenting with pricing. I can tell you for sure that players will hate you for changing prices. If they have any reason to believe they paid more for the game then others because you "experimented with their investment" they will give you hell for that. Just keep that in mind.
Haven't played since I found myself unable to finish the pyramid by 1 year. I'm not sure how I feel about it- it's an unsatisfying way to lose, but I like the idea of the game being difficult and that the player can end up racing against time to finish his/her pyramid before dying too soon.
To those asking about whether the game is still open to beta testers, the answer is yes. PM me your name and the AppleID you would like me to send the invitation to. It also helps to hear a little bit about your interests and background. The next build of Pharaoh should be coming before the end of the week, barring trouble. I haven't been burning the midnight oil as much as the previous two weeks, partly because I need to be careful not to burn myself out, and partly because friends and family insisted I watch Stranger Things because "it's like it was written specifically" for me. They were correct on that count. Funny how a good show can recharge your batteries. I'm getting a lot of feedback on that portrait option, and the idea is growing on me, although I'm still wary because it seems like a less natural layout and would require considerable refactoring of the scene display code - I'd basically have to redesign every layout. I'm not afraid of the work so much as the delay and introducing awkwardness to the UI. Anyone else have thoughts on that? Is there anyone who prefers landscape?
Just a status update. I'm currently doing internal testing of the next build. It includes a major update to the text, including Almanac updates that include HOW you got a card into your deck. No more "Wait, how do I get a Vizier again?" Also fixed some bugs and annoyances like the dead-ending of the Queen when you have a Queen Mummy, and erroneous card text. I've also replaced "Canopic Jar" with "Book of the Dead". It does the same thing, but it's more thematic and a lot of people don't know what Canopic Jars are. My goal is to get this in your hands by the weekend so I can participate in Ludum Dare 2016. Pharaoh began as a little 48-hour game jam game, and I try to participate in at least two game jams yearly to keep my skills up and to try out new ideas for games. Barring any weirdness, you should be able to play the next build this Friday or earlier.
Release 13 Okay, the latest release should be available now. This release includes some bug fixes, interface tweaks, and updates to the Almanac so that you should be able to look up how to produce any given card (once you've unlocked it). I have also replaced "Canopic Jars" with "Book of the Dead", so don't be surprised when you see that new card in your decks!
