By the way this is a link to the game's page: https://indjev99.itch.io/elemental
And this to a youtube video showcasing it (a slightly older version, but yeah): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_DEWFbtfqY

So... hang on. You've given all your cards AI art, but when it comes to the board - the thing most consistently visible, and something you don't want people noticing too much - you stuck with this godawful salmon vomit? for more than one update? Dude... talk with an artistic friend. FIND one if you need to. but please, choose something more neutral. Hell, you've put art on the cards; you should be capable of slapping down a generic wooden table, or a stone slab with runes.
Placeholders are placeholders, but there's no reason to slack on practice just because of "I'll fix it later."

Elemental is an awful name. It's generic to the point where you're fighting multiple other games, and even a recent disney movie, for search engine discoverability. I get it: good names are hard to think of, coming up with something good and original is even harder... but this is just suicide.

1v1 deckbuilders are lame. Unlikely it may be, but "1v1 deckbuilder with competitive and online ranking, please excuse the placeholder art" makes me genuinely question if it's not just a crypto farm, to the point I'm only writing this any of this because I'm bored.

>>2119143
Thanks for the response.
>you stuck with this godawful salmon vomit?
Huh, I thought it just looks kinda neutral. I don't really have good eye for visual stuff, so idk.
>Dude... talk with an artistic friend. FIND one if you need to. but please, choose something more neutral.
I'd love to but all my friends are not really the type of person to pay attention to visuals or like have any ability to explain their thoughts on visual stuff... Any ideas where to find someone like this, as in not just someone to comission for artwork but to give me general advice about visual things.
>Elemental is an awful name.
Huh, I've actually grown kinda fond of it. It used to be worse lmao, originally was "Elemental Dice", which literally sounds like a board game for toddlers. I had no idea "Elemental" could be perceived negatively though, so thanks for that.
>1v1 deckbuilders are lame.
Fine if you don't like them I guess. Can't change your opinion. I like them. Curious why you find them lame? Do you prefer just singleplayer roguelike deckbuilders or something else. Or constructed formats only? Draft is/was popular in MTG and Dominion blew up a lot, so it doesn't seem that rare to like deckbuilders.

>>2119148
MtG:draft and Dominion blew up because they weren't exclusively 1v1. They're able to be played such, but 1v1 being the best way to enjoy them is, from what I can tell, a rare opinion.

As you're probably aware, deckbuilders are enjoyable in large part because it's not just about building your own deck, it's also taking cards and resources away from other players. On the surface, there's nothing inherently bad about such a thing being 1v1. There are all sorts of 1v1 games, after all. But a deckbuilder is inherently social.
In MtG draft for example, passing 8 cards in one direction and receiving 7 cards from the other works without a hitch, even down to 3 players, because there's always uncertainty of who is getting what. When the players drop to 1v1, that uncertainty disappears. Something, either the draft phase or one's strategy, is different, and the result becomes lessened in my opinion.

Singleplayer deckbuilders work because they don't need to be balanced. Ironclad+corruption is busted as hell, but there's no actual need to run it unless a player wants to. We can go on to say that singleplayer games are allowed to have absolute ballbusters, to test the hardiest of builds or punish the overconfident. The difference between this and a 1v1 should hopefully be obvious: such extremes should probably not exist when competing against another player.

>>2119173
>1v1 being the best way to enjoy them is, from what I can tell, a rare opinion.
Among the people I've played with, 1v1 was considered best for Dominion. For MtG:draft, no -- I agree there.
>it's also taking cards and resources away from other players
I find this part is actually more emphasized in a 1v1. In a 1v1v1v1 -- your main goal is always optimizing your own deck, in a 1v1 each action is 0 sum, so you can think a lot about the opponent's deck. In particular in my game, with the elemental mechanic, it is crucial to always consider the opponent's deck. I have actually playtested a 1v1v1v1 (in the board game version) a while ago and it did work with a few rule modification, but 1v1 has been my focus for now. It is probably also because of my tastes as a gamer -- I really enjoy 1v1 games for competitive stuff. Eliminates feeling like you got screwed over by an accidental kingmaker and stuff like that. In any case, I know that 1v1 games are not for everyone, but that's my demographic and I know it exists in theory (most TCGs are 1v1 for example).
>Singleplayer deckbuilders work because they don't need to be balanced.
This is fair, and is a thing I've ran into while working on my game -- balancing being harder and more important here. But I think I'm doing a good job so far.

>>2119115
>AI art
delete yourself

File: screen.jpg (1.02 MB, 2560x1440)

1.02 MB JPG

Visual update done!

>>2119115
>>2120456
Looks so fucking sterile that any neurotypical will bounce off it from a single screenshot. Good luck getting any sales to support further development.

My issues:
>There's some muddy identity issues between the colours.
I think this is the main one, the mechanics just seem half-baked. It's not clear to me what the difference is between Fire, Earth, and Magic as elements. I guess there are more Fire cards and fewer Magic cards, which affects the relative power of die-manipulation against those elements, but I think it needs a bit more than that.

>Die manipulation is a bit underpowered
I think it's almost there, but there needs to be a dynamic to die manipulation besides "if your opponent has it, you should probably also get it" or "if you're running 3x cards you should get it". I think turning one or two of the really weak die manipulation cards into blessings would be a good idea to add a bit more spice to the game. That, or letting you gain gold off the die manipulation cards somehow, maybe even just 2 gold each or something.

>Hedging is a bit too strong and available
Hedging is when you add another element to your pool to make it harder to die-manipulate against you. There's a huge number of dual-coloured hedge cards that can massively devalue die manipulation against you. This is a problem because die manipulation is generally questionable, and taking these cards (which is already good because they're 10-cost 2 die cards) protects you from it almost as much, if not more than, just taking die manipulation (without the mana cost).

>Random is WAY too strong
In the continuing saga of die manipulation sucking, I don't think the strongest element should have been the one that's also immune to it. Random has tons of cards that increase the expected value of your die to the fucking roof while also benefiting your own die manipulation efforts. I guess maybe this could be the "extra spice" to the die manipulation game that I was talking about above, but in that case random shouldn't be the element with the highest expected damage output and a ton of great cards.

>>2121560
>Purity is too strong
There are a lot of little balance issues in the costs, some cards cost 5 that really shouldn't, but I think purity definitely should cost 10 or even 17.

>Doublers
The other doublers like purity, there are just too many of them, and it contributes to the elemental identity issues. I think other than Purity, JUST Magic and maybe Fire should have a doubler. The other cards should get some variation of a doubler, like Earth also shielding you or Water also healing you for half the die value.

>The gold game is weird
I think alongside Random, Gold is too strong to be a starting card. It's generally fine later, I THINK, but right at the start, whoever gets to a certain amount of gold first and can get first crack at the market has a gigantic advantage. Oh, and the relic that lets you spend 2 to add a card you just bought to your hand? I think it's a fine concept but that's an absurdly powerful relic, maybe make it like 4 or something.

>Healing maybe a bit too strong?
Just an extension of the hedging point, there are tons of dual-element healing cards that I think defeat the main weakness of the mechanic (that you can stymie it by attacking only one die). I think normally that weakness justifies why you start 50 life points closer to winning via healing that via killing, but it disappears if you can just hedge. There's even a nature + random healing card, just ridiculously strong.

>More reserve, less mana generation
I think there are a few too many cards that just give you unconditional mana, and I think that's unfortunate because the face-down reservation system already kind of lets you bank mana for later turns. I'd try and focus more on that and less on generic cards that literally just say "get 2 mana" (which is effectively putting you 2x turns ahead of your opponent, ridiculous).

I think I had some more points (why is there only like one Water card?) but I've forgotten them. Interesting start.

>>2121336
Well, it is a work in progress. I don't have background in art or design. Also I am not in this for the money, I make a lot more from my regular programmer job than I need anyway. Though I'd still want to get a lot of players, just because it would be really awesome, so always looking to improve it. My next piece of work is probably working on a tutorial and after than maybe a better overall client gui when you start a game/join/login/etc.

>>2121560
>>2121562
Hey, thanks a lot for the really detailed feedback and thoughts on balancing, love it! May I ask how many games you played? Was it only against the bot or also some friend. FYI, the bot is not like an amazing player, currently working on a stronger bot but configurable difficulty (basically raising its cap, but also making it more interesting to play against; while adding some nobs to dumb it down for lower difficulties).

For everything you wrote and my responses, I want to preface it with -- you could be right, I don't have nearly enough hard data to be certain about various balancing things. By the way, I'd love it if you joined the discord, even just to lurk or maybe post a thread on balancing. I'm trying to get a community going.

>There's some muddy identity issues between the colours.
Yeah, Fire and Earth are almost equivalent. I considered removing one of them, but the issue is that I think it is good to have more damage cards in the deck than say gold or healing, but making them all scale with the same element makes it harder to use dice control since you're more likely to scale with the same thing as the opponent. I 100% agree that figuring out a way to have some different identity to these two would be good, but I haven't figured it out yet. I haven't yet figured out something I'm happy with though. One idea was making fire cards do more damage (maybe 1.5x or even 2x) but not give any gold, but I am not sure how that would feel.

>Die manipulation is a bit underpowered
Hm, could be the case. I am sure I agree fully based on my experience playing the game. I've recently tried to add a bit more support to them using some synergistic relics, but maybe a bit more is needed. I have various concerns about making them blessings (makes mana cards not as valuable, etc), but maybe something like also making them give 1 gold or whatever could be a good idea, so at least they are strictly more powerful than basic incomes. I will think about this.

>>2121560
>>2121562
>>2123462

By the way, I'd also love to play the game against people that have meta crafted separately from me and my circle of friends whom I've played with. So feel free to DM on the discord, I think it would be interesting.

>Hedging is a bit too strong and available
I agree that multi element cards are harder to dice control, but in general that should go for both you and the opponent, i.e. it is harder for the opponent to lower them both, but it is also harder for you to increase them both. Now if dice control is generally just weaker, as you say -- this maybe just means meta is you don't buy dice control and instead you just buy these cards. I don't think I've found the meta to be like this though (and sometimes you're actually desparate for some dice control). So qualitatively I agree with what you're saying, but I'm not sure this is as prevalent and dice control is as weak as you say. In fact until recently the meta in my opinion was actually closer to investing really heavily into 1 or 2 really big cards (and dice controlling for them), but I have tried to shift slightly in the other direction. Remains to be seen.

>Random is WAY too strong
Could be the case. My recent adding of relics that supports dice control has to some extent also buffed the chance die. Ideally I'd like to see some stats about this, whether it is actually significantly stronger, but I am inclined to agree that it may often be above curve. I could think about counterplay to it.

>Purity is too strong
>Doublers
There is a "hidden" cost to the doubler cards -- you generally need to face down them, which ends up costing 2 gold per use. Plus you don't always get a chance to use them (say you drew them same hand as the card you wanna double without any extra mana). They are meant to be fairly high cap when you get to use them though. Still, completely possible that they are too strong. I think I could like the idea about the doublers not being plain doublers.

>>2121560
>>2121562
>>2123462
>>2123486
>The gold game is weird
>I think alongside Random, Gold is too strong to be a starting card
I also kinda believe that Gold (and partially Water) is among the better starting cards on average. However, my bot disagrees (as in I fiddled with its paamters to maximize its winrate against itself) and it actually likes straight damage more than gold even at the start. It might be an artefact of its playstyle (which is suboptimal) though. I have also theorycrafted a playstyle of rushing damage before the gold guy scales, so it isn't as clear, maybe.
In any case, the point of the pick order auction at the start is to kind of induce balance (if gold was just super good, the player taking would be starting at -6 gold, so probably it is not as good then).
>Healing maybe a bit too strong?
Well even though you can partially hedge, as you said, all healing still scales with nature, so if you attack that die you do stiffle it quite a bit. Additionally, there are fewer healing cards than damage cards, which also makes it harder to heal out. I generally haven't seen mor than 1/4 or so of games to be won by a max hp win.

>More reserve, less mana generation
>generic cards that literally just say "get 2 mana" (which is effectively putting you 2x turns ahead of your opponent, ridiculous).
I don't think mana is as strong as you make it out to be. Just "gain 2 mana" often means you spend it on basic incomes if you have no draw to support it. I agree I want to stimulate face down stuff even more, but it is actually used fairly heavily in the meta we currently have with a few people at least.

>why is there only like one Water card
There is pretty equal number of cards for each element, except Magic which is rarer but has overall stronger cards.

>>2119115
I'm sorry my man, but I can't bring myself to feel any enthusiasm whatsoever for yet another deckbuilder. Best of luck though.
At a glance, you need a UI that won't look like placeholder shit, otherwise nobody's gonna give it a try. Have the model shit out a wood texture, make it seamless in whatever Photoshop analogue and slap some panels together with it - it'll help your game a ton by itself. Put the AI images through some shitty color filter too and modify the contrast and brightness so they look more uniform and don't stick out so obviously.

New update, improved the bot AI, so it is stronger, but also configurable with difficulty modes: https://indjev99.itch.io/elemental/devlog/1013540/version-050-alpha

bump

>>2119115
>Ai slop

I'll never play this game. Good luck to you