As always, the feedback has been useful in improving the game, and more is always appreciated. Enjoy!
- Content: Added the fifth upgrade tier, which consists of several new Commander modifications.
- Content: The new upgrades will allow your Commander body to break some Vulnerabilities. The game tracks the conditions in which Vulnerabilities were broken so that, for example, it will remember that you deflowered each of the Chosen personally instead of using your Thralls.
- Content: A new event has been added on Day 30. Scoring and cheat activation have been moved and adjusted accordingly.
- Interface: Minor changes to the Psychic Reading profiles to clarify which Vulnerabilities are broken in which ways.
- Interface: Hotkeys can now be used to input actions during battle. See the attached text file for a list of hotkeys.
- Interface: Hovering the mouse over a button in combat will now show a tooltip indicating the button's effects and its hotkey.
- Interface: During a replay of a file with written commentary, the spacebar may be used to skip through battles.
- Interface: Evacuation and extermination are now shown with progress bars. The amount completed, the amount that will be completed assuming no surrounding or capturing, and the amount that can theoretically be completed if all the Chosen use the Blast action are all shown.
- Interface: The names of the actions taken by the Chosen are now displayed.
- Interface: The dark colorscheme is now the default option.
- Interface: Added the option to use a larger text size.
- Interface: When the player has the ability to buy a Commander but has not yet done so for the coming battle, the button is highlighted in yellow.
- Balance: When multiple Core Vulnerabilities are broken in a single battle, the corresponding scenes will now happen on the same day.
- Balance: Upon the first time reaching Lv 2 circumstance damage against the Chosen strongest against that circumstance, the player is granted +2 bonus Evil Energy. This can make 1-cost Commanders useful even early in the game.
- Bugfix: The tutorial will no longer get confused by the existence of the commentary system.
- Bugfix: The damage bars will no longer loop for values above 10 trillion.
- Bugfix: The multiplier summary will no longer display incorrect values when very high multipliers are involved.
Are rivalries worth trying to set up at the moment?
ReplyDeleteI've been trying to crack core/sig vulnerabilities without breaking minors but I just can't get my head around how.
Played through to day 30. New content looks super promising, I just wish I wasn't so terrible that I only got to see the default outcome.
It's worth a lot of points in the final scoring, and it makes it so the girls don't recover trauma as quickly when spending time together, but it's not a huge deal (for now - some upcoming content will make it more impactful). At the moment, it's practically just a matter of taste, whether you prefer a bit more yuri (with a friendly relationship) or a bit more despair (with an unfriendly relationship).
DeleteIt's also worth noting that setting up a rivalry only requires that a majority of the interactions so far have been negative, so you can afford to break some minors first. If there are equal positive/negative interactions, then the higher-tier breaking scenes take priority. Since you can decide exactly when to use the defiler actions that cause tier-two breaks, you have some flexibility.
I'll be damned, I finally had a eureka moment. I went from being unable to get more than 3 evil an encounter, to 21 and immediately getting a scene where my Chosen started turning against one another. Feels good.
DeleteCongrats! I hope the game doesn't become too easy for you.
DeleteSo I just finished up with a final score of 111T. Took out all core/sig vulnerabilities by week 15, finished off the minors and picked up the last of the upgrades by around week 17. After that, I just fast-forwarded to reach day 30.
ReplyDeleteMy thoughts so far:
It feels a lot like a puzzle game, in a way. You're not so much reacting to the Saviors on the fly as you are puzzling out the exact combination of actions that will score you a break. An arguable downside of the determinism is that you can brute force the solution with perseverance and almost no understanding.
My game progression ran like this:
Days 1-9; flail uselessly and build up evil.
Days 10-12; Invest in a commander and retry over and over again until I'm able to break down some vulnerabilities.
Days 13-17; repeat my earlier successful strategy with a few minor variations to pick up the remaining vulnerabilities.
Days 18+; skiiiiiiiip.
Basically, the "game" boils down to "how do I solve this particular team?" as opposed to "how do I fight this battle?"
Maybe if there were different missions/terrain to force you to vary up your solutions? Maybe you're trying to corrupt a scientist and the Saviors try and stop you. Or maybe they're attacking your lair and you need to fight defensively. The point is, making each mission feel distinct.
If you haven't played it, Into the Breach is a great example of a really tight game-play loop that changes things up with different maps, objectives and enemies.
Quick word on writing: your smut is top shelf. Well written and with a good mix of pacing and payoff. I can't praise you highly enough.
So yeah, final thoughts: game-play shows promise but struggles with the difficulty/engagement curve.
P.S. Suppressor vs Defiler? Pros vs Cons? Defiler seems like a solid upgrade.
Thank you for the detailed feedback! Ironically enough, I was actually playing Into the Breach at the time that you posted this. I only discovered it recently, but it has absolutely informed my thoughts on design for this game and for future projects.
DeleteI agree with your analysis and criticism regarding the difficulty curve and repetitiveness of the early and lategame, and I have some ideas for how to deal with them. Essentially, the current game flow will be the equivalent of a "single play" mode, and there will eventually be a "story" mode that consists of multiple teams fought in sequence with limited saving opportunities. Each team will have some sort of gimmick (for example, slimegirls and gynoids that are effectively immune to some circumstances, or a team of idols whose combination attacks are predictable once you know the song but powerful enough to demand preparation on the player's part). These gimmicks will generally make the game more difficult, but they'll be balanced out by persistent upgrades that are earned by fulfilling various conditions.
In the shorter term, the next tier of corruption will cause the Chosen to start using some very powerful moves that change the flow of battle. Each move unlocked will force the player to change strategies, so I hope that this breaks the monotony of the later days. Additionally, reaching the end of the tech tree will eventually provide an option to trigger the final battle immediately (instead of waiting for Day 50). I expect that skilled players will usually be able to reach this point by Day 30.
Regarding Suppressors vs. Defilers, the base damage is about the same (300 and 150 for a Defiler vs. 200 and 200 for two Suppressors). The Defilers' big advantages are that their trauma is more concentrated on a single damage type (more important for the next corruption stage), and that they get a damage multiplier when the target is already highly damaged and corrupted. For example, when the target has >10k PLEA and has already orgasmed, the two Defilers that deal PLEA will deal double damage due to making the target orgasm again.
Thanks as well for the encouragement. I hope the game remains engaging enough that you stick around to see where the development goes!
You might also like Slay the Spire. While in execution it's a very different gameplay loop (a rogue-like deck building game), it shares a lot of the same meta themes (picking your battles, you always know exactly what your attacks will do, limited RNG to keep you on your toes).
DeleteAs for Story Mode, will we be able to weaponize defeated Saviors and use them in future battles? Credit to your writing, I found myself growing attached to my chosen squad, so I hope vanquished enemies can be repurposed in some way.
P.S. One pet peeve: Your hotbar "attacks" aren't arrayed to match how trauma's are displayed.
To match how the trauma's are displayed (Fear, Disgust, Pain, Shame) your hotbar would ideally be Threaten, Slime, Attack, Taunt.
I hadn't heard of Slay the Spire, but it looks interesting, so I might check it out.
DeleteYour speculation about how the cast might stick around between loops is pretty much spot-on. I agree, that sort of attachment should be promoted.
Sharp of you to notice how the attack arrangement differs there. It's deliberate, but still potentially subject to change. For the sake of new players, I wanted the first moves listed to be the ones that can cause openings on their own. Otherwise, I worried that a player might pick "Threaten" since it was first on the list, see that it seemed highly effective against the target, end up using it repeatedly, and never see the Surround button pop up. That said, especially now that hotkeys have been added to the game, I can see how the asymmetry might not be worth it.
That's a solid reason, but counter-point: People with broken brains will confuse taunt and threaten 70% of the time. I suppose you could also try color coding/tool tips to signify which attacks cause openings on their own.
DeleteActually, this just brought something else to my attention.
"DISG: Always, but only up to half the defense level. At defense level 1, this is rounded up. Above that, it's rounded down."
Does Disgust turn orange when it hits its maximum level? Because I'd been seeing that happen yet until I started writing this reply I'd completely forgotten that disgust had a cap.
Could be handy to highlight that in a tooltip as well. It's the sorta information that you'll read, but because you don't immediately see it in action, you'll forget about.
To be quite honest, I've hit the hotkey for threaten when I meant to taunt, too. Maybe the constant annoyance for experienced players isn't worth the uncertain benefit to new players after all.
DeleteYour conclusion about the DISG opening's color is correct. I had thought I had explicitly stated it somewhere, but upon searching through the files, it appears that I didn't. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.