v.0.5.0 - Major Enemy Reworks

Summary

This update ended up being way bigger than expected, but I'm very excited about it! I had a few goals in mind throughout these changes:

• Make enemy mechanics more interactive, make the actual wordplay on the board more impactful, and balance the power levels of enemies across biomes.

• Make bonuses feel better overall - the extra slot and free Swap should make it easier to line up bonuses with relevant runes, while also nerfing the huge multipliers that could trivialize the game.

Of course the balance isn't perfect yet, but overall I think the enemies provide much more interesting challenges now.

TLDR:

• Voidwalkers, Hieroglyphs, Souls, Hexes, and Hourglass mechanics/enemies have all been reworked or adjusted. You can find the main points in bold in the changelist below.

• Enemies have been adjusted to have more consistent health/stagger values (generally lower than before).

• Swap no longer costs or requires Power Gauge - instead, you get one free Swap per grid.

• Nerfs to big multiplier bonuses, Void, and Storm.

Changelist

General

• You can now abandon a run from the pause menu, instead of having to exit to the main menu and then deleting the save.

• Abandoning/deleting a save now counts as a loss in the history.

• Swap no longer costs or requires Power Gauge - instead, you get one free Swap per grid.

• Starting bonus slots increased from 7 to 8.

• True damage now also prevents damage reduction from effects like Weaken/Frailty.

• All campaign starter decks now start with an additional Uncommon bonus.

• Selecting a starter deck now also shows the starting bonuses for that deck.

• Burn starter deck now starts with Eternal Candle instead of Charcoal.

• Mana starter deck changed: -1 REPEL, -1 TRANSMUTE, +1 CHANNEL, +1 BARRAGE.

Enemies

• Base health/stagger for all enemies have been adjusted to be more consistent - for the most part, enemies that had abnormally high values were reduced.

• There are a lot of fundamental changes to enemy mechanics to try to make them more interesting and interactive. The main points are in bold.

• Voidwalkers have been redesigned around a new mechanic called Contra: during even numbered rounds, words must be entered backwards.

  • Each Voidwalker has a different ability while Contra is active:

    • Saber - Can't be staggered during Contra.

    • Growth - When the Growth deals damage during Contra, they heal for double that amount.

    • Dweller - During Contra, the Dweller's block doesn't decay, and whenever you gain block, the Dweller gains the same amount of block.

    • Shroud - Evades attacks during Contra.

    • Medium - Letters drawn during Contra have their score reduced to 0.

    • Goliath - Gains Power when taking damage during Contra.

    • Spire - Starts with Void Armor equal to its health. Damage taken during Contra is dealt to the Void Armor instead. If the Spire's health is reduced to 0, it instead recovers health equal to its Void Armor.

  • Voidwalkers had higher health to compensate for Void damage, so they've been reduced significantly to be in line with other enemies.

• Hieroglyph abilities reworked - Instead of enemies having different ways of applying Hieroglyph, it's now one mechanic - whenever you draw a tile, it has a 1/3 chance of gaining Hieroglyph.

  • Enemy mechanics now generally follow the same pattern: play Hieroglyphs -> negative thing happens. Enemy actions have also been adjusted to offer more chances to safely play Hieroglyphs.

    • Serkite - You gain 3 Poison for each Hieroglyph played.

    • Khunemos - Gains 1 Unstoppable whenever you play more than 1 Hieroglyph at a time.

    • Maaten - Drains your Power Gauge whenever you play more