roots below v0.4

Version 0.4 is the largest technical update yet, finally bringing a feature I had always planned on: randomized (and longer!) runs, as well as a new event type. Now players can find Shrines in their runs, which will give them the opportunity to heal, remove cards, and get cursed. Additionally, I decided to sneak in one or two new cards, a new status, and a new talisman. Enjoy!

what’s next?

I’m still following the roadmap I laid out in v0.2.1’s “what’s next”. Next up is v0.5 Art & Sound! I’m anticipating this one will take a long time but look forward to a completely redesigned (or lets be honest, “actually designed for the first time”) visual experience, as well as the first steps on filling out the game with sound and music.

Sometime between now and 0.5, I’ll also be drafting up a new roadmap to take this thing to 1.0

Release Notes

New Features

• Randomized runs!
  • Previously, each run had 4 pre-defined stages. Now each run generates a new map of stages, consisting of multiple routes
  • Each run takes the player through ~11 stages now
• Shrines
  • Shrines are events that give you the opportunity to use on of your Rituals or Learn a new ritual
  • Each run has a random number (at least 3) of Shrines generated and placed on the map
• Rituals
  • “Decipher the carvings” - Learn a new ritual
  • “Ritual of Restoration” - Heal 20% of your max HP, but gain a Curse card
  • “Ritual of Excess” - Draw 1 extra card per turn but reduce your Max HP by 10%
  • “Ritual of Annihilation” - Remove up to 2 cards from your deck, draw 1 fewer cards per turn
• Curse cards (see below)

Additions

• Status effects
  • Dazed: prevents the target from taking any actions until its turn counter runs out. Cancels queued next action.
• Talismans
  • Band of Unceasing Rage: Lose all cards named “block”. Lose the ability to gain block. All your attacks heal you for their unblocked damage.
• Cards
  • Deafening Blast: Inflicts Dazed on a single enemy for 2 turns
  • Curses: a class of cards that negatively affect you. They’re visually distinct, with inverted colors. Obtainable as side effects from certain Rituals
    • Exhaustion: -1 Energy while this card is in your hand

Balance/Changes

• Talismans
  • Renamed the boringly named “Autoblock” talisman to the more fitting “Defensive Charm”
• Cards
  • Clumsy Swing: Cost reduced to 1. It felt like the creation of an injury in your draw pile on every use was enough of a downside that the 2 cost was unnecessary
  • Flash of Light: Increased effect to inflict 3 turns of Vulnerable instead of 2. For only 2 turns of vulnerable, the cost of the card felt too high - you almost never would be able to take advantage of the effect on the first turn, meaning it effectively felt like only applying 1 turn of Vulnerable
• Enemies:
  • Tweaked some of the enemy spawn, attack, and bock values to make them a bit more forgiving. Longer runs mean more opportunities to choose and craft a strategy, but they also mean more chances for you to take damage
• Loot
  • Tweaked loot generation for stages a little bit to provide (hopefully) a bit better variety

Bugs

• Fixed a bug where enemies would sometimes show 0 when blocking
• Fixed an issue where multiple consecutive runs without reloading the game could break enemy spawning, resulting in the player being stuck in an empty battle
• Fixed a bug where killing the final enemy of a combat with Unholy Blessing would not award you HP
• Fixed a bug where Strength could apply to no-damage cards that target enemies (ie - status inflicting cards like Flash of Light and Deafening Blast)
• Kind of a bug, kind of a restriction removed: Previously you couldn’t even select unplayable cards or cards you didn’t have energy for. This made the card text extra difficult to read! The restriction was there previously to prevent you from being able to play these cards, but instead made the interaction feel clunky. Now, however, the rules have been reworked so you can select previously non-selectable cards - zooming and making them readable - but will still be prevented from actually playing them