GGv0.23 — gotta dispatch 'em all...

lotta good stuff in this one, pardner. first and foremost, we got the…

“VARMINT LEDGER”

if you’ve been wonderin’ whether you’ve seen all the jobs in the game or not, now we’ve got a varmint ledger to remove all doubt.

it shows every varmint you’ve brought into battle at least once, and tracks which varmints you’ve won with, plus which varmints you’ve won on the hardest difficulty with. this’ll be a tough one to full clear, but i know y’all’re up fer the task.

icon changes

i took GG to an in-person playtesting event (my first ever!!) and literally every person who played was very confused by hearts for Grit and shields for HP. in retrospect this uhh… makes complete sense. now we use little hearts for HP, and little sweat drops for Grit. yay playtesting!! yay glitch city!!

unlockable difficulties (sorry to all pro gamers)

every time someone booted up the game for playtesting, my anxiety spiked because 50% of them started on the medium difficulty. for those of you who have played this game, you know that’s a bad idea, the ruleset is pretty complex and not very intuitive for someone just picking it up for the first time.

so, now the difficulty levels are unlocked incrementally. beat regular -> get access to rugged, beat rugged -> get access to gruelin’.

apologies to GG veterans for asking you to play through regular difficulty again. your state will be saved (yes, even through updates) so you should only have to do it once (unless you delete your cookies, if you play in-browser).

two new jobs

as always, i don’t wanna give ‘em away, especially now that we’ve got the varmint ledger. but if you wanna see ’em, try upgrading a Medic and a Hunter.

combat clarity!!

lots of people at playtesting were confused about the order of operations between the two teams, which is very fair, it can be kind of confusing especially when abilities like Archer or Evasive start coming into play. so i added two major new UI elements:

turn indication

this little thing slides back and forth as the turns switch between the player and the enemy. whoever’s turn it is, the varmints who will be acting get highlighted so you know who’s going to participate in the turn. (for example if you have an archer in spot two, your spot 1 and spot 2 varmints will be highlighted.)

effect describer thingy

in the big empty space where the cards used to be, now we put information relevant to the last event in combat. it’s not 100% complete yet, but it will explain pushing when that occurs, explain abilities like Quickdraw when they fire. hopefully this’ll help to make the flow of combat a little more clear.

changelog

• add varmint ledger and persistent storage of jobs used, won with, and won with on hardest difficulty
• add unlockable scenarios and persistent storage of which scenarios have been completed
• removed the ability to do “lateral” class promotions (like going from “Soldier” to “Vigilante”). no more shooting yourself in the foot!
• changed symbols for Hit Points and Grit
• in promotion phase, gray out units who can’t be promoted (due to not having any affordable promotions)
• added tooltips to describe “for the battle” or “for the next combat round”
• tutorial varmint apologizes if you promote them before they ask to sit out the next battle
• combat event banner with helpful context as combat progresses
• tooltips scale to fit within the screen
• player turn and enemy turn indicators
• highlight units who will take an action during their team’s turn
• added two new jobs: REDACTED and REDACTED and support ability REDACTED
• add text indicating progress on Victory and Defeat screens

vacation

i’ve been workin’ at work and workin’ at play. time for me to take a little break. i might sneak a mini-update in between now and tuesday, but after that there won’t be another update until 2023-05-26!!

thanks for readin’ friends, and thanks for playin’.

-cry