August Update

I took a 3ish week break at the end of July, but have been working on the game quite a lot in the latter half of August. I got some great feedback from someone which has pushed me to re-analyze some aspects of the game. The main realization was that the deckbuilding side of the game just wasn't working all that well for new players. Early game felt slow and the game doesn't give you a lot of direction.

I've been spending a good bit of time redesigning some of the core game systems, which I've almost finished as of now. The main change is how cards are added to your deck.

In the previous video, each round of the game would be comprised of 3 phases: the buying phase (spend gold to buy cards from a shop, like any other autobattler), the card playing phase (spend mana to play cards you draw from your deck, like any other deckbuilding game), and the battle phase (your team bumps heads with an enemy's team, like any other autobattler). The latter two phases are the same, so it's the buying phase that's gotten a redesign.

The buying phase is now a drafting phase, and it goes like this. At the start of the draft, you get to pick 1 of 3 relics, which are items with passive effects that are always active. This should give players much more direction throughout the game, and introduce some more excitement. After picking a relic, you'll then draft 10 cards. There's no money involved here, you are simply presented with 3 different cards and are prompted to choose one of them, after which you'll choose again until you're done. You will have the option to skip cards, but skips are a resource must be spent. You start with no skips, but gain them when you pick your relic. Each relic has an associated skip amount, where the weaker the relic, the more skips it provides. So if you want a thinner deck, you'll need to pick a weaker relic.

This drafting phase also doesn't happen every round; it happens every 2 rounds, and later drafts will happen after 3 rounds. This count can be reduced however. When you draw through your whole draw pile, you'll reduce the draft countdown by 1. I am hoping that this will add some extra strategy to the value of skipping cards and adding card drawing effects to your deck. If you can draw through your deck quickly, you can draft more frequently, which can be a very good thing because the cards and relics you draft will become stronger with each draft. For your first draft, you'll only be presented with cards and relics from one pool. Then for your second draft, you'll only be presented with cards and relics from the next best pool, and so on. Eventually this will cap out and you'll stop entering the drafting phase, although I'm not sure what that number will be.

I'm not quite done implementing this yet, but I'm close, and it's looking good so far. The main benefit for this is you start drawing through an interesting deck immediately, which this game's mechanics really benefit from. The relics are also very fun. I evaded them at first because every game has them, but eh, maybe there's a good reason for that.