Hello all! Welcome to my first major update for Golemworks!
After some time away from working on it, I've managed to convince myself to really hunker down and iron out what I deem to be some major flaws with this project. This patch is a big one, and should lead to significant changes (hopefully improvements) in the gameplay. That being the case, I'll do my best to - for the first time since developing games - explain some of my decisions.
I tried setting up the notes so that each section addresses roughly one design problem, and concrete changes are listed in bullet points. I'll go ahead and begin.
Economy and Scale
For some time, I thought Golemworks' biggest problem was lag. So I put a lot of time into separate attempts at optimization solutions, but unfortunately, they all failed at bringing the game to an acceptable framerate (< 1 FPS in some cases) during a deep endless run. Then, at some point, I had the idea that this might be more of a 'scale' problem. That is, making it to round 70 or so with golems that have 10,000 attack power should be practically impossible anyways, but turns out to be simple enough to achieve with a handful of the absurdly powerful catalysts.
I am a little afraid of taking away from the exponential growth fantasy. However, exponential growth was too easy to achieve. Just 3 or 4 of some of the late game catalysts are enough for golem production to spiral out of control. I'm convinced this is something that needs to be accounted for. With that, I've made some major modifications that should stabilize the economy and limit the late-game scale of golem production that is readily achievable. The wave count change also makes the runs shorter which I think is appropriate in a game that asks you to think and make decisions every round.
Reduced wave count from 40 to 25
Can no longer purchase shop and slot upgrades. Instead, the whole factory upgrades itself every 5 rounds.
Rerolls now cost money, and double in cost every time it's used per round
You now receive slightly more for selling things
Money gained during endless mode is throttled much more heavily
Waves scale harder in endless mode
Normalized the amount of money gained depending on shadow power. This means that by default (Normal mode in the Wasteland), the amount of money gained in a round should be equal to wave power. However, in areas with more wave power, the amount of money you receive should remain roughly the same. For example, before, runs in the Exalted Temple offered significantly more resources than runs in the Wasteland, but now that is not the case. This also means that most enemies give much more money upon death.
Increased prices for all catalysts, molds, and upgrades
Adjusted Hard difficulty by having it give less money instead of starting on wave 5
(08/14) Greatly increased the base amount of money earned per round, to match the increased prices for items and upgrades
Hopefully, with this update, the pace of the game is faster early on, but deep endless runs are much more difficult to achieve.
There is still a clear optimization problem for those who do happen to make it far in endless mode. If players are still lagging too much, I'll try to address that at a later date. But these changes should make that more of a rare issue.
Meaningful decisions
Upon looking at each mechanic of this game and asking myself : "How does this encourage meaningful decisions?", I found that there are several that were sorely lacking. One is the mold shop. Offering only level 1 molds at all points of the game means that the decision to buy one mold over another is rarely thought provoking. Furthermore, having 5 mold slots means that the same choices are pretty much always available, resulting in this mechanic essentially becoming a waste of space.
Another mechanic that is underutilized is sockets. The game gives the player full freedom to attach things together as they wish, which made it too easy to achieve optimal setups. I want players to have to think a little more about how they want things to go together.
The following modifications are more or less an attempt at making Golemworks more engaging, specifically by adding more limitations and more real options to think about.
The shop now shows 3 catalysts and 3 molds
The shop now offers randomized upgrades for molds at a discount. The upgrade level of the shop determines the maximum upgrade that can be offered
Changed Trial of Luck from random prices -> less shop options
Later areas now include challenges such as 'more socket shapes' and 'debuffs for some mold slots'.
Increased the wave power for later areas (This was already happening, but I've amplified the effect)
The following changes are a little out of place, but they contribute to making the game interesting so I stuck them here.
'Boss mobs' are now guaranteed on the final wave (now wave 25)
Adjusted the Trial of Colossus so that low level cores are not faster than normal.
Preventing golem attacks from being useless
There are certain mechanics in the game that make it possible for a golem to deal exactly 0 damage to an enemy. I've come to believe that this is far too punishing, and cannot be allowed to exist in this game at all.
Removed the 'flat damage reduction' effect from ALL shadows. Affected shadows are Invidia and Ira. Gave them slight compensation buffs to their speed.
Adjusted the Trial of Elements to give some shadows 50% elemental resistance instead of making them fully immune to certain elements. Additionally, Trial of Elements no longer doubles the effectiveness of elements.
Adding information / feedback
A common experience playing this game seems to include losing suddenly, and not at all understanding why. This is a feedback and UI issue. It is also, in some cases, a tutorial issue. Essentially, the game needs to give you more information, and these changes are aimed at doing so.
The tutorial now points out how to upgrade molds you've already bought, as well as how to see the enemies in the upcoming wave
Added portraits to enemy names in 'wave info'. Also improved tooltips.
Added a golem damage chart, which tracks the damage dealt by each type of golem in each round.
There is now a new visual and sound effect for whenever an enemy takes reduced damage for any reason
Hovering an area in the play menu now shows you its challenges.
Addressing the "loop" strategy
The 'loop' strategy is a setup that looks something like this :
By feeding a catalyst back into itself, a single core is able to benefit from the same catalyst over and over, indefinitely. In the past, I actually went out of my way to make sure this was supported. I think the fact this possibility exists is inherently kind of interesting, and is a unique gimmick of this game that feels wrong to get rid of. It's a cool option. But it has proven to be way too dominant of a strategy, to the point where it can trivialize the entire game from as early as round 3.
The 'socket shapes' challenge mentioned earlier should help make this strategy harder to achieve, but I wanted a way to nerf its power without removing it from the game entirely. What I came up with is as follows : Every time a core visits a catalyst it has already been to, it moves slower and slower. Those who try this strategy should now find it takes much more time for things to ramp up. This adds a significant downside to a strategy that once had none.
I also went ahead and moved the Level Splitter to a higher tier. It was undoubtedly the main troublemaker in this easy win tactic, and it offers too much value anyways.
If a core visits a catalyst it has already been through, it will *slow down significantly* based on how many times the visit happened.
Level Splitter is now Tier 1 instead of Tier 0
Mid run saves
I felt like this deserves its own section because it's not really a 'minor thing', and was kind of a lot of work. It took me a little too long to realize that I just needed to cram everything into a JSON. Sorry guys. This is a basic feature that should have been in the game to begin with, but I'm glad I got it done.
If you quit mid-run, it is saved automatically, and you can continue it on the next play session.
Minor things
Adjusted the colors to be more saturated
The game should now use less RAM
Fixed a bug where the game would start in English for all players, regardless of system language
Made some optimizations (this is minor since I don't think I addressed the real bottleneck)
Replaced a couple music tracks
If you find anything that's broken, it would help me out if you posted about it somewhere in the community page. I'm often checking there to see if there are things I need to change or fix.
If you are an older Golemworks player who enjoyed the game before, I hope you'll forgive me for changing the game so much. I couldn't help but try and leave this project in a state that I'm happy with. Ultimately, my hope with this update is that it brings Golemworks a bit closer to my original vision : a challenging and strategic automation roguelike.
Hope y'all enjoy