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Winter Wizard Battle
by human-J0315C
This is a pseudo-deck-building game using combinations of smaller elements to form spells instead of using individual cards. You have to remember what spells you have "learned" already, and use them to defeat enemies!
I borrowed ideas from Slay the Spire and other games similar to that, and used cheap image assets to speed up development. I plan to explore the combos-spells game dynamic in a non-winter-themed game.
Once you get past the initial battles, there are some interesting spell combos and chaining you can do!
You can play the game here: https://joelhasa.site/with/a-holiday-wizard-game/
Please let me know what you think!
- auto-saving in browser local storage
- some bugfixes
Roasts
milobrandt 3 years ago
Mechanics ControlsThis is a neat idea - I played through once (defeating 22 enemies) and I like the mechanic of combining pairs of "cards" in a deck - particularly when that meant that I had to make decisions of which combo to use a tile in when I only had one of a tile; that mechanic feels like something to focus on in the design of the game, since it seems like a strong point.
Sticking points:
1. I spent a lot of time just cycling through combinations of things to try to remember what they did; I'm not sure "the player remembers it" is a viable way to handle pairings. There's probably a lot of ways to handle this - even just showing the player what their options are would be a great help, but I suppose there's lots of combinations (36?) so that could be unwieldily. Other solutions might be to give a more firm character to each icon (e.g. how gift boxes are mostly about defense and trees about attack - I didn't really pick up on meaning from the others). Something needs to be improved here - as it stands, this is an obstacle holding the player back from the information they need to act strategically.
2. The playing experience is rather monotonous - something needs to break up the sequence of similar fights. Lots of ways to do that - bosses or shops might be a nice addition (thinking about how Slay the Spire does it). It could also help to add some elements of rarity (e.g. rare tiles/spells or even just weird enemies that don't do the normal things). I also felt that losing felt a lot like winning, except with a gradual net decline in health over time - it'd be more fun to set up situations from which the player might lose catastrophically rather than in some cold statistical way of "less healing than damage" - and, again, bosses or more varied enemies would help with that, as could sectioning the fights in some way (e.g. so that the question becomes "can I finish this section without dying" not "if my health keeps declining at this rate, I'll be dead in 8 fights").
Sticking points:
1. I spent a lot of time just cycling through combinations of things to try to remember what they did; I'm not sure "the player remembers it" is a viable way to handle pairings. There's probably a lot of ways to handle this - even just showing the player what their options are would be a great help, but I suppose there's lots of combinations (36?) so that could be unwieldily. Other solutions might be to give a more firm character to each icon (e.g. how gift boxes are mostly about defense and trees about attack - I didn't really pick up on meaning from the others). Something needs to be improved here - as it stands, this is an obstacle holding the player back from the information they need to act strategically.
2. The playing experience is rather monotonous - something needs to break up the sequence of similar fights. Lots of ways to do that - bosses or shops might be a nice addition (thinking about how Slay the Spire does it). It could also help to add some elements of rarity (e.g. rare tiles/spells or even just weird enemies that don't do the normal things). I also felt that losing felt a lot like winning, except with a gradual net decline in health over time - it'd be more fun to set up situations from which the player might lose catastrophically rather than in some cold statistical way of "less healing than damage" - and, again, bosses or more varied enemies would help with that, as could sectioning the fights in some way (e.g. so that the question becomes "can I finish this section without dying" not "if my health keeps declining at this rate, I'll be dead in 8 fights").
human-J0315C 3 years ago
Thank you! The pairing mechanic is definitely the main focus of this prototype.1. I appreciate your thoughts on improving the gameplay - I'm planning on adding a library view so you can keep track of what spells you know without having to just remember them.
It has been hard to find a balance between giving every tile a single, predictable action (where you're just picking 2 individual effects to use) and having the combos dictate the meaning of the spell, each spell being more than the sum of its parts. Any other thoughts on this would be mucho appreciated!
2. Definitely agree with all your thoughts here, especially adding other game scenes (shops, branching maps, bosses). I was trying to avoid being a complete ripoff of other games, but now that you mention it, I think it might be more a matter of adhering to the well-worn conventions for this subgenre ( roguelike deckbuilder ).
Again, thank you!
Satoshifuz 2 years ago
Level DesignIt's very good and combining pairs of "cards" in a deck - particularly when that meant that I had to make decisions of which combo to use a tile in when I only had one of a tile; that mechanic feels like something to focus on in the design of the game, since it seems like a strong point.like guy said before me
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