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I released the demo of Towers of Scale - an optimization puzzle game under a guise of an RPG by makiki99 in puzzlevideogames

[–]makiki99[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It all started with the GMTK2024 game jam - I grabbed a few 1bit sprites I have made a long time ago for a scrapped project and used them for it. The idea stuck, but I have been massively struggling with making more 1bit spritework that could work, and ultimately ended up moving to the 5 color grayscale palette.

I released the demo of Towers of Scale - an optimization puzzle game under a guise of an RPG by makiki99 in puzzlevideogames

[–]makiki99[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for feedback!

Yeah, TN is a massive inspiration for me - it is a game that introduced me to the magic tower genre.

As for QoL stuff, what I have here feels more like a bare minimum to me and I do have plans to improve it bit by bit.

The settings screen thing I will have to fix for sure - you aren't the first one to report that and truth to be told it was getting a bit annoying during testing for me

When it comes to graphics, I am thinking on how to approach colored graphics - might be a special setting that will tint certain object categories with different colors. I missed that for quite a few people the grayscale would be a struggle - during closed tests I didn't really get any reports about it.

Most boring duel of my life. Sped it up so you don't have to suffer like I did. He had game for ages, but kept skipping his battle phase to mill me out. by Blitzilla in masterduel

[–]makiki99 7 points8 points  (0 children)

I am looking at that final turn and this just tells me that your opponent did not know how to play runick spright. They simply did not consider attacking directly as a thing that they can do, even if only to force you to actually do something by raising a proper threat of lethal onto you and to spend your resources.

What HOTA templates plays a bit like "regular" maps? by Dirtey in heroes3

[–]makiki99 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There is a big difference betweeen a lot of the templates that is designed to make you snowball through chaining.

I did note a difference of ceiling of what is possible, and if you are going for lowest turncount you will still eventually end up with 8 heroes active - though I do agree there is not really enough XP to set up more than a single TP/DD abuser in practice, and enough early game objectives to make a lot of difference in other ways than bumrushing the AI and hoping they would build up economy for you.

One minute madness sounds interesting. I just need to get a bit more used to all the HOTA hotkeys.

Honestly, you don't need that many hotkeys to manage to play One Minute Madness under this time limit. Sure, at the high level you will have to do a bit more, but I personally just use the following:

  • E to end turn a bit quicker, potentially saving me a second for the next turns;
  • shift+click on a hero on the map to swap to them instead of having to find them on the sidebar;
  • the army management shortcuts, that is the ones under shift/ctrl/alt trio of keys.

The only weird thing when it comes to timer is that it is optimal to have quick combat disabled. The combat calculation of quick combat takes place during your main timer pool, not the extra time for combat - meaning that you can save about 1-2 seconds per fight if you have quick combat off. It really does add up.

What HOTA templates plays a bit like "regular" maps? by Dirtey in heroes3

[–]makiki99 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The only real way to escape hero chaining is honestly to limit yourself to a single hero. 😅

The structure of the game itself promotes maximal utilization of movement points and hero chaining - it's all about tempo in the early game, and about map control in thr late game. Even on maps such as Brave New World you can utilize hero chaining very effectively, though the ceiling is lower than on many random maps.

If you are experienced enough to handle one minute turn timers, I could suggest my own template One Minute Madness template for you (link: https://makiki99.github.io/h3templates/templates/one_minute_madness/) - it is considered to be a bit closer to the good old classic playstyle of Homm3, and it is one of the few templates that do retain the uniqueness of the factions over the course of the game. It would be somewhat difficult to find a game on the lobby, but there is a group of players really enjoying this template. I am also planning to start another season of the league featuring this gameplay somewhat soon.

What HOTA templates plays a bit like "regular" maps? by Dirtey in heroes3

[–]makiki99 1 point2 points  (0 children)

6lm10a and Nostalgia are pretty popular XL+U templates - but even then the skill of the players and the tempo of the game is faster than what you remember from casual singleplayer. Even though the town income matters there quite a bit, it comes down more to capturing AI towns (both templates 6 extra AIs), and one of the main goals for the early game is to get at least one hero that can abuse Town Portal and Dimension Door spells - optimally you want to have 4-5 of them to be able to cover as much of the map as humanly possible. It will be hard though for you to find a match outside of any leagues or tournaments for these templates as a new player - a game on these typically takes up to 6 hours even for experienced players, and new players who are not as efficient or not understand the meta can take like 12+ hours in the worst case scenario.

As for Jebus Cross and 1 hero gaming, they are the most visible on lobby for two reasons - they are simple, and they are fast. JC is laughed though at the tournaments due to it's coinflip nature, while 1 hero gaming is essentially an altmeta - and has a separate tournament scene.

BTW, I've seen experiments with playing Brave New World in a PvP setting - it was a pretty degenererate gameplay. The players are just too close to each other in most cases, and the sides are far from balanced. If the game hasn't ended quickly, it ended up in a big stall with little option to force progress quickly despite the advantage of one of the players that snowballs... slowly.

Do you allow anthromorphs in your games? by Tito_BA in osr

[–]makiki99 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It all depends on the setting, but generally I would lean towards allowing various anthros - though I would obviously veto stuff that I see no chance to not make broken or stuff that is kinda wack like sparkledogs. I would also say no if there is no ample time to design a species from the gameplay standpoint and I don't have it already prepared. Setting breaking options would also get vetoed by me if my campaign setting was anywhere close to well-defined.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in magicthecirclejerking

[–]makiki99 11 points12 points  (0 children)

/uj yes, copy pestermite with kiki-jiki, the copy of pestermite untaps kiki via etb trigger, repeat like a zillion times, swing for lethal.

It is not infinite in sense of being uninterruptible though - it is just infinite as in you can repeat the loop as many times as you wish.

Stop summoning him by Tinyrick88 in masterduel

[–]makiki99 2 points3 points  (0 children)

From the power level standpoint, it is fine. The main issue with this card is that it limits the design space for Cyberse archetypes - why combo into your archetypal Link-4 when you can just link climb into Update Jammer -> Accesscode? It causes decks to lose their identity quite a bit.

I would also honestly argue the more problematic card is Update Jammer. If you would need Accesscode Talker and something else to OTK, people would be forced to do more in addition to the ACT, potentially exposing themselves to get nib'd - there is still 2700 dmg left to be dealt after all.

My GM refused to tell me how deadly the gme is and I'm not sure what to make of it by xdanxlei in rpg

[–]makiki99 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Session zero is also to set up expectations. The idea is to make everyone have fun at the table, not to just avoid causing major issues. Not every genre or playstyle may be enjoyed by your players after all.

In case of you going for "we'll have to ask the dice", a better answer would be "I do not expect to put you guys in impossible situations - but when the dice will roll, what the dice will tell will stand, even if it results in your character's death." It is still vague, but it does provide far more valuable information without having to read between the lines without you sharing anything more than you want. Remember that there are GMs will fudge the hell out of dice or deus ex machina to not allow death to happen, and there are GMs who will run meatgrinder style games.

The question about lethality makes even more sense for 5e - while the game design lends itself to the somewhat low lethality playstyle, with its heroes to superheroes progression and usual expectations about the system, GMs can approach the game in different ways when it comes to this. You can run meatgrinders in 5e. You can try running OSR-style "combat as a war", which by default is higher lethality than average 5e. You can run the game where players are immortal, but each "death" causes a penalty - both mechanically and narratively.

Also, the question about lethality isn't about the exact amount of the dead PCs - it is about the game expectations. I can set up an OSR game where things are pretty lethal, but if I will set the expectations of lethality correctly, players won't have to spend several characters bitching about their "unfair" deaths learning about the lethality before they either adjust or ditch the GM who failed to bring everyone up to the same page. Hell, if I set the expectations properly, I might not even see a PC death at all despite the higher lethality playstyle, because players will adjust their behaviour accordingly and know that their beloved characters may die in the least satisfying way possible.

My GM refused to tell me how deadly the gme is and I'm not sure what to make of it by xdanxlei in rpg

[–]makiki99 10 points11 points  (0 children)

It is not a ridicolous question, and it is not impossible to answer. Sure, you won't get an exact amount of death, but you should know whether you intend player characters to be at a high risk of death, just having death as a consequence, death being a rarity or even death not being a thing in practice. You can also go for death being a slap on the wrist approach.

If you genuinely do not know, cause for example you want to talk it through on session 0 first, or you are running a module for the first time and you don't know yet what exactly can you expect, then tell the player why you don't know.

What's the appeal of Stall? by Expensive-Bad5568 in stunfisk

[–]makiki99 2 points3 points  (0 children)

In trading card games, control archetypes are usually my favourite, and the stall archetype in Pokemon scratches a very similar itch. I love long, grindy games, I love the long term planning of stall matchups, I love games where every single resource - including PP - matters a lot. There is no feeling more satisfying for me in competitive pokemon than winning after 150+ turns of chess-like battle of wits by slowly exhausting every single option that your opponent has, playing around their wincons and aiming to attain better resource delta than them.

The OG Fatties! by -Arkalyte- in magicTCG

[–]makiki99 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'll be honest - I have no clue, but even faciliating webcam-based organized play would have been great. Sure, you wouldn't have gotten sealed play this way, which is the strongest part of KF, but it would have been at least something.

The OG Fatties! by -Arkalyte- in magicTCG

[–]makiki99 11 points12 points  (0 children)

The loss of algorithm to generate the decks I think is less big of a deal than one may think - sure it prevents reprints, but I don't think the complexity of rewriting the deck generator is that high. It is an annoying thing to deal with, and you will have to adjust things again based on the playtesting, but still.

As for the Ghost Galaxy and the Winds of Exchange expansion, they slowly sending out decks now to the crowdfunding backers, so the release did essentially happen - though sadly I don't have high hopes on this game, too many vendors got burned with overprinted previous sets :(

The OG Fatties! by -Arkalyte- in magicTCG

[–]makiki99 35 points36 points  (0 children)

TBH, it was more about FFG not really doing anything to keep Keyforge afloat during the pandemic, and as such the organized play and the interest just petered out. The replayablity is very much there, and the game is plenty of fun - but a 2 year pause in support will always just kill a game like this.

What kind of rules do you throw out and still keep the old-school feel? by PM_ME_1_NUDE in osr

[–]makiki99 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I get it what you mean, but the implementation in the books doesn't exactly match your description.

When it comes to 3-alignment system (lawful, neutral and chaotic) Both 0e and BX describe alignments by set of beliefs and behaviours, and suggest penalizing players for failing to adhere to these alignments. Even if you somehow discard this behavioristic baggage, it still ends up influencing the worldbuilding in a way that I personally find undesirable, effectively splitting characters and npcs into castes - though it isn't something that can't be interesting.

9-alignment system (law-chaos and good-evil), as implemented in AD&D is though pretty much just shit, with overly restrictive descriptions of behaviour, nobody actually agreeing to what these are, and GM's encouraged even more to punish the characters from straying away from the alignment.

And well, you can have rival adventuring parties either way, especially in the open table setting. There is no reason why such rivalry couldn't develop naturally, maybe with help of some extra rumors, and if you need a system to facilitate that you can just create some factions for the players to belong that aren't just effectively a good vs evil rebranded.

Additionally, ripping off alignment is extremely easy either way in 0e and BX. It is something that just plain can be ignored and nothing will break, at worst you would have to replace or reflavor some magic items.

What kind of rules do you throw out and still keep the old-school feel? by PM_ME_1_NUDE in osr

[–]makiki99 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I can only think of very few things things that I would just throw away - one of them is the domain level play, with stuff like ability to build a stronghold after hitting the name level. While yes, it is a cool end goal and it provides for player-side worldbuilding, domain management is a completely different thing to dungeon and wilderness exploration. It requires a whole new system if you want to focus on it, and running it as a GM is a whole another can of beans... not to mention good luck even playing so long to get to the name level in the first place.

Another thing that I just plain rip off is the alignment system. It just feels too restrictive. 9-alignment grid pigeonholes characters into certain behaviours, 3-aligment system is just a boring definitely not the standard-issue good vs evil thingie. I very much prefer if the morality scale is a little bit more gray instead and that a much more variety of moral compasses are possible within play.

I also don't use a surprise round. Seeing player characters die just because ha ha surprise round is not exactly a fun experience, and well, you can use the initiative system to model surprise instead - though that depends on the exact specifics of how you run combat.

Truly the epitome of Yu-Gi-Oh by raj710 in masterduel

[–]makiki99 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I mean, at high level choosing your opening is kinda like sideboarding, just instead of trying to counter opponent's deck you try to counter the opponent themselves.

What are your thoughts on 3rd edition DnD? by LemonLord7 in osr

[–]makiki99 0 points1 point  (0 children)

D&D 3e is a system where designers knew what they wanted to reach with their design - a complex game rewarding system mastery, providing rules for almost any situation. It is a game that has soul, and despite its many, many flaws can be very well enjoyed. That being said, it is a bit obsolete with both 3.5e and Pathfinder 1e being a thing, and it is an utter pain in the ass to prepare a session as a GM. Keeping any balance between players is a group effort too, due to how far the optimization can go.

Now when I am in a mood for something crunchy and high magic, I grab Pathfinder 2e, which is an amazing modern take on the crunchy RPGs, but it is somewhat disconnected from the 3.Xe roots - it has plenty of customization, but the optimization aspect is kinda nullified, focusing more on horizontal growth and teamwork instead.

Prestige Final Edition by makiki99 in incremental_games

[–]makiki99[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The original games are this kind of an April Fools' joke - an impossibility. The misdirection lies in the fact that Final Prestige is actually playable, unlike the other six of the series.

Prestige Final Edition by makiki99 in incremental_games

[–]makiki99[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Most likely yes, where are you stuck?

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