One experiment that I keep coming back to is turning the game into 3D, which basically means rotating the camera by -15 on the X, using perspective projection instead of orthographic, and adjusting a few positions and sort orders.

Here's an example, this is before:

This is after:

I think it has something, a certain je ne sais quoi, but I'm not quite ready to commit to it yet. I could make it optional, but it requires some additional work with the order of sprites and such. I might even have to convert all cards to canvases, but that could also overdo it.

Nevertheless, it's almost normal in card games nowadays, such as Cultist Simulator, Stacklands, Inscryption, Magic The Gathering - they all have a 3D view of the board. I don't think I have any excuse not to do it.

Other than that, I fixed a bunch of bugs and focused on balancing again. The shop now offers upgraded cards to make the shop more useful. And enemies only come with lacrima/materia that make sense to have (there are player-specific lacrima like Gain 1 Life that felt weird on enemies).

I also added "Dora the Card Explorer" (I'm sorry :D), which lets you explore cards on the board, such as the stack of blessings in the upper left corner. Still has a weird issue where it's not clickable sometimes, but I'll iron that out in the future. (It's not actually Dora, that was just the name of it on my todo list. :P)

Some lacrima only activate with a certain chance, like Doomed or Capture. I've made it so now when a Capture with 5% success chance fails, it internally adds 5% for the next try. This makes it feel much fairer to the player, and it's openly communicated too. So, you know that the chances are higher the longer you try. It also counts for enemies though, so it goes both ways.

The devil is in the details, and in this case, quite literally. Since you fight demons, I made a list of 31 demons with their special abilities, these will be used as bosses and elite fights.

One example is Bael, who teaches the art of invisibility. He'll sometimes cast invisible on his allies, which flips the cards, so they can't be attacked (until end of turn).

Another example: Paimon, who "has a great voice and roars as soon as he arrives", so in this game he casts Warcry on all of his allies on the first turn of combat.

I've come up with new lacrima too, and it will be a lot of fun adding all those in. This will certainly improve the boss and elite encounters, right now it's just a bit too random. It will be good to have named enemies that you grow to detest over time.

I keep researching more and more into roguelikes. My favourite streamers are baalorlord and Retromation, they always offer a glimpse into what they really want from roguelikes and how they work. Baalorlord is currently running a challenge of mastering Slay the Spire cards, which means, every card and one duplicate of it have to be in a winning deck. It's extremely high-level play and you learn a lot about roguelikes this way.

I've also finished reading the book Masters of Doom, definitely one of the best books I've ever read. Not quite roguelike related (for that I read Spelunky by Derek Yu), but still an interesting dive into making games. I think I will read "Ask Iwata" next, but we'll see.

As for Faith in Despair, I will focus on adding the bosses and lacrima rarity next. I definitely want to try to work faster and get a playable demo out as soon as possible, but it is what it is.

🧙‍♂️ To be continued...