Messages

421

Bigosaur / Re: My Mom's a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac

« on: March 21, 2017, 11:59:02 PM »

After you beat the Executioner, you proceed to the throne. The king greets you and explains that your witch mother wasn't really kidnapped. The king called for her because he has a major problem in the catacombs: Someone or something is raising the dead, and she's the only one who can stop it.

You can choose to peacefully enter the dungeon and find your way to the catacombs. Or you can attack the king. If you defeat him and his guards, you can take the Royal Scepter, which enables you do summon castle guards to aid you.

Beside the scepter, a bunch of new weapons are added to the game: the Shepherd Staff turns enemies into sheep, the Turret Staff creates standalone copy of the staff that autonomously shoots at the enemies and the Earthquake Staff knocks down all the enemies and destroys some rocks. The stronger your Magic skill, the more rocks will be broken. For combat, Earthquake Staff is a melee weapon - you can strike or knock down enemies, similar to Warbreaker Hammer. The Earthquake Staff is currently the only weapon that scales both with magic and melee skill. This means that you can upgrade it with both Warlock and Blacksmith runestones.

Beside all this, two new room types have been added. First one is the Scroll shop, which sometimes shows up as an alternative to the Potion Shop. The shop offers all four types of scrolls for that run at a low price, and you can buy an identify scroll for only 10 gold coins. The second one is a special room in the castle where the Ogre Mama is fighting the castle guards. It can only show up if the Ogre Mama boss is absent from the forest.

Additionally, the Fireball Staff now adds 1-battle fire immunity to the caster who activates the fireball buff.

I also fixed the hitbox for the sword strike of the Guard Captain. It was wrong on the first strike, so she could sometimes hit targets that are far away from her (sometimes even on the opposite side of the room). This is fixed in version 1.8.6.

422

General Chatter - The Boozer / Re: Now We Are Nine

« on: March 18, 2017, 01:18:50 PM »

Happy birthday 

423

Bigosaur / Re: My Mom's a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac

« on: March 18, 2017, 08:26:52 AM »

I think "triggers" is probably best. All the others also mean "cause something to start", but (in a typical English-language way) each one has a subtle shade of meaning that's not quite right for earthquakes.

Thanks.

I just realized I need more text to explain that "the stronger your magic, the more rocks the earthquake destroys", so I'll probably put something like "stronger magic destroys more rocks" (<- if you can come up with a shorter phrase, please let me know) and avoid the whole "triggering" business. Players will deduce that it's earthquake from the weapon's name and the effect they see on the screen.

424

Bigosaur / Re: My Mom's a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac

« on: March 17, 2017, 06:28:11 PM »

I'm making a bunch a of new magic staffs. So far, I have the Turret staff, that creates a standalone copy of the staff that hovers mid-air and shoots at the enemies on its own.

The second one I'm making is an Earthquake Staff. Not being a native speaker, I'm unsure what to put as the description. Maybe "evokes earthquakes". Alternatives I considered as "produces", "triggers", "initiates", "induces", "incites". Which word would you use?

425

Bigosaur / Re: My Mom's a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac

« on: March 15, 2017, 08:04:50 PM »

A new boss is added to the forest area. He starts showing up after you defeat the Ogre Mama, or you play 20+ games. As you would expect from a golem, he is immune to poison. This one being an Earth Golem makes him also immune to meteors and petrifying. Now, this might seem tough, but he's still a first level boss, so once you learn his attacks it shouldn't be much harder to beat him.

426

Bigosaur / Re: My Mom's a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac

« on: March 14, 2017, 12:37:50 PM »

I'm liking the sorceress for playstyle btw - super powerful when combined with the retaliator and the standing-in-front-of-an-ice-shooter trick!

Yup. Especially if you get a Mana Canteen early and save up all the mana for later

427

Bigosaur / Re: My Mom's a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac

« on: March 08, 2017, 10:37:59 PM »

if you didn't get the amulet, antidote, or dragonfire

Retort also helps. Carry it with you and create potions until you get one of those.

But the best way is to simply avoid going close to poison spitters. I often take a hit from enemies instead of going into the middle of the screen.

428

Bigosaur / Re: My Mom's a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac

« on: March 08, 2017, 10:55:25 AM »

Agreed with Glaurung

Thanks to both of you. I had to rush her into the game last night because of an important bugfix. The quest to unlock the mage will come in later.

I got killed by the troll in the daily challenge again... I should really get over my pride and actually pay the fee sometimes, I just keep fighting the thing and dying because I don't want to pay

    

I often pay to pass and come back later when I have better weapons to get my gold back

Also - I'm not sure there are enough things to counter poison at the moment. The two potions that do it aren't that common, and the number of poison shooters in the third level is quite large potentially...

There's also an amulet which you can get at the start or find it somewhere along the way. I feel like adding more means to stop poison would make the amulet worthless.

Also, playing while poisoned adds excitement 

429

Bigosaur / Re: My Mom's a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac

« on: March 05, 2017, 04:38:06 PM »

I'm creating the sorcerer character currently and she has a staff that can create food. I'm not sure what would be a better description for the staff: "Provides food" or "Provisions food" ?

430

Bigosaur / Re: My Mom's a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac

« on: March 05, 2017, 10:24:00 AM »

Will the other levels each have some special rooms possible as well?

Yes, but not so many. The forest should have about a dozen in the final game, because you play the forest every time you start a new game and I want to make sure it's always interesting. I already have some ideas like a Jousting tournament, a pond for fishing, long-jump competition, ...

especially pushing me to drink extra potions etc to get points

Yes. I have seen this too, even if I know the potion is bad, I would still drink it for extra points. But I guess that's good - it makes the daily challenge special.

431

Bigosaur / Re: My Mom's a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac

« on: March 03, 2017, 01:22:00 PM »

Piggles

I've only played about 20 testing runs with them and I feel really sad when the enemies manage to kill them. But, they stay on the screen, so you can revive them with the Life Staff

BTW, they aren't in the Steam version yet, I need to do more testing with various effects/situations. The version will be 1.6.5 or higher.

I've had some good runs lately (sadly not during the daily challenges in the last few days, but ah well), and worked out some nice tactics with the retaliator - if you can get poison immunity and the retaliator, and either some health potions or toughness potions or both, you can currently stand in front of a poison firer for a bit, take say 30pts of damage then heal up before going into the executioner level, and be doing some very, very big hits when you get there!

Yes! Similar with fire/ice immunity. But the poison immunity is even cooler if you get Mushroom level in the forest and bring those 11 mushrooms to the castle. You can buff the Retaliator like crazy and then just one-shot the boss

432

Bigosaur / Re: My Mom's a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac

« on: March 03, 2017, 12:58:07 PM »

The third themed forest area is the hunting ground. Well, not really hunting, but more like taming the beasts. Depending on the number of players playing there's one or more wild boars walking around. You have to chase them down, or hurt them from the distance to tame them. Once tamed, you can mount and ride them which gives you +2 speed.

While you are riding, all the damage taken is split between you and the animal. The boars eat all the food, which heals them. If you get the Hunger curse, you can remove it with the Dragonfire Potion, drink a Beer, eat a Mushroom, or find a way to get off the boar. For example, if a Goblin Shaman drops a meteor on your or someone stomps a Voodoo Doll you're marked with.

433

Bigosaur / Re: My Mom's a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac

« on: February 27, 2017, 12:32:01 AM »

A new version is coming soon. It features a new forest area (similar to the Troll area), where you need to stomp on the pests to get the rewards (they drop runestones):



And I have improved the UI to make the effect icons more understandable:



The Rogue Sword is getting an upgrade. When you are concealed, the next few attacks have Sneak Attack bonus which starts at +100 damage and quickly drops to zero. Basically, you can sneak up on one enemy and one-hit kill him, or maybe do about 150-200 damage to a boss if you swing the sword really fast. The bonus applies to any melee weapon.

434

Bigosaur / Re: My Mom's a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac

« on: February 25, 2017, 01:28:13 PM »

you don't currently seem to get the achievement for beating a boss if you barrel-roll-scroll it, I don't know if this is intentional!

Yes. Also, Gamble scroll allows you to get the Dragon and Executioner achievement on the first level with goblins helping you beat the Executioner because they belong to different factions

I'll have a think about undeath - something like immunity to knockdown like the orc-thingies have would be a big and interesting change?

I think it would be too hard to play without it. When you get surrounded on all sides getting knocked to the side is the only way to escape. Also, I feel like the skeletons should have even less poise than full bodied enemies.

Immunity to poison would make sense too, hard to poison a skeleton!

Yes, complete poison immunity is planned. And maybe inability to drink and eat since they have no stomach.

BTW, I was thinking how magic staves feel a bit weak, and the reasoning that you have no motivation to use the Life Staff or Heal Staff for combat. Because of this I'm changing the base orb damage for those from 6 to 10. I'm also buffing the Supercharger base damage from 6 to 8 to compensate for the higher mana cost of the lightning spell.

435

Bigosaur / Re: My Mom's a Witch: Castle Crashers meets Isaac

« on: February 22, 2017, 11:43:31 PM »

Due to some players complaining about the difficulty, I decided to avoid having Easy/Normal/Hard option, but to give players some powerful boosts until they manage to beat the bosses. The starting boosts are Books your Witch mother left for you.

At first, you get a Book of Life that gives you 100 extra HP. You keep getting this book until you defeat the Ogre Mom. This helps with the fact that the player is still learning the ropes and the goblins do a lot of damage.

After you beat the Ogre, the subsequent runs give you the Book of Ice which freezes enemies for 3 seconds every time you enter a new room. This helps from dying too quickly against the guards. You gain a couple of seconds to survey the room and position yourself.

After you beat the Dragon, you start getting the Book of Fire, which sets all enemies on fire as you enter.

After you beat the Executioner, you start getting a random item. Those items aren't as powerful as Mom's books, but still provide some help.

The idea is that once you reach Mom in the Dungeon, you will unlock her (you can play as her) and then you won't be getting items anymore.

Any thoughs or comments on these changes are welcome.

P.S. Beside the books, there are 6 new items and 2 new potion effects in the game. The new version is already up, so you can try it now.

P.P.S. There will be a fourth book - the Book of Death. It will allow you to kill yourself and come back as undead. This will change the game as you won't be able to heal using the health potions, but by killing the enemies. You will have an appearance of a skeleton and maybe you will be immune to some things, like the magic the skeleton mages will use in the Catacombs level. I still haven't figured out this completely, so I'm putting this book aside until I create the Catacombs level and all the enemies there. However, if you have some cool ideas about playing as an undead, I'd love to hear them.