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 1.6.6Jul 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
- Patch 1.4.6May 01, 2024
Comments
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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.
Sorry for bombarding you with bug reports. Let me know if I should stop.
Today I got stuck in a shop. I knew that going there I would be blocked by heretics from going anywhere else. My plan was: 1) enter the shop, 2) buy something, 3) place a tile in one of the inaccessible spots 4) make use of the sin relic for an extra turn 5) place a tile in the last remaining inaccessible spot 6) win the level. What I believe that we are seeing is that reaching the tile with the shop the sin relic was activated before finishing the shop interaction (I guess)
Nah, all good, thanks for reporting these! Fortunately this one too is a very much corner case (though annoying one) but I will try to replicate and fix it for the next patch. Something is indeed going quite wrong there and I guess as you suspected that SIN is not waiting for you to stop shopping and triggers the level ending too. Weird how the HP bar is not displaying at all anymore and how the whole level blinks out when you try to select something (I guess). And the shop isn't showing the exit option either...
neither the points or the shop prices were shown...
One thing that doesn't sit well with the rest is that SIN should only activate after I place a tile that I can't access - step 3) in the above plan, but in this case we see the problem already before step 2)
I have noticed that potions are drinkable at all times. Today I attempted to use the healing potion after getting stuck, while the lighting bolts were raining down on the remaining empty spaces. The idea was that if I time it right, I could heal more than if I used the potion before the end of my turn. While I was able to pull it off, apparently, the game had already decided that my hp at the end of the turn was less than all the damage to be received, so it killed me anyway. May I suggest that the hp>0 check is done at the end of the lighting bolts animation?
I am sure that other Casual Crusade pro gamers would appreciate it :)
I am having too much fun with this game! New build strategy - if you get enough red gems and raise your max hp high enough, it pays off to purposefully block yourself from playing more chests, especially if they are cursed.
A few bugs worth mentioning:
The description of relics that involve gems are messed up. It is something new from today. For example, Smite mentions "Khan legacy", while the text remains red and the effect is on red gems.
I believe I had a case where I was standing next to a red gem, a brute came next to me, they stepped on the gem, died, and then I received 1 damage from them.
Good catch, the "static color" relic descriptions were indeed messed up. This was regression from the relic color seeding issue fix from the last patch. The second one isn't really a bug as they kinda happen at the same time but I think it might make more sense to change it so that smiting would stop the damage from happening too.
Another simultaneous interaction that doesn't behave as expected: Having the relic for healing when stepping on red, when you pass by a brute just before stepping on the red, the healing does not trigger - only the damage from the brute.
Not a bug, but an edge case suggestion - make cavalry relic (open chests with blanks) to work on picking crosses in boss fights. It is a marginal improvement, but can save runs ... like mine from today
For today's score I got 6000 from drinking a potion of randomness. The 481 I survived long enough thanks to green gem filling the board.
Lucky! Even that 481 was quite a lot for that seed.
Today's daily chroma ban was supposed to be the green one, but during play it was the red one?
Huh, weird. It keeps showing red for me in the menu view but actual run is yellow then. And it seems to do the same consistently every time I refresh it too. Have you noticed skill colors not lining up properly in the past dailies?
Haven't paid attention to that, but will keep an eye out. I opened the daily in incognito and it was the same for me - green in the menu; red in game.
Well this was a bit of a weird one. Seems like Chrome and Firefox have a bit different sorting algorithms which caused the initial green/red difference for me and you. I was also generating the list in wrong order (for daily menu view and the actual game that already is basically staring in the background at that point) and the actual game ones affected the "allowed" colors for the menu generation. But now both of these issues are fixed and the daily mods should preview correctly and be consistent on all browsers.
Hey. This is the second time I get stuck on that "alternative dimension"
This time I opened a new browser and recorded the same run.
It is not related to my previous ascension because the problem happens with a new account as well. It must be expecting me to place a tile, but the board is already completed
Thanks, good find! Praying on broken altars made you indeed become stuck there and didn't trigger level ending even though it was empty. Fixed now.
Inexplicable death to the first boss today. Just picked the chest with the cross and died. Judging by the similar score, I suspect that @Rafitko might have had the same issue.
I messed up early on and didn't get that far. Was there a tile on hand then that could connect to the stood on one after everything else is removed?
before I reach I usually always try to shuffle the tiles so that I have options available later.
I think this particular time, I had 3 tiles (from Fibonacci) I placed a purple gem tile so it swapped out one of my options. I am guessing that when the boss jumps and all tiles are reshuffled, the people gem activated a second time and it swapped out the other tile as well...
Tried again on incognito and didn't die straight away to it but did run myself to a dead end few hits in.
In Behacked there was "holy water" to remove curses. We should have a similar relic/potion here.
Just a small thing, the cross disappeared for some reason, I needed a moment to find it.
Later the Brutes decided to huddle together until they died after moving.
I have a question regarding the endgame. What am I doing wrong? My runs could go on forever, but I'm usually ending them after several hours because sleeps important 😅 I've collected multiple mouldy keys and grails but nothing happens? In one daily run I managed to go to that different level, but I don't remember what I might have done differently than in normal runs. I'd think that after getting so far I'd finally reach the end.
Me again :)
I don't know what happened with the first altar, there was a quick text effect that I couldn't read fast enough and then I continued playing.
I was carrying a second moldy key and 2 grails for multiple levels, not sure if that was intended.
My only problem from today's run - can dailies count as part of the regular leaderboard as well? I am afraid my 66 G will be lost in the many pages of the dailies chronologies.
Suggestion for a new curse: "the number of the beast" - if your score contains the digits 666 next to each other, you receive damage and another curse.
It is an amazing game, my friend. You could develop something full fledged from this idea.
Oh nice you did it! Congrats! 🎉
I think your first one might have been a broken one. It depends on which alt world version you're in and wether you have the grail or not.
I don't plan on merging the leaderboards really as I've intentionally made daily modifiers that can completely change the game and scoring. But I've been thinking of adding like a all time statistics leaderboard or something along those lines so that doing well wouldn't be that much lost forever.
And obviously you do get to keep the hat and the wings! Kinda why I added that today's modifier. Like a "bit" of a nudge for people achieving it. But still not too easy to pull off. I was eagerly waiting for this one to appear. And then I completely botched my own run... 😅
That's a pretty neat curse idea. Fits thematically and not too oppressive yet still having some effect.
You are very correct about the leaderboards. Some daily modifiers are small enough to be negligible, but I am sure that people would prefer to have a separate leaderboard for "clean" runs.
And yes, I will proudly wear my "hat" and wings now
If you are still interested in some edge cases bugs, here are some from today's daily:
1) Died for standing on a trap tile during a boss battle - I guess that the heretic tried to appear and clashed with the player character
2) new trap card out of nowhere - I started the recording because I suddenly got a new trap card during the boss battle. Was this the case for others? Is it supposed to be like that?
3) Chest - Merchant - Deck view interaction - When reaching a merchant and a chest at the same time, the selection windows for each get queued. I opened my deck to review which tile would be the best for me, this caused the chest options to disappear and to switch to the merchant's selection.
Well these 1 and 2 are pretty weird. No idea why a new trapped one would appear. There is only supposed to be two of them (half of starting five rounded down). And I have no idea what killed you there. The heretic would not spawn if the spot was somehow blocked and they only activate once you leave the space anyway. Boss did the stomp so somehow he thinks you're stuck.
The third case is pretty clear but luckily not very common one.
If you use a green tile as your last possible tile in a turn, the game will still detract from the pieces filled with a blank tileas if they were empty.
This seems to only happen if there's at least one unfilled tile remaining at the end of the turn.
Today's daily has a curse "Excommunication - ... - This curse can be placed anywhere"
What does that mean?
Also - me making the most of an unlucky boss fight:
So it basically means that it will be placed randomly in the middle of other relics. Even in the today's daily it is placed between the other two modifiers thus disabling them both.
I've got a heretic placed in empty spot:
Placing a tile (orange) under him resulted in instant death.
The instant death in that scenario is intended (kinda). If you play a tile and can't walk to it (no matter why really, if it's blocked on otherwise unreachable) the level ending will trigger and in case of boss levels, they'll do the stop and hurt you for each unfilled square.
But the heretic being off the tile is something I have no clue about (and shouldn't happen either). I guess it was on that other tile but somehow decided to move even though the boss destroyed the tile it was going to move to...
Time to take a break from this game. Can be addictive :)
I thought to make a video to report some bugs, ended up recording my record run. It is 69 minutes long and doesn't start from the beginning. Let me know if you want to see it
Haha, nice! Yea it'd be cool. Always a good to get some extra insight on how the players are actually playing the game...
This is a screencast that doesn't record audio or the mouse position. It is unedited, real time of me pausing and thinking, so it might appear a bit slow.
(The boss battle starting at 7:05 was epic. I actually completely forgot about my Fibonacci blink and almost died)
Ohh right, you had that relic that makes heretics skip turns and that's why he wasn't moving and towards you where that wildcarded fibo tile would have then smited him. I wondered that what was going on there.
Looks like for the whole fight that was you biggest hurdle all the time really always screwing up with the "placed traps" but blink with all those different wildcards really carried hard!
But you actually got a good use out of that skill on the normal levels afterwards. I think I've kinda overlooked the usefulness of it a bit myself. I guess I should indicate that amounts of stun on the enemies themselves somewhere so you'd be more easily able to know whether they'll move or not. Would make the skill more usable and make planning around it easier.
Today's blessing from daily - Crystal Cascade caries over to normal runs. Not sure if the curse as well, because it is harder to check.
I mean, I played the Daily, then started a normal run and the Crystal Cascade effect works even though I don't have this blessing. Starting new run and restarting the game doesn't fix that.
I'm not sure if it happens to all runs, or only these played after doing a Daily.
Thanks! Fixed now.
Daily run discussion:
1) Maybe not all curses should be in the daily pool? (Halted lineage). I guess if I made it far enough, I would have a relic to pass on, so maybe it does have a place there
2) On the third level I got a bottled mana potion that should give 1000 points. Drinking it gave me 3000 points. Maybe include in the description the current multiplier "1000 x3" that changes with the level number, or don't multiply it if that was not intended.
True, you can not leave legacies in dailies anyway. So basically yes it doesn't do anything there. Same thing kinda when you have a daily mod and excommunication which then immediately disables the mod.
Using the multi is intended for it. Almost all score additions are multiplied that way. You can actually even use that pot in the middle of movement to have even bigger multiplier.
Daily run discussion:
I thought that I was being super smart when I placed all my tiles on the boss fight before opening the first chest. Instead got insta-killed by the boss (first boss, 1 hit 5 hp). Not sure what is the rule that defines how much damage you take.
Question: Do everybody have the same rng seed in the daily or is it only the starting relics?
Everyone will get the exact same RNG. So all chests for example will have the same options (unless they've branched off and can no longer get some relic etc) and so on.
Yea that is the "strat" for bosses as far as I know too. So farm points until you run out of options and have to grab the chest or cross. The boss damages you for every unfilled square on the board if you can't place anything anymore. So you should have opened the chest on your last tile. Then the boss would not damage you and would reshuffle all tiles back to your deck.
2 possible bugs:
1. Penance actually puts a card from your hand back to deck before drawing so if you have no deck you will put one card back there and then immediately draw it back to your hand. I can't find any issue with how it works now. Got any more details if you got it to somehow generate endless cards?
2. Yes the gem generation (or actually reverting them back) had some issues (on other levels too). They sometimes indeed were semi-permanent even though they shouldn't. Fixed already for the next patch.
On #1, the game was duplicating a card in my hand. I forgot the details, but it was either:
If I stepped on multiple Penance at one move, my hand grew larger. I remember that I had like 3 cards in my hand at one point, but had 7 to 8 cards after a move. I had like 5 Magna Carta at that point. I also had Wildcard on Penance (red <-> purple and orange <-> purple).
Just to make sure, this started happening after using Rejuvenating Toxicant.
I'm sorry to report that our new vendor can't count... At first I thought that maybe he has it backwards and counts open chest, but that's not it:
So far I haven't been able to buy anything from him.
EDIT: Wait. Are the unopened chests from previous levels and not the current one?
Yes, exactly.