Roadmap

7-11-2021.

If this game is well-received, and I have the capability to keep working on it, here are some big-picture development tasks I'd like to do:

-Balancing, obviously. A game like this can never be balanced enough.

-Encyclopedia / Bestiary. I've already written descriptions for many of the game's owls and monsters. It'd just be a matter of making an interface where the player can view them.

-Add rare owls!!!!!!! Or procedurally generated owls. There are many ways this idea could be implemented. Perhaps one rare owl chosen at random will always be available at the shop (and probably one fewer uncommon owl will be available to compensate.) Rare owls can be interesting & powerful, and lend themselves well to archetypes and synergies. Example:
"OWL NEST: costs 5c. When summoned, add a mage to your spellbook."
This card ticks all the boxes: It's interesting, since it is a card that itself adds cards to your deck, which is pretty wild. And it's powerful. And it synergizes with some strategies, like the mage banner (so you can make the "mage" deck) or the d20 banner (so you can make the "large deck size" deck). I think people want to be able to draft synergies, and I'd look to a combination of rare owls and banners for how I'd like to accomplish this.

The biggest challenge with rare owls, is that a lot of the ideas I have for them, will be very difficult to communicate to the player. Not gonna lie, I have no idea how to solve this problem. Some major rewriting of the game's text may be in order.

-Nail down core gameplay. Is the game too easy or too hard? Do in-game gambles pay off too much? Not enough? The base gameplay mechanics really need to be made amazing. I'm not convinced I implemented static as well as I could have. Maybe there should be an ultra energy surge that increases static by 3, and a higher max static. I'm also really unsure of miasma. I feel like players maybe dislike losing their deck, but is there any way to make the game work without miasma?

-QOL features. Ability to save your game, adjust volume, etc. are all obvious. What's less obvious is clearer communication of everything. When you play a merchant, and then your spell explodes, it should be clear that you no longer get anything on sale at the shop. And there should be a way to browse the owls you've already summoned. Etc. etc.

-Get the game running on actual hardware! I think I have a gba in the attic somewhere. Someone told me that the game runs fine on an actual GBA, but I'd like to do some testing myself.

-Lots of code rewriting. This game has unimaginably nightmarish spaghetti code. I don't even know how much ewram, iwram, etc. I'm using. To make the game more flexible, better performing, and less buggy, a huge amount of work needs to be done.

-Determine what kind of game it wants to be. Do I want to strip the game of its wacky elements and get my sci-fi writer friend to write a tragic story for the game, complete with rpg progression mechanics? Do I dig deeper into the current roguelike nature of the game and get it to be challenging, deep, and well-balanced? Do I want to let the player control multiple ships of owls? And face down multiple enemies at once? Anything is possible...

Leave a comment if you have any thoughts on this!