TBF #8 – Locks Are Meant To Be Broken

Back from a long weekend!

Hello everyone! As always, I hope you've had a wonderful week so far. Here in Quebec, we just had a long weekend due to "La fête des patriotes," which is a national holiday. The weather could not have been better for this three-day period, and it was just a fun time all around.

On the game side, we've made some progress on unlockables. Last time, we discussed The Collection: a place where you can see all the cards you've unlocked in the game. Well, it's time to dive a little deeper into that system.

The locks…

For those who saw this gif, you might have wondered how to unlock cards. As you can see, most cards are locked with, to be frank, no indication of how to unlock them. The reason is simple: the only way to unlock these cards is to play the game.

What, you thought we would sell these for $9.99 each? We're not that kind of shop around here! Even if we do like money and a roof over our heads, we can't have that kind of monetization scheme.

Each time you finish an ascension, you'll have the opportunity to unlock up to three cards that will be added to your pool for the next ascension! This helps keep the game fresh each time you play.

Please ignore the UI button. The style will change as we get closer to release. It does the job… for now.

During our playtests, we saw how it impacted the replayability of the game. Immediately, gears would start spinning in the heads of playtesters as new cards introduced new challenges and new ways to play. We obviously have much more work to do on that front by adding a lot more cards, but this is a very fun way to slowly introduce new elements into the game without disrupting the flow and pace.

… are meant to be broken.

I did say the famous word, didn't I? Playtest. Yes, we had a new round of playtesting with very valuable feedback. One of the most requested elements was the need to start the game faster by introducing a different card into the initial pool on round one. This is definitely something we'll consider as we prepare for more playtesting towards the end of June.

Another element that went (too) well was the killing mechanic that we discussed in TBF #3. Some playtesters just broke the game with these new cards, making it too easy to win. In a way, we kind of like it: if a player finds a way to break the game through smart play, it should definitely be allowed. However, in this case, it was just this card being too strong.

It can kill up to 16 cards… It's just too strong.

We'll definitely do a round of balancing to adjust the difficulty while keeping the fun (and sometimes broken) parts of the game intact. We strongly believe that fun is the number one priority and that this aspect should be considered everywhere: art, gameplay, sound, interactions, and design.

The coming weeks are busy.

As we head into the end of May, we're getting closer to the demo build for itch.io! It should be out very soon, and at the latest in early June. We have a hard internal deadline to ship it by that date. Don't worry, it's coming along well.

This weekend, we'll be at a gamedev event with other developers in Quebec. We'll be playing our game, testing, discussing, and attending some conferences to better prepare us for the following months towards the release of the game.

As a consequence, the next blog post will be shorter since we'll have almost zero downtime. But don't worry, we've got you covered with some awesome new card art! Don't miss it!

See you next week!