I would happily play a deckbuilder based around FTL style fights, but I need to know more about what the secondary loop looks like and what breadth of design space the different "characters" (ships I guess?) will occupy.
I presume you're looking at a Slay the Spire style progression through different sectors? I am absolutely there.
Happy to hear it sounds interesting , i think the idea plays pretty well so far.
As far as the secondary loop, it's very close to FTL actually, you fight enemies, have encounters with various factions and characters, and stop at hangars to upgrade your ship.
You can check more about the game our on out [Steam page](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2118810/Breachway/)
> Your deck is determined by your spaceship's loadout
Generally the thinnest deck is best because it makes your most potent tools come up more often. However in a ship, redundancies and simply having more capacity for guns, engines, etc are hugely advantageous. How are you addressing these opposing thematic elements within the mechanics?
That's actually an excellent question as those two design elements are indeed in direct opposition.
The way I worked around it is two fold, on the one hand, when you reshuffle your deck you don't do it instantly, but instead you draw as many cards as you still have left in your deck, and it only reshuffles at the start of your next turn, so there is a slight penalty in reshuffling too often, as you won't have a full card hand potentially.
On the other hand, the way you generate resources in the game is by distributing your reactor power ala FTL to your 3 resource generators, Mass, Energy and Ordnance. Your max resource generation rate for let's say Ordnance in this case, is capped by the amount of weapons you have on your ship, so the more weapons, the more reactor power you can divert to generate the ordnance that powers your attacks.
You can still play with a small deck, as you can generate resources by other means , not only through your income per turn, and you can play around the fact that you only reshuffle cards the next turn and not instantly. But this takes some skill to pull off correctly, so playing with as small a deck as possible is not the dominant strategy
Oh yeah, there's most of the regular trappings of card games, that allow you to draw or cycle through your deck.
Besides drawing a specific card type (offense, support or tactical) , you can also draw cards specific to any equipment piece via crew abilities.
> The way I worked around it is two fold, on the one hand, when you reshuffle your deck you don't do it instantly, but instead you draw as many cards as you still have left in your deck, and it only reshuffles at the start of your next turn, so there is a slight penalty in reshuffling too often, as you won't have a full card hand potentially.
I imagine this might not be as severe in practice, given a lot of details I don't know, but this sounds kind of like a nightmare for consistency?
Let's say I have a 15 card 'deck', and have an option to add one more card. If I'm drawing 5 per turn I assume, then every fourth turn I'm going to get shafted and draw a single card, and more or less having a useless or highly ineffective turn. By adding a single card, I am now making 25% of my turns total garbage, which sounds like a discentive to adding cards and a bad incenctive to try and stick to multiples of 5 only. If I kept at 15 cards, I'd be getting 5 card hands 100% of the time instead.
Edit: ok so I think I'm already overstating this given it doesn't appear you discard at the end of the turn, still, the idea of the possibly of dead turns due to the delayed shuffle mechanic doesn't sit too well.
Each equipment that is operated by a crew member adds another card slot to your hsnd, and after each turn you draw as many cards to fill your empty card slots.
You don't discard your cards at the end of your turn, instead you can manually discard up to 3 cards from your hand per turn, to cycle through your deck faster.
So the more equipment anyou add to your ship (and thus the more cards) , the more card slots you have, so you can draw/play more cards per turn
Also, as the cards themselves are not contained in any "deck" but are actually added to your deck by your equipment (a Laser cannon adds laser attack cards to it) , you will face enemies that are resistant to a certain type of damage, so you want to mix and match your weapon loadout at least somewhat, in order to tear through their damage resistant plating (For example one enemy has angled armor plating that makes flak attacks deal less damage, but it is only active until that enemy takes 20 hull damage, after which that plating is considered destroyed and the effect is gone)
We're not going to do a kickstarter, i'm not sure it's worth the effort with the low percentage of games that actually reach their funding goal.
We very recently signed with a publisher instead ,and fund development that way, actually sent in my resignation at my full time day job yesterday, scary plunge to take when you have kids to feed, but i know i'd just regret it if i didn't pursue this.
Anyway, if you want to find out more about the game and support it, feel free to check out the [steam page here](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2118810/Breachway/)
Yeah we signed with them last month.
Honestly we were considering going without a publisher until they approached us, talking to most other publishers out there was a big letdown in terms of what they asked for and what they gave in return.
And yeah Hooded Horse has some great games in their portfolio, and they are genuinely nice people, very chill too
Iāve straight up bought practically every game published by Hooded Horse so far, it seems their ātastesā really align with mine. Iām super exited by your concept and execution, wishlisted and insta-buy when you launch.
Be sure to post your progress, any other place we should follow Breachway?
Yeah, it seems like they want to corner the market of high-quality indie space and tactical turn based games XD
Well on their way to become the next Paradox imo.
They've been great to work with so far
Thanks for the support, at the moment there is no way to preorder, nor would i feel comfortable taking people's money before i knew the game was worth it.
The game will come out in Early Access sometime in the second half of the year , you can support us by buying it then
Looks brilliant- wishlisted it on steam!
I'm a big fan of sci-fi deckbuilders- Nowhere Prophet and Deep Sky Derelicts are two games I've sunk many hours into
That's a good game, yeah.
We went for something with more depth here, in the combat portion, but also in the meta-game loop where there's a bunch of different elements to juggle like your crew, equipment, faction relations, etc.
Saying no to scope creep is tough
Still figuring the details of that out.
I definitely want boarding in the game, and i have some potentially cool ideas, but it will probably be something we add after our Early Access Launch, once every other system is in and the functionality is solid
Each faction will specialize in a specific weapon or equipment type, from ion cannons, flak, lasers, railguns, hacking, drones, etc.. again, similar to ftl, it's just such a well designed game, got a lot of the basics right :D
well, originally the game was supposed to be a 1v1 multiplayer game, before we realized it was insane for a couple of first time game devs to make a multiplayer-only title
Sure thing, i appreciate the offer.
We'll have a test build ready in a couple of weeks or so, if you're interested you can [join our Discord](https://discord.gg/aKYh8SZhsR) and you'll be notified when the next test build drops. We're adding new testers with every build so we can get first impressions
Nice work. Just thought I'd flag that another take on what seems like an FTL-inspired deckbuilder was recently announced [here](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2179850/Cobalt_Core/).
There's a good mobile/steam game with turn-based ship combat called Star Traders: Frontiers. I think that might be something to check out if you're looking for other inspirations!
Haha, well i'm not sure this game will ever come out on mobile, it has a lot of moving parts, especially when you take the meta-game into account as well.
Would play well on a tablet or maybe the Switch tho, ngl
Stories are very important, i agree, and we're trying to develop an actual internally-coherent game world with different factions, each with their own motivations and alliances. Since this is a rogue-like game the actual "story" will be relatively vague/basic, but the universe in which it takes place will be our focus, and how characters and factions react to the choices you make as a player during a run
Of course i've never written a story before, but i'm excited at the prospect of being able to tell a story through the game. Most of my fondest gaming memories come from a game's story, not necessarily from its mechanics, even through there are some games with excellent mechanics out there (both Slay the Spire and FTL :P )
added to wishlist, godspeed with the development, your comments all sound fantastic! deck building in a game about spaceships is such an interesting concept and im glad its being explored!
Yeah, it's really interesting how the whole spaceship and scifi theme lends itself to card based games, and what new mechanics it can inspire.
It's a good fit for sure, hopefully y'all will be able to test it out soon
Please, for the love of all that is holy, make it easy to mod. Too many games, especially indie titles, end up dead in the water or never reach their true potential because the community has no chance to improve the game and grow by doing so!
Oh man i'd love to make this moddable, we're doing our best to make it possible.
I got into game development through modding, so it has a special place in my heart
Since our game loop is very similar to FTL, we are kind of going for the same approach to the soundtrack, have a theme for each region/faction, and have both exploration and combat versions of it that seamlessly transition between eachother, as there will be a lot of switching between combat and exploration
This is incredible. As a huge FTL fan but also a slay the spire fan, this is extremely cool.
Iād gladly pay $30 AUD for this, at least. Pop it on steam so I can Wishlist it and give you money edit: ok itās already up? Rad. Good luck with launch! Wishlisted take my money
Looks fantastic, can't wait to see how it turns out!
One minor suggestion - two friends and I went to add it to our wishlists by searching for it on steam. Each one of us searched for Reachway, not realising that the letter before was a B rather than a stylised logo. Just thought I'd mention it in case that's helpful feedback!
Yeah, others mentioned it as well, I'll get around to tweaking the logo some more at some point to make it read better, there's just so much other stuff to do first :/
I know that card games are not for everyone, no worries.
This won't be like your average card game however, it was never intended to be that. There is no "deck" per se, no booster packs, etc. All your cards are gotten through the equipment you have on your ship. The reason why we chose to use card-game combat mechanics, is because i think they lend themselves quite well to tactical combat, and to making tough decisions on a turn-by-turn basis
Maybe once we have a demo you can give it a try and see what you think, we've had some other non-card game players give it a try and they liked it
The closest thing we can do is drones, that basically function like multiple secondary ships. Both the player and enemy can have drones, but your control over your own drones will be very limited
My money is very limited right now, but if Iām hearing you right in a FTL-Meets-StS (Slay the Spire) kinda way, then I will test the market for what a second-hand kidney fetches nowadays.
(Seriously, looks cool, will keep an eye on it! If I donāt sell said eyeā¦.)
That's interesting, a boardgame based on ftl would be pretty cool.
There's always a lot of things to solve if you're making any game that's not a direct copy of another game, it's a lot of work
Looks neat, but deckbuilding games aren't my cup of tea.
Like, one of the things that I love most about FTL is how much in-control I feel when playing. I know that when I win a tough battle, it's because of my skills: I sent the right people to the right places at the right times, fired the proper weapons just perfectly to pop the enemies shields, etc. I feel like a commander who just successfully orchestrated something great.
In deckbuilding games I often feel that my fate is more in the hands of RNG. Yes, there is still skill involved in, well, building the deck, and doing things like managing your hand (and keeping track of the opponents deck at higher levels), but I often grow frustrated because I can't do the things I want to do because the random cards didn't favor me.
When I win or fail, I usually want it to be because I outskilled the enemy or the enemy outskilled me, not because I out-lucked them or vis-versa. Sure, a sprinkle of luck is great, but even then I prefer hard percentages like in FTL or eg X-COM where when you take a shot, you can say "87% to hit" or whatever.
Yeah i get what you're saying, i also really dislike the RNG in some card games, it's especially egregious in Hearthstone for example.
Slay the Spire also has some encounters where you are just straight up screwed by the draw, 0 defense cards when the enemy is about to deal 40 damage or something. Sure, part of it is your fault as the player for not having the right ratios of defense to offense cards, but it's also just bad luck at times, such are card games.
So being aware of these issues, i did my best to avoid them when designing Breachway.
That is mainly done through your crew. Each piece of equipment on your ship holds the cards that are related to it (laser cannons hold laser attack cards, shirld generstors hold shield cards, etc), and each piece of equipment has to be manned by a crewmember.
Your crew are your main way of getting out of a bad hand, each combat encounter you have limited orders you can give your crew, orders such as draw a card from the equipment said crewmember operates, or discover one of 3 cards, return one from the discard pile to your hand, etc - there's other more powerful abilities as well, but they are not yet fully designed.
Also, when it comes to drafting cards after combat, it's not just straight up a selection of random cards, but rather you first pick an equipment on your ship you wish to add a card to, and you draft out of that equipment's draftng library. (Not only does for example each laser hold laser attack cards, but you can have laser cannon subtypes like heavy laser or pulse laser, that further define that equipments drafting library)
There's also more nuanced things we did to avoid randomness, but this is one of the major elements.
I wouldn't call Breachway straight up a card game, more like a tactical turn based spaceship combat game with card game mechanics, or at least that's the intention
Edit: FTL's randomness is sometimes more extreme than Slay the Spire's imo, anyone with 6-7 engine power that got a 3 damage missiles straight to his weapon systems can attest to that, it's almost an instant loss
Would play the hell out of this.
Got any plans for an endgame loop?
If there are ship systems to be upgraded a-la classic RPG gear, that opens the door to a lot of entertaining loops that scale reward quality/stats with difficulty.
That's a very astute observation, our ship equipment is very close to gear in an rpg, as it has levels, which determine the cards and card quality on the equipment and in the equipment drafting table, as well as subsystem slots, that act like gem slots in a game like Diablo, and the subsystems only affect cards from that equipment.
I'm not yet sure what sort of an endgame/reward loop this will yield, we're currently still focusing on having a solid core gameplay loop, with diverse and viable ways to overcome enemies. We're getting pretty close to nailing the basics, all we need is to add a basic tutorial that covers the particularities of how our game is different from both a deckbuilder and ftl. After we have that in, we can put a build up for testing.
I can send you a link to a build once we have it stable enough if you are willing to give me some feedback
I would happily play a deckbuilder based around FTL style fights, but I need to know more about what the secondary loop looks like and what breadth of design space the different "characters" (ships I guess?) will occupy. I presume you're looking at a Slay the Spire style progression through different sectors? I am absolutely there.
Happy to hear it sounds interesting , i think the idea plays pretty well so far. As far as the secondary loop, it's very close to FTL actually, you fight enemies, have encounters with various factions and characters, and stop at hangars to upgrade your ship. You can check more about the game our on out [Steam page](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2118810/Breachway/)
> Your deck is determined by your spaceship's loadout Generally the thinnest deck is best because it makes your most potent tools come up more often. However in a ship, redundancies and simply having more capacity for guns, engines, etc are hugely advantageous. How are you addressing these opposing thematic elements within the mechanics?
That's actually an excellent question as those two design elements are indeed in direct opposition. The way I worked around it is two fold, on the one hand, when you reshuffle your deck you don't do it instantly, but instead you draw as many cards as you still have left in your deck, and it only reshuffles at the start of your next turn, so there is a slight penalty in reshuffling too often, as you won't have a full card hand potentially. On the other hand, the way you generate resources in the game is by distributing your reactor power ala FTL to your 3 resource generators, Mass, Energy and Ordnance. Your max resource generation rate for let's say Ordnance in this case, is capped by the amount of weapons you have on your ship, so the more weapons, the more reactor power you can divert to generate the ordnance that powers your attacks. You can still play with a small deck, as you can generate resources by other means , not only through your income per turn, and you can play around the fact that you only reshuffle cards the next turn and not instantly. But this takes some skill to pull off correctly, so playing with as small a deck as possible is not the dominant strategy
Interesting! That sounds like a unique take, and I'm enthusiastic to give it a try. :D
that's great! we plan to have a proper demo out in March if all goes well , if not the summer Steam next fest for sure
Will there be any "fetch" or draw mechanics? Cards that allow deck manipulation, scrying, etc?
Oh yeah, there's most of the regular trappings of card games, that allow you to draw or cycle through your deck. Besides drawing a specific card type (offense, support or tactical) , you can also draw cards specific to any equipment piece via crew abilities.
> The way I worked around it is two fold, on the one hand, when you reshuffle your deck you don't do it instantly, but instead you draw as many cards as you still have left in your deck, and it only reshuffles at the start of your next turn, so there is a slight penalty in reshuffling too often, as you won't have a full card hand potentially. I imagine this might not be as severe in practice, given a lot of details I don't know, but this sounds kind of like a nightmare for consistency? Let's say I have a 15 card 'deck', and have an option to add one more card. If I'm drawing 5 per turn I assume, then every fourth turn I'm going to get shafted and draw a single card, and more or less having a useless or highly ineffective turn. By adding a single card, I am now making 25% of my turns total garbage, which sounds like a discentive to adding cards and a bad incenctive to try and stick to multiples of 5 only. If I kept at 15 cards, I'd be getting 5 card hands 100% of the time instead. Edit: ok so I think I'm already overstating this given it doesn't appear you discard at the end of the turn, still, the idea of the possibly of dead turns due to the delayed shuffle mechanic doesn't sit too well.
Each equipment that is operated by a crew member adds another card slot to your hsnd, and after each turn you draw as many cards to fill your empty card slots. You don't discard your cards at the end of your turn, instead you can manually discard up to 3 cards from your hand per turn, to cycle through your deck faster. So the more equipment anyou add to your ship (and thus the more cards) , the more card slots you have, so you can draw/play more cards per turn
Also, as the cards themselves are not contained in any "deck" but are actually added to your deck by your equipment (a Laser cannon adds laser attack cards to it) , you will face enemies that are resistant to a certain type of damage, so you want to mix and match your weapon loadout at least somewhat, in order to tear through their damage resistant plating (For example one enemy has angled armor plating that makes flak attacks deal less damage, but it is only active until that enemy takes 20 hull damage, after which that plating is considered destroyed and the effect is gone)
Looks neat
thank you sir
I love it, please don't stop!
Don't intend to š
great idea! When's the kick starter?
We're not going to do a kickstarter, i'm not sure it's worth the effort with the low percentage of games that actually reach their funding goal. We very recently signed with a publisher instead ,and fund development that way, actually sent in my resignation at my full time day job yesterday, scary plunge to take when you have kids to feed, but i know i'd just regret it if i didn't pursue this. Anyway, if you want to find out more about the game and support it, feel free to check out the [steam page here](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2118810/Breachway/)
Based, I'll buy your game. Follow the dream!
Thanks brotha
Congrats! Yeah, I saw y'all are with Hooded Horse, some really great games from that publisher
Yeah we signed with them last month. Honestly we were considering going without a publisher until they approached us, talking to most other publishers out there was a big letdown in terms of what they asked for and what they gave in return. And yeah Hooded Horse has some great games in their portfolio, and they are genuinely nice people, very chill too
Iāve straight up bought practically every game published by Hooded Horse so far, it seems their ātastesā really align with mine. Iām super exited by your concept and execution, wishlisted and insta-buy when you launch. Be sure to post your progress, any other place we should follow Breachway?
Yeah, it seems like they want to corner the market of high-quality indie space and tactical turn based games XD Well on their way to become the next Paradox imo. They've been great to work with so far
Great to hear!
Awesome! Hope it all works out
badass
Can we pre order to give you some early revenue to work with?
Thanks for the support, at the moment there is no way to preorder, nor would i feel comfortable taking people's money before i knew the game was worth it. The game will come out in Early Access sometime in the second half of the year , you can support us by buying it then
GOOD LUCK
We will follow your career with great interest
Haha, well if this game doesn't crash and burn, maybe there will be a career to follow!
Looks brilliant- wishlisted it on steam! I'm a big fan of sci-fi deckbuilders- Nowhere Prophet and Deep Sky Derelicts are two games I've sunk many hours into
Haven't player Nowhere Prophet yet, but Deep Sky Derelicts was great
looks fun
I love the idea
Cheers, glad to hear it
Looks good, reminds me of āfor the warpā
That's a good game, yeah. We went for something with more depth here, in the combat portion, but also in the meta-game loop where there's a bunch of different elements to juggle like your crew, equipment, faction relations, etc. Saying no to scope creep is tough
How would boarding work?
Still figuring the details of that out. I definitely want boarding in the game, and i have some potentially cool ideas, but it will probably be something we add after our Early Access Launch, once every other system is in and the functionality is solid
Could be like Slay the Spire. With each race having its own abilities.
Each faction will specialize in a specific weapon or equipment type, from ion cannons, flak, lasers, railguns, hacking, drones, etc.. again, similar to ftl, it's just such a well designed game, got a lot of the basics right :D
Remind me when game is ready because it looks amazing!
Looks great! If it takes off add MP so you can duel ships with your friends! So many possibilities, good luck! Wishlisted.
well, originally the game was supposed to be a 1v1 multiplayer game, before we realized it was insane for a couple of first time game devs to make a multiplayer-only title
Mvp baby do it to it and it will grow. Dm me if you want a beta tester and surveys and stuff, I would love to give realtime feedback
Sure thing, i appreciate the offer. We'll have a test build ready in a couple of weeks or so, if you're interested you can [join our Discord](https://discord.gg/aKYh8SZhsR) and you'll be notified when the next test build drops. We're adding new testers with every build so we can get first impressions
STS but it's FTL? Sign me tf up
I would play the shit out of that - keep going for sure š
Thanks for the encouragement, we'll keep at it!
Looks great, you have my wishlist!
On the wishlist that goes! Looks good, can't wait to play it
Looks cool. Wishlisted.
That looks impressive as hell would def try it out
This looks really neat! Wishlisted it :)
Nice work. Just thought I'd flag that another take on what seems like an FTL-inspired deckbuilder was recently announced [here](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2179850/Cobalt_Core/).
Yeah, that game looks great, i'm sure there's quite a few FTL/StS games out there in development, this is just our take on it
This seems really similar to for the warp don't you think?
On the surface , sure, it has ships, cards and split screen
There's a good mobile/steam game with turn-based ship combat called Star Traders: Frontiers. I think that might be something to check out if you're looking for other inspirations!
I will, never heard about it, thanks!
I would buy this mobile game, is what I think
Haha, well i'm not sure this game will ever come out on mobile, it has a lot of moving parts, especially when you take the meta-game into account as well. Would play well on a tablet or maybe the Switch tho, ngl
Works for me!
This but more storyline than the base game if you're going to make your own IP. That was the one thing I really thought that FTL lacked was depth.
Stories are very important, i agree, and we're trying to develop an actual internally-coherent game world with different factions, each with their own motivations and alliances. Since this is a rogue-like game the actual "story" will be relatively vague/basic, but the universe in which it takes place will be our focus, and how characters and factions react to the choices you make as a player during a run Of course i've never written a story before, but i'm excited at the prospect of being able to tell a story through the game. Most of my fondest gaming memories come from a game's story, not necessarily from its mechanics, even through there are some games with excellent mechanics out there (both Slay the Spire and FTL :P )
I mean... if you need a writer :p
I want this on my iPhone or iPad
Omg
The visual aesthetic is fantastic, I want to play this. Gonna be keeping a keen eye on your steam page.
Thanks
Shut up and take my money
I would gladly pay you for this game!
I want
I love the concept and it looks really cool!!!
added to wishlist, godspeed with the development, your comments all sound fantastic! deck building in a game about spaceships is such an interesting concept and im glad its being explored!
Yeah, it's really interesting how the whole spaceship and scifi theme lends itself to card based games, and what new mechanics it can inspire. It's a good fit for sure, hopefully y'all will be able to test it out soon
Please, for the love of all that is holy, make it easy to mod. Too many games, especially indie titles, end up dead in the water or never reach their true potential because the community has no chance to improve the game and grow by doing so!
Oh man i'd love to make this moddable, we're doing our best to make it possible. I got into game development through modding, so it has a special place in my heart
That's a really cool idea OP
What will the soundtrack be like? FTL does a great job of mixing the soundtrack with the gameplay and I think really contributes to the experience
Since our game loop is very similar to FTL, we are kind of going for the same approach to the soundtrack, have a theme for each region/faction, and have both exploration and combat versions of it that seamlessly transition between eachother, as there will be a lot of switching between combat and exploration
Awesome and well thought out. Wish you the best of luck
Thanks!
FTL: Good Deckbuilder: Great FTL-like Deckbuilder: What could possibly go wrong? Looking forward to seeing this published somewhere.
This is incredible. As a huge FTL fan but also a slay the spire fan, this is extremely cool. Iād gladly pay $30 AUD for this, at least. Pop it on steam so I can Wishlist it and give you money edit: ok itās already up? Rad. Good luck with launch! Wishlisted take my money
thanks man
Looks fantastic, can't wait to see how it turns out! One minor suggestion - two friends and I went to add it to our wishlists by searching for it on steam. Each one of us searched for Reachway, not realising that the letter before was a B rather than a stylised logo. Just thought I'd mention it in case that's helpful feedback!
Yeah, others mentioned it as well, I'll get around to tweaking the logo some more at some point to make it read better, there's just so much other stuff to do first :/
Honestly homie, This looks fucking awesome. I would buy the hell out of this.
You'll get the chance, no worries
This looks dope and reminds me of slay the spire.
Oh man please tell me there's a flight deck pun in there somewhere
cool idea but card games are an instant decline from me
I know that card games are not for everyone, no worries. This won't be like your average card game however, it was never intended to be that. There is no "deck" per se, no booster packs, etc. All your cards are gotten through the equipment you have on your ship. The reason why we chose to use card-game combat mechanics, is because i think they lend themselves quite well to tactical combat, and to making tough decisions on a turn-by-turn basis Maybe once we have a demo you can give it a try and see what you think, we've had some other non-card game players give it a try and they liked it
I'm still playing Ftl after all these years, so i put it on my wishlist on steam!
Intriguing for sure. Would be cool to have multi ship battles. I always wanted that in FTL.
The closest thing we can do is drones, that basically function like multiple secondary ships. Both the player and enemy can have drones, but your control over your own drones will be very limited
My money is very limited right now, but if Iām hearing you right in a FTL-Meets-StS (Slay the Spire) kinda way, then I will test the market for what a second-hand kidney fetches nowadays. (Seriously, looks cool, will keep an eye on it! If I donāt sell said eyeā¦.)
I have tried to design a boardgame based on FTL, but still lots of things to solve.
That's interesting, a boardgame based on ftl would be pretty cool. There's always a lot of things to solve if you're making any game that's not a direct copy of another game, it's a lot of work
Looks neat, but deckbuilding games aren't my cup of tea. Like, one of the things that I love most about FTL is how much in-control I feel when playing. I know that when I win a tough battle, it's because of my skills: I sent the right people to the right places at the right times, fired the proper weapons just perfectly to pop the enemies shields, etc. I feel like a commander who just successfully orchestrated something great. In deckbuilding games I often feel that my fate is more in the hands of RNG. Yes, there is still skill involved in, well, building the deck, and doing things like managing your hand (and keeping track of the opponents deck at higher levels), but I often grow frustrated because I can't do the things I want to do because the random cards didn't favor me. When I win or fail, I usually want it to be because I outskilled the enemy or the enemy outskilled me, not because I out-lucked them or vis-versa. Sure, a sprinkle of luck is great, but even then I prefer hard percentages like in FTL or eg X-COM where when you take a shot, you can say "87% to hit" or whatever.
Yeah i get what you're saying, i also really dislike the RNG in some card games, it's especially egregious in Hearthstone for example. Slay the Spire also has some encounters where you are just straight up screwed by the draw, 0 defense cards when the enemy is about to deal 40 damage or something. Sure, part of it is your fault as the player for not having the right ratios of defense to offense cards, but it's also just bad luck at times, such are card games. So being aware of these issues, i did my best to avoid them when designing Breachway. That is mainly done through your crew. Each piece of equipment on your ship holds the cards that are related to it (laser cannons hold laser attack cards, shirld generstors hold shield cards, etc), and each piece of equipment has to be manned by a crewmember. Your crew are your main way of getting out of a bad hand, each combat encounter you have limited orders you can give your crew, orders such as draw a card from the equipment said crewmember operates, or discover one of 3 cards, return one from the discard pile to your hand, etc - there's other more powerful abilities as well, but they are not yet fully designed. Also, when it comes to drafting cards after combat, it's not just straight up a selection of random cards, but rather you first pick an equipment on your ship you wish to add a card to, and you draft out of that equipment's draftng library. (Not only does for example each laser hold laser attack cards, but you can have laser cannon subtypes like heavy laser or pulse laser, that further define that equipments drafting library) There's also more nuanced things we did to avoid randomness, but this is one of the major elements. I wouldn't call Breachway straight up a card game, more like a tactical turn based spaceship combat game with card game mechanics, or at least that's the intention Edit: FTL's randomness is sometimes more extreme than Slay the Spire's imo, anyone with 6-7 engine power that got a 3 damage missiles straight to his weapon systems can attest to that, it's almost an instant loss
Awesome! Which game engine are you using. It looks slick
We're using Unity
Would play the hell out of this. Got any plans for an endgame loop? If there are ship systems to be upgraded a-la classic RPG gear, that opens the door to a lot of entertaining loops that scale reward quality/stats with difficulty.
That's a very astute observation, our ship equipment is very close to gear in an rpg, as it has levels, which determine the cards and card quality on the equipment and in the equipment drafting table, as well as subsystem slots, that act like gem slots in a game like Diablo, and the subsystems only affect cards from that equipment. I'm not yet sure what sort of an endgame/reward loop this will yield, we're currently still focusing on having a solid core gameplay loop, with diverse and viable ways to overcome enemies. We're getting pretty close to nailing the basics, all we need is to add a basic tutorial that covers the particularities of how our game is different from both a deckbuilder and ftl. After we have that in, we can put a build up for testing. I can send you a link to a build once we have it stable enough if you are willing to give me some feedback
That would be fantastic, I'd be honored to help contribute in any useful way.
This looks amazing, just put it on my steam wishlist