@garethf I've played MTG more than I'd be willing to admit in public (oops too late for that now). Maybe a suggestion... I remember playing Battle Chess the first time. it grabbed me even though I have played chess a gazillion timesbefore, but those death animations... damn! (even though repetitive) was just the best thing since sliced bread. (Okay it was late 80's/early 90's). I'd love to see some kind of ass kicking, pulverizing, butt stomping of the opposition into the dust kinda repetitive animation after each move/game? It just adds that satisfying... oomfh. Apologies if it is already in there...
I like the proposed changes, especially since it'll make Nuke feel less niche if you can justify it thematically (I eventually removed it from my deck because it was just a little TOO situational). On-play tactic removal sounds nice (good flavour for that agent) and I *really* like the concept of broadening Hermes / Artemis (which could then probably take a cost increase while still being considered very useful for quite a few builds).
I still wouldn't mind the idea of an equippable agent buff to dampen opponent hacking attempts (like how the Neural Uplink increases an agent's own hacking ability), or an expensive agent that effectively comes equipped with some permanent Hermes effect, but I'm sure these ideas can be left for exploration afterwards if you don't find the current ones satisfactory.
Geez, haven't updated this thread since 2013. I'm just winning at PR, aren't I?
Anyway, System Crash has undergone a lot of changes, new art, new cards, changes to old cards, a ton of written story, better UIs and flow.
And oh look, a new website. Shiny. You can sign up for the newsletter, even. To be notified when the game is released and stuff. Which will be, despite what my inactivity might lead you to believe, pretty soon!
I'll be looking for playtesters next week, so watch this space. :)
I read through some of the posts here and just played around a bit in the game.
First thoughts:
Awesome Sounds/Music! They really help create that cyber-punk atmosphere and really immerse the player into that futuristic time+space that you created. Music is so crucial in these type of games!
I have to say that the tutorials are short and sweet and were perfect to get into the first mission and I managed to understand everything clearly!
I also like the Ui and the scoring system (the way the points run down the wire arteries into your OP pool.. :D
The tactic/modifier and agent layout works as well although I really wanted to replace agents that had been a) attack modified or civilians I placed early in the game but who didn't die and just took away space that could have been allocated to a guy with a weapon.
Art overall is bous. I hope you have a lot more cards lined-up! Would definitely enjoy this on a tablet.
OMG @garethf I just saw that there is a page 2 :D I was playing the old v1.0.1.1 lol. Downloaded the newest version....Mind-blown..
Much better graphics, new cards, an actual story line....Bomb.
I love this...so much...really pulls you in!
Definite improvement to the blackmarket system and it eases you in much more with the guy calling you straight up. Good dialogue and I'm wondering if you are going to add voices to this - would spice up the story line at least!
Hey @garethf I just found a bug - When I finished the one mission (can't remember the name of it) I was hovering over one of the modifier cards in my hand and when I was moved to the rewards screen it was attached to my cursor and moving with it...Just thought I'd let you know on that one! :D
Whoa, I remember when you were looking for artists on SC. I didn't realise that you were painting things yourself now! Is this a thing that the project helped you do?
They look super cool :D But they also feel quite small, I'm not sure what scale they're supposed to be (but being "mechs" I kinda assume not knee-high), and I do see that the 2nd and 3rd ones have a door for scale, but I feel like there could be some changes made to make them feel more human-scale rather than knee-high scale... For example the laser eyes sensor things - if they were smaller? And general details like perhaps decor, vents, or such, or smaller details in mechanicals. Single-pneumatic structures make them feel smaller. Perhaps the angle of the view also makes them feel less sizeable.
Other than that "feel", they look awesome :) Portal influence deathmechs :)
@dislekcia - Thanks. And yeah, in a way it did help.
I've sketched (and, to a much lesser degree, painted) since I was young, I learned to draw from Asterix and superhero comics. It's not really something I devoted myself to though, more just a fun hobby that I dabble in.
My skills weren't up to snuff for what I wanted in System Crash, but I decided to use them to help stretch my limited art budget by taking on some of the software cards in SC myself (saving my funds to pay professional artists for the difficult stuff). Since I could get away with icons and geometric shapes to represent the software programs in cyberspace.
Then, when my money ran out and I felt like the game still needed some more cards to flesh it out, I took a stab at doing some of the more complex pieces myself. After all, I paint for fun and to relax anyway, may as well paint something that might be usable in-game. I ended up doing some of the characters and suchlike as well.
Of the 101 cards in SC, I've painted 37.
So yeah, trying to paint at a quality that is useable in-game pushed me out of my confort zone and stretched me a lot. It definitely helped.
Mechs in this setting range from the size of a fly to house-sized, so they do run the range. The 2 spider mechs aren't that big, you could consider them to be basically upgraded versions of this :
A machine gun with legs and a bit of AI guidance, really. The Tarantula has been enhanced with a chain gun and some rocket pods for more boom, but it's not substantially larger.
But your points are valid, the spiders do look a bit on the small side. They should come to about shoulder height. I think part of it is too much space around the figure. I'll tweak and see what happens.
@kidult contributed some great art to System Crash, including Datajack there.
A little addendum to my post above about how my art improved - It's still generally a much better idea to hire good, professional artists.
I got a bit gun-shy after my savings ran out, that was terrifying and I wasn't going to spend any more on SC until I'd built up my funds again, but if you have the money, do it.
Quality art makes a huge difference, and there's an opportunity cost to doing it yourself (the other things you could be doing), even if you have the skills. I've fallen into the trap of trying to do everything myself many times, it's generally better to focus on the things you're good at and outsource the rest.
@garethf Wow man, System Crash is really, really looking amazing... Gareth Kudos for sticking with it all this time and getting it DONE (TM). :) Do you have an ETA yet? I played an earlier build and loved it.
My interest always pique's when someone like garethf manages to go cross-genre so effectively like here. A Dev/artist skillset is rare. Personally I stick to simply attempting code that compiles and I leave the pretty stuff to them artists :-P
My goal is to have it wrapped up by the end of this month, though I have some Other Stuff going on that might see it pushed out to end of August. But that I'd say is the latest, end of August.
So almost there! Glad you enjoyed it, soon you'll be able to get your hands on the full experience! ;)
Quick tech issue, windowed mode doesnt seem to work on 2nd play. I played last night and it worked great but today when i try use windowed mode it just shows a grey screen. Fullscreen works fine though. Im on win 7 64bit if that is of any help. Will report back on gameplay soon but im enjoying it so far
Ok, nevermind specs, I think I'm narrowing in on the issue.
Where did you install SC to? And what User Account Control settings are you using? You can check on Control Panel->User Accounts->Change User Account Control Settings. Will show you a dialogue with a bar indicating what level your UAC settings are at.
I suspect you've installed to Program Files, and your UAC level is such that the program doesn't have rights to read and modify the save file like it needs to, unless you run as admin.
Ok, then that is your problem, if you've installed to Program Files.
Sorry, this is my bad. The installer script I use had Program Files as the default install location but I never install games there, personally. And I turned UAC off ages ago, it's annoyed me with other games before. So I didn't realize that this would be an issue.
Seems like, with UAC enabled at default level, like you see in the pic, the program is installed without sufficient rights to modify files in Program Files. Since it tries to access your profile file inside the install folder, which is in Program Files (I hate games that hide their save files somewhere in My Documents), it fails to open the file for modification and hangs.
If you run as Admin, you temporarily give the program rights to modify files.
So, solution, while I figure out a fix(probably to save the profile file to My Documents rather). Choose one of the following:
1) Just run as admin permanently.
2) Copy your save files out of your current install (INSTALL_DIR\System Crash_Data\Gameplay\Profiles\YOUR_PROFILE.prof), uninstall System Crash, reinstall it somewhere else on your drive. Copy your save files in.
3) As 2, but you turn UAC off and then reinstall in Program Files, if you really want it installed there. That will install the program with full file access rights, since with UAC off, programs are by default installed with the same rights as the user, and you are an Admin.
4) (Optional) Swear a dark curse upon the House of Microsoft, from now unto the 100th generation of Bill Gates' line.
Apologies for the inconvenience, and thanks for your help investigating the problem. :)
having to run it as admin isnt really an issue for me but obviously others might not figure it out. And as for installation, I just followed the prompts. And I've done my 13 missions, will have some gameplay feedback for you soon
Yeah, I'll figure out a better solution, those are just for now.
Cool beans.
Could a solution be to check if the game is installed in program files and then change the saves directory to my documents (which should allow access)? Also, error handling around saving/loading - it's a pain, but it's worth it when it comes to post-release support.
Windows 7 should be creating/reading files in a virtual directory anyway if the game doesn't have write access to the folder it's trying to write to. That's what happens with other Unity games anyway. Not sure if it's something to do with the System Crash installer or the method of writing to folders.
Hmmm. I'll have to dig around online and see if I can find out what's going on there, then. I'm using a standard NSIS script to generate the installer, created by a wizard from an app I found. And writing out xml save files using standard c# file and xml libraries. Well, Unity's mono implementation of them.
Ok here goes! 1st off my experience with card games such as these is the sum total of pokemon cards (can't even remember how it works anymore) and Gwent, which I liked a butt load and am hoping they'll release as a stand alone with online battles! So feedback will just be my own somewhat noob experience. Secondly I have watched your let's play before, so when I fired up the game I had some idea of how the battles work. So I wasn't going into it as total "fresh" player.
From the let's play I obviously saw the interface and graphics, which I though was done rather well and fits together quite nicely. Definitely has that cyberpunk hacking feel to it. (And totally not saying this just because I did some artwork for the game. The mission screen is REALLY good looking). The outlay of the battle area is good too and the card descriptions are great too. I did miss the cliched text being typed out in the story sections though. Could potentially add to those sections as they are very static.
Onto the gameplay bits. So fired it up went through the text bits and started the game. Bit of a lazy reader these days so I went through the text parts quite quickly. May have been a bit hasty through the tutorials section, which could be a result of being tainted by the let's play. I got the gist of how everything works but due to the haste I missed out the part where cards only attack directly opposite from them and that cards without any opposition get hacking points. At 1st this wasn't an issue until the missions where we both had to hit 50 points. While I was waiting for credits to accumulate the enemy was having a field day. Oops, but I learned pretty quickly after a few deaths.
So game progression wise it was going quite well until the snooping missions came about and it all went pear shaped for me. At 1st it was my ignorance of the rules but once I caught on it was still hopeless. Lost about 10 games in a row, trying the various missions and gave up (after figuring out the parts I missed, so played even more games than this). Came back later and carried on with the story missions and Boom! success! They where much easier! Perhaps an indicator of difficulty on missions could help? Due to the nature of random cards being drawn it took a few games to realize I was out of my depth. But after making it through the story missions and getting some cards it went much better attempting them...sort of.
I had compiled some notes of cards / mechanics that seemed off or overpowered ($%^# that neural backlash card) but after my 2nd go at the 13 missions I feel everything is quite well balanced but the difficulty level and amount of cards spikes too quickly. My 2nd play through gave me a bunch of new cards I hadn't seen before and the enemy seems to have a bunch of handy / effective cards I can't access. I had several WTF moments where new cards I hadn't seen before were played and just destroyed me. The 1st few missions seemed fine but once you hit the mark where both players have to get 50 points it became very hard. I've played over 50 or more games now (and I've only cleared the 13 missions once..) and I'm starting to know more cards which is helping me strategy wise but someone less stubborn than me might give up. I would suggest either limiting the hacking points more in the beginning or preferably limiting the cards more so the player can learn specific cards plus their strategic uses. You could disguise tutorials in enemies playing limited cards but with a specific strategy that you can learn to use or defend against.
Lastly I will definitely be buying this game on release even with the current difficulty level as I'm really enjoying it. Well done on this!
Oh man, comments like that totally make my day, @kidult! :D
Thank you, I'm glad you're enjoying it!
And that's some great feedback. After 4 years of playing the game, it's impossible for me to accurately gauge the difficulty for new players. What's easy for me is frustrating for beginners.
I think I will go back and lower the OP requirements for earlier missions, so that the ramp up to 50 OP is more gradual. And I probably need to nerf that early hacking deck, it seems to be a bit harder than the other decks on the easy tier.
Card rewards are random, so a particular playthrough might be easier or harder depending on what cards the random number generator spits out. I'm contemplating hard coding an early reward of at least one Artemis card, as that's a pretty fundamental card for dealing with dangerous Support cards, like the hacking cards.
The idea to put difficulty level indicators on the mission is a great one. And I'll see about maybe adding a text-writing effect, shouldn't be difficult. :)
Hi I played like 5 rounds in campaign of the old version before your YouTube video where you say you removed the mana/currency cards. Which I think was a good call. I'd rather play the new version.
However, being more a Hearthstone from closed beta (and vintage MTG) player with over 100000cards, I never understood TCG or CCG games which takes away my ability to always decide where to attack (or even block attacks). If you can explain to me the jest of this mechanic decision; I think I will be able to understand and enjoy the game more.
I like the theme, and story, I didn't like that when I have multiple story answers when taking to the NPC, they all yield the same result, especially since I got really excited having potentially different story lines. I know you are late in development, and should treat my opinion just as an opinion, don't go change anything. I'm just sharing my single experience with you.
I see many others here are excited and do not complain about it, so I'd like to understand it if you have the time to discuss it - the design decisions. You have learnt a lot, and allude to difficulties of balancing the game...? Please tell us more.
Otherwise just add more juice! I'm sure over time you will flesh it out well with community support. You are brave and smart to involve the public and their input, by that I'm not say mine, I mean in general too many people are afraid of it.
Your art is good enough, but yes in a card game which is basically just interface, it is super important in my opinion. Many people play it just for that, to collect art.
Also launching a card game digitally, places you in a strategic advantage of doing things which paper games cannot do, so use it! More and more for each update, just make sure to plan for it.
When I received your newsletter System Crash, my first thought was one of my web hosts told me my server was down haha phew.
When I received your newsletter System Crash, my first thought was one of my web hosts told me my server was down haha phew.
Haha! XD
However, being more a Hearthstone from closed beta (and vintage MTG) player with over 100000cards, I never understood TCG or CCG games which takes away my ability to always decide where to attack (or even block attacks). If you can explain to me the jest of this mechanic decision; I think I will be able to understand and enjoy the game more.
Sure. Simply put, I made that decision to reduce the complexity of the design. It would complicate the interface, but really the core problem is the AI.
Being able to choose who to attack and block dramatically increases the complexity for the AI in predicting what could happen next turn and making a good decision this turn in order to best defend against those possibilities. I made certain design decisions in order to make it easier to implement an AI that could be on an equal footing with a human playing the same game. Another example is how you have to play all the cards from your hand that you plan to play this turn before the combat phase starts.
I understand how that feels less satisfying to play, especially for CCG veterans. It is more limited. But I tried to limit the scope so that I could achieve this complex game with my limited resources. Even then, I failed to adequately contain the scope. ;)
I like the theme, and story, I didn't like that when I have multiple story answers when taking to the NPC, they all yield the same result, especially since I got really excited having potentially different story lines. I know you are late in development, and should treat my opinion just as an opinion, don't go change anything. I'm just sharing my single experience with you.
I see many others here are excited and do not complain about it, so I'd like to understand it if you have the time to discuss it - the design decisions. You have learnt a lot, and allude to difficulties of balancing the game...? Please tell us more.
Of course, happy to discuss.
Basically, I never planned to have dialogue in the game at all. Originally, you only got mission briefings and then a brief narrative description of your "approach". Something like "You sneak up on the warehouse, noting the guards patrolling the perimeter" etc.
Your communication with other characters in the game was limited to emails they'd send you detailing what they wanted you to do and it was implied that you simply accepted these tasks. Once they were completed you'd get a message thanking you and your reward.
But this felt incredibly passive. Your sense of yourself as a character with a personality and voice was missing. You were just this mission bot doing the tasks the NPCs set you.
To solve this I added dialogue trees. That immediately made the narrative feel 100x more engaging. But...if I just gave you a single response to what the NPC said it still felt fairly passive. You would just go "yes, ok, yes, I agree, sure, yes, on it". Passive.
So I added more options. Sure, they lead to the same place at the end of the day, but they give your character more "personality" options, and at least a chance to argue with an NPC, or dig for more information. They're not there (in this campaign) to really change the course of the narrative, but to give you a sense of your character as a person in the world with a personality.
In expansions I will do branching narratives. The code supports it, I *could* implement it now. But I'm not going to. As I said, I've blown completely past my original scope estimate. And a branching campaign isn't trivial, even if you plan for it from the start; it would be at least +50% effort to implement well.
So I made the choice to push real branching out to expansions. For the first campaign you get a linear plot with "personality" choices in dialogue. In expansions, without a CCG engine to build and bugs to fix, I can devote myself more fully to interesting content. More cards, new card abilities, and branching campaigns with interesting features.
Otherwise just add more juice! I'm sure over time you will flesh it out well with community support. You are brave and smart to involve the public and their input, by that I'm not say mine, I mean in general too many people are afraid of it.
Comments
It just adds that satisfying... oomfh. Apologies if it is already in there...
I still wouldn't mind the idea of an equippable agent buff to dampen opponent hacking attempts (like how the Neural Uplink increases an agent's own hacking ability), or an expensive agent that effectively comes equipped with some permanent Hermes effect, but I'm sure these ideas can be left for exploration afterwards if you don't find the current ones satisfactory.
Anyway, System Crash has undergone a lot of changes, new art, new cards, changes to old cards, a ton of written story, better UIs and flow.
And oh look, a new website. Shiny. You can sign up for the newsletter, even. To be notified when the game is released and stuff. Which will be, despite what my inactivity might lead you to believe, pretty soon!
I'll be looking for playtesters next week, so watch this space. :)
Read all about it and grab the link here.
First thoughts:
Awesome Sounds/Music!
They really help create that cyber-punk atmosphere and really immerse the player into that futuristic time+space that you created. Music is so crucial in these type of games!
I have to say that the tutorials are short and sweet and were perfect to get into the first mission and I managed to understand everything clearly!
I also like the Ui and the scoring system (the way the points run down the wire arteries into your OP pool.. :D
The tactic/modifier and agent layout works as well although I really wanted to replace agents that had been a) attack modified or civilians I placed early in the game but who didn't die and just took away space that could have been allocated to a guy with a weapon.
Art overall is bous. I hope you have a lot more cards lined-up!
Would definitely enjoy this on a tablet.
Downloaded the newest version....Mind-blown..
Much better graphics, new cards, an actual story line....Bomb.
I love this...so much...really pulls you in!
Definite improvement to the blackmarket system and it eases you in much more with the guy calling you straight up. Good dialogue and I'm wondering if you are going to add voices to this - would spice up the story line at least!
Good job man, keep it up!
And please, when you've gone through the demo missions let me know your thoughts in the survey. And I'd love to see your save game file. :)
And thanks @Elyaradine! Enjoy!
Thanks for the interest!
Challenges
Mainly because there are no weak mechs in the current card set. Which is something that testers have brought up before.
So I decided fuck it, let me paint some new mechs to fill out the lower tiers. :)
New mech card #1 - Surveillance Drone
New mech card #2 - Spyder
New mech card #3 - Tarantula
They look super cool :D But they also feel quite small, I'm not sure what scale they're supposed to be (but being "mechs" I kinda assume not knee-high), and I do see that the 2nd and 3rd ones have a door for scale, but I feel like there could be some changes made to make them feel more human-scale rather than knee-high scale... For example the laser eyes sensor things - if they were smaller? And general details like perhaps decor, vents, or such, or smaller details in mechanicals. Single-pneumatic structures make them feel smaller. Perhaps the angle of the view also makes them feel less sizeable.
Other than that "feel", they look awesome :) Portal influence deathmechs :)
I've sketched (and, to a much lesser degree, painted) since I was young, I learned to draw from Asterix and superhero comics. It's not really something I devoted myself to though, more just a fun hobby that I dabble in.
My skills weren't up to snuff for what I wanted in System Crash, but I decided to use them to help stretch my limited art budget by taking on some of the software cards in SC myself (saving my funds to pay professional artists for the difficult stuff). Since I could get away with icons and geometric shapes to represent the software programs in cyberspace.
Then, when my money ran out and I felt like the game still needed some more cards to flesh it out, I took a stab at doing some of the more complex pieces myself. After all, I paint for fun and to relax anyway, may as well paint something that might be usable in-game. I ended up doing some of the characters and suchlike as well.
Of the 101 cards in SC, I've painted 37.
So yeah, trying to paint at a quality that is useable in-game pushed me out of my confort zone and stretched me a lot. It definitely helped.
@Tuism- Thanks man. :)
Mechs in this setting range from the size of a fly to house-sized, so they do run the range. The 2 spider mechs aren't that big, you could consider them to be basically upgraded versions of this :
A machine gun with legs and a bit of AI guidance, really. The Tarantula has been enhanced with a chain gun and some rocket pods for more boom, but it's not substantially larger.
But your points are valid, the spiders do look a bit on the small side. They should come to about shoulder height. I think part of it is too much space around the figure. I'll tweak and see what happens.
"Guys, I need you to get in there and stomp those hacker shits. I'm serious, murderize them."
"Ok, those hacking support cards are getting annoying. Time to do something about that."
"And will someone PLEASE kill Rickson? He's got 2 Datajacks, he's gonna hack the server all by himself. -_-"
Fun. :D
Almost finished testing the early part of the game. Once that's done, I'll be sending it out into all your hands for playtesting. :)
A little addendum to my post above about how my art improved - It's still generally a much better idea to hire good, professional artists.
I got a bit gun-shy after my savings ran out, that was terrifying and I wasn't going to spend any more on SC until I'd built up my funds again, but if you have the money, do it.
Quality art makes a huge difference, and there's an opportunity cost to doing it yourself (the other things you could be doing), even if you have the skills. I've fallen into the trap of trying to do everything myself many times, it's generally better to focus on the things you're good at and outsource the rest.
@kidult Impressive work there Jean, noted. :)
My interest always pique's when someone like garethf manages to go cross-genre so effectively like here. A Dev/artist skillset is rare. Personally I stick to simply attempting code that compiles and I leave the pretty stuff to them artists :-P
My goal is to have it wrapped up by the end of this month, though I have some Other Stuff going on that might see it pushed out to end of August. But that I'd say is the latest, end of August.
So almost there! Glad you enjoyed it, soon you'll be able to get your hands on the full experience! ;)
Beta 1.2.1.0 is out!
Quick tech issue, windowed mode doesnt seem to work on 2nd play. I played last night and it worked great but today when i try use windowed mode it just shows a grey screen. Fullscreen works fine though. Im on win 7 64bit if that is of any help.
Will report back on gameplay soon but im enjoying it so far
Ok, thanks for the heads up, I'll investigate a solution.
What are your system specs, Kidult?
Where did you install SC to? And what User Account Control settings are you using? You can check on Control Panel->User Accounts->Change User Account Control Settings. Will show you a dialogue with a bar indicating what level your UAC settings are at.
I suspect you've installed to Program Files, and your UAC level is such that the program doesn't have rights to read and modify the save file like it needs to, unless you run as admin.
Sorry, this is my bad. The installer script I use had Program Files as the default install location but I never install games there, personally. And I turned UAC off ages ago, it's annoyed me with other games before. So I didn't realize that this would be an issue.
Seems like, with UAC enabled at default level, like you see in the pic, the program is installed without sufficient rights to modify files in Program Files. Since it tries to access your profile file inside the install folder, which is in Program Files (I hate games that hide their save files somewhere in My Documents), it fails to open the file for modification and hangs.
If you run as Admin, you temporarily give the program rights to modify files.
So, solution, while I figure out a fix(probably to save the profile file to My Documents rather). Choose one of the following:
1) Just run as admin permanently.
2) Copy your save files out of your current install (INSTALL_DIR\System Crash_Data\Gameplay\Profiles\YOUR_PROFILE.prof), uninstall System Crash, reinstall it somewhere else on your drive. Copy your save files in.
3) As 2, but you turn UAC off and then reinstall in Program Files, if you really want it installed there. That will install the program with full file access rights, since with UAC off, programs are by default installed with the same rights as the user, and you are an Admin.
4) (Optional) Swear a dark curse upon the House of Microsoft, from now unto the 100th generation of Bill Gates' line.
Apologies for the inconvenience, and thanks for your help investigating the problem. :)
Cool beans.
Secondly I have watched your let's play before, so when I fired up the game I had some idea of how the battles work. So I wasn't going into it as total "fresh" player.
From the let's play I obviously saw the interface and graphics, which I though was done rather well and fits together quite nicely. Definitely has that cyberpunk hacking feel to it. (And totally not saying this just because I did some artwork for the game. The mission screen is REALLY good looking). The outlay of the battle area is good too and the card descriptions are great too. I did miss the cliched text being typed out in the story sections though. Could potentially add to those sections as they are very static.
Onto the gameplay bits. So fired it up went through the text bits and started the game. Bit of a lazy reader these days so I went through the text parts quite quickly. May have been a bit hasty through the tutorials section, which could be a result of being tainted by the let's play. I got the gist of how everything works but due to the haste I missed out the part where cards only attack directly opposite from them and that cards without any opposition get hacking points. At 1st this wasn't an issue until the missions where we both had to hit 50 points. While I was waiting for credits to accumulate the enemy was having a field day. Oops, but I learned pretty quickly after a few deaths.
So game progression wise it was going quite well until the snooping missions came about and it all went pear shaped for me. At 1st it was my ignorance of the rules but once I caught on it was still hopeless. Lost about 10 games in a row, trying the various missions and gave up (after figuring out the parts I missed, so played even more games than this). Came back later and carried on with the story missions and Boom! success! They where much easier! Perhaps an indicator of difficulty on missions could help? Due to the nature of random cards being drawn it took a few games to realize I was out of my depth. But after making it through the story missions and getting some cards it went much better attempting them...sort of.
I had compiled some notes of cards / mechanics that seemed off or overpowered ($%^# that neural backlash card) but after my 2nd go at the 13 missions I feel everything is quite well balanced but the difficulty level and amount of cards spikes too quickly. My 2nd play through gave me a bunch of new cards I hadn't seen before and the enemy seems to have a bunch of handy / effective cards I can't access. I had several WTF moments where new cards I hadn't seen before were played and just destroyed me. The 1st few missions seemed fine but once you hit the mark where both players have to get 50 points it became very hard. I've played over 50 or more games now (and I've only cleared the 13 missions once..) and I'm starting to know more cards which is helping me strategy wise but someone less stubborn than me might give up. I would suggest either limiting the hacking points more in the beginning or preferably limiting the cards more so the player can learn specific cards plus their strategic uses. You could disguise tutorials in enemies playing limited cards but with a specific strategy that you can learn to use or defend against.
Lastly I will definitely be buying this game on release even with the current difficulty level as I'm really enjoying it. Well done on this!
Thank you, I'm glad you're enjoying it!
And that's some great feedback. After 4 years of playing the game, it's impossible for me to accurately gauge the difficulty for new players. What's easy for me is frustrating for beginners.
I think I will go back and lower the OP requirements for earlier missions, so that the ramp up to 50 OP is more gradual. And I probably need to nerf that early hacking deck, it seems to be a bit harder than the other decks on the easy tier.
Card rewards are random, so a particular playthrough might be easier or harder depending on what cards the random number generator spits out. I'm contemplating hard coding an early reward of at least one Artemis card, as that's a pretty fundamental card for dealing with dangerous Support cards, like the hacking cards.
The idea to put difficulty level indicators on the mission is a great one. And I'll see about maybe adding a text-writing effect, shouldn't be difficult. :)
Thanks again for the feedback!
However, being more a Hearthstone from closed beta (and vintage MTG) player with over 100000cards, I never understood TCG or CCG games which takes away my ability to always decide where to attack (or even block attacks). If you can explain to me the jest of this mechanic decision; I think I will be able to understand and enjoy the game more.
I like the theme, and story, I didn't like that when I have multiple story answers when taking to the NPC, they all yield the same result, especially since I got really excited having potentially different story lines. I know you are late in development, and should treat my opinion just as an opinion, don't go change anything. I'm just sharing my single experience with you.
I see many others here are excited and do not complain about it, so I'd like to understand it if you have the time to discuss it - the design decisions. You have learnt a lot, and allude to difficulties of balancing the game...? Please tell us more.
Otherwise just add more juice!
I'm sure over time you will flesh it out well with community support. You are brave and smart to involve the public and their input, by that I'm not say mine, I mean in general too many people are afraid of it.
Your art is good enough, but yes in a card game which is basically just interface, it is super important in my opinion. Many people play it just for that, to collect art.
Also launching a card game digitally, places you in a strategic advantage of doing things which paper games cannot do, so use it! More and more for each update, just make sure to plan for it.
When I received your newsletter System Crash, my first thought was one of my web hosts told me my server was down haha phew.
Being able to choose who to attack and block dramatically increases the complexity for the AI in predicting what could happen next turn and making a good decision this turn in order to best defend against those possibilities. I made certain design decisions in order to make it easier to implement an AI that could be on an equal footing with a human playing the same game. Another example is how you have to play all the cards from your hand that you plan to play this turn before the combat phase starts.
I understand how that feels less satisfying to play, especially for CCG veterans. It is more limited. But I tried to limit the scope so that I could achieve this complex game with my limited resources. Even then, I failed to adequately contain the scope. ;) Of course, happy to discuss.
Basically, I never planned to have dialogue in the game at all. Originally, you only got mission briefings and then a brief narrative description of your "approach". Something like "You sneak up on the warehouse, noting the guards patrolling the perimeter" etc.
Your communication with other characters in the game was limited to emails they'd send you detailing what they wanted you to do and it was implied that you simply accepted these tasks. Once they were completed you'd get a message thanking you and your reward.
But this felt incredibly passive. Your sense of yourself as a character with a personality and voice was missing. You were just this mission bot doing the tasks the NPCs set you.
To solve this I added dialogue trees. That immediately made the narrative feel 100x more engaging. But...if I just gave you a single response to what the NPC said it still felt fairly passive. You would just go "yes, ok, yes, I agree, sure, yes, on it". Passive.
So I added more options. Sure, they lead to the same place at the end of the day, but they give your character more "personality" options, and at least a chance to argue with an NPC, or dig for more information. They're not there (in this campaign) to really change the course of the narrative, but to give you a sense of your character as a person in the world with a personality.
In expansions I will do branching narratives. The code supports it, I *could* implement it now. But I'm not going to. As I said, I've blown completely past my original scope estimate. And a branching campaign isn't trivial, even if you plan for it from the start; it would be at least +50% effort to implement well.
So I made the choice to push real branching out to expansions. For the first campaign you get a linear plot with "personality" choices in dialogue. In expansions, without a CCG engine to build and bugs to fix, I can devote myself more fully to interesting content. More cards, new card abilities, and branching campaigns with interesting features. Thanks!