Casual Crusade
Use your deck of tiles to build a path covering all the lands spreading the good word while also pillaging some rewards as additions to your deck or sometimes even blessing you with some powerful abilities.
The game was made for js13k where the goal is to make a game in JavaScript and make it fully fit in 13 kilobytes or less.
Development log
- Patch 1.6.710 days ago
- Patch 1.6.6Jul 27, 2024
- Patch 1.6.4Jul 17, 2024
- Patch 1.6.0Jul 16, 2024
- Patch 1.5.0May 09, 2024
- Patch 1.4.9May 04, 2024
- Patch 1.4.8May 02, 2024
- Patch 1.4.7May 01, 2024
Comments
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Does liquidating a heretic give you a heretic soul?
Yup
I'm in a level with no lives
the merchants seem slightly broken. When I tap on an item I can’t afford I still get the effect. It doesn’t show the animation of buying it, and it remains in stock. This definitely works for the mimic, and heretic soul guy. I found this out on accident because it doesn’t tell you how many untouched chests or souls you have until tapping on an item. While testing I ended up being able to decline 23 times per area. (I’m playing on mobile.) the game is quite fun notwithstanding.
Thanks, seems like a mobile only bug.
How exactly do you leave a chest untouched?
Don't place a tile next to it ie. don't open it.
How do the boss fights work? When I grabbed the cross I died
No, grabbing the cross does not kill you. There were other things happening between those two things I bet. I'd guess you grabbed the cross, the tiles (that you weren't standing on) got shuffled back to the deck and you had to tiles in hand that could connect.
Why did I find a blank tile in chest in today's daily?
Probably would have been a solo left path tile but road to hell curse removed that path from it.
Are the grail and moldy key just troll items?
Nope.
Wait, then what do they do?
They’re used to reach the ending.
I enjoyed the game, but ... in the current version1.6.6 there are unexpected glitches!
I'm not sure if some of the following is normal:
1. A blank penance tile (purple dor) appeared once after a level where Khan's legacy (green) was used in the previous level.
2(a). Since this level, the tiles which the avatar has stepped on started to disappear even though the tiles are not fragile. I checked the 'curses', but I wasn't aware of any curses which would trigger this.
2(b). The icons covered the play area and made it difficult to see completely.
3(a). In this level, there are tiles which could be connected to the existing paths, but the game suddenly stopped and called it over.
3(b). Tiles can still be placed after the game ended, although it had no effect.
4. As other suggested, if would be good if 'curses' could be removed with the 'holy water'. I guess it could be a random one removed or a particular one which the player selects.
1. Did you somehow shuffle those khan blanks to your deck? They are permanently added there if so...
2. This is a weird one, never seen or heard anything like that. Those icons should indeed have maybe a toggle or something. I have had some plans of actually allowing full scrolling of the map but haven't really worked on this game for quite a bit now. But will happen some time for sure.
3. Are you sure it wasn't because you placed a tile where the character could not travel to? Unsure if you're aware but that is also one condition for level ending. Hard to say exactly as the menu is in the way but these two tiles for example do not connect...
1. Didn't shuffle the 'khan' blanks into the deck. It appeared only once. Checked the deck and the blank wasn't in the deck.
2. Yes, very weird behaviour... so the deck gets smaller and smaller when I played. I used the 'khan' cards to stop the 'bleeding' as much as possible, but it was impossible not to get strikes. Glad to have a lot of extra HP boost and red 'health' pylox charms, so that my HP could get back to normal quickly.
3. The ┓tile disappeared to the right of the starting tile while I walked over the tile. I ignored it as it was the same annoying thing like in the previous two or three levels. I am very sure that the avatar was standing on the right portion of the path. I know that the goal was only to reach the treasure trove, but the game stopped when I was on the way.
╋(┓) ┣ ⇦I was on this side
┗ ┣ ━ ┫ ⇦
2 glitches, 1. In a vendor on mobile you can press something you don't have enough to buy, but it will just give you it. it will not show it either, but you can use it to get 16 of a hat, or get any item a vendor shows (that I know of)
2. on mobile, if you press where contrite (the one that lets you skip chests) would go, it just skips it and acts like it was there even if you are on the first round.
What does broken promise do exactly? What does it mean when the heretics are different?
Nothing
If you have the Redraw scarf and you attempt to place a tile as you redraw, the game softlocks where it shows valid tile placements but you can't put any tiles anywher
Seems this is still an issue, @kingraptor918 mentioned it, 'holding a tile when sin activates bugs the game' makes me wanna pick up JS tho!
Hey, I was showing the game to a friend today and we noticed that mobile full screen doesn't support landscape mode.
If you plan to update the game more, maybe you could add that.
Another mobile friendly feature would be to show pylon info when tapping on it
Today's 3rd boss battle was insane!
I love this game, it seems like a super original idea and very nice mechanics. I would love for you to release it for the play store or on consoles, I think it would become famous. Incredible work!
Hey, I am back. This can be a nice game to relax with.
Did you know that when there are heretics involved, you can cause the level to change while still having valid moves to play? If you are quick with the mouse, you can place more tiles while the thunderbolts are flying. This way you can force two simultaneous level-changes and skip a level. Here is a gif I made to demonstrate. The first time, when I did it out of frustration, I skipped a boss level.
Sorry for breaking your game
Welcome back! Yea it's intentional that heretics can cause an early level end even if you'd have more legal moves to make. When you play a tile but for some reason (heretic blocking the way) can't move to it, it will trigger the end.
The main point that I was trying to make is that, while the end animation is happening, you can drop one more tile, this will force you to skip the next level (if you have the hp to survive the level end)
Oh right, now I get it! So when the level ends due to being body blocked by heretics, you can still play moves and trigger level change multiple times.
Hello, dear community!
I had to register here to thank anttihaavikko for a great game! It feels like it was made with great care. I deobfuscated the latest version from itch.io to learn how to work with canvas graphics from this great example. The code is very logical and concise. Thanks again for your work!
P.S. People who play on desktops and write error messages here - maybe it will be more convenient if you attach messages from the browser debug console here?) On mobile it is also possible, although a little more difficult
The original js13k version also has public source: https://github.com/anttihaavikko/casual-crusade
yes, i learned about your game from js13k. without the sources of the old version it would be sad to figure it out)
One thing I want to warn/say. If you have Sin and it hasn't activated yet and your stuck... DO NOT HOLD A TILE. It will bug the game and you have to restart the tab.
Dang, is that still a thing. I thought I had fixed that already. 🤔
Just a small thing, the cross disappeared for some reason, I needed a moment to find it.
What actually is the use of the moldy key and grail and how do i use it
They're key pieces on reaching the ending of the game.
Theres a actual end?
Yup!
ive been playing this fantastic silly game for a long while now and i wish i could download this like an app or something to play, very cool stuff :D
what are the orange things??? that kinda look like me?
They're heretics, ie. enemies. They block you from moving.
awsome game! I wonder are the levels random procedurally generated, or hand crafted?
They're procedurally generated.
There's no way to proceed:
Btw this had me laughing my ass off
Can you add an option to disable anything score-related? (so that no score-related relics/potions show up, there are no Dynasty/Indulgence tiles/pylons, and you don't show up on the leaderboard)
(Update: I just realized score shops exist, so I guess score is important.)
Strange thing. I chose my legacy - smite - and some time later started a new run, but there was no relic. I thought that maybe I refreshed the page and I'm starting clean. But no, there's no visible relic but heretics stepping on pope's blessing are still liquidated!
EDIT: Also the relic wasn't available when choosing legacy. I had only two other relic, both of which were available.
One of the daily relics today doubles your starting HP to 10, yet none of the descriptions mentions that.
Yea it's "baby steps" as it would almost always kill you on second level without. I still don't really like that mod in actuality. I kinda wanted it to change the gameplay so that you'd have to move step by step but that most of the times doesn't really work like that.
It is great. I love the idea of relics having both positive and negative effects. It actually works in this case. I prefer shorter dailies than longer ones
The symbols for my legacies haven't been showing up. Down the line, can certain elements of the game be made optional (so that the game more closely resembles the early versions) or can there be a casual/endless play mode that has less curses/heretics but can't be on the leaderboard?
You mean after leaving a legacy and starting a new run, it just isn't given to you? It needs to be the same play session or it is forgotten (ie. can't refresh the page between). I guess there is no reason to add a custom game mode if such is wanted.
The legacies are given to me (like I'll see I'm starting with additional lives or given the ability to pass on rewards) but the symbol doesn't appear with my other rewards.
In today's daily, I got so far, and it looked like I could continue going indefinitely (you might want to ramp up the curse chests after some point to make things more difficult). I was looking for ways to intentionally finish the run. This gave me an idea: how about a level on which you need to defeat your own character. Let's say that after countless attempts to find the holy grail and after mingling with too many heretics, our noble hero lost their mind and need to be stopped. Maybe each step could deduct points instead of granting points. All boons and curses are still in effect, but the goal changes.
Additionally, one edge case: if you have red+purple wildcard ; smite and the bonus that stuns heretics when they step on purple - they cancel out. Nothing happens to the heretic when they step on red (no stun, no death)
My first "unique enough to mention" bug, yay - v -
On today's (7/25) daily crusade, encountered Fibonacci and this happened: We had 285 pts and when presented with the tiles below, we became stuck in his shop. Exit button and prices disappeared, along with score, health+username, deck, and gem hover descriptions.
When I attempted to take any of the tiles it would make the sound as if we picked it up/couldn't afford it.
An insane amount of times overlayed over itself.
Indefinitely.
That is until we hovered outside its 'hitbox', that's when it stopped. After clicking where the exit button would be I went to the next level, (no transition) where my deck was back but nothing else. We went to the first chest and everything was back to normal.. Cleared that level just fine, and died in the next with an exact 1k pts. No idea what could've triggered it!
Yup, the same thing happened to me now when I tried to play it. Seems to be an issue with Vanilla daily mod (no gems) and Fibonacci shop as it always has double gemmed ones.
This issue is fixed now with Fibonacci being able to still offer (double) gemmed tiles even with the Vanilla modifier. It was actually ending up in a state where the offered cards had two gems but the first one wasn't really there which made the whole game end up in a completely weird state.
Some bugs:
1) I had a case where my tiles were getting duplicated when I was stepping on 2-3 penance gems one after another. My guess is that because I was at the end of the deck, the second penance started to shuffle before the first penance had finished "delivering" its shuffled tile.
This happened multiple times before I made the recording
2) I have cases where a gem from a pylon can get permanently added to a tile. I can't tell for sure when it happens. The one from today I had a tile with blue gem, a purple pylon added a purple gem to it and I was stuck with that for the next levels.
3) I tried the daily in a new browser - the pylon colors are not the same between runs
4) Placing a tile affected by green pylon generated a blank, without it, there would be an empty spot that would be struck by lightning. Instead of recognising the blank, the lightning still struck and reduced the hp (better watch the video)
1. Kinda weird that it took this long to find since I think this has been there since the beginning. Now it's finally working correctly.
2. I think this happens when a permanent gem is added on top of a temporary one which then kinda "glues" the temporary one there too.
3. Seemed to be the case yes. Fixed now.
4. This was actually just happening on a case like in the video where your way was also blocked by a heretic. That triggered the "end check" to be ran earlier and didn't take pylon additions into account.
Thank you for your fixes. A few things that aren't really bugs:
1. In this boss battle, the level is wider than the game screen and the chest is not visible (it was on the left end below the boss position) ... Have you thought about zoom out / scaling down when the level gets above a certain size?
2. I believe that "amethyst resurgence" should be classified as a curse instead of a boon.
Oh yeah, forgot to fix that camera thing. It was already pointed out earlier by someone. I have these level size restrictions but I think pylons now break those rules a bit and make levels bigger than they should be. Zooming and panning the camera would be a good thing which would allow for bigger levels (allowing more disproportional ones too) but since I haven't built the game with that in mind since the beginning, it's a bit of a bigger overhaul of an addition. But indeed something I'd be interesting in adding though.
Filled the entire board on a boss level with blank tiles hoping to hit the cross, forgot that I had pylons set for all the blank tiles so now my game is stuck in an infinite loop with the boss trying to kill me but unable to do so and I can't go anywhere because everywhere is pylons.
Right right, interesting scenario. Didn't think of such combination at all. Guess I gotta figure out some outcome for when boss tries to stomp and reshuffle but all tiles are stuck due to pylons (or some other reason)...
This time the boss cut me off. There was a fragile tile, maybe it somehow affected it.
Also the cross still sometimes disappears.
Hmm, I'd suspect that the pylon is to blame here and the boss "cut off" check doesn't correctly count those as non-usable squares. And what do you mean the cross disappears? Like completely vanishes and makes you unable to continue?
edit: Yup, that was it. Fixed now.
I should probably say invisible cross, only the sparkles behind are visible. It happens rarely and to me for no discernable reason. I posted it some time ago, I'll try to find that screen
EDIT.
Of wow, that's weird. I guess I've completely missed (or somehow forgotten) that post. Does the cross stay invisible for the whole level or does it phase in/out?
Stays like this for the whole level. Next boss is back to normal.
Cool game and cool idea. Kinda feels lame when you have drawn nothing that suits. rotating 180 degrees would be cool
Well yeah, of course it feels bad when you can't place a tile due to no fault of your own really. But allowing rotating would make it basically endless and would make tiles with three ways basically identical to the full ones. And of course it becomes less of an issue the further along you get as you have more and more control on what kinds of tiles you add to your deck and what sort of relics/potions you choose to help you out on these bad luck situations.
Little thing, no idea how this happens. New run right after choosing legacy relic. It goes back to normal on the next level.
EDIT: also sometimes part of the board is out of frame. Can't tell if there's a chest or merchant or nothing.
The depth drawing issue of the starting tile is now fixed. Seemed to happen when dying on a boss level (after opening the chest ie. shuffling the starting tile back to deck).
The lack of room for bigger levels is annoying. There probably isn't anything there on the right side as the levels have max width and height so that it should be able to show everything. I guess in this case it should pan the camera left a bit to show the edge of that too because seeing even half of the yellow pylon here would be enough.
I've been toying around with the idea with removing the size limitations completely and making the camera movable by player.
That sounds interesting, it might somewhat counter the strategy of cutting off parts of the board and taking damage in late stage.
Right now I find the Khan Legacy pylons the biggest obstacle. If they appear in the middle of the board they can end a run early by cutting you off of large parts of the board. I'm sure there's a way to counter that, just haven't found one yet ;)
Oh yeah true, green pylons can indeed be a big roadblock. Didn't even think of it before but of course it can happen. Shouldn't be too common though luckily as it really requires a specific level layout and pylon next to a choke point.
But yes, there are some counters out there for it! Forgot to mention it in patch notes but blanks aren't as bad anymore (when they come to your hand) as they were before. But now that I know of this, I should probably think of more ways to combat unwanted pylons.
Bug? Report :
Add 4-way tile to sacrificed tile by potion is available at sight, but we can't pass through it. Maybe deleting 4-way tile is more kind than now.
Thanks. Yeah I don't think that potion should add it to sac spot.
I have been playing too much this gem of a game. It is time for me to take a break from it.
Sometimes when you start off a good run it can go for hours before the curses catch up with you, a death of a thousand cuts that can go on forever. I would love to see a menu screen where I could either save my progress and continue later or can give up (submit my score) ... also add some sound controls there too :)
Ignoring scope constraints, instead of simply "give up" maybe there could be some sort of "go to siege" button or something similar that would send you to a super hard, impossible to win level, which offers massive points with every step that you take.
I'm starting my summer vacation from my "real" work today so time to start working on the 1.6 patch. Lets see if that can entice you to return... 😅
I have some new feature ideas and that siege idea sounds pretty neat too. Might play around with it to see if it'd be cool. I don't really like how the runs can actually start taking multiple hours. And of course there are loads of bugs to fix too including the corner case ones reported by you that still remain.
I'd also like to hear your opinion on the green gems. I kinda still avoid them myself when possible as they can kinda trap you. But I'd like to make them more viable and enticing options. Got any ideas?
It won't take much effort to entice me. There are games that I have paid 10-15EUR and I have played them much less than this one. I believe that it has potential.
Regarding the greens here are some thoughts:
- It is ok for not all gems to be desirable from the start. Navigating around the green rarely poses a problem (for an experienced player).
- In later stages, when curse chests start appearing, green can be helpful to complete the stage while avoiding opening such chests (maybe a shopkeeper can offer the service to remove relics, Cavalry is one of those good until it becomes bad, kind of relics).
- Maybe not directly changing green gem, but adding more use cases where green can be useful would add extra depth.
Here are some ideas:
These are the ideas that come to me when I think: "I have a gem that creates tiles and has map control, when can it be useful?". I am sure that you can think of others as well. I have been amazed by your creativity, and when you ask for my suggestions I feel very honored.
The RNG in the daily is not as deterministic as initially thought.
I was worried that my score was so low in comparison to others, so I tried to find my mistake and load the daily in a new browser. Surprisingly, reloading the game in incognito can give you different starting deck. Examples:
Dang. Looks like it yeah. The directions seem to vary while the amount of them and the gem seems to be constant green.
Fixed now. Though it does somewhat bork the daily of today as it changes the 5th card to be a blue one instead.