Brought it this morning and ended up 45 minutes late for work. It’s actually legitimately good and has that 1 more turn addicting feel to it. I had to force myself to abandon my second run or I would have been even later to work.
My first attempt reached floor 41 with an exhaust focused deck. I had cards that got stronger when you played them and other cards designed to slim down my deck or draw more cards so that I could reuse them quicker. There was a nice combo going between a card that gave me 4 block whenever I exhausted a card and another one that would exhaust my whole hand and do a bunch of damage. I also had 2 relics that gave me +energy which went well with the +draw cards I had.
Streamed this today. A quick game with an Ironclad and a long one with a Silent.
My streams would probably be more enjoyable if I didn’t try to explain every decision I made, and I probably wouldn’t get decision fatigue as easily too
Is there any kind of progression mechanic so that failed runs can make subsequent runs a bit easier (eg. by getting new cards you can put in your deck etc)? Or is it more like Nethack where there’s nothing to unlock?
Won twice now with the Ironclad so here are my thoughts on what works and what doesn’t work.
First off, Relics > Cards. Cards require you to draw and play them while relic effects are constant. This means that you generally want to go with the ? spaces over the smaller monsters. You still need cards but you’ll have plenty of opportunities to add to your deck. It’s certainly true that not every ? is going to get you a relic but they’re the only way you’re going to see them drop them outside of elite monsters/bosses. Elite Monsters always felt a bit more risky and draining that I wanted to endure so I tried to avoid them.
Secondly, you need extra energy from somewhere. Relics are your best source but cards that give you energy can also substitute for what your energy needs. You can’t beat the later monsters if you’re only playing 3 cards a turn, even the upgraded cards aren’t strong enough to beat the enemy monsters. A mix of draw + extra energy is required if you’re going to get through the 3rd map.
Of my two wins, the block focused one was the easier. The main card for this is barricade which lets your block persist between rounds and body slam which converts the block into 50-60 damage hits. Grab all the block cards you can and you can outpace all the incoming damage. It’s actually a bit rough in the early turns as you’re playing power cards that aren’t directly effecting the battle but once you get rage and juggernaut stacks to go with your barricade, you’re going to win that fight.
The second win was Rampage + Searing Blows + Headbutt. I kept my deck as small as possible and used 1-2 cards for a majority of my damage and focused on playing them as often as possible. When your rampage is hitting for 60+ things die pretty quickly.
I’ve tried doing a strength build but it wasn’t that success even when starting with limit-break which lets you double your strength. The ramp up time is too long and I died in the 3rd map. I still need to try the other class and see how it feels.
Me and my roommate completed our first run yesterday, was an amazing game with the silent, we got like perfect synergy cards+relics, the deck basically was draw, energy generation,3 copies of “that-one-that-does-damage-to-all-enemies-whenever-you-use-a-card” and some copies of other utility damaging cards, even with that we managed to die in a third floor random encounter (luckily we had the resurrection item).
I’m having a great time playing this game, great job!
This game is great, and for an Early Access game it looks very polished already. Made it to the second boss twice with an Ironclad where I lost hopelessly; the game feels the right kind of challenging and rewarding though. Overall I love that it reminds me of both Dominion and FTL, as I’ve played and enjoyed those extensively.
Can’t wait to play it some more over the weekend, great job!
I also lost my pyramid run, but that was mostly on me as I chose to lose my only exhaust effect and then picked up a regret. Which now I type it sounds kind of appropriate.
Just wanna add to the slew of voices lavishing tremendous praise on this game. Won now with both Silent and Ironclad a couple of times each. Incredibly fun with sufficient variance to keep the gameplay interesting, but not to the point where it nullifies the strategic elements. Amazing stuff.
