New logo/cover!
Some effects, like “associated with the word red” are vague, and they need some UI to know if the card will proc. Also, I couldn’t tell what was going on in multiplayer - were they taking turns, or what?
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Thank you so much for the feedback!
They were taking turns in the multiplayer clip, I should make that more clear in-game though (like a “YOUR TURN” screen or something), it’s still definitely a work in progress.
I agree that the color cards (e.g red) are pretty vague right now, and do need some ui so that the player can actually know what words to spell to trigger/proc the card.
Probably like the little side descriptions (like Glass Card) in balatro:
But instead it just shows a scrollable list of words whenever a word category is ‘linked’ from the card.
Added hints to the game!
(hint on the bottom left)
The hint shows you the 7th closest special word you can spell.
This unironically is the only reason the game is playable, since otherwise you wouldn’t know or remember all of the special words.
It doesn’t give too much of a gameplay advantage, since it’s a word of medium distance every-time. It only serves the purpose of preventing players from getting “lost”, and not being able to find any special words. The hints basically let the player know what special words exist in-game. It enables all of the deck building mechanics in the game to actually work. Without the hint you’d get a game where you can’t get any of the cards, since you can’t remember them all. Like, the game would be so terrible without the hints.
There will also be an option to play the game without hints, yay! /j
It’s crazy how much a small little text label fixed the scope creep (would’ve had to add too many word cards, just to make sure the player can consistently get them), and just the general design of the game.
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Can’t wait to lose to the word version of the plant 
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Wait, how does being close to a word work? The hint is ruler, so if I spell ruler, I get the ruler?
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Being close to a special word works by letter count, since reorders are free.
Like { “T”: 1, “H”: 1, “R”: 1, “E”: 2 } and {“R”: 1, “U”: 1, “L”: 1, “E”: 1, “R”: 1} kind of logic.
If you spelled ruler you would get RULER regardless of what the hint is, the hint just tells you that the ruler word has a effect (getting RULER).
If you got closer to or further from “ruler” the hint would change to the new 7th closest special word, so that the hint shows as many special words as possible to the player.
The fact that the hint actively changes also prevents the player from getting stuck (like if you had no Ls but you had the “ruler” hint). It changing also gives the player the option to just ignore the hint if they don’t want the TIMER card for example.
The hint actively changing also forces the player to actually think about and remember the word they are going for (like thinking about what effect TWO would give).
The boss page where “The letter E is debuffed. All words containing E are invalid.” is actually going to be so evil lmao, can’t wait to see people absolutely hate it.
Especially considering the fact that the baron equivalent is EXCELLENT, which is for Es instead of kings.
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Boss pages should be a lot more fun and counterable than Balatro’s blinds, since you can actively swap out and get more Word Cards during the game.
In Balatro, your jokers are completely locked in when you start a round. This makes a lot of the boss blinds feel like RNG just killed you for no reason, since you don’t really have a lot of options to prepare or counter them that aren’t also RNG (e.g. randomly getting Director’s Cut).
You’ll actually have options to change your deck and adapt once you get to a boss page, which I hope will make them feel more like skill-based challenges than things that randomly kill you.
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The game now works single-threaded (for mobile support) in the web browser!
Had to fix many bugs to get it working, but now you can play the entire game in the web browser, which is good because nobody even has to download the game to play it.
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New Word Card, ALPHABET!
If every letter in the scored word is unique, multiply fire by half of word length. (was nerfed after I playtested the card)
CASCADE is also now finally in the game! (after about three days straight of trying to fix the code behind AnyCardTriggered)
Added BALL to the game!
It adds +33 points and +12 fire if base word points is a multiple of 3. Base word points is the blue number in the score preview, next to the hint.
Hopefully you noticed that the ball is being used as a normal card here!
All of the Word Cards (joker equivalent) will also be able to be used as regular cards in your deck. You can discard a Word Card to add it to your pile. If a Word Card is scored in the word box, it’ll trigger its default effect.
I suggest getting a demo out ASAP. These posts are quite interesting, but the best thing that can help a game improve fast is playtesting and feedback.
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The demo actually feels like it’s going to be done soon :D! I don’t want to make an official demo until other people play it though. A public playtest will likely happen before the demo is released (to catch bugs).
I’ve mostly been focusing on a lot of big things like the options menu, pages and chapters, possible lore, multiplayer improvements, etc.
The game is starting to become really fun and I can’t wait to see people play it.
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Finally a game that gives me the balatro vibe. Looks fun as hell.
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New gameplay teaser for the game! It better reflects how its actually going to be played (hints, target score scaling, etc).
Here’s some cool combos I’ve discovered in the game:
GIBBERISH + TIMER:
TIMER allows you to regain the turns GIBBERISH takes away with TIMER’s max turns boost. GIBBERISH allows you to be constantly scoring words, preventing TIMER from even running (it pauses during the scoring sequence)
GIBBERISH + STREAK:
GIBBERISH makes every word valid up to 9 letters, and STREAK only resets when you spell an invalid word. GIBBERISH basically just breaks STREAK entirely, allowing STREAK to gain 1.1x fire per word scored and almost never lose it.
BLUEPRINT → MISPRINT
You can quickly spell MISPRINT after spelling BLUEPRINT to get two very powerful rare cards. BLUEPRINT can copy MISPRINT for very good amounts of +fire (mult but different gameplay-wise).
CASCADE + COLOR Cards
The COLOR cards trigger whenever a card is scored when the word is associated with their color (like water for blue). Since the COLOR cards trigger so often, it allows CASCADE to get more chances of triggering the card on the left of the COLOR card. This results in color cards triggering whatever card is on the left of it multiple times if CASCADE is also there. EXCELLENT, ALPHABET, and other cards with strong default effects are really good for the color card to trigger repeatedly.
NINE + GIBBERISH
GIBBERISH allows you to consistently trigger nine letter words, making NINE trigger almost everytime.
STREAK + ONE
ONE allows for one letter words to be spelled and gives a points bonus when you spell them. This allows STREAK to scale easily when you can just spell multiple one letter words.