I like the concept of this game, but it just feels horribly unbalanced and almost entirely luck based.
I never feel like my choices ultimately matter all that much, because I don't get to decide what is played. I could have a deck with great synergy, but if that Ant that gets played is the card that tips the damage over the threshold, I'm then screwed, because I'm left defending the crown with a card with 1 health on top of a huge stack of cards that are obviously going to overfill my den.
I feel like having a hand that you draw into would be better, and perhaps letting us choose which animal in the den is hunted? That way I can hunt my Ants or Bees and leave the Bee Hive alone, because losing an animal that's central to a build is not in my control and run-ending.
There are also some cards, regardless of quality level, that are objectively better or worse than others.
Like I said, I like the concept of the den and draw deck being the "health" of the player essentially, it's innovative. There's a reason that most other games have very limited permanent changes to your deck, though. It's incredibly tricky to get that to be balanced. If you can get that to work, that would also be a really cool feature of this game, but as it stands, literally everything being permanent makes it too hard to balance a build, and makes it largely luck based.
I have followed on Steam though, because I can see the potential!
But please don't use AI art. Visually the game looks nice if not for basically having no identity, because the art is all in different styles. I can't look at a card and definitively say "ah yes, that's a card from Pack Tactics! I recognise the design style."
As many creative people in the game industry will agree, ask around! Someone out there will do you a series of art designs for cheap or even free!
Or, as many physical card pack games do on their cards - display the artist on the card itself proudly! You could ask the community to draw some art for your cards, and your favourites get to be included in the game, or get unlocked as alternative art for a card once you win a run with it in your deck or something like that!
Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts and experiences! There is definitely a significant luck component. We're aiming to build some more reliable strategies into the game, though there will still be high variance ones as well.
Interesting, the tutorial could be a bit more thorough, took me a bit to grasp some of it. Especially things that remove card permanently like hunting. More cards and styles would bit good if you plan to expand it, overall neat.
I was referring to playstyle, visually I think the game looks fine, if maybe some inconsistency in things like the eyes.
As for ideas, possibly a card or species that specializes in stacking with a different species in the den, like a cuckoo bird that can stack in other birds dens.
Maybe a species that can return from the den after a certain number of turns. like 3 or 4 as that how longs games seem to have lasted to me.
Those are just off the top of my head, anyway, good luck with your game.
Really enjoy it so far. I think the T-Rex is very overpowered, especially if you get it early, but otherwise so far everything else seems relatively balanced. Will continue to play and note any changes that might be helpful.
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finally, a "Pack Animal" run
Nice!
Also, we have a discord server if you're interested in chatting with other pack tacticians! https://discord.gg/DtgXZPjae8
what do you call the paw print tribe?
the food chain
That pelican is gonna get so big
if the game even lasted that long, I think this is my screenshot from the end of the game
my egg evolved into a shiny egg
Yeah that is a bit silly. I plan to cover this with a little exception
please don't, it's a good synergy. then people can use their egg builds to evolve their shiny eggs
Fair enough, it shall remain for now
shiny egg canablisam, though, is a different matter.
Yeah trout has a lot of upside, egg cannibalism is a downside for sure
reroll on round 1 should be free, because you can just quickly reload anyway
Nice!
We definitely want to celebrate victories more. With some meta unlocks we have planned there should be more heft to winning
or just add a stat summery screen or something, make it visually distinct from the round end screens
I did it!
I like it
<3
I like the concept of this game, but it just feels horribly unbalanced and almost entirely luck based.
I never feel like my choices ultimately matter all that much, because I don't get to decide what is played. I could have a deck with great synergy, but if that Ant that gets played is the card that tips the damage over the threshold, I'm then screwed, because I'm left defending the crown with a card with 1 health on top of a huge stack of cards that are obviously going to overfill my den.
I feel like having a hand that you draw into would be better, and perhaps letting us choose which animal in the den is hunted? That way I can hunt my Ants or Bees and leave the Bee Hive alone, because losing an animal that's central to a build is not in my control and run-ending.
There are also some cards, regardless of quality level, that are objectively better or worse than others.
Like I said, I like the concept of the den and draw deck being the "health" of the player essentially, it's innovative. There's a reason that most other games have very limited permanent changes to your deck, though. It's incredibly tricky to get that to be balanced. If you can get that to work, that would also be a really cool feature of this game, but as it stands, literally everything being permanent makes it too hard to balance a build, and makes it largely luck based.
I have followed on Steam though, because I can see the potential!
But please don't use AI art. Visually the game looks nice if not for basically having no identity, because the art is all in different styles. I can't look at a card and definitively say "ah yes, that's a card from Pack Tactics! I recognise the design style."
As many creative people in the game industry will agree, ask around! Someone out there will do you a series of art designs for cheap or even free!
Or, as many physical card pack games do on their cards - display the artist on the card itself proudly! You could ask the community to draw some art for your cards, and your favourites get to be included in the game, or get unlocked as alternative art for a card once you win a run with it in your deck or something like that!
Thanks for following on Steam! Getting a recognizable style is important to us and this current AI art is largely placeholder.
Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts and experiences! There is definitely a significant luck component. We're aiming to build some more reliable strategies into the game, though there will still be high variance ones as well.
try a 5-species build
have no idea what's happening?!
Thanks for the feedback, I really want to get a more comprehensive tutorial/onboarding into the game soon
Great game, wishlisted :)
Very fun! Shiny egg turn one OP :)
Had a blast playing it! looking forward to future updates and balance patches!
Thanks! We'll be continuing to update the balance and content. If you have any balance thoughts etc. I'd love to hear them.
Interesting, the tutorial could be a bit more thorough, took me a bit to grasp some of it. Especially things that remove card permanently like hunting. More cards and styles would bit good if you plan to expand it, overall neat.
By styles do you mean playstyles or visual styles (like cosmetics)? Either way I'd be curious to hear of any that would be particularly appealing
I was referring to playstyle, visually I think the game looks fine, if maybe some inconsistency in things like the eyes.
As for ideas, possibly a card or species that specializes in stacking with a different species in the den, like a cuckoo bird that can stack in other birds dens.
Maybe a species that can return from the den after a certain number of turns. like 3 or 4 as that how longs games seem to have lasted to me.
Those are just off the top of my head, anyway, good luck with your game.
Cool game.
Thanks!
I tried but I can't play this, sorry. The generated graphics are just way too distracting and messy.
Thanks for the feedback! we'll do visual passes as we go. I'm hoping we can get a relatively consistent style with time.
Really enjoy it so far. I think the T-Rex is very overpowered, especially if you get it early, but otherwise so far everything else seems relatively balanced. Will continue to play and note any changes that might be helpful.
Thanks for playing, yeah T-Rex can definitely get out of hand. We'll be doing balance changes as we get more great feedback like this <3
Pack tactics designer here: happy to engage any thoughts, feedback, questions etc.