Cards n' Varmints

This was really cool, also I'll take any excuse to do funny accents

I did a thing :)

I remember you when you were niche 🔥

wont let me drag and drop card on critter in tutorial (browser)

A little gameplay, a little critique ;)

Only cleared the 'regular' campaign, but I have some immediate thoughts:

• Some of the buttons being shades of gray (eg. "move out!!!" when picking a scenario) is kind of confusing, as they don't look selectable.

• The pixel-style font is hard to read, especially when small. The "o" looks like an "a", for example, and is compounded with the weird abbreviations like "VilDfndr".

• The campfire screen can be cut entirely- Having just Promotions and Team Building (or better, one screen) would save a few pointless transitions.

• The combat log is just distracting- It's much clearer to just look at the characters. It's also a insufficient for reviewing a battle, because it doesn't show the board state. It might be better gone, or toggleable. If it stays, it might be better written vertically, and split by turn, like:
  • []It's yer posse's turn!
  • []Zuzanna attacks Errol with 3 attack power!
  • []Errol takes 3 damage!
  • []Errol is defeated!
• Written one line at a time, instead of flashing up for a split second. When the turn ends, clear the log and start over. Maybe keeping the "page" in a horizontal log like the current one.

Really good and creative game. Big fan of the unique combat mechanics and jobs system.

Cati (catsuses?) seem very strong, and both of it's upgrades too. 

Gym rats and their upgrades felt a bit weak. Too risky, having a large chance of growing weaker over time, same for bodybuilder (wich I ended up not risking). Marathon runner felt more guaranteed, but didn't quite pull it's own weight

Magician was a tad hard to use, but very useful. Very thematic. Cardslinger had a lot of utility too, but Mage felt a bit weak. It seems that in order to compensate for it's insane power to cause damage before the battle starts, it's plagued with inconsistency, causing no damage during the actual battle and having two bad cards. Might have been better if I had stacked more Varmints to mitigate that, but my Mae run didn't get to last that long. Feel like giving it another try thou

Farmer was nice, but it's uprades steal the show. Corn cob was funny and unique, but ultimately hard to make use of. Chef was very strong if you managed to make on early, but multiple don't stack very well (they start buff each other) and it can be risky to use too many ribbons at the start on a lizard that won't help in the front lines, so it felt balanced

Medic felt bad when I was trying to use it with regular cactus cause it's overshadowed by crested, but it worked wonders with metal catcti. Chemist felt too risky so I ended up didn't trying it

A few wiggles with getting to activate the Crested party buff and the mercenary attack buff, but just cause this is the demo

What was a tad furtrating overall was how, depending on your strategy, certain guys could be useless, not being able to be upgraded into a tree you can make use of. Wasn't that bad since you could always just get a few more till you got what you wanted, and some trees are usefull even "off combo", but with more jobs and tress, that could become more annoying (unless the point is to force people to find a way to make use of all their troops, even the ones that don't directly combo, since this would only really start turning into a problem once you started getting close to the maximum amount of troops possible, wich I didn't, not even in the hardest dificuty)

Other than that, archers could be slightly confusing, and how a few skills ineract, as well as the mechanics protecting against stalemates, weren't very clear until I experienced them. Might be a me thing, but I would love more detailed explanations of those (as well as exlicit mention of things like how every number is rounded down) in some sort of in-game guide

Overall a pretty incredible and unique game, already wishlised!

I really liked the game, I tend to play it when it gets a new update of some sort, I have finally managed to beat the hardest mode, here's what i think about most of the varmints:

medic: feels very..... win more, its doesn't feel very strong early or mid game, since it doesn't have that much health and healing such a minor amount isn't gonna matter much if it dies really easily. I suspect it will be better with the final release of the game when there are stronger enemies and varmints.

magician: looks strong on paper, but is just too frail and doesn't scale well late game, it's evolution, wizard shows some potential, but haven't really tested it.

soldier: extremely good early game, decent late game, but tends to fall off late game, resilient is a very strong ability, allowing it to survive multiple fatal wounds over the rounds, feel like its evolution, mercenary is also suited for late game with its ability to use points as extra damage, overall a pretty well balanced card that has its uses.

gym rat: very good varmint to have, can be a bit awkward to use but having 1 feels necessary due to how strong marathoner is, permanent stat buffs are very strong in this game, overall it's a strong varmint but is balanced by it's removal of stats and the necessity to evolve it quickly. 

farmer: the varmint seems really handy, synergizing extremely well with gym rat/marathoner due to it's ability to cycle cards quickly in hand plus it's evolution: chef, gives a varmint +1 +1 which is extremely useful along with having a slightly better version of the farmers cycling ability.

Saguard: really feel like this class was the strongest, my winning lineup for the final battle was 4 metal cactuses along with 1 saguard, I really feel like the pure stat buffs are just so strong throughout the game, saguard basically has "get 4 health deal 4 random damage" and metal cactus improves on that with dealing 1 damage at base stats which goes a long way when upgraded with chef and marathoner.

Overall, I felt like saguard was the best varmint, with gym rat and farmer being necessary to have for there stat buffs, soldier is decent with it's survivability, damage, and mercenary evolution. magician felt the weakest, while healer felt like it was a bit weak now but might be more viable when the game comes out and there's more waves of enemies.

nice game pardner

"what am I, some kinda gulch guardian?"

hiii, i hope you're still active, i sent a friend request on discord! the game is brilliant!!!

this team is insane

This was fun! It took a couple of job ups to discover a real synergy (big shot and metal cactus), but when I got there I was untouchable til the end. I also like that I didn't play the tutorial and was still able to figure it all out on the fly.

music is a bop

cool

Damn, this game made me interested in the deck building genre, thanks for that! (Amazing game btw, hoping all goes well til it realeases)

is the music available or for sale somewhere? extremely catchy soundtrack

What an amazing experience, parder

The game is so good and the pixel art is probably the best I've seen! Probably one of the best games I have played on here. But one small suggestion I have is to add a "Load Feature" that resumes a run if you exit out of a tab. Tysm for making this game and updating it regularly

full marathon build for the win yaaaaaaa love this game

Yo this game is great, fantastic work! I really dig the aesthetic and the personality added to the varmints, and the class system is super fun. I'm a little nervous to try a different scenario, I was so pumped on my first loadout after I achieved infinite Chemist heals with my marathoner bros

Really fun and quite unique, i really love the Wild West style it has to it too! I just kinda wish that maybe if you win, you get to keep the bloom ribbons you have for a future game, idk, it's cause sometimes it just feels useless to have em there at the end at least...

One of the best games I've played on this website !

The job system reminded me a bit of Fire Emblem / Final Fantasy Tactics, it's really well done !

Can't wait for the steam release !

I really enjoyed this!  I love the way the music changes.  The jobs seem really creative and I like how many options there are in combat.  The pixel art is a little rough, but I can see this shaping up to be really cool!

So, a marathoner and a herbalist are unbeatable once herbalist gets around 10 attack, after that you can increase attack of marathoner once or more to not get stalemate defeat. You can sprinkle some bigshot on top for that sweet-sweet extra draw, just don't make him evasive, it may or may not break stuff after he gets mild again.

How to solve? Maybe add healing reduction or enemies which heal when your squad heals (maybe excluding healing from cards), but I'm not a game designer so adding "healing stealing" may or may-not make the players who use marathoner-herbalist combo unknowingly dig their own grave and be frustrated.

This is a really nice prototype! The difficulty level is brutal though, and even when I get high-roll stats at the beginning I still get rocked.

And I am a Super Auto Pets sweat with tons of victories! I have to ask, have you ever been able to win this? or were you not concerned with the balancing yet because it's still a prototype?