This update has a special focus on making the game and user experience nicer for everyone, and introduces a new logo and default card back!

Main Changes

New Card Back and logo

We have a new card back, which I think makes the game a whole lot more professional! It was designed by The Pixel Buster, who has been adding new art for the game since august last year, and he has already made over 90 card arts!

New Hint System

There's a new hint system to help players both old and new understand why they can't perform certain actions!

New Mana Drop UI

The mana drop UI was quite clunky and not very accessible, so a new UI shows up now so you can more easily choose what you want!

Improved card rules

An important aspect of the game, the card rules text, has been slightly improved to be clearer and less heavy on players. Some more complex cards have also had some keyword reminders removed, to focus on the main keywords, and some cards no longer prioritize their associated cards (like tokens) where it's important for new players to understand the card. Additionally, some other rule terms have been changed:

• Rest is now Exhaust, and the Rest icon no longer is used (instead the Exhaust term is used explicitly). The reason for this is that Rest was an awkward term and the more standard term would be Exhaust, and I want the game to be understandable for most players.
• References that specify health now use the health symbol instead. This makes the rules nicer and also shorter to read.
• Some keyword reminders were rewritten to be clearer.
• Once per turn effects have been rewritten to use the "word -> effect" format, to more clearly indicate those effects being once per turn
• The Set Zone was renamed to the Support Zone. This was done because although the name kinda works in english, it becomes a bit confusing to translate to other languages and to explain to other players.

Changed rules on card stats when a card is removed

Fairtravel Battle is meant to be both a physical and digital game, and as a result it has to adapt to be a bit of both. In a lot of card games, damage is physical, and doesn't get changed automatically. However, a lot of similar digital games tend to adjust a character's damage/health when a card buffing it gets destroyed. To reduce "bad feels" situations in FTB, this behaviour was changed to be slightly similar to other games. Now, after one or more cards have been destroyed, if another card would have been destroyed as part of state checks, it instead gets its health set to 1 if applicable. This behaviour is new and the coding might not be perfect, so expect hotfixes in case some edge cases are found! This generally avoids bad feelings when a single targeted removal could wipe an entire player or team board due to a buff being removed and causing other cards to now have 0 or less health, which can be devastating and quite unfun.

Full Changes

• Added Strain card art
• Grove Arms now always summons tokens when attacked
• Staff of the Wilds now has 2 attack (up from 1)
• Draconic Shift no longer causes a debuff to opponents
• Added a visual indicator to revealed cards in hand
• Several UI/UX fixes
• Removed timed glow from Support and Quest zones to avoid confusion when a card actually activates
• Changed health calculations when stat buffs are removed to keep cards that just became eligible from being destroyed by state checks
• Updated rules text with simplified terms, icons, and layout
• Added support for summon sickness custom game mode parameter
• Simplified rules text of the Core card cycle
• Added missing keyword reminders from some cards and removed some from more complex cards
• Fixed deck customization not appearing
• Added Hint system
• Added new logo and card back
• Added support for clicking on a label that is part of a checkbox to trigger the checkbox
• Player hands now move when zooming out on 3-4 player battles so you can more easily see each hero's health
• CPU players should act more
• Added retargeting to single target prompts (so you don't need to re-select the target to change to another target)
• Fixed avatar picker to work on both home and rewards screen
• Redesigned control guardians trial deck list
• Rewrote the home tutorial to more clearly explain the game
• Updated Master of Undeath's trigger visual effect
• Improved performance and memory usage of the collection screen and in-game
• Increased UI size on the shop screen

[ 2024-03-02 16:38:42 CET ] [ Original post ]