upcoming update #1

It’s been a couple of days since roots below’s jam release, and after a brief rest, I couldn’t resist coming back for more. I have lots of plans to expand and improve the game. It’ll still be a few days before a new release; I’m waiting for voting in Cosmic Horrors Jam II to end before publishing but in the meantime, I can show off what’s in the works!

Status Effects

A variety of status effects were a feature I had planned right from the beginning but didn’t get around to doing. These are complex to implement in part because so many things can trigger the special behavior of statuses. Additionally, statuses may be permanent or turn limited. In development, there are two statuses now:

• Vulnerable. Inflicted on enemies via cards, inflicted on you via enemy special abilities. Increases incoming damage by 25%
• Confounded. Inflicted on you via enemy special abilities. The energy costs of cards are randomized for a couple of turns

Visual Feedback

In the current release version of roots below, there’s very little feedback about certain actions. Now there’s a text flash at the top of the screen during battle to pass messages. For example:

• If you try to play a card that costs too much, you’ll get a message about too little energy
• When you select a card from your hand, you’ll get a direction/reminder that to play the card, you’ll need to click a target.
• When enemies cast special abilities (such as Summoning or Confounding), a message describes the effect

Another bit of visual feedback added is that cards that cost too much to be played also become grayed out.

Additional events

Nothing to show off just yet but I’ve got plans laid for events aside from only battle - various shrines to discover where you’ll learn rituals that may let you recover health, gain buffs, find new cards or perhaps become cursed. In a future update, I’ll begin showing off some of these events and working on more randomization to make individual runs unique.

Preview