Gulch Guardians
rip-roarin' cute western turn-based card tactics autobattler with one heckuva job system.
a game by cryy22 (design, programming, art, music).
this is the EARLY DEMO version!! WISHLIST ON STEAM for the full version!! demo includes 22 jobs out of ???
THE "GAME LOOP":
- fight them interlopers with cards n' autobattles
- pick varmints to promote into better jobs
- switch up yer team fer the next battle, pardner.
A HUMBLE REQUEST, compadre. i'm sick n' tired of my job and lookin' to make games full time. if you can help out by rating the game, commenting, sharing, donating and/or wishlisting the game on steam — well now that'd just make my day, friend-o.
NOTE 2 ALL CURRENT/FUTURE GAME DEVS. it's tough finding the code and project files for commercial games!! there are definitely a lot of much better programmers out there, but i'm not too shabby. if yer lookin' to read some code, if only just to observe how someone else does it, give me a holler in a comment or on Discord (cryy22) and i'll send it over.
thanks fer readin', and thanks fer playin'.
-cry
Download
Click download now to get access to the following files:
Development log
- GGv0.35 ~ continuityOct 17, 2023
- GGv0.34 ~ floatin'Sep 19, 2023
- GGv0.33 ~ hold up... let him refactorAug 24, 2023
- GGv0.32 ~ cards? yeah. i sling thoseAug 07, 2023
- GGv0.31 ~ it's a new dawn, it's a new dayJul 24, 2023
- GGv0.30 ~ get ledger'dJul 07, 2023
- GGv0.29 ~ decks n' discardsJun 26, 2023
- GGv0.28 ~ check the deckJun 18, 2023
Comments
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THERE’S CUTSCENES NOW???????
AN ENCYCLOPEDIA??????
yeah i’m picking this back up
time for my cacti gang to once again dominate
welcome back pardner
this team is insane
yooooo sweet build!! big game hunters are underrated imo
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.
tyvm for playing!! glad you had fun ^.^
music is a bop
tyty!!
cool
tyty
Damn, this game made me interested in the deck building genre, thanks for that! (Amazing game btw, hoping all goes well til it realeases)
hey thanks so much, glad you enjoyed the game! still working on it!!
is the music available or for sale somewhere? extremely catchy soundtrack
hey sorry for the delay!! busy week.
i put the soundtrack up on soundcloud for you: https://soundcloud.com/cryy22/sets/gulch-guardians – enjoy! i’m glad you like my music!!
thank you! going to get a lot of listening out of these!
What an amazing experience, parder
thanks pardner, glad you enjoyed it!! ^.^
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
awww thank you so much i’m glad you enjoy it!! sorry that you lost your progress 😅 that’s a great idea, i’m definitely going to add a “resume game” feature at some point (not sure when… it is a lot of work) — but sometimes with the way web browsers work, when you reload the tab all progress will be lost no matter what the game developer does 😞 so i always recommend if you want your data to persist between plays that you should try using the downloaded version just to be safe. thanks again and hopefully i’ll have that resume game feature for you soon!!
just so you know, i added a continue feature in the last patch! it works in the browser so if you accidentally close a tab you should be able to pick it back up.
full marathon build for the win yaaaaaaa love this game
yesssss caveman strats!! REALLY BIG SMASHERZ. ty for playing!!
hoohoo muscles together stronk
ima try gunslinger cuz it is actually one of the only cards that caught my eye, the musket also caught my eye too ima try that after
this game is amazing thanks for making it
thank YOU for playing it i’m glad you’re enjoying so much. there’s a discord if you’re interested (link on the game title screen)!!
okay full healing cactus op
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
thank you, really glad you liked it!! chemist/marathoner is super fun, good luck in your next run ^.^
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...
thanks for playing, glad you liked it, and thank you for the feedback!! hrm… i’ll have to think of a way to use the bloom ribbons after you win, maybe they can be used for unlocks or something in between games…
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 !
thank you so much! there are some incredible games here so that’s really high praise 😁
I actually was playing loads of final fantasy tactics advance while working on the job system; really cool that the inspiration shines through. thank you for supporting the game – i’ll do my best, pardner!!
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!
hey, thanks so much for playing and i appreciate the feedback! definitely lots more work to do on all fronts
wow
that pretty much summarizes my reaction to this update
i went from being able to beat this blindfolded..
..to struggling to survive more than 10 days.
the reserve mechanic was a good idea
and now i can’t just simply rely on marathoner to get me through everything
i have yet to win again..
i give this update 7 vbucks out of 3 sugar cubes
hehehehehe… even more stuff’s gonna change soon…!!
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.
whoa thank you for playing and great feedback! you’re right about that team comp it’s pretty OP in this build. i’m actually okay with broken teams as long as there are more than one of them and they’re slightly risky to pull off… hrm, the build i’m releasing on wednesday is a major change to the strategy layer, i’ll need to re-examine herb/marathoner afterwards and maybe do some rebalancing
just learned that characters with the mild trait can actually attack under..
certain circumstances
cool game btw
hehe that’s right! i want to add a few more of those little moments scattered across the game, especially once i open it up into a more roguelike style.
thank you for playing and commenting, i’m glad you like it!!
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?
hey thank you so much for playing and for the feedback!
you’re correct, I haven’t done too much balancing yet while I’m still adding lots of new features and stuff. I do always make sure to beat the game at least once before updating on itch.io but yes this most recent build is really over the top difficult. This is the first build with “sturdy” and I think giving it to the non-boss knights was a step too far.
I’ve been trying to update the itch version every Tuesday – this week there won’t be much changed thanks to the game jam but I did fix some balance stuff.
It's cool you're updating frequently! About the sturdy modifier, I did encounter a bug that happened twice- It will sometimes be applied but not apply the indicator onto your character. It still saves them from death, but just doesn't show the S. I think this happens if one character takes the sturdy modifier more than once? I was heavily relying on the strategy of stacking one unit with health and praying for heals.
ah yes that stupid bug! I’m pretty sure it’s fixed locally but who can say for sure with nebulous bugs…. “make one gigaunit with enormous max health and pray for Hot Springs” is probably the dominant strategy in the current build yes – tomorrow’s build introduces the “healer” attribute that should allow for a little more diversity of strategy.