Upcoming CCG - Rise of the Overlords

Finally a game that actually looks fun! Thanks OP!

Reminds me of a fun little game called like castle crash or something I think I'll look into it

Hi,

Firescale Studios here (the creators of this game). We are a small indie dev team working on this with passion because we really believe in the idea and in its possibilities. 

We would like to let you know that we have just opened the first playtest of the game on Steam (search Rise of the Overlords) to start getting feedback and user impressions. It would be great if you could participate in this and leave some feedback!

The playtest is currently limited to the introductory tutorials and then you can play PvP with 3 predefined decks / factions. We have limited this playtest on purpouse because it's the first version we release, however we can say that the game has a lot of possibilities (under development) and we will be able to deliver some other interesting game modes rarely seen in TCGs (thanks to the combination with board games). You can get a grasp of one of them in the tutorial in the dungeon levels ;)

Your participation is key for our success, so if you like the game idea, please don't hesitate to play the game, and leave feedback!

Thanks!

So I’ve played the game a bit and I have some feedback:

The tutorial:

The tutorial was pretty good, the only part I was confused about was where the end turn button was.

Core Mechanics:

I think that base movement should be lower or cost more actions. Units can move so far that a lot of the positioning in the game is irrelevant. Also, this makes things like getting additional movement and Archers very underpowered and ineffective.

Balance:

1. Archers are very bad because their Power charges up very slowly. I think that they should gain something like +2 Power every round, or maybe make it so that you can refill their quiver by spending an action. Also, right now the Archer cards don’t have a keyword or any indication of how they work, so it was very confusing to play the Archer cards and have them work differently than all the other cards. You need to add an “Archer” keyword to add make it understandable for new players.

2. The Deploy mechanic doesn’t seem like it’s very fun because it can lead to crazy turn 1s that give one player a huge advantage, but if you draw them later in the game they are just worse versions of existing cards. I think that you could change Deploy to something like “This costs X less if it’s the first card you play in a round.”

3. I think that you should add some way to use excess actions that you have in a round. Two ways that I can think of to do this are Hero Powers like in Hearthstone or Spell Mana like in LoR. 

4. I felt like the card draw was a bit low compared to the actions you have each turn for some classes (specifically the Archer). One solution is to allow players to spend 2 Actions once per turn to draw 1 card.

First impression was good. The battle and genre is unique, the combat animation need a bit more visual. Like maybe make the slash or fight action bigger or with shake effect. Card Design is good. Battleground is a nice addition, but can be boring if for example, doing battle in the same lava map forever. We need more randomness in the map, to create the sense of strategy plays.

Score 7/10
But I still need to wait for more because this maybe Free to Play now, but it's hard to see it in this state.
It could be heavily filled with microtransaction later. Who knows.

Hi, thank you all for taking the time to play the game and provide feedback. We really appreciate it!

About your thoughts:

• Lack of retaliatory damage: we considered both approaches and decided to investigate the possibility of no applying it (although most games do). One reason was that NOT retaliating gives some opportunity for a large number of small creatures to fight against more powerful ones. If there was retaliate by default, the small creatures would be "suiciding" themselves when attacking (and dealing damage). However, if there is no auto retaliate, a number of creatures can block bigger ones which will take more turns to beat the small ones. We believe this approach provides more tactical opportunities and more value to small creatures and you can play with that in combination to the battlefield to win the game. On the other hand, we also considered adding auto retaliate for melee units (not archers). That would add more value to archers, because they can shoot through other units and not getting hurt in the process.
• Player movement: we are considering reducing the movement to 3, not only for the reasons you mention, but also because 3 is a "magic number"in our case for some reasons. First, because since our cells are square, you can block the attacker by placing a unit between you and the attacker. Then the attacker won't be able to attack your unit in that turn because the path is blocked. With movement 4 the attacker can still walk around the blocker unit and attack you in the same turn. This gives more value to small creatures, because they can be used in a defensive way and it's more tactical. Second, because with 3 it's easier to see where you can move without having to try it out, and also because the unit position is more important, since movement is more limited.
• Archers: We really like the idea behind archers because they add another way to play with units. It is true that playing with archers is more difficult and you have to carefully think your movements better. However, they can still attack through walls and through units, so they have more or less value depending on the battlefield. One way to make them better is to reduce movement to 3 as statet earlier, but keep archer range to 4. Also, introducing auto-retaliate for melee units, and not for archers make them better, because they can attack without having to worry about getting damage. Also, you can run from your enemies while the archer is being recharged.
• Deploy: Playing big creatures on this game in the first turn is not that overkill as in other games because we have a battlefield, and the unit still has to move through it to be able to attack. Also, in our system you choose the 3 initial cards from 9 cards. You are basically looking at one third of your deck and choose cards from it, so you can choose the deploy cards. We allow you to choose from 9 cards because this allows you to adapt your tactics to the battlefield, which is unknown until you play it.
• Excess actions: we have designed cards (which we will release in next versions) to have some control over actions, so you will be able to do it if your deck is designed for that.
• Drawing cards spending actions: we think this could be a little bit OP as a core mechanic because would allow you to cycle the deck too quickly. However, we will add some opportunities for this in special cards, so you can build your deck to do this in the future.
• Battlefield randomness: This is tricky, because we know some players will hate randomness while others enjoy it. I think it depends on the type of player you are. Anyway we want to exploit interaction with battlefields in the most balanced way and in a way that they add something different to the matches. We currently have 3 battlefields now with different approaches on how to play them. We are considering a completely random battlefield generation too. As an example of randomness: in the sand battlefield, neutral creatures are randomly spawned and you have to deal with them. Also, it can also spawn a tornado in some areas that randomly moves all units, having to adapt to the new situation.
• VFX and visuals: You are right there are some visuals that need improvement. We are working on this too of course.  
• Modes:  We just want to let you know the things that can't be seen in the playtest yet, but that the game rules allow and that will give a lot of playability: game modes. The game mostly focuses on PvP (also shows quest mode in the tuto), but we are working on different game modes (many of them rarely or not seen at all in other TCGs, but are possible with our mechanics):
  • PVP: the PvP mode you can see in the playtest.
  • Quest: single player campaign to explore and discover, beat special bosses, find secret weapons in secret rooms, avoid traps, etc.
  • Siege: one player is defender and the other one is attacker. The attacker have to break into the defender castle / territory.
  • CTF: the classic capture the flag mode.
  • Future modes still under development / design: cooperative quest mode?

One question for you:

What do you think about the battlefields? Did you notice the interaction with the sand battlefield (the neutral creatures being spawned and the tornado)?

Thanks a lot for your feedback and consider to subscriibe to our facebook / twitter accounts to be informed of our progress!

@Firescale

It seems like your fixes would address pretty much all the issues I had with this version, and I can see how the excess Actions problem will be reduced when more cards are added and players can build their own decks. For the Battlefields, I also agree that it would be nice to have some things randomly generated at the beginning (like wall and barrel placements) to make games more different. I haven’t played on the desert battlefield so I can’t offer feedback on that. 
Also, another idea I had is to potentially experiment with a hexagonal battlefield. I think it would make sense to have most battlefields be made of squares, but I think that a few hexagonal battlefields could make the game play very differently.

Hey CursedParrot,

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. We are glad we addressed all your concerns / issues you described. 

About combining squares and hexagons, we believe this is a core mechanic and we have to be consistent and stick with one approach. So we don't have plans to use hexagons in our battlefields at this point.

Cheers.

Quote From anchorm4n

I've scrolled through their twitter account and they advertice the game as "a TCG and board game combination" - that sounds reeeeeally cool!

Duelyst was a similar style of cards plus board game style pieces and movements.  I liked it but just couldn't find the time, and now it's dead.  Maybe this will be better and last a while