Last time, we experimented with a mechanic that allows builders to change turns. While it's still unbalanced and doesn't always work perfectly, the key takeaway is that it works! We can now see builders actively interacting with each other, with their actions heavily influenced by the opponent's moves. This is a positive shift, and it feels like we're heading in the right direction. Our next step is to continue developing this approach, identify any weak points, and improve them.
Bonus Gold Coin
Let's start with something that stood out right away. The second team's hero begins the game in the purchasing phase. In theory, this phase is for buying cards, but at the very start of the game, they don't yet have any resources to do so. If the hero doesn’t buy a card, they have to rush across the map to interfere with the enemy’s resource gathering. However, since both players start in opposite corners of the map, the second player ends up spending most of their time simply running to the other side of the forest. This makes them feel disadvantaged.
To balance this, we decided to give the second player a gold coin in their chest at the start of the game. While this won’t allow them to immediately buy a card, it at least compensates for the initial disadvantage and boosts morale.
Enhancing Combat Capabilities
Moving on to a more significant issue: the core interaction between builders revolves around the fact that during the purchasing phase, a builder has some free time to interfere with the opponent’s resource gathering and deal damage. However, they currently lack the proper tools to do so. Their only options are to hit the enemy with a pickaxe, place gnomes, or summon minions from the lane.
The problem is, you can't place too many gnomes because they require resources, and those resources are better spent on development. Minions also take time to leave the lane and reach the opposing builder, who can easily escape using a teleport. This leaves the pickaxe as the only reliable option, but it deals very little damage and is slow. By the time the builder swings the pickaxe, the enemy can run a considerable distance, making a second hit nearly impossible. That’s why we've decided to significantly expand the combat capabilities of the builders.
Sling Instead of a Pickaxe
First, the pickaxe has been replaced with a sling – a ranged weapon. In terms of resource collection, the sling functions just like the pickaxe: if it's the gathering phase, a hit with the sling collects the resource. The projectile flies fast but in a straight line, making it possible to dodge. To anticipate the enemy’s movements and launch a stone ahead of them, players can hold down the Shift key, allowing them to aim freely with the mouse instead of targeting a specific enemy.
Spells
Second, we've given builders spells to aid in combat. Initially, we introduced three abilities:
- Poison Cloud: The builder creates a large cloud of poison around them, gradually damaging anyone caught inside.
- Jump: The builder instantly teleports a short distance in the direction of the mouse cursor. This spell allows for quick escapes from the poison cloud, dodging attacks, or jumping over small obstacles like hills, making the builder much more mobile.
- Merchant: This ability generates a gold coin at regular intervals.
Like champions, builders' skills can be upgraded. The Poison Cloud’s area and damage increase with each upgrade, Jump gains more range and a shorter cooldown, and Merchant reduces the interval between coin generation. Since a builder's strength and progression come from resource gathering, we decided to tie spell upgrades to resources as well. To upgrade a spell, the builder must invest one of each type of resource at the card table.
Upgrades become available every 5 minutes, giving players plenty of time for other tasks while saving leftover resources for spell investment.
Ending Turns Early
Another issue we encountered was that sometimes players would run out of stamina early in the resource collection phase, either intentionally or accidentally. What should they do with the remaining time? They can’t collect resources (no stamina), and it’s not their turn to buy cards. Their only option is to fight, but what if their health is low, and the opponent has the upper hand? To solve this, we added the option to end the resource collection phase early. Players can click the pickaxe icon in the corner of the screen to trigger this, but the phase transition takes 5 seconds to give the opponent time to prepare for their own gathering phase.
Additional Improvements
Along with the changes mentioned earlier, we also addressed several other issues.
Increased Running Speed in the Purchasing Phase
During the purchasing phase, the builder needs to chase down and attack the opponent, but first, they have to catch up. The opponent usually runs directly from one resource to the next, only stopping briefly to hit each resource. If the chasing player spends time casting spells or attacking, they quickly fall behind. To counter this, we increased the builder's running speed by 10% during the purchasing phase. This also makes the option to end the gathering phase early even more valuable. If you run out of stamina but have an opportunity to fight, it's often better to end the phase early to gain a small movement speed advantage over your opponent.
Changes to Minion Lairs
We decided to remove the need to build special lairs for each race of minions to send them into battle. Previously, lairs had two functions: they required bricks to build, and minions were upgraded with souls. This system ensured that minions grew stronger over time and weren't all available from the start. However, we realized we could achieve the same goal without the lair-building mechanic. Now, all minions (except goblins) start at level 0 and are unavailable. The first soul invested upgrades a minion to level 1, making it available to summon in the wave. Simple as that.
This change doesn't significantly impact gameplay because players still need to gather resources, buy the corresponding card, and spend it to unlock new minions – just as before. Previously, players would buy bricks to build lairs; now they buy souls to upgrade minions. If there's no real difference, why complicate things?
As a result, we removed lairs for Rats, Skeletons, Lizards, Spiders, and Mages. However, we brought back the Undead Lair. It originally existed when souls were used to send waves of minions, with the zombie wave serving as a penalty if the player failed to gather enough souls. The Undead Lair made zombies stronger, softening the penalty. When we abandoned the wave-for-souls system, zombies and the Undead Lair were also removed. Now that zombies are back, summoned via a special card, the Undead Lair is relevant again to make this penalty less harsh.
Convenience Improvements
Along with gameplay improvements, we aimed to make the game simpler and more user-friendly. For example, now if you don’t have enough resources to buy a card but have enough gold coins to make up the difference, an indicator will appear on the card, letting you know it’s purchasable, but it will use a certain number of gold coins.
Another improvement is that players can now click on a card even if they can’t buy it at the moment (due to a lack of resources or it not being their turn). The card will be marked with a symbol and added to a wishlist. Once it becomes available, the card will be purchased automatically.
Our card table is completely open, and the information about which cards the opponent buys isn’t secret. Knowing their purchases can be quite useful for predicting their strategy. However, tracking which cards they buy can be tricky – there are 10 cards on the table at any given time, and it's hard to remember all of them to figure out which one has been taken. To make this easier, whenever the opponent buys a card, it will now fly across the screen and disappear into their side.
Well, once again, we have quite a few changes that need testing!
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