Not as far as I know, no. But a lot of people here actually pay for and download official versions, despite what it may look like.
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Sure, but if they were paying for the Patreon version, wouldn't you expect them to leave their feedback on Patreon?
Some do, but in my experience, a lot of people prefer to leave feedback here anyway because this forum has a better user experience than Patreon's system. I've seen this time and again in the Long Live the Princess thread.
Fairer? I don't understand how that word comes into the equation here. The Heat algorithm is balanced around you not gaining additional Heat at the end of your final turn (after all, you gain Heat at the beginning of your turn, not the end). If I were to add Heat generation there, I would simply have to increase the required Heat to compensate.
The final turn isn't about gaining Heat (unless you have Instant effects, which is a way more likely scenario for certain deck types in later versions). It's about unleashing everything you have in a last-ditch effort to rid yourself completely of Challenge cards. You no longer have to balance multiple concerns at once; it's all about destroying Challenge cards, and you've got all your tools at your disposal that you have prepared over the course of the match (in this version, that most likely means cheaper cards and/or higher attack values).
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Because right now, the game can be pretty tough to win, which some people consider "unfair." For myself, I'll reserve judgment until the full game, but I can understand why other people would feel that way.
I was going to say, "it's not as if there's a big sign that says START OF NEXT TURN before you get the heat," but I loaded up the game to make sure I wasn't remembering that incorrectly, and it turns out I was. There is a sign that says "Turn [#], Challenge Phase," and it happens after you gain Heat. Also, when I get the Heat for the Engine cards I played on Turn 1, it still says Turn 1 on the status display in the bottom right corner. If you want players to think of the Heat gain as being at the start of the turn (so they aren't frustrated when they don't get Heat at the end of Turn 10), you should probably change those things.
Or, you could simply let the game be a little easier to win. I understand you're happy with how the difficulty tuning is right now, but it's still not accurate to say that would be something you "have to" do.
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So this is like a lewd version of Aeon's End, I like the concept.
I haven't started the gameplay yet but the cards seem hard to read at first glance.
I think the main issue is the font and background. You are using a Serif font, which isn't good for small text and information that needs to be accessed at a glance since thin lines tend to bleed light ever so slightly making everything more fuzzy than a Sans Serif font.
Also, games that use lighter text of dark backgrounds have bolder outlines + a zoom effect when you hover, making reading cards comfortable.
I don't think the latter effect is practical given the engine you're using, so maybe bolder fonts would do the trick (or different colors), but one thing's for sure: something needs to be improved in the cards' text.
I play a lot of card-based games and I've never had issues reading cards before (Magic, Runeterra, Hearthstone, Slay the Spire, Potionomics, etc.)
So, I'd suggest using a bold sans serif font of your choice and see how people react to it.
AND !
If you think your game system will be easy enough at its core, you can ditch most of the text and use symbols instead. It would also have the benefit of allowing more complex designs down the line while cutting down the amount of text.
Other card games tend to not show text at first glance, but when they do it's always readable. From a UX point of view, it doesn't make sense to have text on screen the user isn't able to decipher quickly, it adds unnecessary friction to the experience.
I haven't started the gameplay yet but the cards seem hard to read at first glance.
I think the main issue is the font and background. You are using a Serif font, which isn't good for small text and information that needs to be accessed at a glance since thin lines tend to bleed light ever so slightly making everything more fuzzy than a Sans Serif font.
Also, games that use lighter text of dark backgrounds have bolder outlines + a zoom effect when you hover, making reading cards comfortable.
I don't think the latter effect is practical given the engine you're using, so maybe bolder fonts would do the trick (or different colors), but one thing's for sure: something needs to be improved in the cards' text.
I play a lot of card-based games and I've never had issues reading cards before (Magic, Runeterra, Hearthstone, Slay the Spire, Potionomics, etc.)
So, I'd suggest using a bold sans serif font of your choice and see how people react to it.
AND !
If you think your game system will be easy enough at its core, you can ditch most of the text and use symbols instead. It would also have the benefit of allowing more complex designs down the line while cutting down the amount of text.
Other card games tend to not show text at first glance, but when they do it's always readable. From a UX point of view, it doesn't make sense to have text on screen the user isn't able to decipher quickly, it adds unnecessary friction to the experience.
Sorry that it took me a while to reply. I've been a bit off the radar these past few days and unable to focus completely. The last thing I want is to rush to answer people who take their time to give me feedback, positive or negative.
It might seem like a small thing to make the value update sooner, but it's not quite that straightforward. It's something I will look into, however.
It's extremely important to me to make the cards feel like cards. I have a strong dislike for the popular trend of reducing cards to squares with an image and perhaps a few numbers in modern computer card games as I feel it removes the illusion of actually playing with cards.
But I did look at a few other types of such games after reading your post, and you're not wrong at all. Bold sans serif with thick outlines seems to be common, particularly for games that try to evoke a modern theme (which Supermodel should, honestly). It seems like the popular choice is fonts that take up minimal horizontal space, which is interesting. I will definitely test alternate looks for Supermodel's fonts before version 2.0. Readability is key, but so is visual identity. It's not easy to get right.
The challenge here, and this is something I pay a lot of attention to in all kinds of UI design even at my day job as a software developer, is that icons are difficult to learn where text isn't. I could probably reduce an effect like "Start of turn: Gain 2 Heat" to an icon for "Start of turn" and two flame icons to illustrate the Heat gain, and it would be instantly readable. But what about new players? If they boot up the game and are greeted by a hand filled with all kinds of icons, they won't understand squat. It forces them to read and learn rules before they can even play the simplest of card effects, and that's not user-friendly.
This is the eternal challenge with UI design. Icons are brilliant for situations where your users already know where to find things and only need visual shorthand to guide them to their predetermined goal. But they are a nightmare to new users. I've had my own struggles with poorly designed icon hells in professional software, so I've seen how poorly that can go.
But I will see what I can do here. Some things are probably worth streamlining, even at the cost of making them slightly less intuitive. One reason I didn't even attempt any of this in the first version is that I thought it would be hard to combine images and text dynamically (particularly once you start considering translations). It later turned out that this isn't the case in Ren'py, so that door is again open to me. It's yet another thing that I will tweak and experiment with.
Hmm, you bring up a valid point. This is actually a good example of how a developer can look themselves blind on their own game due to the iterative development. That delayed update of the turn value that you mention wasn't like that for the vast majority of the game's development since there were no animated transitions or visual guides to card effects at the time. Once you hit that End Turn button, a bunch of stuff happened all at once and then it was the next turn. By the time the transitions were added, I was so used to the mechanics that I didn't even think about this issue.
It might seem like a small thing to make the value update sooner, but it's not quite that straightforward. It's something I will look into, however.
I already did this in version 1.1. And it will be even easier in 2.0 with the ability to "grind" new cards to power up your deck.
The card design and typography are actually based on the work of an established graphics artist. I believe, without actually checking as I speak, that I made few changes to the look of the fonts from what he established for me. Furthermore, I wanted to evoke the feeling of the classic collectible card games I played back in the day, such as Magic the Gathering among others. Especially MTG, actually. And MTG uses serif. The same seems to be true for the FFG living card games, and these are all games that inspired me. It's also worth mentioning that the earliest versions of my game had thicker edges on the card fonts, but I felt this looked ugly and trimmed them back or even outright removed them in some cases.
It's extremely important to me to make the cards feel like cards. I have a strong dislike for the popular trend of reducing cards to squares with an image and perhaps a few numbers in modern computer card games as I feel it removes the illusion of actually playing with cards.
But I did look at a few other types of such games after reading your post, and you're not wrong at all. Bold sans serif with thick outlines seems to be common, particularly for games that try to evoke a modern theme (which Supermodel should, honestly). It seems like the popular choice is fonts that take up minimal horizontal space, which is interesting. I will definitely test alternate looks for Supermodel's fonts before version 2.0. Readability is key, but so is visual identity. It's not easy to get right.
There will be highly complex cards in this game, and you can see a few examples of this already. But it might absolutely be worth it to establish some kind of shorthand for the most common effects and triggers as well as use icons.
The challenge here, and this is something I pay a lot of attention to in all kinds of UI design even at my day job as a software developer, is that icons are difficult to learn where text isn't. I could probably reduce an effect like "Start of turn: Gain 2 Heat" to an icon for "Start of turn" and two flame icons to illustrate the Heat gain, and it would be instantly readable. But what about new players? If they boot up the game and are greeted by a hand filled with all kinds of icons, they won't understand squat. It forces them to read and learn rules before they can even play the simplest of card effects, and that's not user-friendly.
This is the eternal challenge with UI design. Icons are brilliant for situations where your users already know where to find things and only need visual shorthand to guide them to their predetermined goal. But they are a nightmare to new users. I've had my own struggles with poorly designed icon hells in professional software, so I've seen how poorly that can go.
But I will see what I can do here. Some things are probably worth streamlining, even at the cost of making them slightly less intuitive. One reason I didn't even attempt any of this in the first version is that I thought it would be hard to combine images and text dynamically (particularly once you start considering translations). It later turned out that this isn't the case in Ren'py, so that door is again open to me. It's yet another thing that I will tweak and experiment with.
As a fellow MTG fan I can only be excited about the perspective of getting a porn card game with this feel !
However, even though it's true that MTG cards use Serif fonts in real life, they do not on MTGO and Magic Arena.
And the reason is that Serif makes cards less readable when rendered on a screen, and MORE readable when printed.
In short: Serif for print. Sans serif for screens.
That's one of the core rules of font graphic design I believe (although don't quote me on that, I might be misremembering my very few design classes. What I'm sure of though, is that using serif on screens in a no-no in the vast majority of cases)
The FFG living cards games have extensive rules that take time to learn, but once it's done the game flows very well.
My favourite is their Arkham Horror version, such a great mix of storytelling and deckbuilding !
The genius of their system is the fact that difficulty comes from making descisions on what resources to sacrifice and which to keep for later.
In that economical loop, they added icons that serve as currency for stat checks.
They also have keywords that make the cards less wordy, which I think is a no-brainer design wise as it also forces the designers to restrict their design space into things that are easier to expand in the future: Want to make an expansion ? Well first you'll have to think of new keywords and we'll use those in the new expansion.
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Maybe, but wouldn't it also be true that they just wouldn't know what Heat is or why they should want 2 at the start of a turn, if they haven't already read the rules?
One idea that might alleviate your concern here is to have the very simple cards with only a few words of text have both the text and the symbols. Then new players would be clued in to both what the card does and what the symbols mean.
Is the contest in 1.0 indicitive of the difficulty of the average game? Or is it meant to be end game?
Because if this is the entry level... Let's just say I've played 19 games now, and I've made it to round 9 once. And that was pure luck, not skill.
Before people start saying gitgud. I don't think I'm bad at this game, I wouldn't say I'm great at it either. But it definitely FEELS like it's 90% up to RNG.
Because if this is the entry level... Let's just say I've played 19 games now, and I've made it to round 9 once. And that was pure luck, not skill.
Before people start saying gitgud. I don't think I'm bad at this game, I wouldn't say I'm great at it either. But it definitely FEELS like it's 90% up to RNG.
Play 1.1 instead of 1.0. 1.1 added difficulty levels to help you get started. The final game will feel much easier due to your ability to gain new cards and build your own decks, and the challenges will be a little more predictable (for the most part) in that version.
I think it's just that the deck for the demo is absolutely terrible, since it's doing a little bit of everything to show off the different mechanics and so things don't works together properly.
1.1 is actually a bit too easy in my opinion, it added the ability to discard any card for 2 heat, which makes the game feel a lot better to play, but the costs/difficulty haven't been changed to account for it yet, especially considering how unoptimized the deck is.
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I might have already suggested something like this, but I wonder if it would be a better mix of difficulty and flexibility if you could play any card to do 1 damage to any Challenge card during the Challenge phase, or to get 1 heat during the Action phase. That gives you more options for any card you were gonna discard anyway, but without making those options too imbalanced in your favor.
I think it's best to wait with the massive balance changes until we all see how the game works when you can customize your own decks and there is more than just one scenario to play (in other words, 2.0). Much of the feedback I get is specific to this particular scenario, and that isn't really helping anyone. A broader sense of perspective will help all of us narrow down any potential design problems that need to be dealt with.
I've been trying out some experimental changes to the card design based on user feedback, both here and elsewhere. Here is an example of where things are currently at:
For comparison, here is what it looked like in version 1.1:
Ignore the attack values and Heat costs. The screenshot of the original card is modified by other cards here. The values are unchanged in the current version.
For comparison, here is what it looked like in version 1.1:
Ignore the attack values and Heat costs. The screenshot of the original card is modified by other cards here. The values are unchanged in the current version.
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I like the new colorful attacks icons (or whatever you call the ones at the top). I think having the text on the bottom outlined will probably help make it more readable (in addition to just being bigger). I'd say "Turn start: gain [fire emoji]" should be pretty clear to anyone who understands the game well enough to know that Heat is a thing, no problems there. But "Card cost: -2" might be a bit more confusing. You might consider "Cards cost -2" instead, so people won't think this particular card costs two less or something like that, but maybe that's just me. You could also try adding a symbol to the circle that shows the heat cost of cards, since it looks so good with the circles at the top, and then use that icon for this card effect.