Alpha Dungeon Boss Simulator

[Zodaris]

Hello! I have been working on this project on and off (mostly off) since I made it for the GMC Game Jam back in June or so. It is currently at a point where I believe I'm ready to get input and finalize how it all works before I begin to add in additional bosses. I have addressed many of the issues people had taken with it back during the game jam. As an added bonus it is an HTML game now and will not require a download.

For those who don't know/remember:
This is an arcade game where you use play match-3 to charge up the powers of your team to help them fight a boss. You have direct control over the green square. You serve as the healer of the group. Arrow keys or WASD to move. The red square is the "Tank" and has more health then the other squares (green included). If it dies the boss will resort to using only ranged attacks and will likely kill the rest of your party quickly.

Here's a screenshot: (Note: this is from an older version. Current is the same but with audio and pause controls in the top right corner.)


Version 0.0.1.0:

Spoiler

Changes I have made:
- Healing is now based on proximity. The green circle shows the max range.
- Resurrection ability has been reworked to require building up charges in order to use. Also only rezes 1 ally per 100% used.
- Visual updates to the gems. Glows when mouse is hovering over them, and has particles showing what power-up they boost.
- Now supports gem swapping with clicking instead of only using click and drag. (Not requested but something I had always planned to include.)
- Icons have been added to give control over abilities as well as showing their power. (Swirling means automatic/use when able. Click to turn this on or off.) Each gem gives 25% power. Healing and Rez share an icon slot, but one or the other can be seen by hovering over one of the 2 halves and can be turned on or off independently from each other.
- Now shows damage and healing numbers for better understanding of what's going on. To avoid flooding the screen damage numbers on the boss only show up when dealt damage greater than 10.
- Now the boss actually has a death animation!
- Various minor things that aren't note-worthy

Version 0.0.1.1:

Spoiler

Changes include:

• Audio controls.
• Pause menu (with audio sliders).
• General re-balancing of how much % charge gems give (Takes more gems to reach 100% charge across the board).
• Damaging abilities now only trigger when charge is at or above 100% (Used to give a weaker version when below 100%).
• Healing now maxes at 100% and each heal uses up 1% charge (Revives still take a full 100% in order to be used).
• Cyan's ability overhauled. Now increases attack speed for 4 seconds and increases basic attack damage based on % charge. Timer resets to 4 seconds whenever a gem gives additional charge. It will not reset if charge is at max percent (500%)

Here's the link to play it: https://frostdream.itch.io/dungeon-boss-simulator-alpha
Password: bosssim
I'm using a password because I don't want it public yet, as I have some plans that I think it would be better if this was a "can only see if you got the link for it" type thing for now.

 

[Nehemek]

Alright, I'm not good with these bejeweled games but gave it a try. Here are my thoughts:

• I'm not very good at multitasking, and I wish the elements weren't so small so I could focus better on looking at both "screens" at the same time!
• It really wasn't clear what I achieved by matching the tiles. Some numbers along with some indicators briefly changed but quickly went back to 0. I guess I was supoused to keep a chain going but that's quite hard with the random nature of the matching game. By reading your post it seems that they buff the squares but the boss has so much hp and the party does so little damage that I'm not sure if it made a difference than the next point.
• The most important strategic factor was to heal the party and it wasn't so hard. I admit I skipped the forum post and didn't understand what the green controlable dude did. One of my cubes died but I managed to keep the other two alive. Those ranged attacks are heavy.
• And after the whole ordeal and the boss reached 0 hp it!... just.. faded.. away... I was expecting a rewarding explosion :C

 

[Zodaris]

New update is out!
Changes include:

• Audio controls.
• Pause menu (with audio sliders).
• General re-balancing of how much % charge gems give (Takes more gems to reach 100% charge across the board).
• Damaging abilities now only trigger when charge is at or above 100% (Used to give a weaker version when below 100%).
• Healing now maxes at 100% and each heal uses up 1% charge (Revives still take a full 100% in order to be used).
• Cyan's ability overhauled. Now increases attack speed for 4 seconds and increases basic attack damage based on % charge. Timer resets to 4 seconds whenever a gem gives additional charge. It will not reset if charge is at max percent (500%)

Alright, I'm not good with these bejeweled games but gave it a try. Here are my thoughts:

• I'm not very good at multitasking, and I wish the elements weren't so small so I could focus better on looking at both "screens" at the same time!
• It really wasn't clear what I achieved by matching the tiles. Some numbers along with some indicators briefly changed but quickly went back to 0. I guess I was supoused to keep a chain going but that's quite hard with the random nature of the matching game. By reading your post it seems that they buff the squares but the boss has so much hp and the party does so little damage that I'm not sure if it made a difference than the next point.
• The most important strategic factor was to heal the party and it wasn't so hard. I admit I skipped the forum post and didn't understand what the green controlable dude did. One of my cubes died but I managed to keep the other two alive. Those ranged attacks are heavy.
• And after the whole ordeal and the boss reached 0 hp it!... just.. faded.. away... I was expecting a rewarding explosion :C

• Yeah this is a game that tests your ability to switch back and forth. However I have made design choices to help with that. For one, there is a 3 second delay between every attack (from the end of 1 into the beginning of the other) which isn't long but if say you don't need to heal of an attack, you can know you're free to make a couple quick matches. Another thing is that the mouse only interacts with things on the right, while the keyboard only controls things on the left. This is to help keep the player from mixing up the 2 halves. In the future I may add something that'll show on the gem grid that'll show "Hey something you may want to pay attention to is happening with the boss!".
• The gems charge up the special abilities of the units (Heavy Attack for Red, Fire Ball for Orange, Rapid Fire for Cyan, Heal and Revive for Green). The reason the number went back to 0 was because the ability was used up. The swirling animation on the icons shows they are set to "auto-cast". Click to turn that on and off so you can control when they use abilities and to save up charge when you want. Note that in the patch I just made I tweaked the numbers a bit so it takes more gems to charge up and so you're not getting bizarre numbers like "1375%" so it's easier to follow. Also of note, there is no big benefit for, say, matching 5 in a row or any of those other special match ups. More gems is more charge and that's it. This is to help with the multitask aspect of it so you don't have to worry about getting the "perfect" match while you're busy keeping everyone alive. Just make a quick match of any kind near the bottom and hope you get a good cascade of matches while you're busy healing.
  • Also of note is that the amount of damage that abilities can dish out help a TON. Without using any abilities (aside from healing and revive) it takes about 17 minutes to beat. My record using abilities is about 2 minutes. (Which in the future I'll be adding a timer and a "best time" system so players can race against themselves.)
• The melee attacks hit hard too, but Red has more health than the rest of the units. Also if Red dies, aside from the tail attack the boss will only use ranged attacks.
• Yeah the current sound effect for the boss death is going to be replaced, and when it does I'll be making the death animation more satisfying to match.

Thanks for playing it and giving it a shot!

And to anyone who might be skimming through I put a lot of details into that reply since this is information I should convey better and would be useful to anyone playing. In the final version there will be a tutorial that'll help to show what's going on, since a wall of text really isn't good for teaching this kind of stuff.