#deckbuilder

[godkillerbrigade]

Friendship Encounters and Roleplaying in The Last Days of Friendship Valley

The Last Days of Friendship Valley features a card-based tactical Friendship Encounter system that puts you deep into the nitty-gritty of negoatiation and interpersonal interaction. It's the mechanical core of the game: your character build affects both the results of encounters and your choices outside of them.

To give an example of how it works: Let's say you're trying to mediate an argument between two other goats. Things are getting heated, and it's up to you to keep the peace. Depending on how you've built your character, you might...

Approach with caution, starting with small talk with one goat to build rapport and take their attention away from the argument, and tamping down their anger until they give up the argument. At that point, you can focus on the other goat, suggesting that they apologize; with luck, they'll do so, resolving the encounter.

Wade into the argument by starting a completely new fight. Once you're the center of attention, you can start to resolve that argument by apologizing for the mess you caused. Of course, if you're not careful, you might end up losing your head...

Get at the real issue as quickly as possible by poking at touchy subjects. Sure, there's an argument happening, but is anger really the problem? Or is there an underlying grief that needs to be resolved? Of course, this might up triggering a whole new problem: now one of the goats is crying and the other one feels awful.

Completely ignore the argument, shouting "NICE WEATHER WE'RE HAVING, HUH" at louder and louder volumes until everyone else gives up trying to have a conversation. This generally doesn't go well, but, like, maybe if you're loud enough it'll work?

All the while, you need to handle your own emotions; if you're not careful, you'll become the problem.

As you can see, there's a great deal of personal freedom in how you approach Friendship Encounters! All these examples are literal descriptions of various approaches to resolving an encounter. The resultant system allows for extremely deep roleplaying, not just in how you interact with other goats, but in how your character reacts to stressful situations.

Wishlist The Last Days of Friendship Valley today:

[sylvanistwhimsy]

Behold, a gnome! My second Wildfrost charm of many to come, this little one is just so goofy. Neked Gnome is also on the list even if he’s not a charm.

[heightsofmadness]

steam events where they show off demos are so bizarre because I always download like 10, try them all for 5 minutes, get bored pretty much immediately, except that maybe once in every two or three events there's a demo that utterly blows my pants off and makes the whole concept worth it

anyway Cobalt Core feels like someone opened a portal to one of the less awful timelines and took the source code for their version of Slay the Spire, so it has a bunch of really clever creative mechanics and a ridiculously cozy vibe for a game meant to kill you

the "campfire" equivalent (a repair bay) is staffed by a cat person who can randomly greet you with "meowdy"

...but also the core loop is incredibly tight, feels really satisfying, and even in the demo there's this constant sense of "okay that run was really fucking fun but I want to try this other kind of build and maybe I won't get the cards that make that work but I absolutely trust that that other build will work too" etc etc

just a really fucking good demo, game comes out in two weeks, I have it wishlisted and you should too, holy shit

[satoshi-mochida]

Yohane the Parhelion: NUMAZU in the MIRAGE releases today digitally for the PS5, Switch and Steam, and for the PS4 digitally on March 28th.

[transdragonlira]

I don't often say that you need to play any specific game, everyone has their own preferences and I get that. That being said. You NEED to check out Astrea: Six sided oracles.

FIRST OF ALL, JUST LOOK AT THIS SNIPPET FROM THE STEAM BANNER

The game is GORGEOUS, and I don't mean in a "this game has good graphics" NO I MEAN AS IN THE ARTSTYLE IS JUST STRAIGHT UP BEAUTIFUL. It's a visual experience like I have never seen before.

But what's even better than the artstyle, is the gameplay. Good lord the gameplay is fantastic. Everything feels like it works together perfectly. And when I say everything, I mean everything. From the dice, the artsyle, the story, your virtues, your health, the enemies' health, your blessings, your sentinels- everything feels in sync with eachother. The sheer amount of synergies you can discover feel endless. (I'm personally a huge fan of the virtue system- making a 'bad' or an 'unlucky' roll still have a significant purpose in your game plan is some genius game design)

Every turn matters. Every turn is a matter of life and death, a good turn is good, but a bad turn can be outright DISASTEROUS. This game WILL have you sitting on the egde of your seat constantly. Every turn is a puzzle to be solved, and every run is a combination of carefully (or not so carefully) picked out dice, with many paths to victory.

Like so many masterpieces of games, the game is easy to learn, but has so much dept to explore that I don't think I'll ever truly master it.

Look. I put 5 hours in the free demo which only includes the first area and only a handful of dice, virtues and characters. This game is gonna get hundreds of hours put into by me. There's a lot to say about the game, but frankly- none of it is enough to encapsulate the full experience. If you're not sold immediatly, you can try the demo first, it has plently of content to get you hooked

NOW GO PLAY IT, IT'S 10% OFF FOR THE LAUNCH! YOU WILL NOT REGRET IT

[temporal-nebula]

[artful-browniebites]

Trying to figure out what the cards would look like

[aretmaw]

Finished I Was a Teenage Exocolonist a few days ago, Dys is defintely my favourite emo nature boy ever.

[exocolonist]

The famous "Tangent Eyeroll". Tangent does not put up with interruptions when she's working. This better be important!⁠ ⁠

[blueberry-lemon]

Shouting into the Void - Touhou: Lost Branch of Legend

Shouting into the Void about Touhou: Lost Branch of Legend

(don’t mind the screenshots, the game is localized into English)

I've seen barely anyone talk about this game, but I love it. It's a Touhou fangame, and it's a deckbuilding roguelike very much in the style of Slay the Spire.

Yes, I know, there's like 30 games out there in the style of Slay the Spire these days. But this one might honestly be one of my favorites. Between this and Monster Train, I haven't really felt a desire to go back to Slay the Spire.

The structure is as you'd expect: You pick a character, you get a starting deck, and you start doing battles. You pick your "path" among battles, random events, and shops. You get different artifacts (called "Exhibits") that give you passive abilities that will sway your playstyle.

First off, I love the art. For me it's one of my favorite-looking deckbuilders and favorite-looking Touhou games. The danmaku-style attack animations are an incredible touch.

Secondly, I love the different permutations and decks you can go for. The game uses a very streamlined "mana color" system for playing cards. Unlike Magic the Gathering, you don't have to worry about actually drawing cards randomly to get the colors you need. You automatically start each turn with the same colors (for example, "3 red mana and 2 yellow mana.") Different colors can be used for different cards, which invites different strategies.

Every time you start a run, you not only choose which character to play as but ALSO which color deck you want to start as. This level of choice reminds me of the fun of starting a Monster Train run.

If you're into deckbuilders or Touhou, give it a shot! It's still in early access, and some lines are still being fully translated into English, but it's completely playable in its current state.

Find it on Steam!

[visualreverence]

Hi! By day I'm a concept artist, currently working on Earthless, a sci-fi, roguelike deckbuilder with tight tactical gameplay and loads of retrofuturistic pizzazz. It's developed by Blackbird Interactive and published by Team17 and it's available to demo as part of Steam Next Fest. If you're curious about our offering, please try it out and wishlist our game. Thanks!

[godkillerbrigade]

Character Customization in The Last Days of Friendship Valley

What's an RPG without character customization? In The Last Days of Friendship Valley, something very important to me was putting together a system where players could completely customize their own cute lil goat: not just on the inside (which I've talked about before) but on the outside, too. Thanks to the work of the excellent hedgemom, you can do just that!

In addition to your goat's emotional strengths and weaknesses, you get to define their face shape, horns, ears, tail, fur patterns, fur color, and more! When you combine that with the game's backstory and roleplaying options, the whole world is your oyster. Will you be a hardy, gruff sea-goat from the magical Fairyflight Bay? A soulful, curly-horned techno-historian from the Oldest City? Or maybe a fast-talking merchant who grew up on the gift caravans of Spine Road? The choice is entirely yours.

No matter what you choose, there's one thing for certain: that goat's gonna be cute as hell.

Wishlist The Last Days of Friendship Valley on Steam to get notified when it launches:

[chuthulhu-plays]

I gotta say, now that Million Monster Militia is in Early Access I've been playing it for a bit basically daily and far and away my favourite unit to pick up early in the game is this one:

I feel like a fuckin sook for saying the Game Developer is my favourite unit but goddamn this thing is great if you start powering it up early in a run. It gives any unit with 0 base damage its own base damage, and also raises its own base damage by 1 every time this happens. So if you have items on the field, or units that always have 0 base damage it starts climbing in power fast. Plus...

Having a Game Developer and Darrrr on the field with a flock of sheep turns the sheep into absolute murder machines, and I deeply, deeply enjoy that

[blackroseraven]

Got my A20 Ironclad win a few days ago and finally got the doodle done to celebrate my victory.

I learned more about deckbuilding with this one, and how you really only need ONE copy of your good card win condition, you just need stuff that can synergize with it and amplify its effects.

I got Time Eater and Awoken One for my last bosses; I don’t actually know how I would have done against Donu and Deca. Funnily enough this deck worked really well against Time Eater because like. I just sit there building up power, unlike my normal “too many cards” decks where I wildly play cards out and end up giving him a billion strength. 

look at me i’m learneding

[satoshi-mochida]

Duelists of Eden now available

From Gematsu

Duelists of Eden, a deck-based fighting game with rollback netcode set after the events of One Step From Eden, is now available for PC via Steam for a 10 percent-off introductory price of $4.49 until March 14, after which it will change to $4.99.

Here is an overview of the game, via its Steam page:

About

Duelists of Eden is a 2D grid-fighting game set after the events of One Step From Eden. Build a deck and battle online in real-time action! Choose characters with unique weapons and queue online for a match.

Key Features

Deckbuilding – Fight in a mix of strategy and real-time action! Create your own unique combination of spells to take down the competition. Save and edit an unlimited amount of decks in the editor!

Dynamic Cardtridge and Combo System – Create combos on the fly, adapting the scenario and what spells you and your opponent have.

Tutorial and Training Modes – Learn the ropes in the tutorial mode and deep dive into the mechanics via training mode. Training mode includes hitboxes, character states, quick deck edits, speed modifiers, and more!

Custom Rollback Netcode – The game was completely rebuilt to support custom rollback netcode, for the smoothest experience possible.

Replay Mode – Review your matches in replay mode!

Watch the launch trailer below.

Launch Trailer

[spiffyinfo]

Does this game's learning curve drive you mad? Fhtagn Simulator Itch.io site