To be brutally honest, the balance on this is horrible. Everything except discard costs "action points", and many items need resources which take time to acquire--a LOT of time, since no matter how well your deck is put together, it's random chance for getting needed cards. Even though players have the advantage of seeing the cards the enemy will play, they still depend on random chance/luck that they cards will fall favorably. Less frustration just randomly rolling dice, "oops, you rolled less than a 7 on a six sider. You're dead."
A basic sword requires 2 wood. A wood resource card requires you get lucky enough to have them at the start. If you bought an axe upgrade at the start, you still have to use two action points to play the wood cards, and another four (two each) to harvest them. Again, if you get lucky, you start with the basic sword in first deal. And this is all if you get lucky-not skill or planning (unless you make a deck with only wood and basic swords, but then most levels will kill you without other support cards). But a basic sword only does two points of damage. Many enemies have armor that 2 points won't even scratch. So now you're trying to upgrade to yet a better weapon, while getting your butt beat.
More balance would give more options, such as reduced points needed to play and gather resources, or an option to start with at least a basic sword, or even make some enemies suffer the same "random luck" fate on some cards. Other possibilities are letting the player pick two or three of their starting cards, or having more to start with and a bigger hand, say starting with five (or six if they purchase the "boost" option to start) and a hand size of seven.
Perhaps even have difficulty levels: Easy might give even more, normal might be as I suggested, and hard as it is now.
As I have been teaching my nephew who I have been teaching how to program: No one wants to play a game where the programmer seems to want to just kill them outright (As Joshua said in "War Games", "A strange game; The only winning move is not to play.") or where the only "challenge" is "Skill? Forget skill! I hope I get lucky!"
← Return to game
Comments
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
To be brutally honest, the balance on this is horrible. Everything except discard costs "action points", and many items need resources which take time to acquire--a LOT of time, since no matter how well your deck is put together, it's random chance for getting needed cards. Even though players have the advantage of seeing the cards the enemy will play, they still depend on random chance/luck that they cards will fall favorably. Less frustration just randomly rolling dice, "oops, you rolled less than a 7 on a six sider. You're dead."
A basic sword requires 2 wood. A wood resource card requires you get lucky enough to have them at the start. If you bought an axe upgrade at the start, you still have to use two action points to play the wood cards, and another four (two each) to harvest them. Again, if you get lucky, you start with the basic sword in first deal. And this is all if you get lucky-not skill or planning (unless you make a deck with only wood and basic swords, but then most levels will kill you without other support cards). But a basic sword only does two points of damage. Many enemies have armor that 2 points won't even scratch. So now you're trying to upgrade to yet a better weapon, while getting your butt beat.
More balance would give more options, such as reduced points needed to play and gather resources, or an option to start with at least a basic sword, or even make some enemies suffer the same "random luck" fate on some cards. Other possibilities are letting the player pick two or three of their starting cards, or having more to start with and a bigger hand, say starting with five (or six if they purchase the "boost" option to start) and a hand size of seven.
Perhaps even have difficulty levels: Easy might give even more, normal might be as I suggested, and hard as it is now.
As I have been teaching my nephew who I have been teaching how to program: No one wants to play a game where the programmer seems to want to just kill them outright (As Joshua said in "War Games", "A strange game; The only winning move is not to play.") or where the only "challenge" is "Skill? Forget skill! I hope I get lucky!"