Boss fights are now slightly more curated. For this I once again chose to create a json file, which gets read at the start of the game.

Once the map gets generated, the map chooses a random boss from the json data, and generates the required lanes, minions, boss cards and boss lacrima.

At the top of the post you can see the first boss, he's called Paimon and he has two minions. The minions are randomly generated, the boss isn't. In this case, it caused quite a chain reaction on first turn, because Paimon buffed the minion on the right, which cause him to weaken all of my creatures and steal gold from each of them too.

Rarity

Lacrima now also come in different rarity. Just like bosses and lacrima relations, I stored this data in JSON. I decided to have 4 rarities: common, uncommon, rare and ultrarare. Ultrarare will be things that should change the game drastically. Not sure what exactly yet, but I already have some crazy lacrima ideas on my list that wouldn't make sense if they were common. Things like "remove lane", or "flip card", etc.

Dividing up all existing lacrima into these categories felt very good, it made a lot of sense and I believe it will lead to a more balanced experience when going through the levels.

Splash Screen

Since I want to get the game out to players soon, I added a splash screen. The only option right now is to start a new run (button not pictured), more buttons will follow.

Making this screen has felt incredibly motivating. I believe I've seen the first glimpse of the soul of this game. I already want to make music for this, for which I instantly got a bunch of ideas. And I feel like it informs the rest of the game, what it wants to be.

Things are going to get interesting from here on out.

Roadmap to Playtest

Here is a list of things I need to do before I can let you playtest it:

* 20 blessings: I have about a dozen blessings implemented, I want to have at least 20, and I also want to change them to json data. Right now they are stored as scriptable objects, which isn't working so great with enums. When you change the order of values inside enums, the options in scriptable objects don't change accordingly.

* 5 event types (fight, shop, sleep/rest, pray, altar/exorcism): I still need to add the altar/sacrifice/exorcise event that lets you get rid of cards for a reward. Other than that, all events are done.

* Balanced enemy materia distribution (for elite/boss fights, specific patterns): I want to have at least 10 bosses implemented, right now there's only one.

* Sounds: I can't wait to add sounds to this game, I already have a bunch of ideas. Music will play an important part as well, but for the playtest I may only add a maximum of two.

* UI update: There needs to be an actual rewards screen instead of just a popup. Shop and inventory need better UI as well, maybe even different backgrounds.

A rough estimate suggests to me that this will take another 2 months, which feels incredibly slow. I could try to speed up, but I'm not sure my health can take the hit. We'll see how it goes.

As I said previously, I've also begun playing FF7 again, I'm about 4 hours in and it's great (and frustrating in some ways, but that's old games for you). Also still reading Ask Iwata, and learning more about roguelikes.

My wife also playtested the current version again, and this run took us a bit more than an hour. We had a discussion afterwards about story and music for it. There are different versions of the game in my head, depending on how much time and money I want to spend overall. But we agreed that the soundtrack will be incredibly important, just like usual with my games.

🧙‍♂️ To be continued...