This feels like it's just on the edge of being a really fun little game, but the sheer randomness in the early stages and the way in which losing health so drastically impacts your ability to deal with enemies drags it down. The obscurity of some mechanics is also a problem- I understand that it's a deliberate choice, and I think in some cases it works. Learning what the doctor does to your crewmates, or what each of the divine offerings actually provides, is a fun way to improve mastery of the game. Similarly, the very obscure elements- the puzzle of figuring out how to deal with the extremely dangerous late-game angel/devil enemies is a neat, out of context challenge. But a lot of this obscurity is just painful to deal with- for instance, it's possible to lose the spelling game repeatedly while spelling valid english words, because there's no clear indication that what's needed is three three letter words. Some clarity on that point- maybe in the form of three marks on the ship lighting up as valid words are formed, or a suggestion via dialogue, would make it much less frustrating.
I also think that the sheer necessity of crewmates and the total randomness of whether you acquire any in the first few fights is also problematic. Perhaps a free crewmate could be added to the very beginning of the game, or have one be guaranteed in the first 2-3 events. Further, some crewmates become extremely frustrating to face, in particular the one which boosts dice which drop to two pips- without control over where your shots go, and given the high variability of damage even with a few extra rerolls, it feels entirely up to chance whether your opponent will take damage or heal every time you attack them. It might be beneficial to make the combat mechanics asymmetrical, and allow the player to place their own shots in addition to their opponents.
I don't want this to come off entirely negative- for all these issues I had, I kept playing through moments of frustration because the game has a lot of charm and some really good bones. Cheers!
For the spelling game, it is actually told in dialogue but just in a "language" you don't understand. And wouldn't one get it in the first failure ie. not fail it repeatedly? Not very many times at least.
The patch I'm currently working on adds in a log book to your ship that tracks all events you've encountered offering more info and hints about them. Also includes an option to start with a crew member and trinket, but you gotta unlock and earn those starters though.
Seems to be caused by the event you had before where you pick one crew member and the other will end up on the next enemy (the frog one in the pic). That seems to cause enemy to get too many crew members and causes an error. Managed the repro and fix and next patch will be coming soon...
I'm pretty sure websites can not go full screen on their own and need user interaction to do so. I think at least most browsers do enforce this security thing.
i am in a run where apparently i have so many event-boosting things that combat has mostly disappeared. got a few green reset things and in my current reset, i have had ONE combat. and about 15 queen of the sea encounters. and like 40 trinkets. it stopped adding them to the ship after a while so i have no idea if they still count tho.
while i was writing this i got my 2nd combat encounter and the birds ANNIHILATED my opponent 👍
Basically, the librarian just gives you tips (that's what my friends told me, they might be lying), and for the word puzzles, you have to make 3 3-letter words, and the frog will reward you with stuff. I'm pretty sure the words are from the scrabble dictionary.
If it is 100% loosened you can go ahead and ram it to get the divine being inside. If it is no loose enough and you ram it, it sinks. I am not sure what the exact percentage required for a successful ramming, but I think it is over 75%.
I wouldn't say it used to be any easier. On one hand, it used to have less variety so less RNG but on the other hand, there also was less choices to me made ie. even more luck based.
I do like games which have some mysteries and leave them to player alone to solve and obviously I do like to make games which I myself enjoy. It's not for everyone, I get it and it's just fine. And I am in fact working on a next patch which will include a log book where you can explore your discovered things/mechanics a bit more thoroughly giving at least some hints which should at least a little help alleviate these issues.
Spelling just one word isn't enough. You gotta do all three, to win. And pirate/sea themed words are in fact a bonus. The weird lettering is the "special language" of the frogs. It's not quite as simple as just flipping or mirroring but that's on the right track.
Sorry for wasting your time and thanks for the feedback...
What a completely terrible thing to say. You get to play a well crafted and entertaining game, for free, and because you are frustrated because you don't have the patience or capability to figure things out you feel obligated to leave such pointless and shameful feedback.
Next time you are not having an absolutely great time, perhaps be a better human being and simply move along to something that does make you happy. But then again, looking at some of your other posts, your negative and off base comments seems to be something of a habit of yours.
chill out pall unloading your angst on random people wont help you .If you dont like a certain thing about this game make a calm constructive and polite comment. The dev of this game is not responsible for your problems so dont attack them if you want to fight people online go on a flat earth discord server. Also escaping whatever problems you have in life through a video game (that you dont even seem to like) and being toxic on game communities will not lead you anywhere.
So weird bug. You're the second person so far to have encountered this (or at least told about it). So if you've got any more details on the steps leading to this, they'd be very welcome.
Generally balanced gameplay unless unlucky with some encounters.
Good music.
Great and simple art style.
Critical feedback
I feel like it doesn't explain enough to the player.
What do the demon and angel want and why can't I exit their battles mid fight. The navigation seems too vague. What do these special symbols do? The game explains spice and plated cargo and that's about it.
You have to read the description of the game to even understand the plot.
Explain why my turn was skipped and unlucky 13 procced.
Please add difficulties.
Please make the starting roll to be 7+ minimum.
Please add more player agency. I lose too often to bad luck instead of poor planning. Rig the dice ever so slightly to roll better instead of worse. People take success fleetingly but loss hits harder.
I have had to read the comments to understand many of the confusing mechanics.
There are a few too many useless or negative events.
Conclusion
I look forward to seeing how this game changes with the upcoming updates and hope to make the game easier to understand and add some more player agency and QoL features
Adding more player agency, yes, big time! This has been one of my main priorities every patch. Making it less completely random and have some choices to be made. Of course it still needs more of it.
I don't really like the idea of difficulty selection. I'd much rather balance the only option to be better. Don't really like the idea of rigging the dice too much either. Sure, getting bad rolls can sometimes feel unfair but rigging the RNG when it's literally about rolling D6s would be noticeable in the long run and it'd just make realistically calculating the odds more difficult.
For the angel/demon battle, figuring out the goal is part of the puzzle of the fight. Explaining it thoroughly would lessen the experience in my opinion really. But I guess marking the correct dices for the combination or something like that could maybe hint a bit more on the solution without giving it away. And why do you feel like you should be able to opt out of the fight once you've challenged it? That's not a very common mechanic in any game really.
I understand the idea of perfecting the difficulty you already have. That makes sense.
When I design games, I try to optimise for fun over realistic and pure logistics. When I played the game I found the angel/devil fight super annoying because I lost a really good run. If the solution to the fight is what I think it is, then it is just too unlikely to win to be worth sacrificing that much cargo unless I'm in endless mode.
Being able to opt out of fights is rare, I agree but it doesn't help that I have no clue what I need to do to win. I like the skeleton fight because it gives you the option to fight, and you can see what you're up against. I mention a potential solution below.
When I talk about rigging the dice, I also see why you wouldn't like this idea. I mainly want the first dice roll and maybe the first battle to be rigged. I restarted too many games because I didn't roll higher than a 7 or encountered a *6* as my first enemy.
If you want to keep the mystery of the game, perhaps add a log book which could double as a statistics page. This would be where some information about certain events would be kept after you encounter them multiple times. Or you could do a *secret notes* type thing similar to stardew valley and finding notes that tell you certain loved gifts. Adding a log book allows some information to be retained over different playthroughs and acts as a trophy collection or a secondary objective for players.
I really enjoy discussing game design, if you want to go more in depth.
Ohh I like the logbook idea. I'm actually planning for the next patch to have bit of a more "saving progress" and unlocking things to be maybe used at the start of a new run. I'm thinking of allowing you to go inside your ship and tweak some stuff there for the start of the run from the stuff you've unlocked. The logbook could be there too I guess and it'd offer some hints/explanations you've encountered in a more lore way.
And for the initial cargo roll rigging, I'd more like a system that would incentivise you to keep trying even on a bad roll like the brilliant whale mechanic in Slay the Spire (gives you an additional item on start of a run if you reached the first boss on your previous one).
The angel/devil fights are supposed to be quite often too dangerous. That's why you get to choose whether to do it or not and shouldn't be just snap-challenged. It can take a lot of your cargo to succeed (or everything even and still fail) but on the flip-side the reward is also pretty much better than anything else in the game right now.
I just received the legacy trinket and thought of that slay the spire mechanic too. It would really help this game yeah.
Please remove the reef event. It is just so annoying. If you don't want to remove it, maybe make it so you are guaranteed another event straight after to compensate slightly.
I have spent over 40 pieces of cargo and still can't get the angel on my side. Is this unlucky or is the chance just too low?
Alright, thank you. Also at some point if there could be a save function that would be awesome i think I have only ever beaten it about five times and 3 of those times i had amazing builds and saw no end in sight but at some point i would have to log off and i love starting over but its so hard to get those good builds.
Another bug: With the "a destroyed 3 becomes a perl" perk, if a plated cargo with a 3 gets hit, it becomes a perl, greatly reducing the value of plated cargo. If a spiced 3-cargo gets destroyed, it does not become a perl though.
This was 1.2.4 and I think the green pearl is now rarer? I have encountered the green pearl probably 15 times so far. I currently have about 30 parrots, and splash damage of 5. Boner is way at the back of the boat behind all the dice allowing me up to 7 shots, although I have not had to shoot anything in a really long time. Epic run.
I was playing one of the earliest versions of coup ahoo. I have played many updates too. Earlier editions was easier to take multiple dices and won. Also, it was easier to take multiple 'helps' 5 or more as well upgrades. In the following updates game was much harder to won after 4th or 5th ship. 1) If the game is to be great you must add some strategy to randomness without ruining the fan. eg. some maps? sail options? upgrade options? 2) The GPS ship showing some color spots without explaining what these spots mean. I suppose white spot is the 14th ship (hero). 3) Generally i liked the earlier editions. You added many elements in which i have played the game more than 10 times and almost each time is totally different. 4) GPS ship 1 or 2 times was shown. The big sea bird/cat only 1 time appeared. The Ship help men almost all times were very different. 5) You may add level hardness. add some score eg. time, hit times (based on dots), time of playing, ships you wreck, ship men you had etc. 6) Add PvP dual player mode. This is a must! 7) More over, it can also be a full game as sea/land declaration battle turned base map game.
No, i liked most of them. However, it is like playing without playing. No much options for strategy. So, i am against adding anything more before strategy is fixed. However, i like the game! However, some players may like this randomness. You have random dice, random bonus, random path, random help. Somehow you must make a balance between strategy / fun / randomness, i think. This is m,y opinion. An option for easy/hard level may help too. Most other similar games have a shop that you choose to buy bonus/guns/help based on some points/coins that you have taken. Maybe this helps too. However, please, keep some list of editions between heavy updates that alter the game!
Oh yeah sure, I totally agree. I've been trying to add more events where players can better have choice for what to get. Just being completely random whether you win or lost isn't that fun for long.
Yeah I guess that could work. Couldn't really be a crew member as you'd need to trigger it at some point when to have the effect. Well of course the crew member could have some trigger for the effect to happen kinda like the rolling blanks fixes stuff but couldn't be all that common and would make more sense to let it be controlled more. I guess it could even be a pearl effect. Other than merging plated cargo, it seems kinda underpowered to me. I mean for example I'd rather take three ones over one three. You'd lose 2 damage dice in the trade and could only live through single 2 damage shot when before you could take two shots of any damage really. So I guess it could even double the value of the combined dice or something like that.
* I wouldn't mind if the initial RNG is a bit "doctored". Like if the starting dice roll, first enemy cargo and the first loot are more favourable. I end up restarting runs that finish the first battle with less than 12 cargo points
* I noticed that the crew mate that upgrades cargo on blanks sometimes attempts to upgrade non-upgradeable cargo (pearls, special pieces, 9's)
* When some long ships pass by, they might disappear before they are completely off screen
So the overall start RNG and "bad starts" is a tough one. I don't really think doctoring it to be more favourable is really a solution. It would just move the goalposts of a "good start". I've more thought of incentivizing not restarting even one a bad start kinda like the whole whale mechanic in Slay the Spire. So unless you know, it's a brilliant mechanic where the gives you a reward on a start of a run if you've reached the first world boss on your previous run. The legacy trinket was my first attempt on treading the same line while also having the side effect of "one more try". I've thought of maybe adding like a hidden luck stat that'd increase if you were like very much below the "par" between levels and it'd give you more chance at getting good events.
I've also noticed on a few runs that Wright no longer plates found cargo. That was the base 3 and then upgraded 3/4. Cargo just never got plated. Then it started working again.
So it started working after the upgrade or just seemingly out of the blue? Seems to work for me in normal scenario at least. You do know that it only works for enemy loot dropped to water right?
I had a math question which was like: reach 25 to get your cargo back. I made some addition as a first step like "2+3=" with the intention to get a 5. After selecting the "=", the right hand ship got a "6" dice which I found strange. I changed my calculation to calculate with this "6" but when I selected the 6-dice, it only entered as 5 in the equation...
Yeah weird. Looks like the numbers are all messed up visually when the dice are on the host ship. The values still remain what they should be but just show up wrong.
What's up with the girl in the yellow jumpsuit (?), how can you meet her? I'ven been asked about that girl a few times from the furfolk guy who's accompanied by the seafolk people
P.S. Not related to my question but the new bird animations are cute and I appreciate the effort that is put into the game with all the details, challenges and quirky characters to interact with (:
Wow, I thought the reference was obvious. 😱 Probably you're not as old as me and not that familiar with what it's referring to. Would it help if I'll tell that the frogs are aged teen and they moonlight as ninjas?
Cool cool! So yeah, just a lore reference for now at least just to add some variation to their message. But who knows, maybe at some later patch she might appear... 🤷♀️
Back at it again! This new update is great, I especially love the green pearl event and the endless mode rework(s).
I’m pretty sure the angel/demon fight reworks are recent as well, the ability to swap out crew members is greatly appreciated. Also, the doctor allowing for (seemingly) infinite upgrades is really nice for more scaling. The spy adds a lot more options to battling as well, and I like how it overlaps with the ability to bribe, making pre-battle decisions more important.
In terms of the green pearl event, I feel like there could be different possibilities of what occurs. Resetting is great especially the first few times, but I was seeing him so many times (I had three copies of The Mark) it felt kind of useless. I suggest either some kind of drawback (maybe losing a relic?), or a chance for other things to happen - losing or gaining cargo, etc. Same thing for the spy and the chest, since it is guaranteed to do nothing if all crewmates have already been upgraded once.
Some sort of anti-soft lock feature for the clam guy (do they count as a mini-boss?) would be nice, even though of course just reloading the game works too. Before I figured out the gimmick, he wasn’t dealing any damage due to a reduce damage taken crewmate, making it difficult to figure out how to prevent soft lock. Perhaps them increasing their damage by one each turn? Not entirely sure, it might get out of control.
I never got the genie to work, although once I noticed some Ös and connected to potential names of crewmates. Will try to pursue that line of reasoning. For some reason, “pearl” or “frog” are not valid answers, but oh well.
I only noticed a few bugs (besides for the easily avoidable one of clicking things too fast). The biggest one was the Handy figurehead not working, the birds flew over but then just continued going with the carpenter.
The prince never got rescued by the king, which may have just been unlucky or something to do with resetting with the event. The ability to have them walk the plank helped out with that, though.
Stealing the last piece of cargo from a ship through the spy doesn’t kill them immediately, but luckily they go down after being shot which luckily avoids soft lock.
Haven’t been able to replicate it yet, but something about the bird boomer combo killing the enemy almost instantly combined with clicking “fire” leaves the dice frozen on the previous screen until the next battle, also making me unable to avoid the angel fight. (Although, it seems as though mandatory divine being battles might be intended?)
I think these new balance changes are great and add a lot more endless potential to the game, and makes the early game much more enjoyable. It seems the constant reset ability just makes it really easy for overpowered builds to be created, whether from pearl relics, 2-3x upgraded diplomat, or lots of splash damage birds, all of which are understandably late game but also not easily countered. Thanks for taking the time to read all of this!
P.S. Are they called trinkets or relics? They seem to be referred to differently, like the “mimic” one says (or at least used to say) “relic” compared to the description of the “trinket collector”. Alright, that’s all. Love this game!
I didn't even mean for the green pearl event to be affected by the mark. It definitely shouldn't be as it needs to be more rare. At least not the same amount as the normal trinket event. And yes, they should be called trinkets. They're called relics in the game code but "should" be called trinkets everywhere where it's visible. Though this internal naming confusion has bled a bit to the descriptions too but now everything should be saying "trinket".
The divine being fights are not avoidable in the endgame. Just to make it pose more threats and potential run enders. The same for the clam boss really. The clam should be pretty much a counter to mass pearl builds but I guess it still isn't really a counter enough and the boss can still be a pushover with some combinations or just loads of birds. Birds overall might be a bit "too good" against plated dice and since the clam only has a single cargo piece, you don't even have the normal drawback of random targeting.
Maybe I just need to design an anti bird boss now... 🤔
You're on the right track for the wish event. Will for sure add pearl as a trigger word to it. Gotta think about whether to allow "frog" or just "crew". Been thinking about increasing the letter pool from 9 to 12 too as just having 9 letters limits the options so much.
Meeting the king now with the prince might probably be too rare too just due to a bigger pool of possible events. Need to look into whether that chance needs to be boosted somehow.
Oh and do tell about the easily avoidable bugs (by playing too fast) if you know of any from the top of your head that you know how to reproduce. Ideally I would like to fix all those too.
One that’s been around for a while is if you click a bunch of dice quickly when choosing which one will take damage, as long as the enemy’s damage is greater than the dice number they will hit you multiple times, even without Boomer or multi-target crewmates. If they have a splash damage crewmate like Bob the splash damage affects your cargo as well. It’s a pretty useless bug, but makes it easy to die quickly in endless if you don’t want to reload the game, just by clicking a bunch of your cargo really fast. Only works if the damage taken is greater than the targeted cargo’s health. Probably something to do with the “attack X additional number of times” effect coded in the game.
Relatedly, after doing this and then trying to hit the “shoot”, “fire”, and “roll” buttons repeatedly, weird things happen - sometimes the enemy gets an extra turn, even shooting twice in quick succession, sometimes they shoot you while the dice rolling animation occurs, sometimes you get an extra turn. Not sure if the first bug is required to do this, but I think the game’s just struggling to process the back and forth attacks and overlaps them somehow. I once died while doing this and I think I had the ability to fire a shot on the respawn screen.
The same thing happens sometimes if you can defeat the enemy, but also hit the “shoot” button right before the “continue” button shows up. This one is a little harder to replicate, but when it works you sometimes get the “fire” option on a non-enemy event (I think I shot at the trinket collector once), but it doesn’t really do anything either. Depending on the next event, sometimes you can pass through that one and then skip the next enemy encounter, or occasionally you skip an enemy and an event and go right to the next enemy.
The first bug is generally detrimental, the second one is kind of neutral, and while pulling the third one off occasionally helped it’s difficult to pull off. Also because they require people clicking fast which is never necessary for battles, they don’t really affect gameplay, but they do exist. It should be relatively easy to replicate most of them, despite the effects appearing somewhat random.
Miscellaneous: When hitting the continue button early after bribing an enemy, the cargo sometimes overlaps with the crewmate or nudges them off the edge of the boat.
Having a navigator give four/five directions to choose from does nothing (didn’t expect it to though), same with being able to loot more than six dice. Probably doesn’t count as a bug.
If a divine being’s powers overlap with another crewmate’s, nothing happens (maybe intended?)
The strike trinket, which “increases all outgoing damage by one”, doesn’t work with birds (also maybe intended?)
That’s all I can think of for now, maybe I’ll play some more and see if I can find any. ;)
Once again, thanks for taking the time to go through all this.
Tough to find the spot from the minified sources but I think I got it. This is probably the same issue that caused a soft lock for some other people too.
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just a suggestion, but the last few words of the genie ship usually cover most of the top letters, so can you fix that?
Yup, already fixed.
What happens when two ships with both one cargo, both one level two swab and no trinkets or other crew members, battle each other?
I guess there is a chance for infinity there. Pretty rare though...
This feels like it's just on the edge of being a really fun little game, but the sheer randomness in the early stages and the way in which losing health so drastically impacts your ability to deal with enemies drags it down. The obscurity of some mechanics is also a problem- I understand that it's a deliberate choice, and I think in some cases it works. Learning what the doctor does to your crewmates, or what each of the divine offerings actually provides, is a fun way to improve mastery of the game. Similarly, the very obscure elements- the puzzle of figuring out how to deal with the extremely dangerous late-game angel/devil enemies is a neat, out of context challenge. But a lot of this obscurity is just painful to deal with- for instance, it's possible to lose the spelling game repeatedly while spelling valid english words, because there's no clear indication that what's needed is three three letter words. Some clarity on that point- maybe in the form of three marks on the ship lighting up as valid words are formed, or a suggestion via dialogue, would make it much less frustrating.
I also think that the sheer necessity of crewmates and the total randomness of whether you acquire any in the first few fights is also problematic. Perhaps a free crewmate could be added to the very beginning of the game, or have one be guaranteed in the first 2-3 events. Further, some crewmates become extremely frustrating to face, in particular the one which boosts dice which drop to two pips- without control over where your shots go, and given the high variability of damage even with a few extra rerolls, it feels entirely up to chance whether your opponent will take damage or heal every time you attack them. It might be beneficial to make the combat mechanics asymmetrical, and allow the player to place their own shots in addition to their opponents.
I don't want this to come off entirely negative- for all these issues I had, I kept playing through moments of frustration because the game has a lot of charm and some really good bones. Cheers!
Valid points!
For the spelling game, it is actually told in dialogue but just in a "language" you don't understand. And wouldn't one get it in the first failure ie. not fail it repeatedly? Not very many times at least.
The patch I'm currently working on adds in a log book to your ship that tracks all events you've encountered offering more info and hints about them. Also includes an option to start with a crew member and trinket, but you gotta unlock and earn those starters though.
The game broke against the king ship
Seems to be caused by the event you had before where you pick one crew member and the other will end up on the next enemy (the frog one in the pic). That seems to cause enemy to get too many crew members and causes an error. Managed the repro and fix and next patch will be coming soon...
also can you add options in the game while you play bc if I close my PC and open it again it doesn't fullscreen
I'm pretty sure websites can not go full screen on their own and need user interaction to do so. I think at least most browsers do enforce this security thing.
what I mean is like options in the beginning but you can just click them while you play bc that's the only way to full screen. in the beginning
Oh I see! You can actually bring up that menu at any time by pressing ESC.
omg I'm so dum, thanks!
hello. I have been playing for a bit and the last update has been for 18 days! just wondering when the next update is going to happen. thanks!
Next patch is still in the works. Can't say for sure yet but I'm aiming to get it release ready in a week or so.
i am in a run where apparently i have so many event-boosting things that combat has mostly disappeared. got a few green reset things and in my current reset, i have had ONE combat. and about 15 queen of the sea encounters. and like 40 trinkets. it stopped adding them to the ship after a while so i have no idea if they still count tho.
while i was writing this i got my 2nd combat encounter and the birds ANNIHILATED my opponent 👍
i get you. I had a pet that went through 4 librarian things and got skeletonized and all I can't find any encounters
during my run like that i had the guy skeletonized, maxed out, i had the boat piece thing boost encounters, AND i had a maxed out skeleton bard!
my friends made t*t, s*x and fat on the frog word puzzle ship, can you not make the words that sus?
These words are still words. It wouldn't be fair if they weren't included
Yup, ALL words count, no matter what they mean. Or they should at least. If you find one that doesn't, let me know...
i did frog. it uh... broke. and i won too... ._.
Thanks, looks like there's a bug on wishing for crew with that slot occupied...
Can anyone help me with Mr.Frog the librarian and Mr. Frog of the word puzzles? Dyslexia makes this puzzle even more diccifult!
Their 'language' might as well be martian for how well I can understand them, to be honest, but any hints would be appreciated.
Basically, the librarian just gives you tips (that's what my friends told me, they might be lying), and for the word puzzles, you have to make 3 3-letter words, and the frog will reward you with stuff. I'm pretty sure the words are from the scrabble dictionary.
Wait what is the brown furry thing on the TMN ship?
He is their teacher
why do the o's look like that?
Sometimes, when I shoot the iceberg thing, it says, "it is now 100% loosened, should I ram it". Is this a bug?
Also, I skeletonized a crew member with wings and it ended up as a skeleton with wings and white eyes, which is kinda weird
If it is 100% loosened you can go ahead and ram it to get the divine being inside. If it is no loose enough and you ram it, it sinks. I am not sure what the exact percentage required for a successful ramming, but I think it is over 75%.
It’s basically a dice roll against the given percentage.
double green pear
WTF
birds destroy to 1 cago left, spy sabotage that one
click shoot and everything normal again
I wouldn't say it used to be any easier. On one hand, it used to have less variety so less RNG but on the other hand, there also was less choices to me made ie. even more luck based.
I do like games which have some mysteries and leave them to player alone to solve and obviously I do like to make games which I myself enjoy. It's not for everyone, I get it and it's just fine. And I am in fact working on a next patch which will include a log book where you can explore your discovered things/mechanics a bit more thoroughly giving at least some hints which should at least a little help alleviate these issues.
Spelling just one word isn't enough. You gotta do all three, to win. And pirate/sea themed words are in fact a bonus. The weird lettering is the "special language" of the frogs. It's not quite as simple as just flipping or mirroring but that's on the right track.
Sorry for wasting your time and thanks for the feedback...
What a completely terrible thing to say. You get to play a well crafted and entertaining game, for free, and because you are frustrated because you don't have the patience or capability to figure things out you feel obligated to leave such pointless and shameful feedback.
Next time you are not having an absolutely great time, perhaps be a better human being and simply move along to something that does make you happy. But then again, looking at some of your other posts, your negative and off base comments seems to be something of a habit of yours.
chill out pall unloading your angst on random people wont help you .If you dont like a certain thing about this game make a calm constructive and polite comment. The dev of this game is not responsible for your problems so dont attack them if you want to fight people online go on a flat earth discord server. Also escaping whatever problems you have in life through a video game (that you dont even seem to like) and being toxic on game communities will not lead you anywhere.
What?
So weird bug. You're the second person so far to have encountered this (or at least told about it). So if you've got any more details on the steps leading to this, they'd be very welcome.
Great game.
What I enjoyed
Varied events.
Varied companions.
Some lore but not critical to the gameplay.
Good use of puzzles.
Generally balanced gameplay unless unlucky with some encounters.
Good music.
Great and simple art style.
Critical feedback
I feel like it doesn't explain enough to the player.
What do the demon and angel want and why can't I exit their battles mid fight. The navigation seems too vague. What do these special symbols do? The game explains spice and plated cargo and that's about it.
You have to read the description of the game to even understand the plot.
Explain why my turn was skipped and unlucky 13 procced.
Please add difficulties.
Please make the starting roll to be 7+ minimum.
Please add more player agency. I lose too often to bad luck instead of poor planning. Rig the dice ever so slightly to roll better instead of worse. People take success fleetingly but loss hits harder.
I have had to read the comments to understand many of the confusing mechanics.
There are a few too many useless or negative events.
Conclusion
I look forward to seeing how this game changes with the upcoming updates and hope to make the game easier to understand and add some more player agency and QoL features
I hate to say this, but you may have found an unfixable bug called "skill issue"
Why do I bother writing honest feedback when I get this as a reply. *sigh*
Adding more player agency, yes, big time! This has been one of my main priorities every patch. Making it less completely random and have some choices to be made. Of course it still needs more of it.
I don't really like the idea of difficulty selection. I'd much rather balance the only option to be better. Don't really like the idea of rigging the dice too much either. Sure, getting bad rolls can sometimes feel unfair but rigging the RNG when it's literally about rolling D6s would be noticeable in the long run and it'd just make realistically calculating the odds more difficult.
For the angel/demon battle, figuring out the goal is part of the puzzle of the fight. Explaining it thoroughly would lessen the experience in my opinion really. But I guess marking the correct dices for the combination or something like that could maybe hint a bit more on the solution without giving it away. And why do you feel like you should be able to opt out of the fight once you've challenged it? That's not a very common mechanic in any game really.
I understand the idea of perfecting the difficulty you already have. That makes sense.
When I design games, I try to optimise for fun over realistic and pure logistics. When I played the game I found the angel/devil fight super annoying because I lost a really good run. If the solution to the fight is what I think it is, then it is just too unlikely to win to be worth sacrificing that much cargo unless I'm in endless mode.
Being able to opt out of fights is rare, I agree but it doesn't help that I have no clue what I need to do to win. I like the skeleton fight because it gives you the option to fight, and you can see what you're up against. I mention a potential solution below.
When I talk about rigging the dice, I also see why you wouldn't like this idea. I mainly want the first dice roll and maybe the first battle to be rigged. I restarted too many games because I didn't roll higher than a 7 or encountered a *6* as my first enemy.
If you want to keep the mystery of the game, perhaps add a log book which could double as a statistics page. This would be where some information about certain events would be kept after you encounter them multiple times. Or you could do a *secret notes* type thing similar to stardew valley and finding notes that tell you certain loved gifts. Adding a log book allows some information to be retained over different playthroughs and acts as a trophy collection or a secondary objective for players.
I really enjoy discussing game design, if you want to go more in depth.
Ohh I like the logbook idea. I'm actually planning for the next patch to have bit of a more "saving progress" and unlocking things to be maybe used at the start of a new run. I'm thinking of allowing you to go inside your ship and tweak some stuff there for the start of the run from the stuff you've unlocked. The logbook could be there too I guess and it'd offer some hints/explanations you've encountered in a more lore way.
And for the initial cargo roll rigging, I'd more like a system that would incentivise you to keep trying even on a bad roll like the brilliant whale mechanic in Slay the Spire (gives you an additional item on start of a run if you reached the first boss on your previous one).
The angel/devil fights are supposed to be quite often too dangerous. That's why you get to choose whether to do it or not and shouldn't be just snap-challenged. It can take a lot of your cargo to succeed (or everything even and still fail) but on the flip-side the reward is also pretty much better than anything else in the game right now.
I just received the legacy trinket and thought of that slay the spire mechanic too. It would really help this game yeah.
Please remove the reef event. It is just so annoying. If you don't want to remove it, maybe make it so you are guaranteed another event straight after to compensate slightly.
I have spent over 40 pieces of cargo and still can't get the angel on my side. Is this unlucky or is the chance just too low?
Math event's game over prevention won't work if you have any pearls
Forgive me I'm a bit slow haha do the colors on the map mean anything?
There is an internal logic for them yes but it’s not explained anywhere.
Alright, thank you. Also at some point if there could be a save function that would be awesome i think I have only ever beaten it about five times and 3 of those times i had amazing builds and saw no end in sight but at some point i would have to log off and i love starting over but its so hard to get those good builds.
I think my ship has become unsinkable by now, haha!
Another bug: With the "a destroyed 3 becomes a perl" perk, if a plated cargo with a 3 gets hit, it becomes a perl, greatly reducing the value of plated cargo. If a spiced 3-cargo gets destroyed, it does not become a perl though.
is there a such thing as too many dice?
Hey! I can see the sunken boat! (odd)
Swab is secretly divine and can fly
in my best run this happened :(
Well that's new. I'm guessing it jut froze there? When exactly did this happen? Was it right at the start of the combat before you get to shoot?
yea thats when it happened.
these covered letters are a bit frustrating
Oh damn, of course! Gotta do something about that...
This was 1.2.4 and I think the green pearl is now rarer? I have encountered the green pearl probably 15 times so far.
I currently have about 30 parrots, and splash damage of 5. Boner is way at the back of the boat behind all the dice allowing me up to 7 shots, although I have not had to shoot anything in a really long time. Epic run.
Well yeah, 1.2.5 made the green pearl event rarer.
Looks like a bug: If someone who is efficient at fishing is 'interrupted' by picking up cargo, another cargo will appear a while after the first one.
One feature that I really miss is some kind of "Auto" button. It really gets tiresome later in the game if lots of dices are involved.
I was playing one of the earliest versions of coup ahoo. I have played many updates too. Earlier editions was easier to take multiple dices and won. Also, it was easier to take multiple 'helps' 5 or more as well upgrades. In the following updates game was much harder to won after 4th or 5th ship. 1) If the game is to be great you must add some strategy to randomness without ruining the fan. eg. some maps? sail options? upgrade options? 2) The GPS ship showing some color spots without explaining what these spots mean. I suppose white spot is the 14th ship (hero). 3) Generally i liked the earlier editions. You added many elements in which i have played the game more than 10 times and almost each time is totally different. 4) GPS ship 1 or 2 times was shown. The big sea bird/cat only 1 time appeared. The Ship help men almost all times were very different. 5) You may add level hardness. add some score eg. time, hit times (based on dots), time of playing, ships you wreck, ship men you had etc. 6) Add PvP dual player mode. This is a must! 7) More over, it can also be a full game as sea/land declaration battle turned base map game.
About number 3, you mean that added variety is bad because all the runs aren't the exact same?
No, i liked most of them. However, it is like playing without playing. No much options for strategy. So, i am against adding anything more before strategy is fixed. However, i like the game! However, some players may like this randomness. You have random dice, random bonus, random path, random help. Somehow you must make a balance between strategy / fun / randomness, i think. This is m,y opinion. An option for easy/hard level may help too. Most other similar games have a shop that you choose to buy bonus/guns/help based on some points/coins that you have taken. Maybe this helps too. However, please, keep some list of editions between heavy updates that alter the game!
Oh yeah sure, I totally agree. I've been trying to add more events where players can better have choice for what to get. Just being completely random whether you win or lost isn't that fun for long.
Do you mean the weird font? Nope, that is not a bug.
This game could be absolutely phenomenal PvP. Let players encounter each other along the way within the usual progression.
I just had idea that may or may not be crazy overpowered or really bad and dumb.
what if there was a crewmate or a special cargo that combines every 1 point cargo piece up to nine
So lets say you had 9, single point plated cargo pieces and you can combine them into 1 cargo with 9 points.
The same can be done with regular and spice and so forth, but only with the same type.
Yeah I guess that could work. Couldn't really be a crew member as you'd need to trigger it at some point when to have the effect. Well of course the crew member could have some trigger for the effect to happen kinda like the rolling blanks fixes stuff but couldn't be all that common and would make more sense to let it be controlled more. I guess it could even be a pearl effect. Other than merging plated cargo, it seems kinda underpowered to me. I mean for example I'd rather take three ones over one three. You'd lose 2 damage dice in the trade and could only live through single 2 damage shot when before you could take two shots of any damage really. So I guess it could even double the value of the combined dice or something like that.
Hey, some feedback from me:
* I wouldn't mind if the initial RNG is a bit "doctored". Like if the starting dice roll, first enemy cargo and the first loot are more favourable. I end up restarting runs that finish the first battle with less than 12 cargo points
* I noticed that the crew mate that upgrades cargo on blanks sometimes attempts to upgrade non-upgradeable cargo (pearls, special pieces, 9's)
* When some long ships pass by, they might disappear before they are completely off screen
So the overall start RNG and "bad starts" is a tough one. I don't really think doctoring it to be more favourable is really a solution. It would just move the goalposts of a "good start". I've more thought of incentivizing not restarting even one a bad start kinda like the whole whale mechanic in Slay the Spire. So unless you know, it's a brilliant mechanic where the gives you a reward on a start of a run if you've reached the first world boss on your previous run. The legacy trinket was my first attempt on treading the same line while also having the side effect of "one more try". I've thought of maybe adding like a hidden luck stat that'd increase if you were like very much below the "par" between levels and it'd give you more chance at getting good events.
I like the luck stat idea - gives me a reason to hope and to continue playing.
I still think that reducing the spread in the beginning might be good. But it is also true that I generally don't enjoy so rng-heavy games
Good point. You can't easily get dupes so guess it has slipped up. But yeah, they definitely should stack.
I've also noticed on a few runs that Wright no longer plates found cargo. That was the base 3 and then upgraded 3/4. Cargo just never got plated.
Then it started working again.
So it started working after the upgrade or just seemingly out of the blue? Seems to work for me in normal scenario at least. You do know that it only works for enemy loot dropped to water right?
Out of the blue. Didn't work before the upgrade, and didn't start working until perhaps 4 encounters after the upgrade. Then it behaved normally.
Did you have lots of other stuff (ie. trinkets mainly) that might interact with it?
Sadly no screenshot but a strange bug:
I had a math question which was like: reach 25 to get your cargo back. I made some addition as a first step like "2+3=" with the intention to get a 5. After selecting the "=", the right hand ship got a "6" dice which I found strange. I changed my calculation to calculate with this "6" but when I selected the 6-dice, it only entered as 5 in the equation...
Yeah weird. Looks like the numbers are all messed up visually when the dice are on the host ship. The values still remain what they should be but just show up wrong.
What's up with the girl in the yellow jumpsuit (?), how can you meet her? I'ven been asked about that girl a few times from the furfolk guy who's accompanied by the seafolk people
P.S. Not related to my question but the new bird animations are cute and I appreciate the effort that is put into the game with all the details, challenges and quirky characters to interact with (:
Wow, I thought the reference was obvious. 😱 Probably you're not as old as me and not that familiar with what it's referring to. Would it help if I'll tell that the frogs are aged teen and they moonlight as ninjas?
Oooh, how cute! Yeah, that helped :D But girl in the yellow jumpsuit... Is it just a lighthearted reference or can you actually meet her?
Cool cool! So yeah, just a lore reference for now at least just to add some variation to their message. But who knows, maybe at some later patch she might appear... 🤷♀️
Back at it again! This new update is great, I especially love the green pearl event and the endless mode rework(s).
I’m pretty sure the angel/demon fight reworks are recent as well, the ability to swap out crew members is greatly appreciated. Also, the doctor allowing for (seemingly) infinite upgrades is really nice for more scaling. The spy adds a lot more options to battling as well, and I like how it overlaps with the ability to bribe, making pre-battle decisions more important.
In terms of the green pearl event, I feel like there could be different possibilities of what occurs. Resetting is great especially the first few times, but I was seeing him so many times (I had three copies of The Mark) it felt kind of useless. I suggest either some kind of drawback (maybe losing a relic?), or a chance for other things to happen - losing or gaining cargo, etc. Same thing for the spy and the chest, since it is guaranteed to do nothing if all crewmates have already been upgraded once.
Some sort of anti-soft lock feature for the clam guy (do they count as a mini-boss?) would be nice, even though of course just reloading the game works too. Before I figured out the gimmick, he wasn’t dealing any damage due to a reduce damage taken crewmate, making it difficult to figure out how to prevent soft lock. Perhaps them increasing their damage by one each turn? Not entirely sure, it might get out of control.
I never got the genie to work, although once I noticed some Ös and connected to potential names of crewmates. Will try to pursue that line of reasoning. For some reason, “pearl” or “frog” are not valid answers, but oh well.
I only noticed a few bugs (besides for the easily avoidable one of clicking things too fast). The biggest one was the Handy figurehead not working, the birds flew over but then just continued going with the carpenter.
The prince never got rescued by the king, which may have just been unlucky or something to do with resetting with the event. The ability to have them walk the plank helped out with that, though.
Stealing the last piece of cargo from a ship through the spy doesn’t kill them immediately, but luckily they go down after being shot which luckily avoids soft lock.
Haven’t been able to replicate it yet, but something about the bird boomer combo killing the enemy almost instantly combined with clicking “fire” leaves the dice frozen on the previous screen until the next battle, also making me unable to avoid the angel fight. (Although, it seems as though mandatory divine being battles might be intended?)
I think these new balance changes are great and add a lot more endless potential to the game, and makes the early game much more enjoyable. It seems the constant reset ability just makes it really easy for overpowered builds to be created, whether from pearl relics, 2-3x upgraded diplomat, or lots of splash damage birds, all of which are understandably late game but also not easily countered. Thanks for taking the time to read all of this!
P.S. Are they called trinkets or relics? They seem to be referred to differently, like the “mimic” one says (or at least used to say) “relic” compared to the description of the “trinket collector”. Alright, that’s all. Love this game!
Thanks a lot for the thoughtful comment! ❤️
I didn't even mean for the green pearl event to be affected by the mark. It definitely shouldn't be as it needs to be more rare. At least not the same amount as the normal trinket event. And yes, they should be called trinkets. They're called relics in the game code but "should" be called trinkets everywhere where it's visible. Though this internal naming confusion has bled a bit to the descriptions too but now everything should be saying "trinket".
The divine being fights are not avoidable in the endgame. Just to make it pose more threats and potential run enders. The same for the clam boss really. The clam should be pretty much a counter to mass pearl builds but I guess it still isn't really a counter enough and the boss can still be a pushover with some combinations or just loads of birds. Birds overall might be a bit "too good" against plated dice and since the clam only has a single cargo piece, you don't even have the normal drawback of random targeting.
Maybe I just need to design an anti bird boss now... 🤔
You're on the right track for the wish event. Will for sure add pearl as a trigger word to it. Gotta think about whether to allow "frog" or just "crew". Been thinking about increasing the letter pool from 9 to 12 too as just having 9 letters limits the options so much.
Meeting the king now with the prince might probably be too rare too just due to a bigger pool of possible events. Need to look into whether that chance needs to be boosted somehow.
Oh and do tell about the easily avoidable bugs (by playing too fast) if you know of any from the top of your head that you know how to reproduce. Ideally I would like to fix all those too.
One that’s been around for a while is if you click a bunch of dice quickly when choosing which one will take damage, as long as the enemy’s damage is greater than the dice number they will hit you multiple times, even without Boomer or multi-target crewmates. If they have a splash damage crewmate like Bob the splash damage affects your cargo as well. It’s a pretty useless bug, but makes it easy to die quickly in endless if you don’t want to reload the game, just by clicking a bunch of your cargo really fast. Only works if the damage taken is greater than the targeted cargo’s health. Probably something to do with the “attack X additional number of times” effect coded in the game.
Relatedly, after doing this and then trying to hit the “shoot”, “fire”, and “roll” buttons repeatedly, weird things happen - sometimes the enemy gets an extra turn, even shooting twice in quick succession, sometimes they shoot you while the dice rolling animation occurs, sometimes you get an extra turn. Not sure if the first bug is required to do this, but I think the game’s just struggling to process the back and forth attacks and overlaps them somehow. I once died while doing this and I think I had the ability to fire a shot on the respawn screen.
The same thing happens sometimes if you can defeat the enemy, but also hit the “shoot” button right before the “continue” button shows up. This one is a little harder to replicate, but when it works you sometimes get the “fire” option on a non-enemy event (I think I shot at the trinket collector once), but it doesn’t really do anything either. Depending on the next event, sometimes you can pass through that one and then skip the next enemy encounter, or occasionally you skip an enemy and an event and go right to the next enemy.
The first bug is generally detrimental, the second one is kind of neutral, and while pulling the third one off occasionally helped it’s difficult to pull off. Also because they require people clicking fast which is never necessary for battles, they don’t really affect gameplay, but they do exist. It should be relatively easy to replicate most of them, despite the effects appearing somewhat random.
Miscellaneous: When hitting the continue button early after bribing an enemy, the cargo sometimes overlaps with the crewmate or nudges them off the edge of the boat.
Having a navigator give four/five directions to choose from does nothing (didn’t expect it to though), same with being able to loot more than six dice. Probably doesn’t count as a bug.
If a divine being’s powers overlap with another crewmate’s, nothing happens (maybe intended?)
The strike trinket, which “increases all outgoing damage by one”, doesn’t work with birds (also maybe intended?)
That’s all I can think of for now, maybe I’ll play some more and see if I can find any. ;)
Once again, thanks for taking the time to go through all this.
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Tough to find the spot from the minified sources but I think I got it. This is probably the same issue that caused a soft lock for some other people too.
How does the math game work and is it always possible to win?
You just gotta use your dice to calculate to either target number. The targets are fully random so not guaranteed to be always solvable.