Forbidden Merge
Complete the ritual in the old tree stump to expel evil from your forest.
Playtime ~ 40 minutes
Tips:
You can tier-up almost everything by combining two entities of the same tier.
Click on non tier 1 resources to split them.
Explore different crafting recipes by checking tooltips.
Controls:
Left mouse click - everything
ESC - open/close menu
Credits:
@pasq - art and animation
@NedoKontent - Game design, programming, ost etc.
Sounds from:
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Comments
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It's really frustrating how Fungul 1s that spawn from other Funguls from higher levels can't be merged with other Fungul 1s.
Really enjoyed the game. The art style is beautiful, and the mechanics are fun to discover. There are some bugs, which I guess can be fixed with a couple of patches. Overall, a great project that can grow into something bigger.
Thanks for your honest review!
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Thank you for the kind words sir!
Beat it, it's got a few painful bugs such as randomly placing things on occupied tiles. Biggest problem was figuring out how to get the resources needed to kill monsters faster than they spawn in. I was literally deleting soul 3s to make room once i found the gimmick.
Thanks for playing and gratz on beating it!
Bugs with tiles are painful and very hard to track, I hope one day I will understand how my code works.
While play testing, we saw abundance of souls in a lot of runs. But some players were soft locking themselves couse of spending souls inefficient. We have special unit that can help with excessive resources)
Thanks for playing our game! We really appreciate it!
I didn't beat the game, ran out of time to play when I did (was taking me longer than 20 minutes, which is not at all a complaint, and I made some mistakes by putting off killing enemies and just continuously merging them; the lack of space started to really hurt, and I realized it would have been far more manageable if I had dealt with it early and depleted my low/mid-tier units' health as low as possible without them dying instead of merging them immediately).
But I do intend to come back and play again from the start, really like this game and have a high opinion of it, also highly recommend.
Sharing feedback and notes about bugs/experience I had while playing:
- DISPLAY BUG: Some creatures, such as Gnome II & Armatus II, will display the "combines with" information of the last thing hovered over, instead of being empty since they merge with nothing other than themselves. (For example: Hover over "Water III", then "Gnome II": the Gnome II's tooltip will say it combines with "Stone III" and "Water III") This doesn't affect all Tier 2 units. (Ent II's tooltip is normal, for example).
- UX: I would like it if some interactions were made clearer in the tooltips; Mushroom unit hints in a "lore" way that you can feed it things by combining to increase strength, but it doesn't list it in the "combines with" area. It would be nice if it did, like how the healing herb clearly explains how it works. It makes me feel like I'm missing something with some of the other units, like Jotun (it says it freezes things, but in what way...? I couldn't figure it out)
- COMBAT BUG(MAYBE?): Speaking of Jotun: the last thing I did while playing was have it fight an enemy unit, but although Jotun got damaged, the enemy did not? I have no idea why. Pretty sure the specific fight was... I had my 7/18 Jotun I fight an 11/6 Dwarf II, after combat Jotun was 7/7 (taking 11 damage, as expected) but Dwarf was still 11/6.
- Putting souls in the cauldron deletes them; I think it'd be good if instead they returned at least a T1 soul, like how disposing other things containing souls works.
- UX: I would like it if, when dragging something on something else, it would display a preview of the "result" (hovering above the merge target you're dragging over, in the same way that the Ritual preview does? I know that might be complicated to add, just found myself wanting it more than a few times. I started taking notes on units partway in to better recall specific stat points.
- BUG: In some situations, I managed to have two objects on the same tile by moving a unit/object to a tile either right before or right after (?) opening a chest right next to it. I can't give exact steps to replicate, and not sure if it's only with chests or if it can also happen with resource nodes.
- BUG: Although the game prevents you from harvesting a resource if there's insufficient space, you can start harvesting and then either open a chest or split an existing pile to make the space unavailable again. When this occurs, the unit harvesting & the harvested item will be sent off-map, almost completely offscreen, in the top left. I suspect similar might happen if you start multiple harvests at once with insufficient space.
(started playing again and tried to intentionally break it this time, and found a few more bugs as a result, have added them to the above comment)
Thanks a lot for the great review and such detailed feedback!
I'll try to fix as much as possible in the near future, however cous I'm quite unexpected with coding, some of the bugs are fundamental flaws, that are incredibly hard to fix. So I'll do what I can)
I really like the idea about mushroom's tooltips, will add it 100%. However with Jotun and few others I want to keep it vague, to let players explore a little bit. Jotun should lower enemy's attack, if it doesn't then it's just another bug=~=
Dwarfs have the same ability as Armatuses, which negates first hit. You can track that by blue particles.
I'll see if result is possible and will it look good!
I really appreciate this! Thanks for playing!
Seconds before you commented I finally realized about the armor thing lol; I didn't realize the glittering indicated armor at all on my first play. I had hesitated to use my metal units because of their low health, so despite me paying attention to stat changes, I never gave myself the opportunity to understand it absorbs a hit (to make that understanding leap I would have ALSO needed to have actively noticed both the particle effect, and its absence afterwards, which I clearly didn't in the case of Dwarves ). I like hidden mechanics conceptually so I get the intent, I just totally missed it here.
The space management stuff I understand would be pretty complex to "fix" here in a way that prevents it from ever happening in the first place, but I think there might be some ways you could handle the "error case" more cleanly. Referencing other merge games I've played, for cases like this I think they usually have a "bubbling" objects that are being forcibly given to the player when they don't fit on the field (they go into bubbles which float above the grid, allowing you to "pop" them when you do have space). Dunno how well that'd fit here, but something to consider.
Glad I could help, and your inexperience doesn't show at all, you clearly know what you're doing in terms of presentation and a lot of the little UX things developers frequently overlook.
"Bubble" thingy really does sounds like a good idea. Will see.
Thanks for the compliment! I really do appreciate it)
A big thank you for trying out our game and for taking the time to write all this. It means a lot to us, and we will try to fix the issues mentioned in the next update!
A great and fun game. There are a few bugs and after the begginging it gets a little too hard. But I am definetely looking forward future updates. Would reccomend
Thanks for the review! I'm sorry for the bugs, I hope they weren't too intrusive. Game is a little bit challenging, what exactly you found too hard?
We’re touched by your support. Thank you for playing!