I found this on incrementaldb, this is probably one of my favorite games I’ve seen in awhile. It’s really good!
I haven’t played stacklands, so these kinds of card dragging games are new to me, but I like how it plays. It reminds me of a neat concept I found in the devlog of another game, which is context sensitivity. Everything is just dragging cards so it’s easy to understand new concepts as they’re introduced, like visiting town, crafting, dungeons, etc.
I also surprisingly liked the crafting. I went barbarian so I tried all the bone needle and lash combinations to find something with a high attack speed, it’s fun preparing a stack of like 20 lashes and then marking off all the combinations until you find a good one. It reminds me of those element combiner games, but especially Infinite Craft. I was glad to only see 231 possible recipes because if it was like 1000+ or infinite I think I would’ve lost interest.
I needed a bunch of rope and in the process of farming the woods, I ended up with a ton of trees I didn’t want and they were getting in the way. I’d like some way to prevent so many trees from stacking up, like maybe a way to stack them, delete them, queue them, rush them for less resources, a maximum number of cards from the woods you can have out at once, etc.
The game is pretty hard on my browser, I’m pretty sure that’s just the web though and the desktop version on steam will run fine.
The themes are pretty (i also didn’t know they were there). I ended up liking Stained Glass and Meadow more than the default, especially the card colors of Meadow and the background color of Stained Glass.
I’m confused what the resources did when leveling up my pet and what it turned into. It’s a Spark Baboon?? I fed it mostly rope, flint, bones, and stone I think. I like making bad decisions so I wanted to feed it 20 rope to see what happens, but I changed my mind halfway through
When you zoom out, some words like “Berries” and “Arcanite” get split at awkward spots. They could get a little smaller instead (idk how you’d do that) or maybe spill out a little bit, like negative margins in CSS
All of the text could be a little bigger, it’s hard to read even in fullscreen
When I have like 80 wood I like splitting off 60 to sacrifice. I have to drag off 20 pieces of wood individually first, it’d be easier if there was a way to split stacks. I can drag all but one, but that leaves me with 1 wood and I want to have some leftover.
Making the pet “queue” things by surrounding it with tasks you want done is great. Having it bounce around randomly and do things gives you a surprising amount of control by spatially organizing cards on the board. If you don’t want it to activate a card, just take it away. It’s kind of funny looking away for a second and then returning to see it spawned some monsters and started fighting them, the pet is literally getting into trouble which is very monkey-like
It’s a little confusing that you’re taught about breaking down unwanted weapons but can’t break down the dead-ends, especially for the arcanite weapons. The bonus XP is nice though.
If you use all of a resource (like the XP things), it’d be nice if the next one you get is put back in the same spot. I keep a stack of the XP cards next to the level up card but after using them they usually show up somewhere else. You can do this by just clicking and dragging all but one, but it’d be nice
I think cards that are occupied could stand out more, especially when zoomed out
A way to filter or sort weapons would be useful, like searching “bone needle” for the tier 2 bone needle combos, or sorting discovered recipes by attack speed.
The way entering a village works with its own dedicated board is fantastic. I didn’t even know you could move the interior village card itself until I needed some space and realized you could move it and the NPCs
I think I exhausted most of the available content, but I was still having fun with it and wanted to keep playing.
Also, idk how I feel about the quest timers. The dungeon and traveller timers were fine though.
While it wasn’t really an issue while I was playing, I’d like if middle click only panned and didn’t move cards
Offering a huge stack of items is like the best thing ever
This is what my board looked like near the end if you’re curious:
This game is really good, even if you weren’t aiming for the incremental crowd lol. I’m looking forward to any future updates
Wow, you definetely won the prize for the most thorough comment about the game left everywhere at all. Thanks a lot for this, the feedback is very valuable and the fact that you enjoyed it is motivating.
> I’d like some way to prevent so many trees from stacking up, like maybe a way to stack them, delete them, queue them, rush them for less resources, a maximum number of cards from the woods you can have out at once, etc.
Thats the new one! I thought of deposit stacking previously, but one of the latest version with autonomous pet behaviour made it messier to implement so I postponed it for now. But I didn't think of rush them for less resources. That's a feature worth thinking about, don't know how, but never crossed my mind at all even though it's a pretty cool solution
> The game is pretty hard on my browser, I’m pretty sure that’s just the web though and the desktop version on steam will run fine.
While desktop build (that since it works on electron just runs a crhomium based wrapper anyway) might solve the issue partially I'd still offer you to play a bit with "stack collapse" setting. When stacks collapse earlier it will lead to less rendering and might help with performance. I added it exactly for that. Hope it will work for you at some level
> I’m confused what the resources did when leveling up my pet and what it turned into. It’s a Spark Baboon?? I fed it mostly rope, flint, bones, and stone I think. I like making bad decisions so I wanted to feed it 20 rope to see what happens, but I changed my mind halfway through
Evolution work such way that it evolves into the form related with materials you fed pet the most. So since its sparkling you ended up feeding mostly flint. Or at least that how it's intended to work. I tried to hint at plot card that it will work better if you feed only one material - this way you'll unlock pet's true form and can get to named form later
> When I have like 80 wood I like splitting off 60 to sacrifice. I have to drag off 20 pieces of wood individually first, it’d be easier if there was a way to split stacks. I can drag all but one, but that leaves me with 1 wood and I want to have some leftover.
I even started to implement a way two versions ago with special "split" buttons but ended up being SO laggy, so unfortunately I had to scrap it. Your description pushed me to thinking of Using three cards instead of two for collapsed stacks where second card would work as middle card in the stack. But in will damage low spec machines performance
> If you use all of a resource (like the XP things), it’d be nice if the next one you get is put back in the same spot
That's the coolest one tbh and the best recomendation I got yet. Yes, other players told me the board gets messy pretty quick, but your order with slots is pretty interesting. I'll try to dig into it. Thanks a lot for this one
> A way to filter or sort weapons would be useful, like searching “bone needle” for the tier 2 bone needle combos, or sorting discovered recipes by attack speed.
I will totally work on better recipe book dialog window layout
Thanks again for the feedback. I'll address two more spesific things that needed to address separately in other two separate responses
TLDR: As regular solo indie gamedev I make the most common mistake ever - I don't target anyone and just make games based on what I usually play myself. And since I played too many incrementals every game I do end up being incremental in some way
> I think I exhausted most of the available content, but I was still having fun with it and wanted to keep playing.
I bet you didn't! I challenge you to show me a screenshot of your prestige tree. Especially the familiars evolutions branch. How many scorpions did you evolve to named forms? Or turtles? Or eagles? Pets discoverability is the mecahnics exactly for such completionists as you (in a good way), but it's pretty demanding
Oh, I forgot about that one! Did you try to put it onto the soulstone anyway? It should be only display issue, I didn't think it could break actual gameplay, but I guess I'll be doing 0.3.1 hotfix anyway
I tired that and using any type of rss to fee dit, absolutely nothing worked. It was still usable to help with things but softlocked cause I cant fight with it
Thanks again for telling me! The case was really rare because you need to do the same oddling evolution and have the same oddling type in the first place (theres bird oddlings, insect oddlings and so on).
Just uploaded v0.3.1 with fixture. It should fix even old saves retroactively allowing you to evolve fed before the fix. Could you please check again?
I really like the game, but sadly I still do have the bug with the stuck cards in the village item slot. Stopped me from proceeding since the goblin statue was stuck there too.
I know how it sounds, but this time it's different one then a month ago. The problem is I couldn't find the steps to reproduce and I tried multiple times. I know that when it breaks icon dissapears on that slot. Could you please tell me the exact steps you did before it happened? It would help A LOT. I tried to catch it for a week or so.
Sorry, I can't recall exactly what I did as it happened, since I just kept playing for a while. I know that I put a few weapons into the slot to scrap them at the smithy (about 6-8 items), but as I entered the village I could just remove until I had 5 items left in the slot then it stuck.
Stacking 6-8 weapons is not nothing! It's a usecase. I'll give it a try. Thank you. Hope you can give a game a second try even though the first one provoked this
But other then trying again on new save I can't offer anything. This is really softlocking bug for proceeding right now. Sorry for how frustrating it might feel
Just completed the game. GREAT demo! I am a big fan of Stacklands and this felt way more RPG/Adventury compared to Stacklands. Stacklands felt more sim-y with all the resource maintenance and the constant need to have food to feed your villagers. This was way more relaxed. Loved the experimentation with crafting! Would love to see that more developed and go even deeper. Maybe add socketing or enchants as well. Or give the "failed" crafts more of a function other than take apart.
when i go to give the craftsman the stone, it lets me give him one, and then the rest of them get stuck in the village card. And anything else I add to the village card after also gets stuck
Sorry for that, village inventory ended up being too complicated on the inside and too buggy on the outside. I described what kind of problems exactly I had in the reply to the comment below, but I fixed it
The previous bug was fixed, but now I'm having the same issue as Lemur2304. The item cards in the Item slot on the Village card get stuck. Clicking or dragging on the Item slot does not pull them out. The Item slot shows # Items but you cannot get the items out. Either in or out of the Village.
Ok, this was the trickiest to fix. It was flaky bug which on top of that ended up having several different ways to reproduce, which needed a separate fix for both of them. So bugs were
You save with stack in village inventory, you update the page, after load you can't take anything from inventory which soft locks your whole progress with not being able to finish the Craftsman quest
You have a stack of something in the game and then you add a map card on top of it (most likely a dungeon map card on top of stack of remaining stones). This breaks too, now map somehow broke the stone stack and your inventory stopped working. Softlock again
Im afraid there could be more cases I haven't found, but I fixed those two. Inventory works differently too, now you can take the whole stacks of same items from it, which is more convenient then taking out the whole stack of stones one by one.
Could you please check again (most likely need to start a new game) and say if the bug is still there?
Same problem as Tahnan, not being able to move the village and the other items moved it off the "playing field". Also i recommend changing the screen moving button from mousewheel button to right click as it would be more intuitive. Also doesnt constrain the player to having to need the mouse.
Otherwise fun game, looking forward to further development. :)
Impressive quick updates. Moving around the screen is a lot more smoother and no further problems with the village card.
Killed the lich while being a lvl11 mage, now lvl2 wizard. Pet was arcane unicorn lvl10.
There is a problem with the blacksmith as it says he can uncombine weapons but nothing works. Dragging weapons onto him nor him onto weapons. As such making weapons turns into a chore and having enough arcanite to make weapons and even combinations will be hard right now. Leveling up the companion is easier as a lvl 10 pet will kill the lich easily.
Otherwise good game looking forward to the next update.
I think something got stuck: I can enter and exit the village, but I can't move its card (which was really annoying when my pet wandered behind it), and now I can't take items out of it.
Also, is there a way to pan? I can zoom in and out, but I can't move the area after I zoom in, which is irritating when cards spawn just offscreen.
You can zoom with mousewheel and move screen with mousewheel click.
I'll double check the village issue, it sounds pretty unpleasant. Village is the buggiest part right now, so I totally believe that such things can happen. Thanks for letting me know, I'll try to fix it. And I'll tweak pet layer being a bit higher too, just in case
What final player class and pet evolution you ended up with?
Could you please try once again? I uploaded a new version with:
- New drag system. Touch screen compatible. Now draggable with left click. Zoom is either with mousewheel or touch gesture
- Village card and exit card are movable. Might mess inner coordinates of npc a bit after that but last time I couldn't reproduce the bug. Please, let me know if you can
Forgot to tweak pet layer tho, but fixed the root problem, so it shouldn't bother you too much
The dragging and the village card are definitely better. There's still the problem that the village card says "6 items" and I can't seem to get them out. (One being the map to the goblin dungeon.)
Yeah, village inventory had several bugs. I described it in details in response to empyers as he was the first one bringing up the problem. Now everything should be ok, but might need starting a new game
Could you please tell me if the problem is still there?
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I found this on incrementaldb, this is probably one of my favorite games I’ve seen in awhile. It’s really good!
I haven’t played stacklands, so these kinds of card dragging games are new to me, but I like how it plays. It reminds me of a neat concept I found in the devlog of another game, which is context sensitivity. Everything is just dragging cards so it’s easy to understand new concepts as they’re introduced, like visiting town, crafting, dungeons, etc.
I also surprisingly liked the crafting. I went barbarian so I tried all the bone needle and lash combinations to find something with a high attack speed, it’s fun preparing a stack of like 20 lashes and then marking off all the combinations until you find a good one. It reminds me of those element combiner games, but especially Infinite Craft. I was glad to only see 231 possible recipes because if it was like 1000+ or infinite I think I would’ve lost interest.
I needed a bunch of rope and in the process of farming the woods, I ended up with a ton of trees I didn’t want and they were getting in the way. I’d like some way to prevent so many trees from stacking up, like maybe a way to stack them, delete them, queue them, rush them for less resources, a maximum number of cards from the woods you can have out at once, etc.
The game is pretty hard on my browser, I’m pretty sure that’s just the web though and the desktop version on steam will run fine.
The themes are pretty (i also didn’t know they were there). I ended up liking Stained Glass and Meadow more than the default, especially the card colors of Meadow and the background color of Stained Glass.
I’m confused what the resources did when leveling up my pet and what it turned into. It’s a Spark Baboon?? I fed it mostly rope, flint, bones, and stone I think. I like making bad decisions so I wanted to feed it 20 rope to see what happens, but I changed my mind halfway through
When you zoom out, some words like “Berries” and “Arcanite” get split at awkward spots. They could get a little smaller instead (idk how you’d do that) or maybe spill out a little bit, like negative margins in CSS
All of the text could be a little bigger, it’s hard to read even in fullscreen
When I have like 80 wood I like splitting off 60 to sacrifice. I have to drag off 20 pieces of wood individually first, it’d be easier if there was a way to split stacks. I can drag all but one, but that leaves me with 1 wood and I want to have some leftover.
Making the pet “queue” things by surrounding it with tasks you want done is great. Having it bounce around randomly and do things gives you a surprising amount of control by spatially organizing cards on the board. If you don’t want it to activate a card, just take it away. It’s kind of funny looking away for a second and then returning to see it spawned some monsters and started fighting them, the pet is literally getting into trouble which is very monkey-like
It’s a little confusing that you’re taught about breaking down unwanted weapons but can’t break down the dead-ends, especially for the arcanite weapons. The bonus XP is nice though.
If you use all of a resource (like the XP things), it’d be nice if the next one you get is put back in the same spot. I keep a stack of the XP cards next to the level up card but after using them they usually show up somewhere else. You can do this by just clicking and dragging all but one, but it’d be nice
I think cards that are occupied could stand out more, especially when zoomed out
A way to filter or sort weapons would be useful, like searching “bone needle” for the tier 2 bone needle combos, or sorting discovered recipes by attack speed.
The way entering a village works with its own dedicated board is fantastic. I didn’t even know you could move the interior village card itself until I needed some space and realized you could move it and the NPCs
I think I exhausted most of the available content, but I was still having fun with it and wanted to keep playing.
Also, idk how I feel about the quest timers. The dungeon and traveller timers were fine though.
While it wasn’t really an issue while I was playing, I’d like if middle click only panned and didn’t move cards
Offering a huge stack of items is like the best thing ever
This is what my board looked like near the end if you’re curious:
This game is really good, even if you weren’t aiming for the incremental crowd lol. I’m looking forward to any future updates
Wow, you definetely won the prize for the most thorough comment about the game left everywhere at all. Thanks a lot for this, the feedback is very valuable and the fact that you enjoyed it is motivating.
> I’d like some way to prevent so many trees from stacking up, like maybe a way to stack them, delete them, queue them, rush them for less resources, a maximum number of cards from the woods you can have out at once, etc.
Thats the new one! I thought of deposit stacking previously, but one of the latest version with autonomous pet behaviour made it messier to implement so I postponed it for now. But I didn't think of rush them for less resources. That's a feature worth thinking about, don't know how, but never crossed my mind at all even though it's a pretty cool solution
> The game is pretty hard on my browser, I’m pretty sure that’s just the web though and the desktop version on steam will run fine.
While desktop build (that since it works on electron just runs a crhomium based wrapper anyway) might solve the issue partially I'd still offer you to play a bit with "stack collapse" setting. When stacks collapse earlier it will lead to less rendering and might help with performance. I added it exactly for that. Hope it will work for you at some level
> I’m confused what the resources did when leveling up my pet and what it turned into. It’s a Spark Baboon?? I fed it mostly rope, flint, bones, and stone I think. I like making bad decisions so I wanted to feed it 20 rope to see what happens, but I changed my mind halfway through
Evolution work such way that it evolves into the form related with materials you fed pet the most. So since its sparkling you ended up feeding mostly flint. Or at least that how it's intended to work. I tried to hint at plot card that it will work better if you feed only one material - this way you'll unlock pet's true form and can get to named form later
> When I have like 80 wood I like splitting off 60 to sacrifice. I have to drag off 20 pieces of wood individually first, it’d be easier if there was a way to split stacks. I can drag all but one, but that leaves me with 1 wood and I want to have some leftover.
I even started to implement a way two versions ago with special "split" buttons but ended up being SO laggy, so unfortunately I had to scrap it. Your description pushed me to thinking of Using three cards instead of two for collapsed stacks where second card would work as middle card in the stack. But in will damage low spec machines performance
> If you use all of a resource (like the XP things), it’d be nice if the next one you get is put back in the same spot
That's the coolest one tbh and the best recomendation I got yet. Yes, other players told me the board gets messy pretty quick, but your order with slots is pretty interesting. I'll try to dig into it. Thanks a lot for this one
> A way to filter or sort weapons would be useful, like searching “bone needle” for the tier 2 bone needle combos, or sorting discovered recipes by attack speed.
I will totally work on better recipe book dialog window layout
Thanks again for the feedback. I'll address two more spesific things that needed to address separately in other two separate responses
First addition:
> This game is really good, even if you weren’t aiming for the incremental crowd lol. I’m looking forward to any future updates
Check out this post: https://sshulin.itch.io/soulstack-demo/devlog/1511627/bumped-to-v030-thanks-to-i...
TLDR: As regular solo indie gamedev I make the most common mistake ever - I don't target anyone and just make games based on what I usually play myself. And since I played too many incrementals every game I do end up being incremental in some way
Second addition:
> I think I exhausted most of the available content, but I was still having fun with it and wanted to keep playing.
I bet you didn't! I challenge you to show me a screenshot of your prestige tree. Especially the familiars evolutions branch. How many scorpions did you evolve to named forms? Or turtles? Or eagles? Pets discoverability is the mecahnics exactly for such completionists as you (in a good way), but it's pretty demanding
New bug: Can't evolve from pup because I have the achievement lowering food need. Doesnt let me go above 19 food, but it needs 20 :(
Oh, I forgot about that one! Did you try to put it onto the soulstone anyway? It should be only display issue, I didn't think it could break actual gameplay, but I guess I'll be doing 0.3.1 hotfix anyway
I tired that and using any type of rss to fee dit, absolutely nothing worked. It was still usable to help with things but softlocked cause I cant fight with it
Thanks again for telling me! The case was really rare because you need to do the same oddling evolution and have the same oddling type in the first place (theres bird oddlings, insect oddlings and so on).
Just uploaded v0.3.1 with fixture. It should fix even old saves retroactively allowing you to evolve fed before the fix. Could you please check again?
That's exactly what I did.
Lost my save ;-;
Oh no. You mean version update broke it?
I really like the game, but sadly I still do have the bug with the stuck cards in the village item slot. Stopped me from proceeding since the goblin statue was stuck there too.
I know how it sounds, but this time it's different one then a month ago. The problem is I couldn't find the steps to reproduce and I tried multiple times. I know that when it breaks icon dissapears on that slot. Could you please tell me the exact steps you did before it happened? It would help A LOT. I tried to catch it for a week or so.
Sorry, I can't recall exactly what I did as it happened, since I just kept playing for a while. I know that I put a few weapons into the slot to scrap them at the smithy (about 6-8 items), but as I entered the village I could just remove until I had 5 items left in the slot then it stuck.
Stacking 6-8 weapons is not nothing! It's a usecase. I'll give it a try. Thank you. Hope you can give a game a second try even though the first one provoked this
Could you please try again? Just uploaded v0.3.1 with fixture. Now it might even heal old saves (yet might clean some corrupted cards)
But other then trying again on new save I can't offer anything. This is really softlocking bug for proceeding right now. Sorry for how frustrating it might feel
Just completed the game. GREAT demo! I am a big fan of Stacklands and this felt way more RPG/Adventury compared to Stacklands. Stacklands felt more sim-y with all the resource maintenance and the constant need to have food to feed your villagers. This was way more relaxed. Loved the experimentation with crafting! Would love to see that more developed and go even deeper. Maybe add socketing or enchants as well. Or give the "failed" crafts more of a function other than take apart.
Awesome job!
when i go to give the craftsman the stone, it lets me give him one, and then the rest of them get stuck in the village card. And anything else I add to the village card after also gets stuck
Sorry for that, village inventory ended up being too complicated on the inside and too buggy on the outside. I described what kind of problems exactly I had in the reply to the comment below, but I fixed it
Could you please check again?
The previous bug was fixed, but now I'm having the same issue as Lemur2304. The item cards in the Item slot on the Village card get stuck. Clicking or dragging on the Item slot does not pull them out. The Item slot shows # Items but you cannot get the items out. Either in or out of the Village.
Could you please check if it persists on a new save? It might be the saves versioning problem
Confirmed. Looks like it's working on a new save.
How do I turn in the stones to the craftsman? I tried dragging a single stone, the whole stack of 5, my character, clicking all over, nothing works.
Ok, this was the trickiest to fix. It was flaky bug which on top of that ended up having several different ways to reproduce, which needed a separate fix for both of them. So bugs were
Im afraid there could be more cases I haven't found, but I fixed those two. Inventory works differently too, now you can take the whole stacks of same items from it, which is more convenient then taking out the whole stack of stones one by one.
Could you please check again (most likely need to start a new game) and say if the bug is still there?
Confirmed! That did the trick. I was able to drag the whole stack and he accepted them. Thank you!
Cant move the camera besides zooming in and out?
It was middle mouse button before. Now left mouse button works too as well as touch gestures. Can you check please if it's more clear now?
Much better! And the game is really fun btw
Same problem as Tahnan, not being able to move the village and the other items moved it off the "playing field". Also i recommend changing the screen moving button from mousewheel button to right click as it would be more intuitive. Also doesnt constrain the player to having to need the mouse.
Otherwise fun game, looking forward to further development. :)
Could you please check again? I uploaded a new version that fixes both problems, including zoom ux. Please, let me know if something is still off
And if you can complete the demo, please tell me what end class and end familiar evolutions you end up with
Impressive quick updates. Moving around the screen is a lot more smoother and no further problems with the village card.
Killed the lich while being a lvl11 mage, now lvl2 wizard. Pet was arcane unicorn lvl10.
There is a problem with the blacksmith as it says he can uncombine weapons but nothing works. Dragging weapons onto him nor him onto weapons. As such making weapons turns into a chore and having enough arcanite to make weapons and even combinations will be hard right now. Leveling up the companion is easier as a lvl 10 pet will kill the lich easily.
Otherwise good game looking forward to the next update.
Could you check the Craftsman problem? He should accept the weapons now
I think something got stuck: I can enter and exit the village, but I can't move its card (which was really annoying when my pet wandered behind it), and now I can't take items out of it.
Also, is there a way to pan? I can zoom in and out, but I can't move the area after I zoom in, which is irritating when cards spawn just offscreen.
You can zoom with mousewheel and move screen with mousewheel click.
I'll double check the village issue, it sounds pretty unpleasant. Village is the buggiest part right now, so I totally believe that such things can happen. Thanks for letting me know, I'll try to fix it. And I'll tweak pet layer being a bit higher too, just in case
What final player class and pet evolution you ended up with?
I didn't really get any farther than about level three, with a level-0 pet, when things got stuck.
(Also,I'm on a laptop, so I don't have a mousewheel. I can zoom with the trackpad, but "mousewheel click" is probably not possible.)
Could you please try once again? I uploaded a new version with:
- New drag system. Touch screen compatible. Now draggable with left click. Zoom is either with mousewheel or touch gesture
- Village card and exit card are movable. Might mess inner coordinates of npc a bit after that but last time I couldn't reproduce the bug. Please, let me know if you can
Forgot to tweak pet layer tho, but fixed the root problem, so it shouldn't bother you too much
The dragging and the village card are definitely better. There's still the problem that the village card says "6 items" and I can't seem to get them out. (One being the map to the goblin dungeon.)
Yeah, village inventory had several bugs. I described it in details in response to empyers as he was the first one bringing up the problem. Now everything should be ok, but might need starting a new game
Could you please tell me if the problem is still there?