Apple App Store


The journey to absolutely destroy my savings and career continues! I released a big update to my game, Lore Seeker


new stuff [tech]:
- The game now runs on Mac Os X in addition to iPhone / iPad
- I did a fuckton of optimizations to make the game run faster
- The AI can now 'hit & run' with fast flyers or stay out of range with fast units
- I replaced my maps / levels / art with open text files that you can just modify and change the whole game. This system is still basically unusable because you need to do everything perfectly or the game crashes but you can already use it to change the balance of the game


new stuff [game design]
- Cards are now divided into 4 'factions' like the MTG colors. Your cards come out faster when you use your own faction, but you can use the other factions as well with a penalty
- I added a bunch of new cards, still needs way more IMO
- Troops now have triggered / activated effects of their own. E.g. a priestess can heal your own troops, a hired general buffs all of your troops whenever you play a new troop, etc.
- it now supports cards like mtg's "counterspell" that target your opponent's/own cards before they come out (I only have 1 card like this for now)
- You can now take control of enemy troops (also just 1 card that can do this for now)
- Some troops like Cannon now deal damage in an area of effect
- I can now have cards that target 2 tiles. For now I only have 1 type of card that uses this, it allows you to teleport your troops


A list of stuff I'm planning on working on:
- Add cards with a sacrifice mechanic, like you need to kill your own troops as an added cost
- Add online play. This seems like a low priority thing to me because I'll never in a million years have enough users to make matchmaking a thing. It would have to be a "host a game then invite your friend with a passcode" type of deal
- Replace the enemy AI with neural networks. I thought this would be badass and so I made 1 attempt at it already but the AI ended up way weaker than my home-cooked rules based AI, so I put that idea on the shelf for now. It was also a little bit slow and so you had to wait half a second here and there for the AI to "think" which was another minus. Anyway I think the AI is important because I remember playing shandalar and the AI giant growthing the wrong card and stuff and it really took away from the game.
- Android and windows ports. Android seems like the most important thing to me because at least some people have asked for it
- Add more maps with different experiences. I programmed my game so you have a lot of options when you make a level, but I don't have any experience with level design so I don't think I did a good enough job showing this off yet.
- Adding a story. This seems so far out of my skill set I just completely ignored this. I'm not sure how much it would add to a collectible card game anyway
- Adding a tutorial. I'm not sure if the game is easy enough to understand as is
- Maybe I should make youtube videos explaining how the game works etc. in an effort to get some users. I'm not really sure if that would be appreciated or effective. I always feel like I should be spending 100% of my time making the game itself better instead of trying to promote it

Anyway, everyone here was super supportive when I posted about this before so again a 1000 thanks to you guys and plz root for me to get the game off the ground. I'll keep posting when I hit big updates...