Slay The Spire Dev släpper gratis Groovy Autobattler Where Your Deck Is Dance Moves och ger Unity The Finger on the Way Out: "That Is How Badly You F***ed Up"

Återutgiven av Platon

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Slay the Spire-utvecklaren Mega Crit har släppt ett nytt autobattler-kortspel som heter Dancing Duelists. Spelet är tillgängligt gratis på itch.io and features a cast of different characters, all with their own decks, who you level up between dance-offs with new cards and abilities. It’s way better than it has any right to be.

Don’t get me wrong: this comes from a three-week game jam, and so the core is there but there’s little wider structure, and I ran into one or two minor glitches over several runthroughs. But this is as good a proof-of-concept as you’ll play, featuring 10 characters with unique deck styles, a range of power-ups you apply as you progress through the dance-offs, and the delicious trick of letting you get overpowered as hell.

Mitt första försök var med Disco Dan, vars nyckelkort kallas spin: det ger bara en skada, men låter dig sedan spela ett kort till. Med tillräckligt många av dessa i din kortlek, och specifika kort som kan buffa det, kan du snurra och snurra och snurra: den enda nackdelen är att efter ett visst antal snurr blir Dan yr och turen tar slut.

Even then that’s a simplification of how you can build-out this character. But Disco Dan and I didn’t quite mesh, and after getting absolutely walloped by some self-healing tree thing I decided to try out Boom Boxer. Now we were cooking with gas. This character is a heavy hitter with a vigor mechanic that can further buff the damage, and after winning a few dance-offs I’d added enough good cards and abilities to basically turn this thing into prime era Mike Tyson.

Boom Boxer lost one dance-off but was so overpowered by the end of the run it was almost comical. Even this was as nothing, however, next to the clown I picked next called Carnival Carry: all about playing multiple cards, my Slay the Spire knowledge meant I picked up the claw card early. And you know what? Claw is still law. I thought Boom Boxer had gotten too powerful but some lucky card picks made Carnival Carry a true terror that didn’t lose a match. It kunde inte förlora en match.

This sense of being unbeatable, of having a deck that just works together almost too well, is the kind of feeling you’re always chasing in deck builders. Dancing Duelists delivers a quickfire dose of this in every playthrough, with every character seemingly able to become ludicrously OP. Which I’m completely fine with: this is a fun experiment, not a competitive FPS.

Dancing Duelists har sitt ursprung i den senaste och katastrofala kontroversen over Unity’s pricing structure. Mega Crit har gjort sitt nästa spel i Unity men, efter tillkännagivandet av ändringarna, släppte följande uttalande i september:

“The Mega Crit team has been hard at work these past 2+ years on a new game. But unlike with Slay the Spire, the engine we have been developing it in is Unity.

“Despite the immense amount of time and effort our team has already poured into development on our new title, we will be migrating to a new engine unless the changes are completely reverted and TOS protections are put in place.

“We have never made a public statement before. That is how badly you fucked up.”

Yowza. And Dancing Duellists is Mega Crit experimenting with the alternatives, coming from a three week game jam in the Godot engine. In fact, Mega Crit announces alongside this release that Godot is “our new official engine of choice!”

Dansande duellister är tillgänglig för Windows, Mac och Linux. Mega Crit säger att alla som vill ge en donation för spelet bör rikta det mot the Godot engine’s development fund.