v1.9 - Doors, Stairs and Pixelart

Hello there!

New version (1.9) is now live, here's what's new:

• Visually, the game is now much more consistent and leaning more into the chunky pixelart style, which I have always adored. Some elements still need changes, but I’m happy with the intermediate results. Especially text is tricky, which needs to stay readable, despite the game window being resizable and workable in all kinds of resolutions and aspect ratios.
• Removed guaranteed gold when getting to the stairs of a floor, instead added additional collectible ruby in dungeon deck of each floor
• Reworked room/door mechanic:
  • once you have defeated all the enemies in the dungeon deck of a floor, a separate Stairs card spawns that let’s you continue to the next floor. The Door does not turn into Stairs anymore.
  • each floor has a specific number of rooms. You start in the first room, and can still go from one room to the next via the Door card.
  • going from one room to the next does not add fatigue.
  • starting with the end of the last room of a floor, instead of a door, a Backtrack card spawns
  • Thematically, Backtrack is supposed to represent re-traversing back through the floor of the dungeon, like you sometimes do in other RPGs or metroidvanias. Mechanically, Backtrack works similar to Door, but also shuffles 3(!) Fatigue into the deck.
  • Hopefully, this change encourages players to play each room as best as they can and make the most of the resources they are given to avoid getting fatigued. The previous mechanic of one Fatigue per room felt too inconsequental and players wouldn’t feel encouraged enough to play efficient.
• Ruby cards are not Ethereal anymore.
• Introduced a second loot card, the Sapphire, which is worth twice as much, but IS Ethereal. It appears in later floors.
• Reworked Push mechanic, which felt weak and too narrow to be useful most of the time. The fast that the hero is also moved means that you cannot really avoid getting hit most of the time, so the pushing dagger felt weak and not fun to use. Instead of being pushed, the target’s row/column is now “shifted” by one space perpendicular to hero. Not fully sold on the mechanic myself, but at least it feels a bit more usable… more testing required! We’ll see :D
• Later enemies have more health, making some cards more valuable that felt unnecessary before, like the Nightmare Blade
• Enemy Wizards and Orc Shamans now flip instantly (Keyword Eager), which forces players to play more aggressively and either try to remove them as fast as possible or deal with their attacks/buffs. To counter, Wizards have a slightly longer channeling duration
• Reworked a bunch of cards, including
  • Reactive Armor
  • Wooden Shield
  • Greatsword (is now Battle Hammer)
  • Pushing Bow and Pushing Dagger (now shift instead of push, name change for cards incoming…)
  • Row Of Fire
• lots of smaller changes too numerous to mention… :D

As always, thanks for reading and see you at the next patch! :)

Bye! (ʘ‿ʘ)╯