Universal Shift Shaft (by William Katz)

Discussion in 'iPhone and iPad Games' started by Rocco SE, Mar 16, 2022.

  1. Anotherkellydown

    Anotherkellydown Moderator
    Staff Member Patreon Bronze

    shiftshaft and aussiepaul like this.
  2. shiftshaft

    shiftshaft Member

    Mar 16, 2022
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    Wow, wow, wow! That's is so exciting. Thank you so much Jared and Touch Arcade, this is an honor.
     
  3. pjft

    pjft Well-Known Member

    Feb 15, 2011
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    #23 pjft, Mar 19, 2022
    Last edited: Mar 20, 2022
    So, I bought the game and I'm liking it so far - well done for releasing it :)

    I am a bit confused though, and unsure if it's a bug or intended. I started a level close to a tree. The tree had a red icon. I don't recall if I was beneath the tree (not adjacent, maybe 2-3 tiles away) and destroyed some gems under both, or if I was on one of the sides and rotated the screen, finishing beneath the tree. Even though the tree was red it still hit me. Am I misunderstanding the "red icon" rule, or could there be some exception that can make it happen?

    Second: at one point I got stuck at the corner of the board, after destroying a pillar and falling to the corner and getting the item. I got "stuck" in the sense that the screen stopped responding except the rune icon. I had to kill the app and continue where I was, and sure enough I could play as normally.

    Question: does the game ever end?

    Other than that, this is a really nice brain teaser, well done! Best of luck :)

    Edit: just to say that the same issue with external music stopping every time a new level starts happens to me as well. Loving it so far!
     
  4. Anotherkellydown

    Anotherkellydown Moderator
    Staff Member Patreon Bronze

    #24 Anotherkellydown, Mar 20, 2022
    Last edited: Mar 21, 2022
    I feel like I’m just not good enough at this. 43 runs with zero wins tells me I’m not grasping the strategy. I know how everything works, I just can’t beat it. I don’t even know how many levels there are until the boss but I do know that depth level 5 (maybe 6) is the farthest I’ve gotten. Between landing right next to a rat, to constantly getting annihilated when landing at a diagonal to the bats, I’m losing hope :(

    Has anyone on these forums successfully finished a run? How far did you get? What are some fundamental strategies that I may be missing? Any insight would be great.

    I’m not changing my stance on the game - it’s still very fun to play and nearly impossible to put down - but seeing my stats is almost depressing. On a positive note, I’ve unlocked the majority of powerups (minus the ones for beating the salamander and reaching depth level 8) so I’ve got that in my favor.

    Just to reiterate, my feelings about the quality and value of this indie gem haven’t changed and I’d still highly recommend picking it up.

    Based on my comment above, I’m probably not 100% qualified to help. But I can try! :)

    Of course, it would be ideal if I could watch exactly what happened in the “tree situation”, but I tried to picture what you described. You obviously understand the red/yellow/green indicator (that took me a while - at first I thought red was when the enemy would attack, but it’s green) so that’s not the issue. One thing I did notice is that rotating the board counts as a move, advancing the enemy’s turn count by one. [Edit: that last sentence is not correct] Could that be what happened? Did you see the roots actually attack you? If not, maybe it was a bat or another enemy that hit you?
     
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  5. shiftshaft

    shiftshaft Member

    Mar 16, 2022
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    Hmmm, monsters are only meant to attack if the dot is green. When they attack, the dot becomes red. Does this line up with your understanding?

    Hmmm, I have seen this type of bug before- they are very hard to reproduce so I haven't been able to track them all down . I'm glad that you can quit the app and continue the run to get around this bug. I'll keep trying to figure out what causes this bug in the meantime.

    Yes there is a boss on level 10. It is quite difficult to get there. You'll need at least 2 rune slots, a good amount of health, and a bit of luck.


    The external music bug fix should be out this week.
    Thanks so much for playing and taking time to leave feedback
     
  6. pjft

    pjft Well-Known Member

    Feb 15, 2011
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    Thanks for the reply! :) It might have been the case where rotating did update the icon and as such I didn't notice it was changing color, it's definitely a possibility.

    I am in the same position as you (well, perhaps less proficient in the game though :) ). I am still to unlock most of the power-ups, and the farthest I've gotten to was depth 6, but I'm still going at it! My best strategy so far heavily relies on the fireball rune - the one that shoots one enemy - but that's very thin as far as strategies go. I also understand that one can use rock mining and rotation to move the player but also to move the enemies, so something I sometimes try to do is to use that knowledge to move enemies away from me (when I'm on top). It gets harder in levels with pillars, but that is something that I find helpful in keeping my distance from enemies. The bats are, so far, the ones that kill me the most.

    I think that the monster resolution isn't clear to me, so if someone could help confirm some of these I'd love to know.

    The monster attacks only trigger at the "end of turn", meaning, when the player character _stops_. Meaning, if we rotate and the player is in attack range but it then falls (for whatever reason), the monster will not attack. Is that correct?

    We'll keep at it. :)
     
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  7. pjft

    pjft Well-Known Member

    Feb 15, 2011
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    It does, and per @Anotherkellydown 's post, it might have been something with the rotations changing the icon without me noticing. I'll keep an eye out for it. Thanks :)

    Not a bother - if I run into it again I'll try to specify the circumstances in case it helps! The fact that the rune icon still works suggests that probably the game doesn't think the turn has ended, or is waiting on something.

    Hah, I'll keep trying then :)

    Nice - looking forward to it. :) Thank you for engaging here, I'm really happy to play the game. Thank you for creating it!
     
  8. gaberaph

    gaberaph Well-Known Member

    Feb 20, 2015
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    So I’ve literally been having the WORST Monday in ages, when a mate rang me up on my lunch break an hour ago and told me to download this!
    ZERO regrets, I’m a match game nutjob and this is JUST the kind of refreshing new take on the genre I’ve been craving so AGES!!! Super happy!!!!

    I just wanted to ask if sound effects will be added eventually? It’s literally the only thing I feel is missing in the game experience to really suck me in! I’m one of those, that mutes music and only leaves sound effects on, as they help me focus (ADHD sufferer here )

    Regardless if sound effects are added or not tho, this has truly made my day, and I’m gonna let everyone who’s into iOS games know about it!
    Thank you for making this :)
     
  9. shiftshaft

    shiftshaft Member

    Mar 16, 2022
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    Yes, the player will attack all monsters, collect all items/gems, and fall into any empty tiles beneath them before the monsters get a chance to attack.
    The player also gets to attack before monsters, so if you next to a Dragon and you rotate to be on top you get to attack first.
    The player also gets to exit before enemies attack.
    Hopefully that clears things up.
    Maybe I'll add an info section that describes the turn.


    I'm so glad that you are enjoying the game. Yes, sound effects are on the road map. The sound engine I was using was causing a lot of crashes and I'm not a sound engineer so they all didn't sound cohesive. I decided to take them out for version 0.8 (the current App Store version). I'm planning releasing Version 1.0 by the end of year and I plan to add sounds and a narrative. If things are really going well then I could add a few more game modes too. We will see
     
  10. pjft

    pjft Well-Known Member

    Feb 15, 2011
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    Ok, so here's a mild niggle. It's probably easy to solve if you update the red/green/yellow at the end of the event turn prior to the player playing, rather than after the player playing.

    I just lost a game because an enemy was yellow and I landed within range. Turned green, hit me, and immediately turned red. I thought I was safe as he was still yellow when I played my turn.

    Unless that's a bug, it's probably easier to make it so that the actual status is visible when the player is making a decision.

    Finally, really small thing but wanted to ask about it. I'm finding a visual dissonance between green being danger and red being safe. I know green is active, and red is inactive, but it just occurred to me to bring it up.

    Regardless, off I go for another journey!

    Have a great week.
     
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  11. shiftshaft

    shiftshaft Member

    Mar 16, 2022
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    Yea, I kind of knew about this but I have played for so long that now I kinda operate that "yellow" means they can attack next turn. I'll take a look at the code and see if this is an easy fix. I, also, really waffled on the colors and ended up with the "stoplight" metaphor. Green means go and all that.

    I really appreciate you taking time to leave feedback. If you run into any other "rough" areas please let me know. Thanks!
     
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  12. Ghostdog1

    Ghostdog1 Well-Known Member

    Jan 30, 2015
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    I really tried to like the game. I love roguelikes because of the skills you need to learn to master this kind of games. But after 47 Runs I‘m quite convinced this game is unbalanced. Sometimes the starting position in later depth levels is just unfair. As the dev wrote in a comment before, u need luck to get to the boss and win. And the further you go down the levels, the more does the game change from skill to luck.

    IMO
    My first idea for a better late game balancing is to raise the hp and to raise the hp you can collect. It would also help to let ‚ad … health’ pop up in every lvl and let it become a bigger health gain the deeper level you are in. This would give the player more fun with his solutions for the level goals. So in later levels it could become a strategy to lose life to achieve a part of the level goal. The game would still be hard, but would gain more possible strategies and drop a bit of the luck part i don‘t need.
     
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  13. shiftshaft

    shiftshaft Member

    Mar 16, 2022
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    I totally hear you. I'm working on some changes now to make the end game more balance for players who have progressed far in the game. The update should be out by the end of the week. Thanks for the feedback!
     
  14. Anotherkellydown

    Anotherkellydown Moderator
    Staff Member Patreon Bronze

    I spent my entire evening after work last night playing. I finally got to level 6 and even passed it and got to level 7. And I saw a salamander for the first time! I just needed to take more time to think ahead. It’s easy to mindlessly tap big groups of rocks without thinking about the next move. The game is still incredibly tricky but that hasn’t stopped me from trying. Looking forward to the future updates. Shift Shaft is going to stay on my phone indefinitely.

    I’d love to see cloud saves added so I can play this on my iPad too. I usually play games on the iPad when I’m home.
     
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  15. Roxton

    Roxton Well-Known Member
    Patreon Bronze

    Jan 30, 2015
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    Great game! One niggle. The third row of unlocks has the stated precondition of reaching level 8.
    I was so stoked when I reached level 8, but the actual criterion is to beat level 8.
     
  16. shiftshaft

    shiftshaft Member

    Mar 16, 2022
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    Congrats! Sally can be a real pain in the side.

    Re: cloud saves. Yes those are on the docket, probably 3 months out.

    Hmmm, that might be a bug. Ill check the code and see what's up. Thanks for the feedback.
     
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  17. shiftshaft

    shiftshaft Member

    Mar 16, 2022
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    Hey everyone version 0.8.2 was just released and should be available in the App Store in the next couple of hours. It includes a lot of changes to the game balance and fixed a bunch of bugs.

    This version includes game balance changes and bug fixes:
    - Updated the following Runes:
    - Liquify: Charge from 10 to 8
    - Crush: Charge from 8 to 6
    - Fiery Rage: Charge from 6 to 4
    - Bubble Up: Charge from 35 to 30
    - Get Swifty: Charge from 40 to 35
    - Teleport: Charge from 30 to 25
    - Transform Rock: Charge from 35 to 20
    - Vortex: Charge from 30 to 25
    - Move Earth: Charge from 40 to 35
    - Rain Embers: Charge from 30 to 25
    - Fireball: Charge from 35 to 30
    - Drill Down: Charge from 40 to 35
    - Basecamp items now show you the achievement after you purchase the item
    - Luck now improves your chances of finding good items, runes or gems encased in pillars
    - Adjusted offer rates for runes to players with more rune slots or who own more runes
    - Adjusted monster spawn rates in deeper levels
    - Converted audio files to save space
    - Bug fixes:
    - Fixed an issue where other audio would start and stop after each level
    - Fixed a bug where snake eyes could offer you a rune that you had
    - Fixed an issue where the player could have more than 4 rune slots
    - Fixed an issue where using Vortex could cause a crash
    - Fixed an issue where the game would not recognize that there were no more moves for certain board configurations
    - Fixed an issue where certain stats would be set to 0​

    Please keep any feedback and bug reports coming, it is really helpful for our small team of 3.

    Over the next 6 months, I will be working on adding a story, sound effects, alternate game modes, a leaderboard, cloud saves, support for long-term players, and things you care about. So let me know what you want to see in Shift Shaft and I'll do my best to accommodate.
     
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  18. honeybadger

    honeybadger Member

    Sep 8, 2014
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    Loving this and glad I'm not the only one who hasn't beaten yet. Am at 33 runs and concur that bat keeps getting me. I've also noticed that while I've definitely gotten to level 8 I haven't beaten, and so "reach level 8" things aren't unlocked and in stats it says the farthest I've gotten is 7.
     
  19. shiftshaft

    shiftshaft Member

    Mar 16, 2022
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    Hmm, this is definitely a bug and I'll need to check it out. Sorry about that!
     
  20. Scottlarsen

    Scottlarsen Well-Known Member

    Nov 25, 2009
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    I’m in the same boat. This has to be one of the most masochistic games I’ve run into. 47 runs in and I see no way of managing those bats. Killing one usually brings on two more. When the board has 4 or 5, it’s game over. I also don’t love the 25% gem cost charged when the board is out of moves. That’s happened several times now.
     

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