Welcome or Welcome Back!

Today's post doesn't come with a new version - though some of you may have noticed the hotfix for screen resolution compatibilities, yesterday hence 0.3.2.1 (first time i've used a more-than-minor-version and i'm sure it won't be the last) - but rather a progress report on how the next major patch for Final Notice is coming along, 0.4.0. Before that, let me quickly speak about the progress with version 0.3.5, as that'll be coming next TUESDAY - was going to be wednesday but I'm on my onesies at work the back half of the week and don't think I can spare the time to do all the uploading business and such!

Progress on 0.3.5

I spoke in the last devlog about how I wasn't completely positive what domain I wanted to add for 0.3.5, but had some ideas floating around. Well, the good news is that I have, indeed, decided and managed to get the domain all put together over the last couple of days, as well as one of the two adjectives that'll be coming. Take a peek at the oncoming ad for 0.3.5's launch next week and maybe you can figure it out.

That's right - the next domain to be added is Dreams. Dreams domain will revolve mostly around a boss that seeks to render your cards useless by making them just a dream, it's like an M. Night Shyamalan movie. Cards will very subtly flicker in your hand if they are "VEILED", the status effect the dreams domain imparts. When played, they banish themselves, without triggering an effect. This is two-fold in use, obviously these cards can be cleansed, that much is the obvious counter play, but certain cards that like when you banish something, like Stamped Copy can actually use these cards to play off of the effect, as it's a banish in and of itself. Beyond that, the boss' primary synergies are slowly banishing your cards until you're left with very little and punishing larger banish pools, as we don't currently have a boss that does that well. You can consider it control/deck disruption, as a lot of it's banishing is deck based, with a little hand based veiling.

The core design principle at play here is that banishing, as it is right now, is just a very, very notably free way to generate value and doesn't carry much of a downside. Exile-Attendant, the preset deck, takes great advantage of banishing cards repeatedly to draw more, deal damage and so on, the value of it is really, really good, and I want to keep that kind of value, but the boss can't really punish you for repeatedly banishing out your whole hand to then draw a new one the turn after. Wind can punish you relatively well with Suffocate, but one out of all the possible adjectives/domains is too little.

Progress on 0.4.0 - Zeus!

Here's the meaty one, there's quite a lot of work going into making a modular bounty system, i.e. easy to add to in the future. This first boss will take the brunt of the effort to create, but bounty bosses after should take a fraction of the time, since most of it will just be reusing the first boss, changing the display and then altering timings for it's special interactions and the deck it uses, the primary system will be all built.

And luckily, that primary system has been built, and now all that remains is making Zeus an interesting, challenging bounty. The idea of this system is to give tailored games over the current game's randomisations, to give the player something to fight against specifically. Eventually, this'll be turned into a sort of roguelike mode where you fight a spree of bounty bosses with a smaller initial deck, then add to that deck as time goes on through the run - I'm considering an infinite run and possible leaderboards, but we'll see how that goes - that's far future at this point.

Saying all that, Zeus also comes with his own status effect, CHARGED.

Wooooow it's not just a piece of text that says "CHARGED" on the card woooooow.

"Charged" cards are simply unplayable, much like entombed, but they directly buff what cards Zeus can play, leading to a difficulty in playing against him, as, as you might be able to tell by the placeholder card effect, Zeus deals a LOT of mortis out. To play against Charged and keep him from zapping you out of the game too quickly, you'll either need to pack ways to dump cards for value or cleansing effects. Now, some of the more strategical players may think "well it doesn't matter how much he dishes out if he never gets a turn, I'll just stun him the whole game."

I GOT YOUR ASS. I THOUGHT OF THAT. 

After Zeus hits 30 mortis, he'll play a special card that allows him to completely ignore stuns for the rest of the fight. If your plan is to stun him till he drops dead, you better not brick! He has an additional effect at 60 mortis, and another at 80, but for now those'll stay a secret, you'll have to check back in future devlogs if you want to see those.

"But what's the counterplay?"

Well, completing certain interactions against Zeus will award the player with certain cards that have a "Grounding" effect. These cards provide strategical advantage and make Zeus far easier to handle, but you need to be able to find a path to completing these tasks mid fight if you want to receive Grounding cards. It's important to note - these cards are not necessary to beat Zeus, but are there to make it easier to do so. He's a tough fight, his whole gameplan is really heavy hits and not much else. He can't really interact with your hand save for one or two cards, he can't really interact with your deck or discard, you're facing him as I think is thematic for the King of Olympus, without tricks or deceit.

Maybe.

Anyway, that's all for this one, look forward to the Dreams domain coming out next Tuesday and possibly, quite soon, a steam page!

Till next time!