My two cents: I don't think it's an issue. The risk of over-investing in them and losing early is real, and I wonder if the above pic is from extreme luck. I've found them neither necessary to win nor a guarantee of winning, even without a limit.
While it is a bit of luck, this was my end game. I started out investing in curses and other units before investing into buildings and stat boosts to put my units up to 9/20 (which is typically when they become undefeatable in standard battles if they have a shield). Once I reached that point, I just farmed for the same building... which is easy since the building allows me to farm for more buildings, creating an endless loop of cash.
I don't think you understand how the minds of leaders work. That, or you think that the villain of this game is somehow different from our real world politicians and corporate executives.
I'm sure the king did invest in those. Probably had a lot more than that, even! More than could possibly fit on the entire field! ...and then he spent all of the income from them on food, wine, and other luxuries for himself. Well, what he physically could spend, anyway; he just hoarded the rest.
It is amazing just how many emergent weird tricks and strategies and synergies such a simple system can have. A neat one that I discovered that I don't think has been mentioned before: If you have an enemy archer problem, especially with a bunch in the same row (I actually had an entire row full of nothing but archers at one point), the Summon book works better than replacing their bows with the Bat Curse. Just place your summon one space before the furthest place on the field as soon as the battle starts; this will block the archers from taking a step, and give the rest of your units time to catch up to them, so they can take over blocking movement. Works best with a Rocker to Bless summons anywhere in the field. Depending on the situation, it doesn't just have to be at the start of the battle; if unit deaths create another 2+ space gap, just pause and drop another summon in the gap.
In general - Try and 'draw' every round for as long as possible. Then once you HAVE to start winning you want to win with a single beefy guy in each row to minimise the damage to the castle.
Specific tips:
-Prioritise Bat Curse in every book slot early. This is a way of "banking" money/power so you don't get too powerful and start winning rows. Only use the curses after your side is dead.
-Buy every single mauseleum (gold generator). You can never have enough. That's how you keep rolling late game for whatever crazy strategy you are chasing.
-The maximum damage your single unit needs is only 9 to 1 shot everyone. Even so you don't nessecarily want to hit that cap too early in case they completely roll over the enemy.
-Use spy liberally early-mid to try and match each rows power in order to 'draw' or be overrun (and then bat curse).
-Sell all your buildings on the final turn. They don't do anything for the final turn after all
Thank you! The "Hyperfixate on Bat Curses" step was what I couldn't figure out; most of the other stuff I already did even in the course of a normal run. Except for the spying... that I find only rarely useful, especially in the early game, especially if I have any amount of Bat Curse. Oh, and yes, you CAN have enough or even too many Mausoleums... once they start getting in the way of placing other things! 3 level 3 Mausoleums for a total of +12 gold per turn was about the limit. But anyway, yeah, with a full set of level 3 Bat Curses, this was trivial:
...i know this sounds completely antifun but looking at this i think i might need to buff the king progression after 10 turns hahahaha that sounds too effective
I really enjoyed playing this game, the whole art style is what sells it to me, it´s also very addicting, getting the good ending was hard but with the OP combo of Barns and rats/summoners anything is possible.
I learned that to use the books more effectively it´s better to pause in the middle of the battle and not use them all at the start, unless there´s archers, then it´s better to cancel their bows with the curse, overall the strategy part of the game is really fun.
Now I have the urge to make a tierlist of which units are the best :)
That's really addictive game!
The gameplay is great
By playing dozens of times and achieving 5 or 6 victories with positive HP, and more of that with 0 HP, I could say that the major challenge of the game is not about getting power and ruining enemies, but is about the simultaneous growth of potential and keeping it in check at the same time. The most painful losses occur when you encounter the King too early because of too too-powerful build for beginning levels (especially high-level Bard-Summonner/Ratfolk setups). The power of the King grew over time too, but not so fast as the power of the Witch, so, the strategy is about losing the minimum number of both red and blue hearts at each level to maximize the number of rounds before the boss battle. Nevertheless, there is another reason to keep growth in check. Level3 items are very powerful, but if you are creating L3 item when there are already 3 or 4 bones in the tub, your are getting one cool Tier 4 item (like jumbo milk or succubus or big boned) in the shop for it. But if you are crafting L3 item with 1 or 2 bones in the tub, you are getting some useless shit for it, like excalibur. So, that's another example, of when you should constrain your potential until the third bone is in the tub and not create L3 items, but just prepare for it. I'm interested if this encouragement for slow growth was intended or that's for coincidence, because seen something similar in roguelike card (dice) games, when you have good attack cards (dices) and can finish the round instantly, but the game encourages you to prolong the round as long as you can to heal it up until the end of the round (in that games that's a little bit annoying).
Here is a screen for my best run in the attachment. Managed to prolong the game for 12 rounds, and did the boss fight flawlessly (all the 3 lanes were mopped up with serious advantage). 3 HP were lost in the midgame. Maybe even when waited for three bones in a tub to craft my first L3 and make sure that I would not get lousy gift for it
PS: regarding the perf problems: I'm using Macbook m1 with 8GB RAM and after playing 3-4 games in a row without reloading page (pressing in-game restart button instead) the game becomes unplayable, - animation becomes slow, sound starts to freeze for fractions of a second. Page reloading tackles the problem.
Beat it on run 6 or 7, in 11 turns, mostly by the combined power of a bard, rats, and the demon spawner. I like that you don't have to defeat the sons, both slipped through but this was my second king encounter so I knew to put all the big guns in the middle lane.
Well balanced game, very nice look, tight and fun game loop. I think this could have success on steam / mobile, maybe you'd earn something. You could make this a rogue lite and expand it in that case. At any rate, thank you for the fun I had.
Minor bug where I defeated the game but was not crowned glorious overlord of the township. Could be considered a feature to teach us not all heroics go acknowledged. Back to the cauldron!
There's a really minor bug I came across, I'm having difficulty figuring out the exact conditions, but here's my best guess: If I defeat all enemies extremely quickly while in fast-forward mode (eg: first two rounds, using a Bowie or Stoner) my units will take a couple more steps forward after 'winning', before they jump all the way to the end. It doesn't actually have any effect whatsoever on gameplay and it's not even all that irritating, but I thought I may as well call it to your attention. (and yes, being able to fast-forward is awesome!)
Thanks for reporting!!! I introduced a behaviour so that, when there is an active archer or a cursed unit, the "jumping to the end" was deactivated. I can simply make it ask if there are any enemies and if not, to ignore that, and that should be it! Next patch!!
Wow thanks! Also, I'm impressed you were able to make the menu soundtrack distinct without out making another track. Seems like the boss music track is used in another game, I'll check it out. :)
Love this game. Spent too much time playing it. Thanks for making it and updating it.
Some gameplay/balance suggestions:
Nurse - Text says 'heals hurt allies' however only heals 1 unit each time. The upgraded nurses feels redundant as not many enemies deal more than 3 damage anyway. Consider upgrades being able to heal from lethal damage or heal multiple units in lane (to protect from range damage)
Excalibur - really weak and requires a lot of set up to make work.
Wizard - clunky to play. it would be much smoother if you could "load up" spells. Also on upgrade maybe attack multiple units instead of more damage. He feels like kobold/archer with extra steps at the moment.
Pigman - Even with upgrades he is weak relative to his tier 3 peers. Every 3rd step is just too slow
Succubus - Giving an upgraded succubus a shield removes the blessing. This doesn't really matter because succubus is so strong anyway haha.
items - It might be nice to have 1 or 2 other items to increase variety. E.g add the bow as an attacking item or a heal scroll (heal when taking fatal damage) or blessing cross as utility items.
Not forcing the use of gold to start a round might be interesting. Allowing strategies of saving up gold at the cost of life to get better units
Add text explaining the spying costs 2 gold. Maybe it's just me but I played 20+ rounds always saving 1 spy for the final round before realising you could spy at the cost of gold after using up the 3 free spys
I really need to rewrite the text for the nurse, probably next patch!
And i might consider a rebalance for the pigman. He is QUITE strong in later levels, but maybe too weak starting out?
And i'll see about the spying! Editing UI always sucks but i'll keep it noted as something that should be touched up!
As for the other things, they are mostly intended behaviour and/or unchangeable.
Excalibur is intended to work that way, he does require a lot of setup, but i quite like that! It's a whole event with a huge payoff.
Wizards are divisive, but they are working as intended! I really really like how they work.
They do need setup to work, too, as you are supposed to be going for a mostly magic build (and therefore have weaker/fewer units). The fact that they make you use your magic in turns, and strategize, goes perfectly with them, imo: you kind of feel smart in a way. A "brains triumph over strenght" vibe. I could maybe make them stronger in early levels to make up for that, but they do tons of damage already!
Extra items would throw off the balance of the randomness, but there will be new items when new decks of units come around! Some day! But it's in development <<
The forcing of gold is intended! I want people to roll instead of saving, and see different choices and freeze some units to buy. That would be discouraged otherwise, which in turn would also make the game truly random, as you would only use the three units the market gives you and that's it!
Thanks a lot for the feedback!! I'll get those other things checked for next patch!
I played Excalibur again and tried to go all in on his damage just for fun (it was).
With that in mind you should increase the damage cap from 99. Its completely unnessecary but I feel let down I couldn't get 300+ damage when I levelled up my beefy 75dmg lv 1 excalibur haha
I love the game Stopsignal, ive been playing it for a while, and this is the best ive managed so far, ill comment again if i can win.
Also, THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR UPDATING THE FAST FORWARD, it feels so much nicer now. I just happened to check the dev log, so, here is your thank you. :)
Conceptually straightforward, and considerably fun! Kudos to the dev - it's a very solid gameplay loop and I definitely enjoyed the few hours I spent on it trying different builds!
this game is awesome, but I think It could have more chalenges, quests and why not, more enemies on the late game, maybe a tier 5 and 6. There is so mutch potencial about this game! By the way, I finaly got the last self-imposed quests: finish in less than 9 turns and finis in more than 13 turns
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You have wasted my precious 4 hours... in most joyous way!
Just fixed the kingdom's economy. Honestly, I don't know why the King didn't just invest in these things.
I might need to give a max limit to these a bit, hahahahah
My two cents: I don't think it's an issue. The risk of over-investing in them and losing early is real, and I wonder if the above pic is from extreme luck. I've found them neither necessary to win nor a guarantee of winning, even without a limit.
While it is a bit of luck, this was my end game. I started out investing in curses and other units before investing into buildings and stat boosts to put my units up to 9/20 (which is typically when they become undefeatable in standard battles if they have a shield). Once I reached that point, I just farmed for the same building... which is easy since the building allows me to farm for more buildings, creating an endless loop of cash.
I don't think you understand how the minds of leaders work. That, or you think that the villain of this game is somehow different from our real world politicians and corporate executives.
I'm sure the king did invest in those. Probably had a lot more than that, even! More than could possibly fit on the entire field! ...and then he spent all of the income from them on food, wine, and other luxuries for himself. Well, what he physically could spend, anyway; he just hoarded the rest.
With perfect play you might be able to get 99/99 on all 3 guys but I'm not goin to bother trying ha
I loved the game, I found the strategy mechanics very interesting in addition to having the Android version. 10/10
Did I die?? yes, but so did the king so that's a win!!!! YIPPEEEEEE. it was a lot of fun :3
It is amazing just how many emergent weird tricks and strategies and synergies such a simple system can have. A neat one that I discovered that I don't think has been mentioned before: If you have an enemy archer problem, especially with a bunch in the same row (I actually had an entire row full of nothing but archers at one point), the Summon book works better than replacing their bows with the Bat Curse. Just place your summon one space before the furthest place on the field as soon as the battle starts; this will block the archers from taking a step, and give the rest of your units time to catch up to them, so they can take over blocking movement. Works best with a Rocker to Bless summons anywhere in the field. Depending on the situation, it doesn't just have to be at the start of the battle; if unit deaths create another 2+ space gap, just pause and drop another summon in the gap.
is this the sequel to stress misery and fatigue simulator?
Wizard Army
Failed to get the 99 / 99 strength guy. It can definitely be done though.
Indeed it can.
...HOW.
That many upgraded units... all of the same unit... how do you, hold off spawning the king long enough to make this possible!?
In general - Try and 'draw' every round for as long as possible. Then once you HAVE to start winning you want to win with a single beefy guy in each row to minimise the damage to the castle.
Specific tips:
-Prioritise Bat Curse in every book slot early. This is a way of "banking" money/power so you don't get too powerful and start winning rows. Only use the curses after your side is dead.
-Buy every single mauseleum (gold generator). You can never have enough. That's how you keep rolling late game for whatever crazy strategy you are chasing.
-The maximum damage your single unit needs is only 9 to 1 shot everyone. Even so you don't nessecarily want to hit that cap too early in case they completely roll over the enemy.
-Use spy liberally early-mid to try and match each rows power in order to 'draw' or be overrun (and then bat curse).
-Sell all your buildings on the final turn. They don't do anything for the final turn after all
Thank you! The "Hyperfixate on Bat Curses" step was what I couldn't figure out; most of the other stuff I already did even in the course of a normal run. Except for the spying... that I find only rarely useful, especially in the early game, especially if I have any amount of Bat Curse. Oh, and yes, you CAN have enough or even too many Mausoleums... once they start getting in the way of placing other things! 3 level 3 Mausoleums for a total of +12 gold per turn was about the limit. But anyway, yeah, with a full set of level 3 Bat Curses, this was trivial:
it's so aesthetically pleasing! B)
you can NEVER have too many mauseleums
holy shit HAHAHAHHHAH
you are a god
...i know this sounds completely antifun but looking at this i think i might need to buff the king progression after 10 turns hahahaha that sounds too effective
haha yes! King evolves into a secret boss after 20 rounds
came for the necromancer cutie, stayed for it too.
even though I suck royally at the actual game :-)
so sad itch only support paypal and card pay. is there any other way to support you?
I really enjoyed playing this game, the whole art style is what sells it to me, it´s also very addicting, getting the good ending was hard but with the OP combo of Barns and rats/summoners anything is possible.
I learned that to use the books more effectively it´s better to pause in the middle of the battle and not use them all at the start, unless there´s archers, then it´s better to cancel their bows with the curse, overall the strategy part of the game is really fun.
Now I have the urge to make a tierlist of which units are the best :)
That's really addictive game! The gameplay is great By playing dozens of times and achieving 5 or 6 victories with positive HP, and more of that with 0 HP, I could say that the major challenge of the game is not about getting power and ruining enemies, but is about the simultaneous growth of potential and keeping it in check at the same time. The most painful losses occur when you encounter the King too early because of too too-powerful build for beginning levels (especially high-level Bard-Summonner/Ratfolk setups). The power of the King grew over time too, but not so fast as the power of the Witch, so, the strategy is about losing the minimum number of both red and blue hearts at each level to maximize the number of rounds before the boss battle. Nevertheless, there is another reason to keep growth in check. Level3 items are very powerful, but if you are creating L3 item when there are already 3 or 4 bones in the tub, your are getting one cool Tier 4 item (like jumbo milk or succubus or big boned) in the shop for it. But if you are crafting L3 item with 1 or 2 bones in the tub, you are getting some useless shit for it, like excalibur. So, that's another example, of when you should constrain your potential until the third bone is in the tub and not create L3 items, but just prepare for it. I'm interested if this encouragement for slow growth was intended or that's for coincidence, because seen something similar in roguelike card (dice) games, when you have good attack cards (dices) and can finish the round instantly, but the game encourages you to prolong the round as long as you can to heal it up until the end of the round (in that games that's a little bit annoying).
Here is a screen for my best run in the attachment. Managed to prolong the game for 12 rounds, and did the boss fight flawlessly (all the 3 lanes were mopped up with serious advantage). 3 HP were lost in the midgame. Maybe even when waited for three bones in a tub to craft my first L3 and make sure that I would not get lousy gift for it
PS: regarding the perf problems: I'm using Macbook m1 with 8GB RAM and after playing 3-4 games in a row without reloading page (pressing in-game restart button instead) the game becomes unplayable, - animation becomes slow, sound starts to freeze for fractions of a second. Page reloading tackles the problem.
Really love this game. It's the first game I purchased on Itch.io. I've sunk about 5 hours into the browser version already.
Keep up the good work. I love your art style. I'd also love to connect and chat about how you make games. Ping me on discord: briandouglas_71953
Good in every aspect : Visually appealing, music is pretty good, great replayability and a tough challenge for sure !
Esta god.
cool
Took a while but I finally got the good endings.
No sé inglés pero está guapísimo
2 hard 4 me
One of the best auto-battlers I have ever played
Suuch a well-thought and enjoyable game, thank you! I donated and can’t wait for updates!
what a wonderful game!Wish to support it on kickstarter
Auto Necrochess Gameplay
Beat it on run 6 or 7, in 11 turns, mostly by the combined power of a bard, rats, and the demon spawner. I like that you don't have to defeat the sons, both slipped through but this was my second king encounter so I knew to put all the big guns in the middle lane.
Well balanced game, very nice look, tight and fun game loop. I think this could have success on steam / mobile, maybe you'd earn something. You could make this a rogue lite and expand it in that case. At any rate, thank you for the fun I had.
Minor bug where I defeated the game but was not crowned glorious overlord of the township. Could be considered a feature to teach us not all heroics go acknowledged. Back to the cauldron!
There's a really minor bug I came across, I'm having difficulty figuring out the exact conditions, but here's my best guess: If I defeat all enemies extremely quickly while in fast-forward mode (eg: first two rounds, using a Bowie or Stoner) my units will take a couple more steps forward after 'winning', before they jump all the way to the end. It doesn't actually have any effect whatsoever on gameplay and it's not even all that irritating, but I thought I may as well call it to your attention. (and yes, being able to fast-forward is awesome!)
Thanks for reporting!!! I introduced a behaviour so that, when there is an active archer or a cursed unit, the "jumping to the end" was deactivated. I can simply make it ask if there are any enemies and if not, to ignore that, and that should be it! Next patch!!
again, thanks for reporting!!!
Wow, that was a prompt reply. Makes sense! Writing code logic is difficult :)
Can you post all 3 tracks from the OST. If you already did can you give me some pointers.
https://soundcloud.com/bauti777/auto-necrochess-battle-theme
https://soundcloud.com/bauti777/unnamed
here you go! except the menu loop, which is just a part of the firt one repeating over and over!
Wow thanks! Also, I'm impressed you were able to make the menu soundtrack distinct without out making another track. Seems like the boss music track is used in another game, I'll check it out. :)
nice game, i jsut suck at it :-/
Love this game. Spent too much time playing it. Thanks for making it and updating it.
Some gameplay/balance suggestions:
thanks for the feedback!!!
I really need to rewrite the text for the nurse, probably next patch!
And i might consider a rebalance for the pigman. He is QUITE strong in later levels, but maybe too weak starting out?
And i'll see about the spying! Editing UI always sucks but i'll keep it noted as something that should be touched up!
As for the other things, they are mostly intended behaviour and/or unchangeable.
Excalibur is intended to work that way, he does require a lot of setup, but i quite like that! It's a whole event with a huge payoff.
Wizards are divisive, but they are working as intended! I really really like how they work.
They do need setup to work, too, as you are supposed to be going for a mostly magic build (and therefore have weaker/fewer units). The fact that they make you use your magic in turns, and strategize, goes perfectly with them, imo: you kind of feel smart in a way. A "brains triumph over strenght" vibe. I could maybe make them stronger in early levels to make up for that, but they do tons of damage already!
Extra items would throw off the balance of the randomness, but there will be new items when new decks of units come around! Some day! But it's in development <<
The forcing of gold is intended! I want people to roll instead of saving, and see different choices and freeze some units to buy. That would be discouraged otherwise, which in turn would also make the game truly random, as you would only use the three units the market gives you and that's it!
Thanks a lot for the feedback!! I'll get those other things checked for next patch!
Thanks for the reply.
I played Excalibur again and tried to go all in on his damage just for fun (it was).
With that in mind you should increase the damage cap from 99. Its completely unnessecary but I feel let down I couldn't get 300+ damage when I levelled up my beefy 75dmg lv 1 excalibur haha
weird to comment in my own game, but just to show the new fullscreen features (and a really good run)! (;
This game is so fun!
After 20+ runs, I finally figured out the secret ending...
Finally a turn 7
this game is so fluid now! even on normal speed is way better! that's awesome, congrats!
theres a bug on the browser version were the speed of the entire game and all the animations/tweens are very slow
Can't seem to replicate it! What's your browser?
google
I used to have this issue when I only had 8GB of ram.
Important: there is a bug with the lvl 3 succubus that makes her instakill the king or princes with the lil projectile she has (hi this is me the dev)
new mission: try to kill king with lil projectile.
awesome update with the fast forward
I love the game Stopsignal, ive been playing it for a while, and this is the best ive managed so far, ill comment again if i can win.
Also, THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR UPDATING THE FAST FORWARD, it feels so much nicer now. I just happened to check the dev log, so, here is your thank you. :)
Conceptually straightforward, and considerably fun! Kudos to the dev - it's a very solid gameplay loop and I definitely enjoyed the few hours I spent on it trying different builds!
thank you so much!!! <3
i don’t think you can get a luckier turn 1 than this holy
oh damn that is actually perfect o:
Or a second boss (for example after winning against the king you have to fight others country or even god)
Hah, one day! First let's get the game on phones <<
S2