Hello, I tried to play on my retro console, r36s, it loads and stays like that, no image appears, do you know how I can solve it, your game is very good, congratulations
I believe it would be interesting to implement a feature that allows us to copy and paste other players' builds and then have them battle it out. (Does pico allows it?)
A canon build, with a sword it would looks like the mech on the title screen. (HP: 325)
The cannons performed better than I expected, but their long attack cycle is a concern. Don't pick Destroyer Rounds; Cannons are already prone to damage overkill, but it just makes it worse.
When choosing between Root Reinforced Item and HP +15, you can get HP +15 by scrapping a useless lv3 upgraded item, so I'd prefer to choose root.
I have played this (great) game more than anyone should, and I even learned how to hack Pico-8 games just to see how some rare RNG scenarios would play out. I think I've played enough to say:
The game has a balance problem. Specificially, it is almost impossible to win the game with something other than melee weapons *without getting melee weapons that would win the game faster*. The RNG probability on melee combos is so high, that any other combo only arises if the player intentionally chooses the hard path for fun.
The other balance issue is the launcher spider. It's a very cool design, but it sucks. It is so much weaker than many preceding bosses, setting aside that its flamethrowers could be effectively countered by that anti-flame shield. I think you could double the output of the weapons and add some special boosting item in the middle (all items increase by 1), and it would still be beatable.
Ive been keeping up with the commentary surrounding the game, seeing the general feedback and it does summarize to very specific aspects of the design. While some are part of the limitations of the system, some are part of balancing a heavily RNG game. I have been writing down most of the points made cause Ive seriously consider doing a follow-up game and these points are very valuable. That being said, its been nice seeing all the screenshots of people beating the game with a variety of builds, so while they might not be as prevalent or easier to start, they are strong enough to beat the entire game. Encounter balance also needs a look-through, but once again, I have found a healthy mix of people trying and people having an easy time wining. There are things yet to be improved and I will look into them as I try to make this idea even bigger and better. Thank you for the continued commentary.
SunderBlade is terrifying. Once it appears, the game is basically won. Also, it would be really cool if each weapon interface could display the damage output ratio from the previous round. (AI Translated)
Loving this game. Quick question: If an item is in the backpack, will items with certain tags still proc? For example, if my Rusty Wire is in the backpack, will my Rusty Cutter still buff +2 in combat?
I love this game!! I decided to redo my comment with a bit more of my thoughts
- text is hard to read yadda yadda and it feels like there'd be enough space to budge things and give just 1 extra vertical pixel to the text and maybe to the trash/inventory buttons too?
- I feel like the trash button should open the inventory when clicked and close it when clicked the 2nd time? Just gets rid of 2 unnecessary clicks (at least, to me)
That's my only 2 critiques really, just a general feeling like some things could be enlarged or easier to use, otherwise been playing this game nonstop. (Does the paid version have more stuff?)
Yeah, the font is a common feedback point which is a fair critism. Due to the Pico8 engine, mixed with the complexity of a game like this one, i could have gone with keywords or with long explanations. I chose the latter since keywords are imbedded complexity. Don't think I can do much beyond making a bigger game somewhere down the line.
And yeah! The full version includes the bot items and 2 more starting characters that change your starting gear. Thank you for playing!
Managed to win a run , got lucky with the Dupe Item so i managed to upgrade them, i manage to almost survive without any live lose (lost a live during the last few fights)Tip: Really hoped the White Accessory item(Like bullet, Armor/Belt) Is able to be Upgraded as well,kept forgetting i can't do that when i picked the dupe
Over all, fun game with Replayablities,looking forward to update,if there's any(Btw i did the run on the website)
I really enjoyed playing this on my phone, but I would really have preferred if joystick controls were on by default, and didn’t turn off after every run. Still, great work!
This game is super cool. I'm stuck on one thing though: I can't find a winning non-melee items combo. HtH + boosters (health or damage or health & damage) wins every time, but I can't find a working ranged set. Shotguns *should* work but are too weak, grenades or cannons - I can't seem to get the RNG to find all the items. Same with pistols and such. Anyone got tips?
For example this is a comparatively weak HtH setup I rolled just now but I can still win with it, while all the while I cannot roll a winning gun/rust/shotgun/etc combo.
I was in the same boat (and *mostly* still am), but I found that if you get the shock-set (including the "boost all shock items by 2 each time this fires" weapon), you can beat the game.
But, to do that I had to change my enemy selection strategy. I found that, with melee builds, it doesn't really matter what enemy you choose, but with any other build, it's extremely important. You have to memorize the buildouts for later enemies.
Edit: I now think I've cleared it with every major paradigm except Cannon- Shock, Fire, Melee, Rust, and Pistol.
I'm going to jump on here and say that, even with the RNG, a lot of builds are just...not viable, which is sad. For example, the "Take one second off the pistol to the left/right" pistols are impossible to make into a winning build. That's sad, since they are among the coolest.
I even tried putting those two pistols facing each other with multiple ".5 seconds off pistol charge time" blocks, but no luck.
I think you should consider rebalancing if you have time. Like, if a player gets perfect RNG and draws four pistols (two "left" and two "right") and four "-.5" blocks, they should be easily able to beat the later enemies.
Edit: Welp, I guess it was a skill issue (or a need for luck), because I've won the last few games in a row using fire, pistol, rust, and of course melee. I believe I've done Shock, though it was super hard.
Cannon and Grenades seem impossible right now, and many of the "Unique" and "Exceptional" items seem almost impossible to use, even if you're lucky. The upgraded Superior weapons are generally better than the Unique weapons, I think. Some tinkering might make those cool end-game weapons a bit more usable.
Thank you so much for sharing your combos! Gonna try them over the next few days! I totally gotta go thru enemy types and rethink them. You're correct, some are way easier in certain builds, for me the Scorch/Flame go down way easier than Phalanxes, gonna see how that works with ranged.
Re. exceptional/unique, I couldn't get them to work as-such but sometimes they did drop a levelled (lvl 3) shock axe which is a winning item but like, its just a part of my regular melee build. I did try the buzzsaw? melee item and it worked but again, was part of the melee build and relied heavily on regular melee items. So it was more of "any melee item will work here" rather than " this specific item"
Cannons/Grenades -> I just couldn't find the g.launcher & grenades consequently enough. Cannons (as seen from cannon spider/launcher spider) just don't seem to work right now yeah. :(
I really wanted a working shotgun or SMG build, but I just can't seem to get it.
Pistols/SMGs - I had a levelled (lvl2? or 3?) MechaFinger but that didn't seem to work for me, gonna try again while paying attention to which enemies I pick.
I totally forgot about shotguns. There doesn't seem (to me) to be any item that would really seal the deal on them, even with minor buffs.
For cannons, I *think* that if you got that 3x Damage cannon with 3 of those cannon-buff items (and 24 heal, 24 shield), you could probably survive. Unfortunately, any other cannon wasn't good enough for me to beat the final bosses (that you can't avoid).
I'm really surprised about the buzzsaw! I wonder if you had built up a ton of health. I tried swapping the buzzsaw into a melee build, and I just found that it took up too much space. I found I dealt more damage without it than with it.
>get 3 decent levelled grenades in one run but again, 0 launchers
FINALLY got a 50/50 melee/ranged win with a really simple setup but I honestly just couldn't get the RNG rolls needed to collect it for the past weeks somehow?
It really feels like melee wins are easier by simple RNG/item drop ratio. I really wanted AP bullet set for my SMGs but couldn't roll a single one in this run.
re. Buzzsaw (actually had like 3 wins with it lol) yeah had to get more health, and with daggers and the +damage/+health engine it works. Barely but does.
Re:Buzzsaw 1. Impressive. I never managed it. 2. Buzzsaw still feels broken, because from what I've seen two daggers (which you get really early in the game) is 100% always better than buzzsaw. By the time buzzsaw is running as fast as 2 daggers,, you could have been dealing 100dmg/s with daggers.
I actually did get the RNG for grenade launcher: 2 upgraded grenades, and grenade launcher. But guess what! That takes up 7 vertical slots, leaving just 1 more slot for other useful stuff. 100 damage every 8(?) seconds isn't that great for taking up the space of 4 weapons. 4 upgraded daggers (with no other melee buffs) deal almost exactly that amount of damage.
Won on my 3rd run, repair piston + dagger could build up some serious damage (like 45 every 2 seconds). Amazing game, can't wait to see what you make next!
No, there is no rotation in this game. It was balanced around the shapes having this limitation being considered. One part is code complexity and the other is non-native rotation function in pico8.
Finally I got my little goblin hands on the full release, cannot wait to run this game for hours :D especially super glad about all the new stuff added, there is just so much more to explore
please allow either skipping the choosing item phase or a way to trash one of the given items, I find myself with bad options a lot of times when I choose to pick items
As items give +5 when i throw them, just add this as a fourth option. is a bit hard to find space in the UI but I am sure you could do it. And this removes the by far biggest annoyance for me.
Besides that: If you can add 20 levels of progressively increasing challenge & some more items that can be unlocked through gameplay (exactly slay the spire core progression basically),
Due to limitations this was an option I had considered but couldn't implement. This is a feature I will be keeping in count if I were to make a bigger version of the game. Thank you for the feedback.
It's suggested that it's possible to play this on mobile? Is there something I need to do to make it work? Or does it just not work on Android phones? Which format should I be using?
It is possible to play the web version on mobile! After launching the game, inside of the Pico8 interface, there is a small rectangular button which is the "PAUSE" button. After pressing it, the game opens a menu that allows you select an option called "Joystick: OFF". Pressing on that option turns it ON and makes the movement of the directional buttons be mapped to the movement of the cursor. The (X) button is your main interaction button and the (O) button opens and closes the inventory. Hope this helps!
I am really enjoying the game, and do hope a locally-installed phone version eventually comes, because boy oh boy is this a delightfully bite-sized little game and I want accessible at all times, lol.
This is a neat take on the backpack autobattler! I kept seeing items that were like oooooh I wanna try that next (the sniper rifle especially). I wound up just buying a ton of knives and barely winning every fight lol.
Pico8 does have saving! its very limited, but you can "store 64 numbers (256 bytes) of data to persistent storage". By encoding the items of the inventory, I managed to "store those values" and read them back in the menu. You can look into DSET() and DGET() if you wanna read about it.
Okay well now having played it Im even more impressed. Outstanding work.
One snag I ran into while on mobile using joystick mode was that if I was holding a piece of equipment to place in storage, but accidentally pressed O to shift the view up top, when shifting back down the equipment was no longer visible.
Im assuming it gets repositioned somewhere as when I turned off Joystick mode and tapped rhe screen it appeared at that location.
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Hello, I tried to play on my retro console, r36s, it loads and stays like that, no image appears, do you know how I can solve it, your game is very good, congratulations
I believe it would be interesting to implement a feature that allows us to copy and paste other players' builds and then have them battle it out. (Does pico allows it?)
A canon build, with a sword it would looks like the mech on the title screen. (HP: 325)
The cannons performed better than I expected, but their long attack cycle is a concern. Don't pick Destroyer Rounds; Cannons are already prone to damage overkill, but it just makes it worse.
When choosing between Root Reinforced Item and HP +15, you can get HP +15 by scrapping a useless lv3 upgraded item, so I'd prefer to choose root.
I have played this (great) game more than anyone should, and I even learned how to hack Pico-8 games just to see how some rare RNG scenarios would play out. I think I've played enough to say:
The game has a balance problem. Specificially, it is almost impossible to win the game with something other than melee weapons *without getting melee weapons that would win the game faster*. The RNG probability on melee combos is so high, that any other combo only arises if the player intentionally chooses the hard path for fun.
The other balance issue is the launcher spider. It's a very cool design, but it sucks. It is so much weaker than many preceding bosses, setting aside that its flamethrowers could be effectively countered by that anti-flame shield. I think you could double the output of the weapons and add some special boosting item in the middle (all items increase by 1), and it would still be beatable.
Ive been keeping up with the commentary surrounding the game, seeing the general feedback and it does summarize to very specific aspects of the design. While some are part of the limitations of the system, some are part of balancing a heavily RNG game. I have been writing down most of the points made cause Ive seriously consider doing a follow-up game and these points are very valuable. That being said, its been nice seeing all the screenshots of people beating the game with a variety of builds, so while they might not be as prevalent or easier to start, they are strong enough to beat the entire game. Encounter balance also needs a look-through, but once again, I have found a healthy mix of people trying and people having an easy time wining. There are things yet to be improved and I will look into them as I try to make this idea even bigger and better. Thank you for the continued commentary.
Loving this game. Quick question: If an item is in the backpack, will items with certain tags still proc? For example, if my Rusty Wire is in the backpack, will my Rusty Cutter still buff +2 in combat?
Only items in play are counted towards buffs. So in the case of Rusty items, only those not in the backpack are counted towards that bonus.
I love this game!! I decided to redo my comment with a bit more of my thoughts
- text is hard to read yadda yadda and it feels like there'd be enough space to budge things and give just 1 extra vertical pixel to the text and maybe to the trash/inventory buttons too?
- I feel like the trash button should open the inventory when clicked and close it when clicked the 2nd time? Just gets rid of 2 unnecessary clicks (at least, to me)
That's my only 2 critiques really, just a general feeling like some things could be enlarged or easier to use, otherwise been playing this game nonstop. (Does the paid version have more stuff?)
Yeah, the font is a common feedback point which is a fair critism. Due to the Pico8 engine, mixed with the complexity of a game like this one, i could have gone with keywords or with long explanations. I chose the latter since keywords are imbedded complexity. Don't think I can do much beyond making a bigger game somewhere down the line.
And yeah! The full version includes the bot items and 2 more starting characters that change your starting gear. Thank you for playing!
This is an amazing game - especially that it’s in PICO-8. Here’s my playthrough with feedback:
PS: If wires are working then they are not drawing their damage lines like other things.
Managed to win a run , got lucky with the Dupe Item so i managed to upgrade them, i manage to almost survive without any live lose (lost a live during the last few fights)
Tip: Really hoped the White Accessory item(Like bullet, Armor/Belt) Is able to be Upgraded as well,kept forgetting i can't do that when i picked the dupe
Over all, fun game with Replayablities,looking forward to update,if there's any(Btw i did the run on the website)
I really enjoyed playing this on my phone, but I would really have preferred if joystick controls were on by default, and didn’t turn off after every run. Still, great work!
This game is super cool. I'm stuck on one thing though: I can't find a winning non-melee items combo. HtH + boosters (health or damage or health & damage) wins every time, but I can't find a working ranged set. Shotguns *should* work but are too weak, grenades or cannons - I can't seem to get the RNG to find all the items. Same with pistols and such. Anyone got tips?
For example this is a comparatively weak HtH setup I rolled just now but I can still win with it, while all the while I cannot roll a winning gun/rust/shotgun/etc combo.
I was in the same boat (and *mostly* still am), but I found that if you get the shock-set (including the "boost all shock items by 2 each time this fires" weapon), you can beat the game.
But, to do that I had to change my enemy selection strategy. I found that, with melee builds, it doesn't really matter what enemy you choose, but with any other build, it's extremely important. You have to memorize the buildouts for later enemies.
Edit: I now think I've cleared it with every major paradigm except Cannon- Shock, Fire, Melee, Rust, and Pistol.
I'm going to jump on here and say that, even with the RNG, a lot of builds are just...not viable, which is sad. For example, the "Take one second off the pistol to the left/right" pistols are impossible to make into a winning build. That's sad, since they are among the coolest.
I even tried putting those two pistols facing each other with multiple ".5 seconds off pistol charge time" blocks, but no luck.
I think you should consider rebalancing if you have time. Like, if a player gets perfect RNG and draws four pistols (two "left" and two "right") and four "-.5" blocks, they should be easily able to beat the later enemies.
Edit: Welp, I guess it was a skill issue (or a need for luck), because I've won the last few games in a row using fire, pistol, rust, and of course melee. I believe I've done Shock, though it was super hard.
Cannon and Grenades seem impossible right now, and many of the "Unique" and "Exceptional" items seem almost impossible to use, even if you're lucky. The upgraded Superior weapons are generally better than the Unique weapons, I think. Some tinkering might make those cool end-game weapons a bit more usable.
Thank you so much for sharing your combos! Gonna try them over the next few days! I totally gotta go thru enemy types and rethink them. You're correct, some are way easier in certain builds, for me the Scorch/Flame go down way easier than Phalanxes, gonna see how that works with ranged.
Re. exceptional/unique, I couldn't get them to work as-such but sometimes they did drop a levelled (lvl 3) shock axe which is a winning item but like, its just a part of my regular melee build. I did try the buzzsaw? melee item and it worked but again, was part of the melee build and relied heavily on regular melee items. So it was more of "any melee item will work here" rather than " this specific item"
Cannons/Grenades -> I just couldn't find the g.launcher & grenades consequently enough. Cannons (as seen from cannon spider/launcher spider) just don't seem to work right now yeah. :(
I really wanted a working shotgun or SMG build, but I just can't seem to get it.
Pistols/SMGs - I had a levelled (lvl2? or 3?) MechaFinger but that didn't seem to work for me, gonna try again while paying attention to which enemies I pick.
I totally forgot about shotguns. There doesn't seem (to me) to be any item that would really seal the deal on them, even with minor buffs.
For cannons, I *think* that if you got that 3x Damage cannon with 3 of those cannon-buff items (and 24 heal, 24 shield), you could probably survive. Unfortunately, any other cannon wasn't good enough for me to beat the final bosses (that you can't avoid).
I'm really surprised about the buzzsaw! I wonder if you had built up a ton of health. I tried swapping the buzzsaw into a melee build, and I just found that it took up too much space. I found I dealt more damage without it than with it.
OK so I spent a few days and RNG was like
>0 grenade launchers total, like at all
>get 3 decent levelled grenades in one run but again, 0 launchers
FINALLY got a 50/50 melee/ranged win with a really simple setup but I honestly just couldn't get the RNG rolls needed to collect it for the past weeks somehow?
It really feels like melee wins are easier by simple RNG/item drop ratio. I really wanted AP bullet set for my SMGs but couldn't roll a single one in this run.
re. Buzzsaw (actually had like 3 wins with it lol) yeah had to get more health, and with daggers and the +damage/+health engine it works. Barely but does.
Re:Buzzsaw
1. Impressive. I never managed it.
2. Buzzsaw still feels broken, because from what I've seen two daggers (which you get really early in the game) is 100% always better than buzzsaw. By the time buzzsaw is running as fast as 2 daggers,, you could have been dealing 100dmg/s with daggers.
I actually did get the RNG for grenade launcher: 2 upgraded grenades, and grenade launcher. But guess what! That takes up 7 vertical slots, leaving just 1 more slot for other useful stuff. 100 damage every 8(?) seconds isn't that great for taking up the space of 4 weapons. 4 upgraded daggers (with no other melee buffs) deal almost exactly that amount of damage.
SUPERNEAT!
Neat game, but the pixel font is borderline unreadable. Would be more enjoyable if we didn't have to strain to read while playing.
Buen juego! Al principio no entendía sus mecanicas, después le tomé el ritmo
lovely tiny little game.
(does [adjacent] include diagonal directions?)
infinite mode.. common now. why wouldnt you? :)
Thank you! and no, adjacency just works on cardial directions.
RUST TO RUST,
ASHES TO ASHES.
No android version? :'(
Currently the way to play on Android is through the web version
peak game, very high quality and I love the art style
also that damage scales FAST with the electric axe
are the *carts.rar files Pico-8 PNGs?
Yes! That download is for the .p8.png files
Won on my 3rd run, repair piston + dagger could build up some serious damage (like 45 every 2 seconds). Amazing game, can't wait to see what you make next!
Finally won! The upgraded Tempo Engine, plus the absolutely busted Twin Dagger, carried me to victory. Excellent game!
is there a rotation key because sometimes I find myself have enough space but can't but it in because it not rotate
+1 for the question, was wondering the same thing.
No, there is no rotation in this game. It was balanced around the shapes having this limitation being considered. One part is code complexity and the other is non-native rotation function in pico8.
Finally I got my little goblin hands on the full release, cannot wait to run this game for hours :D especially super glad about all the new stuff added, there is just so much more to explore
please allow either skipping the choosing item phase or a way to trash one of the given items, I find myself with bad options a lot of times when I choose to pick items
This
As items give +5 when i throw them, just add this as a fourth option. is a bit hard to find space in the UI but I am sure you could do it. And this removes the by far biggest annoyance for me.
Besides that:
If you can add 20 levels of progressively increasing challenge & some more items that can be unlocked through gameplay (exactly slay the spire core progression basically),
Yeah, Ascension would be a great add to the game, but that would be part of a different, more larger version of the game.
Due to limitations this was an option I had considered but couldn't implement. This is a feature I will be keeping in count if I were to make a bigger version of the game. Thank you for the feedback.
Amazing game. You always nail the game loop!
It's suggested that it's possible to play this on mobile? Is there something I need to do to make it work? Or does it just not work on Android phones? Which format should I be using?
It is possible to play the web version on mobile! After launching the game, inside of the Pico8 interface, there is a small rectangular button which is the "PAUSE" button. After pressing it, the game opens a menu that allows you select an option called "Joystick: OFF". Pressing on that option turns it ON and makes the movement of the directional buttons be mapped to the movement of the cursor. The (X) button is your main interaction button and the (O) button opens and closes the inventory. Hope this helps!
Ahhh, so the WEB version, I can't just slap the app in there and call it a day like I could with Slice And Dice...
Thanks for the info! :)
I am really enjoying the game, and do hope a locally-installed phone version eventually comes, because boy oh boy is this a delightfully bite-sized little game and I want accessible at all times, lol.
I agree this would sell beautifully as it is for mobile!
Such a simple game yet addicting! Love this stuff!
This is a neat take on the backpack autobattler! I kept seeing items that were like oooooh I wanna try that next (the sniper rifle especially). I wound up just buying a ton of knives and barely winning every fight lol.
How does the game remember the last run? I thought Pico8 had no saving?
Pico8 does have saving! its very limited, but you can "store 64 numbers (256 bytes) of data to persistent storage". By encoding the items of the inventory, I managed to "store those values" and read them back in the menu. You can look into DSET() and DGET() if you wanna read about it.
Oh, I see! I didn't expect it to work on web exports either XD. Awesome game btw!!
Wow this looks amazing!
Dammit Loki... Another gorgeous game lol. Havent had a chance to play yet but this looks ridiculously good.!
Okay well now having played it Im even more impressed. Outstanding work.
One snag I ran into while on mobile using joystick mode was that if I was holding a piece of equipment to place in storage, but accidentally pressed O to shift the view up top, when shifting back down the equipment was no longer visible.
Im assuming it gets repositioned somewhere as when I turned off Joystick mode and tapped rhe screen it appeared at that location.
Hmmm I think I see the problem. Ill look into it, ty for playing!