Patch 1.6.0
As my summer vacation from my day job draws to a close, it's time to roll out this patch. It's not the biggest one ever because things like the Elden Ring DLC consumed a fair bit of my time. However, I did have a few long train rides, which provided ample time for dev work.
Two new mechanics have been added to the game. The bigger one (I think) is pylons. They appear on levels like chests and vendors, and when you place a tile around them, they will automatically add a gem of their matching color to the placed tile. There is also a new vendor who sells these new pylon-related items.
In addition to pylons appearing naturally, there are also a bunch of new relics that can create them or affect the way they work, such as extending their range.
The second major feature is the addition of fragile tiles. These tiles appear randomly instead of normal tiles in chests and vendor inventories and behave almost just like normal tiles. However, stepping on them (while passing by and not stopping there) will cause them to be removed from the board.
Fragile tiles are not completely removed from your deck when they break and will appear again on the next level (or whenever there is a full reshuffle). These tiles add more strategic choices to your toolkit for additional scoring and dealing with heretics by cutting them off.
Even though I think these additions will increase total scores, I still wiped the leaderboards clean. But now you can view the previous version leaderboards too, so your earned glory is not lost.
There will also be some new unique hats available only through claiming a high enough spot on the leaderboard.
And, of course, there are a whole lot of new relics, potions, and daily boons to play around with, along with a bunch of bug fixes and balance/quality of life improvements.
Let me know what you think of these new additions and if you stumble on some bugs or even if you have some great suggestions for future additions!
1.6.1
- Fixed starter tile depth issue after dying on a boss level
1.6.2
- Allowed multiple purchases from Nichiren
- Fixed issue with Nichiren locking next opened chest view
- Made created cards also trigger pylon effects
1.6.3
- Fixed visual glitch on menu screen when receiving a leaderboards crown
Comments
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Great update. The pylons add another level of strategy that needs to be considered. I love it!
Some stuff to point out after a few plays:
While other vendors allow multiple purchases, here the merchant window closed after the first purchase. Right after the vendor interaction, I placed a tile next to a chest. After reaching the chest the rewards window was not reacting to my hover/clicks, but the tiles in my hand were playable. This happened in 3 separate games. Once it was between levels (merchant was at the end of one level, rewards bug happened on the next level).
- Appear to be duplicates with different names.
- Used as legacy in a new game, they don't have effect on the starting level. I was hoping to start with more than 10 points on level 1 :-)
Placing a tile with a purple gem between red and blue pylons resulted in blue+purple gem (expected blue+red). I uploaded a public video, and you can see this at 18:00
- I used the "pathfinder's" potion to add some tiles around me. The newly appeared one that was next to a pylon didn't receive a gem.
- Just a guess, but if a green gem places some blanks, I assume that the pylon would not add gems to those blanks. If then I use 2 of the potion that adds paths to tiles on the board, I will have walkable tiles around the pylons that don't have gems. Imagine the horror!
In case your backlog of ideas has become too short after your vacation. Here are a few:
- a relic that acts the opposite of a wildcard: prevents combining gems of certain colors. Might be useful to counter some (green) pylons.
- relics or potions whose effect depends on the number of gems currently on the board
- vendors that give delivery quests: You receive some bad potion. You have to carry it a few levels and when delivered to another vendor you get points or a better potion. .... or: You get a package of 5-10 fragile tiles. You get paid XYZ number of points for each delivered tile to another vendor 3 levels later. Maybe subtract points if too few tiles are delivered.
It was intentional that Nichiren offered only single item but now that I think about it, why not allow more. The locking was not intentional but fixed now too.
Yeah those two are dupes so that a daily run could get double the effect. Those two along with one other one in that vendor inventory are actually daily modifiers and not "normal" relics. And yeah, they don't affect the first level as the level is actually generated before the skill is given. Could probably fix that too somehow but doesn't seem like a big priority... :D
Multiple pylons do trigger on a single tile but a tile can't have more than two colors and that's why the red effect didn't trigger.
Good catch about the "created cards" not triggering pylons. Now they do! The depth issue of the starting tile after dying on a boss level is now fixed too.
Heh, regarding Nchiren - I was initially writing it as a question if it was intentional or not and if it was to give the player some indication that they are allowed only one purchase. But then I deleted it to keep my "essay" shorter. Using the same slogan texts as the other vendors ("shop till you drop") also doesn't help to highlight the difference.
The legacy pylon activation on the tutorial level definitely not a priority.
The multiple pylons thing - to me it would make sense if the pylons overwrite the existing gem. In theory there could be a case where 3 (or more) pylons touch the same tile. It is definitely more simple to just pick 2 of them and ignore the rest but ... on the other hand ... if each of them activates but only 2 remain, it would be more fun 😇. An example: if there are green, red, blue and orange pylons (corner position), if you are lucky, your placement would get you healed, place a blank tile and have blue/orange left on the tile. The order in which pylons activate would play a role in deciding which 2 gems remain at the end.
Two minor comments I forgot:
- I notice a significant delay between the moment I place the last possible tile and the moment when the thunders start. It could be something that you added intentionally, based on previous comments. If that is the case, I recommend including some indication for players that they are having 1-2 seconds to drink a potion. Might not be obvious to newer players and would help to show that it is intentional and not just sluggish. I personally would enjoy the reminder as well.
- Not a sound designer myself, but my first impression from the pylon's sound effect was not pleasant. I am getting used to it, but if more people mention it, maybe you can find a more chill / less jarring variation for that sound.
Yeah there is an added delay (2/5 seconds depending on whether it will kill you) when on unfinished level end and you have a potion that could somehow affect the situation. Kept the timing fairly short so that you'd still kinda need to be aware of what you could do to pull it off. Some kind of indication might not be a bad idea as it still would realistically need to be known first hand even with it.
By the way, there are also undocumented hotkeys now added to potions (number keys) to help with pull off these "grace period" quaffs or even healing mid thundering.
Aight, will keep an ear out more critically on the pylon sounds. Have to admit, I didn't really listen to them enough...