Hey man, great work on this project! I just tried it out for the first time and enjoyed my time with it. going in semi blind i was taken off guard by how many things were popping up at me for upgrades/cards/purchases. I also didn’t really know what was happening after buying cards and whatever comes after them. I also thought the cards were shuffling each round but then after 3 or so rounds figured out i could equip them to a card hand. i then tried to delete some cards and it worked sometimes but othertimes it felt like pressing b wasn’t deleting or working to remix my hand. so i kinda felt stuck with cards so im not sure if i was missing something or if that’s a bug.
I ended with a multishot railgun, rocket launcher type build which felt super powerfull so that was cool! fun game overall!
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Interesting feedback, Devon. I’ll address it in another post, but for now, there’s another important issue to address.
Zeb’s fresh eyes caught a serious issue; there’s way too much going on. Each feature was added with a purpose, but it’s not reaching that purpose RN.
Loot
Loot was added with the purpose of having Brotato-style permanent progression to counter the randomness of the hand draw system. With the hand system removed, loot no longer has that reason to exist. Loot was also created to give the player something to buy and do while in the stage, but it’s just not fun to buy from vending machines. Perhaps that’s a lack of item variety, but I think it’s something more than that.
Trinkets
Trinkets were added to create a tradeoff between good and bad stats. Right now, they feel like bloat because their upgrades are typically pointless compared to the cards, which are the real meat of the game. I’ll likely remove trinkets, but I may use their art for another feature.
Powerups
Powerups were added to retain some of the time-based tension from the old combo system. I don’t think I’ve ever bought one from a vending machine or seen a playtester buy one. On the other side of things, opening all these chests allows you to stack powerups like crazy, easily breaking the game. Powerups will likely stay, but powerup vending machines are just clutter.
The 'open world'
The “open world” lacks a reason to travel. Initially, I thought a large map with shops could be fun, but it just leads to huge chase sessions where enemies trail behind you, making the horde survival more of a slow, boring pursuit. I’ll be shrinking the map. As for shops, they don’t feel like they add much to the game, but they clutter it a lot. I’ll be removing them.
Level up rewards
Some level up rewards are interesting. Multiply, sacrifice, anything that modifies a card. The issue is that they become bland when you have to sift through dozens of them per round. This adds to Phoenix’s suggestion to shorten the shop phase.
I have a few ideas on how to improve this.
My solutions
- Leveling up will now give you a currency called Gold
- The world will be smaller
- Shops will be removed
- Chests will now contain a bit of Gold, powerups, and loot
- Discarding loot will now give Gold, making it more valuable
- Gold can be spent on new, more significant purchases around the map. There will be fewer POIs to cut clutter
- One area will let you spend Gold to fully heal
- There will be a special shop offering three items (like level up cards), each costing Gold. This will replace the level up card UI, allowing you to make the purchases in-game.
- To sacrifice a card, you must now include a “blood offering” by killing X enemies in a region to trigger the sacrifice offers. Each will cost Gold as well. I’ll have to find a way to make sacrifices more powerful to suit this increased labor for them.
- To multiply a card, there will be some other objective (TBD)
- More ways to modify a card, each being interesting and involving Gold.
- Overall, a more diverse world of opportunities to spend Gold or other resources.
- Also, less mental clutter and confusion.
Let me know what you think of these changes – are they going too far too late into development?
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As long as you’ve got a backup, go nuts 
It’s hard to imagine just how it will change, but I think it will focus the game. Just a decision like a smaller map will make it less confusing to get around, less hunting for things, etc.. and in my view, the main fun of the game is running around shooting, and buying+using combo cards. As long as that’s still at the core, I think I’ll be happy.
I’m honestly excited to see what you cook up 
Hey guys!
Fixing the open world is on hold for now. Current big change: multiple weapons.
The refactor to support holding and equipping new weapons was enormous, but it’s complete! I’ve decided how things will work for almost every part of this except getting new weapons.
I’d like feedback and suggestions: Where should you find or get new weapons? Should they be bought with stars? If so, how? Should they be offered at certain level ups? How do we maintain agency with the weapons you get without allowing you to get the same weapons every time?
Once this decision is made, I think it’ll be another week, and then the multi-weapon update can go live. I have a feeling this’ll be a huge difference in the game. I’ll also be adjusting weapons to feel more unique and cater to a specific build much more strongly.
Needless to say, the release date will have to be pushed back. I’ve decided to prioritize a full polish, scope creep be damned, and add as much time as necessary before release. Perhaps by late September? I’m being generous with the deadline this time.
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As a player and fan, I think that’s a good decision
It’s hard to say without knowing more, but my immediate and slightly rambling thoughts are:
- Weapons with effects like combo cards (ie an uzi has more spread and high RoF) that go at the end of the applied modifiers. I think weapon choice will have most impact that way, and make them more distinct from each other?
- Probably use absolute modifiers sparingly (ie RoF = X/s, as opposed to RoF *= X), so the player’s upgrades aren’t bypassed entirely. On the other hand, if weapons can be changed on the fly, it may actually work better to put absolute limits on them, so weapon choice is more significant.
- You could have tiers of weapons (ie uzi lv1, uzi lv2…), but I think it may introduce some confusion and need for inventory management. A simple approach could be gaining a weapon level by getting the same weapon again, which would make duplicate weapon drops useful. I’m unsure if a tiered system will add much though, other than complexity, but it might It would also discourage the player from using many different weapons, and encourage focusing on one or two.
- I imagine the player can swap weapons at will, maybe between two equipped, or something relatively simple. I think that would give the player some more interesting choices during gameplay, like swapping between a heavy weapon (big damage, makes the player walk slower / can’t dodge / …) and a light weapon (lower damage, movement up), melee vs ranged, … a bit like swapping between builds, really.
- For acquisition, it might be good to make them relatively rare compared to other powerups, just to make them more significant, but I’m not sure. Maybe that would just keep the player from playing how they want.
- The cleanest solution seems to me to have a new type of in-game shop, that sells a random (but visible) pick of weapon at a price of stars. If they instead drop on the ground, it would potentially be annoying picking one up accidentally, and there’d be a lot of them to avoid over time.
With a shop (or several), I think you get a good balance between player choice and circumstance, so the player won’t always see the weapons they prefer, but will have informed choice.
I hope you can deduce something from all that
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Sure, I got what I needed. I ended up coming to that decision independently too. A weapon shop is a good idea, but my concern was that there’s getting to be too many shops. My solution was to have a central shop “hub” where the player can walk around and bring up different shops.
little misunderstanding
Also, the player won’t be swapping weapons. Similar to Brotato, they’ll all be firing at once. I was planning to let you upgrade weapons by paying stars on that particular weapon, but obtaining duplicates could also work.
making weapons feel impactful
As for weapon modifiers, I realized that the way to make them impactful is to make them multiplicative like Brotato. Here’s an example:
That multiplicative Damage modification is high-impact. For Uzi, it may be something like “Rate of fire is multiplied by 1.8”. After each weapon level-up, I’ll buff the existing bonus and introduce another powerful bonus. This will give the player something to work towards long-term. Weapon level-ups also increase the weapon’s combo slot cap.
3 Likes
Hello fellows! Just wanted to check in, since it’s been a month. Progress continues, and I think I’ll have something ready soon. I got things to 90% done a few weeks back, but I felt like having a break after that.
3 Likes
Very enjoyable game.
I manage to break it, it froze visually, I could still hear sound but it wouldn’t move from this screen.
Had another go https://youtu.be/rQa74qi4uRo
Is this broke or am I missing some feature in game when heading to exit?
Sometimes it triggered straight away, other times not.
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You can’t leave through exits while the swarm is in progress. Take a look at the top left corner, there’s a notification. This is also explained in the tutorial, and in the next update, I’ve made it more clear by having them turn red when swarms appear. The next update also has major balance passes and improvements so the game doesn’t get that out of hand. As for the freezing, I have no idea what causes it. It’s happened to many players in the late-game, but I’ve not been able to repro it.
Any feedback on the game or new item suggestions?
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The game character seem to be unbalanced to me where “guy” gets good at killing fairly easy, the rest robot/mix three a struggle with aim.
The game is fun, suggestion would be investigate this freezing as it happened again 
, btw I played Mac version if that make any difference.
Also I noticed this Upgrades sometimes offer same thing but different values, maybe it could avoid being repeated.
Longer play video, in the end it froze as well :->
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Ah, Mac does make a difference. I do not know why, but the Mac users keep freezing at unexpected times. The game can still play, but the video is frozen. I agree that Guy is fairly OP and that upgrades need more variety. I’ll investigate the freezing and release the next update shortly.
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I think I’ve found the issue. This will likely add a week before the next update can arrive, but I’ll hopefully have it fixed.
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Yeah!!!
Last minutes were very painful ( on OpenGL3 rendering driver )
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Congratulations! What build did you go with for this win?
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Executable=/Applications/WOMBO!.app/Contents/MacOS/WOMBO!
Identifier=comically-unfunny.itch.io
Format=app bundle with Mach-O universal (x86_64 arm64)
CodeDirectory v=20500 size=706202 flags=0x10002(adhoc,runtime) hashes=22058+7 location=embedded
Signature=adhoc
Info.plist entries=25
TeamIdentifier=not set
Runtime Version=11.3.0
Sealed Resources version=2 rules=13 files=4
Internal requirements count=0 size=12
--verbose --rendering-driver opengl3
lol, I meant the gameplay - which cards?
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Basic guy
Mostly I focus to increase gun reloading, bounces, explosiveness and avoiding spawn and big red bullets
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That’s a classic strategy, I think almost all the top entries use it. There’ll probably be more unique strategies in the next build, though. It may also come with a leaderboard wipe (I won’t change your score) if the scores in the new multi-weapon system are way lower.
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--rendering-driver vulkan
it performed way better then opengl3, but then it struggled towards the end
Full gameplay will be here https://youtu.be/rdlVN7j4DYI
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