Playing the Alpha build of the game while commenting

[ 2025-06-12 07:58:33 CET ] [ Original post ]

Happy Pride month! I've been hard at work working on bugfixes and quality of life improvements for this update but managed to squeeze in a little content. A new Animon to celebrate Pride: Jellmeel! It's a Curiosity and Wisdom type which introduces a new feature: Color varations. Jellmeel comes in many, many Pride flag colors. This marks also the first time, I'm running an in-game event.

Capturing Jellmeel, which appears now in the Demo, contributes to a global goal. If at least a 100 of them are caught, I'll add it to the full game. You can see the progress in the main menu of the demo (hit the inspect button if you're playing with the TTS mode)

I also added a few new stickers for you to enjoy and fill that album of yours!

[img src="https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images/45478228/f81ddc4f006dac905d23770210d0a400387a0aeb.png" alt="17 variations of a new Animon: Jellmeel. It looks like a jellyfish, eyes closed and with a gentle smile on the face. The arms come in different color palettes, representing several of the LGBTQIA+ pride flags."][/img]

Biggest Changes

I discovered that my stat scaling was not working at all, meaning none of the Animons that you encounter above level 1 hat increased stats, including the bosses. I fixed that now which is good but also means I have done balancing work on the wrong basis before. Big oopsie!

I have adjusted exp and HP scaling a bit to make up for it. Additionally, you now get to spend 2 points on stats per level-up which makes it a little easier to hit those "for every 4 points" markers. The trick costs have also been adjusted as several tricks of the buff, debuff, and heal category had too low dice costs. Some are now more costly, others got a bit cheaper. I will continue to work on smoothing out all the values.

You can send Feedback directly from the game, there's a new link button at the bottom of the main menu and you can send Bug reports from the pause menu which conveniently link your game logs and a screenshot of the last screen you were on. This helps me narrowing down where bugs happen a lot!

[ 2025-06-10 16:58:40 CET ] [ Original post ]

Patch Notes

• (Tutorial) fixed end turn stuck after Snap
• Fixed dialogue fast forward not working

[ 2025-05-31 21:13:45 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi, wonderful humans! It's time for another devlog. The Creature Collector Fest is over but the Next Fest is right around the corner! Juggling priorities gets harder and harder between improving the demo, working on the main game, making sure the Twitch integration works, adding Animons, [s]capturing[/s] fixing wild bugs, marketing. I'm trying to use Codecks more consistently which definitely helps. Did you know I have an open board? You can check what I'm working on or what I have planned and even up-vote features you like to see most. You can find it here. With another upcoming event, the Access-Ability showcase, I've been prioritizing accessibility features like optimizing the UI for scaling to reduce cases where elements get pushed out of the screen. Next, I'm trying to tackle adding more options for photosensitivity. You can already disable screenshake but there's currently no option for reducing flashing lights. [img alt="Soulblaze battle screen, Rashikan vs Escurida. Player has around 10 dice which scale up bouncing in a satisfying way when the mouse hovers over them"]https://i.imgur.com/xV4OCdf.gif.io/post/3lpceejf2es2m[/img]

Time for Polish

With a little bit of time opening up, I managed to dedicate some of it to polish which felt incredibly good after weeks of very technical tasks. I improved the win screen that shows when you beat either the demo or the alpha and added animations to it (loving Tweens y'all!). Honestly, the win screen was all over the place before that with elements overlapping each other, text being cut off, and more abominations. Oof... At the end of last week, I started working on preventing the UI getting pushed around when you or the enemy had too many dice. I added dynamic spacing between the dice that takes the amount and the width of the container into account and added a nice bouncy hover effect to make it easier to see when they are close together. Again, using Tweens, I scale the node up and down accordingly with the "elastic" curve for that nice swing effect at the end. I hope to find time to add more battle effects to tricks which are also in need of a lot of polish. Many attacks just reuse the tackle or jump attack effect but they deserve their own little identity. This might lead to refactoring the entire battle effect system which I implemented a while ago before I learned how to write better code. I'm currently creating a scene for each effect with the battle effect resource which has a drop-down for all sorts of effect types like animation, tween, particles, and so on. I can assign a target control and tell it what to do from self-defined presets, if the effect should target the player or opponent, and so on. I probably want to rework it to be similar to how I create tricks now, where I can add trick features as a sub-resource indefinitely to customize it however I want because like with the old tricks I cannot combine effects like tween and particles with the current battle effect system. [img alt="Updated starter screen with six starters: Difdagua, Asinember, Halazoom, Noelle's Zahransa, Arsinjab, Tanina. When selecting one, a little box below it shows the quirk name and description of the respective Animon"]https://i.imgur.com/VyWVzq6.gif[/img]< A few smaller tweaks are the run menu on the map collapsing when not needed and the starter selection screen which now shows the Animon's quirk when hovering/focusing on it.

Roadmap(?)

Planning the next months is bleh (I hate planning!) but it's gotta be done. I already moved some feature back into the early access period to make sure I get the base game loop solid and working before that. Currently, I'm eyeing end of July for early access which is after the Summer Sale but before the gamescom. Until then, I want all three regions to have roughly the same amount of Animons and the difficulty curve more or less balanced (and of course zero bugs and full optimization which is a reasonable and realistic expectation). There's also a story-cinematic I have planned as an intro to give you a little bit of narrative context but we'll see if I get around drawing all that. A few features I have planned for the ea period are:

• Soulblaze mechanic: We all want it, we all love it: Evolution, transformation, digitize, super sayjan form, and what not. Soulblaze forms have been on the list since the beginning but I didn't want to add it until I was sure I have settled on the dice mechanics because they will be a big part of triggering it.
• Nuzlocke-mode: Adding the popular self-imposed difficulty challenge from Pokmon to the game. If you don't know it, it means that if one of your creatures gets defeated, you have to release it and you get to only capture one creature per region. The mode would take care of these restrictions for you, of course.
• Co-op mode: I love co-op and there's not nearly enough games with it. Since Soulblaze is turn-based, it's possible to insert a 2-player mode but I'd have to figure out how to handle displaying 2 Animons per side and how to handle turns then. Do the player both plan their turn and they play out together or do they go one after the other? Maybe alternating with the enemy? Will think about this.
• Unlockable comic pages: Story is always important to me and I literally can't create a game without having a story in mind. While Soulblaze might be my least story-focused game so far, I still want it to contain lore and especially character stories. In that regard, I want players to be able to unlock comic pages while they play which they can read in the collection and don't worry, I'll add visual descriptions to those as well, of course!

Keep in mind that those are features I wish to implement and not guaranteed (well, except for Soulblaze forms which... kinda have to be in there, y'know?). I don't know if I will have the time to implement all of these or that I don't run into serious technical issues that I can't solve. Solo dev means that your time is so split between everything that every mid to large hurdle can mean it has to be put on hold indefinitely. But I'll do my best and it also helps that I really, really want those features.

Lore Sneak-Peek

Over a decade ago the Observer arrived on Earth, a huge crystalline lifeform that appeared to be peaceful. A few years later, for unknown reasons, it shattered and fragments of it grew to became the Animons we know today. Bindshards are made from the outer shell of the Observer and are used to capture Animons because they naturally want to return to their original form, therefore binding easily with the material of the Observer. When exactly the Soulblaze was discovered is unclear but the first Animancers experienced alteration of the Animons' physical shape when they got really excited, scared, or angry. It happens when the soul literally ignites in a surge of energy. Humans, as they do, saw the power and tried to trigger the Soulblaze within themselves which did not go so great... the results are, well, you have met some of the bosses, haven't you...?

[ 2025-05-28 16:59:00 CET ] [ Original post ]

This update contains new settings to reduce some visual effects for players with photo-sensitivity. The "Reduce Flashing/Flickering" settings now removes the red flash when taking damage and makes other effects slower. This is still work in progress so please try at your own risk. For the Twitch mode, there's now an overlay toggle that renders most of the Twitch UI on a separate window which you can then grab via OBS. Viewers can then still see what they can interact with but it won't be in the way of the game. You can also toggle if you want a transparent window or a green chroma key background. This is still experimental but worked when I tested it quite well.

Patch Notes

New Stuff

• Added options to restart and abandon run to the pause menu
• Added V-Sync option to settings
• Implemented option to render Twitch UI on second transparent window
• Added options to reduce effects for doubles and exp text popups
• Added option to reduce flashing or fast visual effects (still WIP!)
• Added dynamic dice spacing to make sure dice don't push UI outward

Changed

• Trick shop prices reworked, now dynamically calculated
• Improved tutorial highlight pointers and arrows
• Removed type efficiency from poison damage (no weakness or resistance)

Fixed

• (TTS) Fixed error when opening empty inventory
• Fixed text box speed not getting fast enough
• Fixed Arcade crashing game when selecting upgrade

[ 2025-05-28 16:29:04 CET ] [ Original post ]

Bugfixes

• fixed temp damage bonus not being applied during battle
• fixed inventory screen tooltips overlaying items on higher ui scale
• fixed menu button not showing for mouse controls on initial map visit
• redesigned demo end screen and optimized for different ui scales
• fixed full party release dialogue broken when changing leaders
• tweaked victory and chest screen for ui scale

[ 2025-05-17 10:51:47 CET ] [ Original post ]

Bugfixes

• (TTS) Added missing Entropy description to dice bag
• (TTS) Fixed tooltip not reading on victory screen
• (TTS) Removed icons being read in battle messages
• Fixed cost calculation for Cleansing Flame
• Fixed tutorial issue where players could click on a wild node and start a battle
• Fixed battle UI not showing new stats
• Fixed previews for special damage sources (Heal and Stat Change tricks)
• Fixed Quirk "Fire Eater"
• Fixed shields resetting when leveling up

Changes

• Removed Minjaluna from demo and added back to region 2 (her Quirk doesn't work with D4s)
• Burn and Poison damage is now equal to half the stacks (instead of a percent of max HP like before)

[ 2025-05-15 16:00:00 CET ] [ Original post ]

Bugfixes

• fixed leveled up stats showing inconsistent values
• fixed Fusion screen starting with 0 charges
• fixed trick Mumble not doing anything
• (TTS) fixed inspect mode in battle breaking selection after pressing right
• (TTS) fixed not being able to select trick to forget when teaching an Animon
• (TTS) improved Animon details screen usability
• fixed reordering tricks on Animon details screen

[ 2025-05-13 08:26:46 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hurray, it's the Creature Collector fest and Soulblaze is here with a freshly updated demo! The update adds several new tricks that you can teach your Animons, adding more complex combination of effects and introduces a few negative effects. These negative effects, like knockback-damage or applying status conditions to yourself, reduce the cost of the trick so they can be valuable. Additionally, the visual feedback for making decisions has been improved. You will now see which of your Animons can learn a trick you are about to pick, before picking it. The inventory now also shows how many of the presented items you currently have while browsing.
I have also implemented carrying over progress to the full game. There are no persistent upgrades in the demo but you can collect a limited amount of marbles (currency to buy upgrades) which you will have when the full game releases. Your collection will also be carried over. The best part, though, is unlocking the cute Tanina, when beating the boss of the demo. Tanina will then be added as a starter Animon later! So, grab your bindshards and go smack that boss!

[ 2025-05-12 17:41:34 CET ] [ Original post ]

I have dedicated April to adding and improving the accessibility features in the game and with the nice coincidence that Steam is adding accessibility tags to the store, I thought this was a good time for another devlog!

Accessbility Improvements

[img alt="Screenshot of settings screen with Open Dyslexic font enabled"]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images/45478228/5f5c6b2b1ace275c7eb47ff3137acab5ae274ecd.png[/img] The game already had a selection of features, most prominently the TTS-mode, but there was also the experimental Open Dyslexic font support and UI scaling. Open Dyslexic was easy to implement but a problem to optimize for. The font is much larger than Kenyan Coffee, the default font of the game, leading to elements getting out of bounds and pushing the layout around. To finally get a hold on that problem -plus I wanted that feature too- I looked into font scaling in Godot. There doesnt seem to be a simple way to globally scale fonts like you can do with UI scaling but there are label and richtext label theme styles that you can add and those you can update. Some already existed out of the box so I added some more until I had styles for small, medium, and large headlines as well as small, medium, and large text. Then I saved the font sizes as defaults at the start of the game and set another set of constant font sizes for Open Dyslexic. Now, when switching to it, I can change the font and adjust the font size but also allow for scaling the fonts up and down by overriding all styles. I also had to add the styles for buttons, labels, and anything that displayed text to make it consistent but now you can adjust how large or small you want the game text to be! Nice! I had to tweak a few elements to expand better when the size got too big and it is not 100% perfect on very large sizes but nothing breaks completely and thats a win? Next, I tackled another thing Ive been meaning to add: Input remapping. Being able to change bindings is not just nice for when you prefer different layouts, its also important for players that have physical disabilities. I used two plugins made by wonderful people: Geip by IsItLucas and Controller Icons by rsubtil. [img alt="GIF of remapping controls"]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images/45478228/72135c2088023f48cc9ea19f25ed2d35ac5a5127.gif[/img] Luckily, Ive been using input actions already instead of listening for specific inputs and I was wiring all inputs through an input manager that handles which screens are allowed to receive inputs and which ones are on hold (for example to avoid executing a trick in battle when you are in the inventory screen). Adding the remapping screen to the settings and updating the input actions was a breeze with the plugin. The only issue I had was that the conflict detection which the plugin is supposed to have didnt work for me so I added some code to check if theres already an action with that button that youre trying to remap and swapped them, if yes. Together with the controller icon plugin which allows me to add images that update according to the current input method and assigned action, it was set up and done! Next thing I tackled was actually showing the most important settings on first startup of the game and then saving the choices there which is the recommended way of accessibility usability. In that motion, I completely refactored my settings screen which became more and more unwieldy. I was adding everything manually and connecting it with signals to make it work. Needed another slider? Had to add the line, add the text, hook up the slider to the settings script, send those new settings over to the settings script (which handles the actual application of the settings) and add the info to the TTS controller. This. Was. Terrible. [img alt="Screenshot of new settings resources in Godot editor"]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images/45478228/617230bb3ac74cafd1228c8cbc31fe75df89a6cf.png[/img] So, I created a new resource, called a Configuration, and a component called Configuration Line. The Configuration would store what type it was (button, toggle, slider, etc.), which keys it used in the settings dictionary, the category, and other details. The configurations gets pulled from project folders and instantiated as Configuration Lines dynamically when the settings screen is opened, and automatically hooked up to signals and the TTS controller. Now, adding a new volume slider for example, was as easy as creating a new Configuration resource in the audio settings folder and done! I also added a little checkbox for which settings I wanted to include in the startup screen. So when you start the game for the first time, itll load a special version of the settings screen and asks you if you want to enable TTS mode. For most of you, this screen will not show because you already have game settings stored.

Tricks up the Sleeve

Refactoring the settings screen in this way inspired me to do something similar for my Trick resources (still called Techniques in the project). Up until that point, the Technique resource was very rigid, it included variables for damage, buffs, condition, and healing. The problem was there was only one variable for each feature so I couldnt have multiple effects per category, like say, buffing attack and debuffing max shields with the same trick. So like with settings, I created a Technique Feature resource that stores pretty much the same variables but now can be added multiple times to a trick. As many as I want actually, the code execution now iterates through each feature and applies their effect. Water Bomb, for example, was a trick that damaged both enemy and your Animon and I had to add a special target called All (instead of Self and Enemy) to make it work and that was fine as long as the damage was the same but if I wanted your Animon to take a different amount of damage, then it wouldnt work. Now it does, I just add two damage features, one that targets the enemy, and one that targets your Animon, and I can adjust damages accordingly, even adding different visual effects if needed. [img alt="Screenshot of new Technique setup, showing two damage features for Water Bomb"]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images/45478228/a2cbe932466f436e59f8495de31552453960fda5.png[/img] Of course, a lot broke because the scripts assumed there was one damage value to look for, or just one buff value, so I had to fix a bunch of things but now it works and its nicer than ever. I can finally add more interesting tricks with combined effects. Theres gonna be a bunch of new ones for the April update!

Dynamic Tutorials

[img alt="GIF of dynamic tutorial, explaining the effects of Fury dice"]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images/45478228/b1937b2b30a26e6778d1da2cba9d0993acfcf916.gif[/img] Watching As of Yet Unnamed play the demo, they pointed out that there was no explanations for any of the status conditions anywhere in the game (haha, oops!) and, well, yes, that was very true. I added dynamic tutorials for both status conditions and dice effects the first time they occur. Siobhn will briefly describe them so you understand the basics of it. Especially for the dice effects which can be a bit complicated if you dont know how they work, it was important. You can reset all tutorials in the settings now, too!

Difficulty Options

I also implemented difficulty customizations (which was easier than i thought!). With the next update, you'll be able to use sliders to adjust incoming and outgoing damage, increase or reduce the amount of dice the enemy has, set catch rate to 100%, or enable 1-hit defeat.

Demo Updates

I also spend some time improving the demo and making sure theres a smooth transition into the full game. I have removed the Animons that were from regions 2 and 3 (sorry!) so its on par with the first region of the full game so you can collect up to 25 marbles and already work on your collection which both are saved and carry over to the full game. Additionally, if you beat the demo, you will unlock a unique starter for the full game as well! (Dont try to beat it yet, the update is not out yet) Your demo run will also be saved now so you can stop and continue later.

Whats Next?

I still have to implement text input for mouse and gamepad mode to round up my accessibility package but Ive seen a plugin for on-screen keyboard which I might use. Apart from that, Ill be adding more tricks and at least one more Animon, potentially more. Stay tuned!

[ 2025-04-24 09:58:24 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello, wonderful humans! It's been a while since my last devlog... I'll try to be more consistent with this! A lot has been added and changed since the last entry. I want to write a bit about the design process I had when finding some problems and how I chose to tackle them.

Actio = Reactio

The biggest change was the reworking of the enemy turn and scrapping the retaliation move idea completely. That was a difficult choice as I really loved the "actio = reactio" concept in which an enemy action only occurs as a response to a player action, putting a lot of agency and control into the players hands. Want to do a lot of moves this turn? Better prepare for retaliation in return! The twist, however, was that the enemy's trick exhausts after a use and cannot be used again until next turn. That meant there was a sweet spot that the player could reach after which the enemy is completely exhausted and cannot retaliate anymore, giving the player free attacks (if they had dice left). I loved the idea of rewarding both ends, being cautious with your tricks and therefore receive less retaliation, or being so good with your dice and spending that you can overwhelm the opponent. The system was inspired by Powered by the Apocalypse TTRPG rule set in which the enemies actually have no turns but depending on the player actions and their rolls, the GM gets to make a move in return. Unfortunately, I ran into design issues with this system that became problematic and I wasn't able to solve them within this design framework. So what happened? I couldn't solve the answer with how to deal with the round end. Once the player had spend all their dice, they had to get new ones and that happened when ending the round and starting a new one, getting all dice back and rolling them fresh. So where's the problem?

• Double spam: you could end your turn until you rolled a double or numbers that you wanted without consequences
• Spending spam: you
• Dice effects: I implemented an increasing amount of dice mechanics, like status conditions affecting dice, which only affected the player since the enemy was not using any dice. Additionally, several trick effects like Adaptive or Grow had no effect when used by the enemy because, again, no dice.

Solution Attempts

Since the enemy only acts when you acted, starting a new turn did nothing, letting you happily roll until you have what you want. So I needed either a restriction or a punishment for spamming the end turn button. I tried:

• Tricks losing their payment when starting a new turn: This prevented readying all four tricks turn after turn because you couldn't keep your paid tricks. Problem: planning ahead and paying a trick for the next round was part of the strategy of the game which then would be completely removed by it.
• Only allowing ending the turn when no dice are left: This prevented rolling until you had a double or the numbers that you wanted (e.g. 2 for Snap). Problem: You could still circumvent it by just spending your dice, end the turn, and repeat until all four are paid. The fix was negligible.
• Having to execute at least one trick before being able to end the turn: That one was dumped pretty quickly. Problem: You could roll poorly and not afford any tricks, then what? Additionally, forcing you to use a trick against your will just to end the turn is terrible game feel.
• The enemy gets a free move when you end the round: This was the most promising solution and actually stayed in the game quite a while. When a player ended their round, all tricks refresh and the opponent would randomly use one against you. This definitely prevented spam, because you would get whacked most of the time. I added a dotted outline effect to preview which technique is going to be used to make it less frustrating and random. For a while, it looked like it was working but it wasn't. I just wanted it to be. While on the surface, it prompted the behavior that I wanted, it had confusion and frustrating parts that I realized when watching people play it or getting feedback.

First, it breaks the "when you move, the enemy moves" idea because you didn't do anything, your animon did not attack or do anything. The opponent got a random freebee and you didn't. I had to add something to the nice, short, crisp sentence and it became this mutation: "when you move, the enemy moves... unless you end your turn, then the enemy also moves". That right there is a bad sign. If the sentence gets longer to describe a mechanic, it's probably the wrong direction. Second, it was unfair. You spend all your dice, used all your tricks, and then you have nothing left but to press the end turn button, seeing that the enemy is about to hit you hard with no option to defend against it except for switching animons or using an item. It did not feel good to be exposed to that extra attack. Third, it was confusing. Often players did not understand why the enemy "suddenly attacked" which is basically related to the first point. And even if you did understand it, you often forgot about it, being in the groove of your rolling and planning and aligning your tricks for nice damage and then, oh, ups, I forgot there's this extra thing.

Goodbye, Mechanic

So that, together with the fact that I couldn't apply any dice mechanics to the opponent, led me to the decision to scrap that turn system entirely. Cutting a design darling is among the hardest things in game design (or at least from my experience working in teams for the last 13 years prior to this) but it's also one of the most crucial methods. If keeping a mechanic, even a pretty cool one, means I have to add several obscure restrictions to it to make it work, it's not something I want to use. So off to the chopping block. Boop. Gone. Phew, that felt actually good. Scrapping things can be very liberating, except when you then realize that you have to write an enemy AI now (careful, not the bad gen AI beep beeeeeeeep beep beeeeeeeep beeeeeep slop but the classic "enemy picks the left path because it's a shorter way to punch you"-sorta thing. Enemy AI is a thing. We've done it for decades! Some people might now point out that it's not AI but a behavior tree which is different and they are probably right but the thing is, I'm terrified of both equally, so tomato tomato)

New Turn System

So yes, the only reasonable choice was to apply the same rules to the enemy as I do with the player which means: rolling dice, spending dice, benefiting from double effects, suffering from dice conditions... the whole show. And I actually accomplished it to my utter surprise. As you might now, I'm not a very good programmer. Many years, all I could do is code super simple gameplay prototypes and then maybe, slowly, a game but... like dynamic shit? Logic? I'm just a lil' design guy. But I powered through and went at it step by step. I came up with a point system to evaluate which tricks made more sense than others in each given turn. I awarded points based on damage or buff amount in comparison to the cost and deduced points for the amount of dice needed to pay for it so the enemy would decide that a stronger technique that needed more dice was not necessarily better than a weaker one that just needed one die, for example. Additionally, I awarded points for when the die color matched the trick's. I refined it then further by adding specific cases to the evaluation. For example, if there was a trick with the precise tag (paying exact gives a potency boost) would be prioritized as it is usually very costs efficient or shield tricks would lose points if the animon already has shields (or set the points to 0 if there are no shield slots left). Here's an example scoring for offensive tricks:

• if the trick has "Shield Break" and the target has shields: +1 point per shield, otherwise +1 per damage
• if there are matching die colors (that aren't Curiosity): 3 x amount of matching dice
• add / subtract points based on dice needed and damage: damage - sum of dice values needed to pay

There were lots of bugs to fix and cases I forgot to consider, like the opponent paying for a trick that was already free from the double effect or actually not execute a readied trick because it was growing (from the new patience dice effect). There's still probably lots of edge cases I have to fix but at the moment, it works pretty reasonably! This was definitely a good decision and it opened up the possibilities for many fun effects now, on top of being more clear to the player. Having our newest animon, Najmagi, hex the opponent's dice so they all roll 1s is pretty neat!

Second design problem: Identity

Soulblaze was always about customizing your builds and team. The fusion screen lets you upgrade and alter your tricks, adding flavours (formerly "battle tags") to them and creating new synergies. You could slap a "double" flavor on a healing trick and boom, free healing any time you roll a double. Nice! This mix and match was cool but it also meant that the unique flavors of the aspects (e.g. Fury has "Hungry", Wisdom has "Overflow", etc.) became diluted. The identity of the specific types less important and the tricks just mostly containers for you to fill with stuff. The fusion system was working great so I definitely wanted to keep that but I was thinking about adding mechanics somehow that made the different aspects (types) unique. This led me to the idea of "outsourcing" some of the flavors and turn them into unique dice effect. This actually solved another problem of mine, namely the bad game feel of mismatching dice colors. So, initially, if you wanted to pay a Fury trick, you better had a Fury die to pay with or otherwise the payment was just 1 if the colors didn't match, no matter what you rolled. The idea was that you had to think about which aspects were in your team and how to pick your dice loadouts but led to a feel of unnecessary punishment, especially when you wanted to have four animons of different types. One of my design philosophies is: [quote]reward smart player choices over punishing bad ones[/quote] Like with children. Yes, give them a lollypop when they shared their favorite toy with the annoying kid next door instead of playing Rebecca Black to them when they didn't. Okay, granted, bribing children with candy which probably also belongs to fucking Ne**l might not be a great parenting idea but you know what I mean?

Dice Effects

I want to reward players for picking their dice colors and matching them with their animons' tricks instead of punishing them when they end up having the wrong trick for their current loadout. And the new dice effects did just that. From that point on, you could pay any trick with any dice, throw a blue water dice on a fire trick, no problem but... you only trigger the specific dice effect when you pay correctly (so a Wisdom die for a Wisdom trick). The dice effects I picked to start with are:

• Overflow (Wisdom): If you overpay a Wisdom trick, the excess amount goes to the trick below it (if available). For this I also added a way to rearrange every animon's tricks on the details screen to make best use of that.
• Grow (Patience): If a Patience trick gets readied and was paid with at least one Patience dice, it starts to grow. Every turn you end with a growing trick, the potency of that trick grows by 1, meaning that if you could use a readied Patience trick but don't use it yet, it grows. The grow is limited by the amount that was paid so if you paid a green die with 3, it can grow up to 3.
• Stoke, formerly Hungry (Fury): Paying a Fury trick with a Fury die "stokes the flame", so to speak, increasing the potency by 1 each turn it received a Fury die. Failling to pay A Fury die to a stoked trick resets the bonus completely.
• Entropy (Mystery): When paying a Mystery trick with a Mystery die, one of your remaining dice gets rerolled (randomly chosen and if available). Mystery often plays with not using rerolls or with the amount of rerolls left so getting free ones like this helps with flavors like "Fatesworn".
• Curious (Curiosity): This one works a little different as it is the default die color. It does not get triggered when paying Curiosity tricks, instead it has a passive effect: Curiosity die never reroll into the same number, so if you rolled a 1 and reroll, it will not be a 1 again. If you roll a 2 then and reroll again, it can be a 1 again, though.

You can read all the effects on the dice loadout screen.
Phew, that was long, wasn't it? We're almost done! I want to end with a brief summary of what the next update will bring. It's called the Mystery March update and the theme is, well, the Mystery aspect. It was added last and was lacking animons and tricks so this update adds more content to it. there will be 3 new Mystery animons, 4 more animancer, several new Mystery tricks, and... a Twitch mode! I'm working on the integration right now so if you plan to stream the game, you'll be able to let your viewers participate. As of now, viewers can vote for which path to take on the map and occasionally, a treasure chest gives the option to let Chat create a custom trick from scratch. I'm brainstorming more ideas constantly and will add more as I work on this mode so stay tuned! Thanks for reading!

[ 2025-03-20 08:51:16 CET ] [ Original post ]

New Features

Lot's of polish and small additions happened for the demo release on Steam that I'm now patching to this build. Generally, the game is now a little more aesthetically pleasing!

Poison & Tide (formerly Drowning)

The two status conditions were reworked to focus around your dice. Poison stacks from the animon are randomly assigned to available dice at the start of your turn. Using a die with poison stacks will deal damage to the active animon. Tide on the otherhand will make dice unusable if they roll below the number of Tide stacks that you have. Rolling doulbes circumvents that effect.

First German Localization

Added German translations and language settings to the settings screen. There are still parts missing that needs translation, please let me know if you find any (comments or e-mail at hello[at]swordandquill[dot]games)

New Art

• Added backgrounds to Hammam (formerly Kiosk), Arcade, Treasure, and Victory screen
• The three regions now also have individual background and indentities and parallax effect when scrolling
• Some techniques got new battle effects
• Item Cards got a visual rework, rarity and costs now showing more distinctively

Fixes & Improvements

Balancing

• Difdagua's Fidgety quirk now triggers when summoned, not when benched (except for when summend for battle start)
• inventory and switching costs now reset after each turn so the first item and switch is free -each- turn
• reduced damage of Double Slap

Tweaks

• added transitions for entering and exiting battles
• (Mouse Controls) Added click-and-drag scrolling to map screen
• (Mouse Controls) Added clickable menu button to map and battle screen
• added tooltip delay time and tooltip offset values to settings screen
• added elemental starters to starter selection
• (TTS) added more details to starter selection screen
• tweaked technique buttons to stretch with longer strings
• added level-up effects to leveling up during combat

Bug fixes

Major

• fixed issue with missing dice loadout data for later animon battles to cause a crash

Minor

• fixed adaptive not working correctly
• fixed tooltips getting out of screen when hovering over enemy content
• fixed issue qhere switching animon after defeat causes error due to missing dice references
• fixed ui scaling for battle screen
• fixed focusing on first technique instead of selected technique after execution
• fixed automatic technique selection ignoring adaptive techniques
• fixed special damage being applied twice (e.g. scorching body)
• fixed enemy intelligence paying for already paid technique from double effect
• (TTS) fixed hearing controls button not working at start of battle before confirm is pressed
• (TTS) fixed tts enable hint waiting for splashscreen animation to finish
• (TTS) fixed repeat button not working after input refactor
• (Mouse Controls) fixed bug where dice weren't dragable after rerolling them (in no-dragging mode)

[ 2025-02-17 11:38:31 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi soon-to-be animancers! Registrations for an ongoing playtest are now going. You get to play the version that I am currently working on so it has all the up-to-date development features. It includes 3 regions with their own animons and three bosses to beat. I'm adding content, tweaks, and fixes usually at the end of each month.
Since this is an alpha version, there's prone to be bugs and some missing animations and such. You can help the development by posting feedback or reporting bugs in the corresponding forums here on the discussion board! Streaming and talking about the game is allowed and encouraged! Please let me know if you're a Streamer and would like to stream the game. Early content creators will get an exclusive build with a custom made starter-animon, just for your stream! Shoot an e-mail to hello [at] swordandquill [dot] games

[ 2025-02-17 10:24:27 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone! I'm working hard on fixing and improving the gameplay loop but also adding more content and mechanics. The titular mechanic, Soulblaze, is a special form for animons that you can activate once you have filled the Soulblaze bar. This is not implemented yet but high on my list... as evolutions and form-change are among the coolest things about creature collecting games, right? Here are first sketches for how the three "starters" could evolve. Soulblaze forms are temporary, and last a few turns before they revert but during that time you get a lot of buffs and advantages.

[ 2025-02-08 11:52:38 CET ] [ Original post ]