v1.10 - Everything Is Moving

Hello there!

This is a huge one!

• Renamed Enemies to Monsters: Monsters is a better fitting name than the very generic Enemies
• The big one: melee monsters can now MOVE! If they do not stand next to you, they will use their turn to move towards you (if there is a path). This is a HUGE change to the game and flips around a bunch of things. But strangely enough, most elements of the game still work just as good as before, many even better:
  • up until now, I always felt the game lacked… tension. The escalating damage numbers of enemies in Slay The Spire are a good example of what I wanted to achieve. Mechanics that present a constant threat, keeping players on their toes and motivating them to play effective. I was experimenting a lot with the fatigue mechanic and other stuff, but I’ve not managed to get the game to feel the way I wanted to… until now. Making monsters move and give chase creates exactly that and more.
  • I feared that making more cards on the board move is too overwhelming for players… and it might be sometimes! But I really feel that the advantages outweigh the increased complexity. Goes to show that you should always test mechanics in practice, not dismiss them outright in theory.
  • The change creates a board that feels so much more dynamic and alive. Players can use the board to their advantage in a lot of ways: creating choke points for monsters to funnel through one-by-one, alternatively attacking from different sides with ranged weapons, or playing ring-around-the rosie with them. Once players master monster movement, they can do so much!
  • Depending on the openness of the board state, different play styles thrive. The rogue often wants open space to freely move around and attack from a safe distance. The knight on the other hand sometimes even embraces closed spaces and likes chokes where they can create 1 vs. 1 situations.
  • There’s even more importance to the order in which players reveal the board and monsters. Revealing a lot of monsters is great for area-of-effect spells, but too many monsters at once can overwhelm and trap the player. This creates a nice risk-reward mechanic.
  • The rogue feels much more like a nimble hero that can slip past monsters due to its mechanics like swapping places, shifting or making monsters fall asleep.
  • Sleep in general feels much more meaningful as it prevents monster movement as well.
  • Turn oder becomes more important: as all the other things relying on turn order, such as the order of attacks and spells, the order in which monsters move is determined by their position on the board. Order is left-to-right, top-to-bottom, like a passage of text is read.
  • Cards that place other cards on the board gained a huge strategic importance. For example, using the Majestic Armor to cut off a portion of the board feels awesome.
  • Monsters will try to trap players in a corner or against a boulder. This can end a run really quickly. I hope players will learn strategies to avoid that… and slipping past an impending entrapment feels really nice.
• removed auto-upgrading of monsters:
  • was used as a tool to encourage players to clear rooms, but is not needed anymore due to the new room/fatigue mechanic
  • auto-upgrading of monsters meant downward spiral as soon as you couldn’t clear a room well
  • felt too constricting
  • players couldn’t learn to associate monsters with their attack power as it would constantly change
• new mechanic: disarm
• reworked rogue starter deck to include crude staves and an old rod, instead of battle rods
  • battle rods felt too advanced and out of place for early floors
  • rogue couldn’t clear the first floor in one room (unlike the knight) and hence that felt weak
  • armor was totally unnecessary because all weapons were either ranged or had quick attack
  • crude staves offer the necessary attack power to clear the first floor in one room, but also necessitate armor to be used without taking damage
  • The single Old Rod in the deck still keeps the rogue nimble and works as a last-ditch effort to escape hairy situations
• gave heroes more initial health (knight: 16, rogue: 12)
• healing between floors heals back up to full health, instead of healing 3
• visual projectiles and improved animations for ranged hero weapon attacks (bow and shuriken) and monster attacks (archer and wizard)
• improved card header visuals
• improved floor visuals
• improved card emblem visuals
• improved location effects: fire, poison, holy, …
• improved pathing for faster hero movement
• lots of smaller changes and improvements

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

Bye! (ʘ‿ʘ)╯