GGv0.22 -- all sorts o' new scenarios, pardner

GGv0.22

lots of new stuff in this one. biggest thing is probably scenarios, a.k.a. difficulty levels:

it’s no secret that this game is pretty tough. i went through a big round of rebalancing this week and added separate difficulties to make it a little less punishing. you can work your way from normal difficulty, to rugged, and up to gruelin’, and if you haven’t been able to see the new ending scene, well, here’s yer chance pardner.

i also put a lot of work into redoing the way tooltips behave:

apart from a significant visual redesign of unit tooltips, tooltips now also have “locking” behavior: hover over them for a little bit, and they lock in place so you can hover over them and see any tooltips that arise there. this is especially useful when you want more information about a varmint’s class or abilities.

now, let’s talk about this bit:

job promotion choices used to work this way:

• when you view the promotion screen, the game picks three jobs that can be promoted to
• any varmint can switch to any of those jobs, as well as any “upgrade” jobs (like Saguaro -> Metal Cactus)
• after you spend a bloom ribbon, the available jobs are re-rolled.

the problem i had with this approach was that there were too many “rolls”. that meant that you could get pretty much whichever job you wanted really early on without much effort. so, i switched it to a “potential” system:

• every rookie has two “potential” jobs they can promote up into
• those jobs never change and are never re-rolled
• you can see those potential jobs in the tooltip, as soon as you recruit the rookie

this will create more interesting choices about which rookies you’d like to send on a mission, and which jobs you’d like to build your team around.

speakin’ of bloom ribbons:

bloom ribbons are now handed out mid-battle, instead of consistently at the end of battle. you can now see exactly how many bloom ribbons yer gonna earn from defeatin’ an enemy squad

this is important for keeping the game fun when you already know you’re going to lose the day. you still want to fight for every last bloom ribbon you can. unless you’d like to run…

runnin’ is a new mechanic that allows yer team to leave the battle quick-like if you feel the situation is hopeless. the run button only shows up after 1/3 of yer team (including support units) has been defeated.

if you run from a battle, it counts as a defeat, so the enemy team will still advance on The Gulch. however, any of yer units that are still standin’ won’t lose a Grit heart at the end of the battle. so if you’ve got a Crested Saguaro you’d really like to bring along for the next one, you may wanna run while that varmint is still on their feet!

check this out:

SCREENSHOT-CEPTION!!

that’s right. i finally decided to stop being lazy and make standalone builds. this is still a pretty lightweight game performance-wise, but if your computer doesn’t like running this in the browser, you’ve now got some native builds you can run. the game just runs better when not in-browser too, btw, personally i’d recommend it.

whew. was a busy week but i’m feeling good about it. next week plans are to add a couple new jobs and another big new feature. hint: gotta catch ’em all…

THANKS FOR READING and THANKS FOR PLAYING~

-cry

changelog

• rookies have static promotion options
• redesign unit tooltips
• add locking behavior to unit and squad tooltips
• add “run” command during prep phase when player has lost 1/3 of initial units
• use symbols and tooltips for “upcoming squads” view instead of simple counter
• add “regular,” “rugged,” and “gruelin’” scenarios with different difficulty levels
• tutorial can be toggled on or off for “regular” scenario
• player receives bloom ribbons when defeating squads, instead of at end of day
• proper ending scene with music and “CONGLATURATION” message