Took a few games to figure out all the mechanics involved. I didn't immediately connect that the "?" spaces were related to the beholders, which that's on me, should have been obvious, but once I figured that out getting through the game isn't that hard.
I think it really needs to track your best times. With practice, it's possible to consistently achieve the maximum score (almost every time), but having a personal best time and/or online scoreboard to beat, would provide a continued challenge.
Sometimes, when I start the game, every sound plays at once, and a second loop of the music starts playing in the background, unaffected by the music toggle.
Has anyone figured out when a game is setup for a 303 result? Or is every game possible to end that way? I've played a few games where I used every HP as efficiently as I could, but came up 1 HP short at the end and ended at 302.
On the other hand, today I had a game where I accidentally used a heart life refill instead of leveling up, which I thought would leave me short at the end (since the heart refills are more powerful if you are a higher level), but that one I ended exactly on 303.
Not sure if it's randomness with the brick walls maybe? Or there might be a strategy to those that I haven't grokked yet.
Heart scrolls restore your entire HP bar, which means that the higher level you are when you use them, the more powerful they get. So if you want the most bang for your buck you need to level up quickly without losing health.
-Find and kill the Lich the moment you get to 11 health. Since the Lich lets you take mines for 2 XP, he actually gives you more XP than the HP needed to kill him
-Find chests quickly, some chests give free XP
-About this last bit I'm not entirely certain, but I usually don't attack wall until I'm sure I can destroy all of them in a single health bar. This is because while walls as a whole give more XP than they take to destroy, you never know how strong any single wall is, nor how much XP it will give you
It's always possible to completely clear the map, and in fact, there's quite a lot of leeway here - it's possible to have cleared every square apart from the dragon, and still have a healing scroll, plus up to about 10 spare gold.
It's almost always possible to get 303, but very occassionally, you will clear the map and still only get 302, which I believe is due to a glitch in the level generation system.
If you run out of moves late in the game, it's because you played "inefficiently" earlier on. Using a healing scroll while you still have hearts remaining, is the most obvious source of inefficiency, but not the only one.
As you have already realized, the higher your level, the more hearts you gain from using a healing scroll, so using hearts while you're still at a low level is inefficient. In general, you will spend 1 heart to gain 1 gold, but there are ways to improve on that ratio, or even gain free gold:
1.) Walls - there are seven walls, and the ratio of gold received : hearts used to destroy, varies as follows: 1:1, 1:2, 1:3, 3:4, 3:1, 3:2, 3:3 (so the average is actually very slightly worse than the 1:1 ratio of normal monsters). Ideally, you would destroy the two walls with a ratio better than 1:1 as early as possible, and leave the others until later.
2.) Chests - two of the chests contain 5 gold each, and they don't cost health to open, so the sooner you find them, the better.
3.) Mines - there are 9 mines, worth 2 gold each, and they don't cost hearts to destroy, so the sooner you destroy and reveal them, the better. Make sure you already know where the you-know-what is, by the time you have enough hearts to kill them.
4.) Gnome - gives you 10 gold, but only after all empty spaces have been revealed, so ideally you would mark as many spaces containing monsters as possible, without killing the monsters until after you've caught the gnome (also don't destroy walls until after you've caught the gnome).
In general, the main key to winning is to expand the revealed area as quickly as possible, as cheaply as possible - it's usually better to kill low-level monsters than high-level monsters (cheap), and better to reveal a space you know contains a low-level monster (even if you're not sure exactly what it is) rather than killing a low-level monster that was already revealed (quick).
great tips! Modified my approach, driving towards corners to find the you-know-what ASAP and marking as many square as possible so I can take advantage of dead mines when the opportunity comes. also wondering if it's worth putting one hit on all walls (but no more)
Not sure about the walls - I think a proper statistical analysis would be quite complicated.
On average, the Gold:Heart ratio of walls is almost identical to that of normal monsters, so I don't think there's too much wrong with just treating them as such, and destroying them anytime it helps you open up an area of the map that you want to explore. You just have to avoid situations where you're on 3 hearts and relying on a wall to give you the last 3 gold you need so that you can level up. You could track which specific walls you've already destroyed, and figure out the probabilities for what's left, but that's too much work for me, and not necessary.
I suppose the ideal time to use them would be when you have 1-2 hearts left, and need 3 gold to level up. Spending those hearts on killing monsters doesn't really help you, but there's a chance that a wall will break in 1-2 hits and give you the 3 gold you need, to save you wasting a healing scroll.
I tend to mostly use them when I'm about to heal or level up (and already have enough gold), but have an awkward number of hearts left, that I don't want to waste - particulaly very early in the game (when there might not be many rats about), and very late in the game, as you're mopping up the final few monsters, and burning through those healing scrolls.
Rats: Will always face the column that the Rat King is located in. Any rats within this column will sit upright and not face any direction
Gargoyles: Will always appear in pairs facing one another. Their eyes are indicators of where their partner gargoyle is located (i.e if one has two eyes, the partner is below. If it has one in a direction, it's left or right, and if it has no visible eyes, its above.)
Gazer: Will obscure a diamond of spaces 2 above and 2 aside itself. Only two will spawn.
Big Slime's & Warlock: The Warlock will always appear against the edge. The 5 open spaces surrounding him will be filled with bug slime's (since he cannot have 8, as he will be present in an edge. I do not believe he can appear in a corner).
Lich: Always appears in one of the corners of the map.
Additionally:
-Five chests (And one Mimic) will always spawn. One of the will always contain a scrying orb. That leaves you with two chests that contain health, and 7 revealed health scrolls.
-Though there seems to be no limit as to where the gnome can spawn, because of how the game generates, he tends to remain closer to the edge of the map.
Really fun! Reminds me of older games that give you just enough hints to put together how it works. The question marks were so confusing at first until I realized the pattern and then it was another interesting part of the puzzle. Is it available for download?
This is really neat! I thought I’d done pretty well to beat the dragon (with a score of 196) but looking at the screenshots here I see the real challenge is to 100% the thing. Nice to have an extra goal to aim for!
303! And I had two hearts left to spare thanks to careful chest-finding. Absolutely incredible game, I'm so glad I didn't see any spoilers. Like someone else said, the monsternomicon was indeed all I needed (and a bit of luck, I admit).
how the gnome (calling him a gnome now due to mention of the other name possibly being a slur) works is that if you click on him he will teleport to a random unrevealed empty space, unless there are no unrevealed empty spaces, in which case he will give you his XP (think of him like a reward for clearing every empty space)
so what actually happened is that he just teleported somewhere else
Is English not your first language? Because at least in America that word is basically a slur for short people. Did you mean something more like elf or leprechaun?
I’m being genuine here, by the way, not passive-aggressive. I know tone can be hard to read on the Internet, so I thought I’d clarify.
No offense intended there, English is not my first language. The figure does not look like a leprechaun to me though. I Would dwarf be a more uncontroversial choice of words here?
Dwarf is the preferred term by a lot of short people as far as I know, and I guess this resembles the mythological dwarf enough to make sense. I just saw it as more of a joker-like figure (the card, not the Batman villain).
Really fun, but a bit punishing if you are unable to find the hearts soon... I would love a roguelike expansion of this game with a bit more randomize enemies. It would need a lot of balance, but there is something interesting lurking there ^^
Great game. Reminds me of Desktop Dungeon quite a bit. Would love it if you put numbers of current / max for healths / gems. Would make it easier to figure out how many you need left / can spend to level up.
So am I. I've tried multiple times on different days, with and without extensions activated. Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC 1809, Firefox 128.6.0esr (32-bit)
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Took a few games to figure out all the mechanics involved. I didn't immediately connect that the "?" spaces were related to the beholders, which that's on me, should have been obvious, but once I figured that out getting through the game isn't that hard.
minutes i didnt want to take to try it, but game has good reviews glad others enjoy it
I think it really needs to track your best times. With practice, it's possible to consistently achieve the maximum score (almost every time), but having a personal best time and/or online scoreboard to beat, would provide a continued challenge.
You should make a hard mode where EXP doesn't overflow. I think that would be fun.
That’s how I assumed it worked for the first few plays. Was stunned when I discovered otherwise!
220 on first win. Such a great game. Makes me want to go back and play Fidel Dungeon Rescue.
Sometimes, when I start the game, every sound plays at once, and a second loop of the music starts playing in the background, unaffected by the music toggle.
Superb little game!
295 on first win, had two L4s left... maybe got a bit lucky? Still figuring it all out. I'll be back.
Has anyone figured out when a game is setup for a 303 result? Or is every game possible to end that way? I've played a few games where I used every HP as efficiently as I could, but came up 1 HP short at the end and ended at 302.
On the other hand, today I had a game where I accidentally used a heart life refill instead of leveling up, which I thought would leave me short at the end (since the heart refills are more powerful if you are a higher level), but that one I ended exactly on 303.
Not sure if it's randomness with the brick walls maybe? Or there might be a strategy to those that I haven't grokked yet.
any game is set up for a 303 result
Wondering the same, thought I had optimized but ended with 298 and also thought it might be the bricks
Heart scrolls restore your entire HP bar, which means that the higher level you are when you use them, the more powerful they get. So if you want the most bang for your buck you need to level up quickly without losing health.
-Find and kill the Lich the moment you get to 11 health. Since the Lich lets you take mines for 2 XP, he actually gives you more XP than the HP needed to kill him
-Find chests quickly, some chests give free XP
-About this last bit I'm not entirely certain, but I usually don't attack wall until I'm sure I can destroy all of them in a single health bar. This is because while walls as a whole give more XP than they take to destroy, you never know how strong any single wall is, nor how much XP it will give you
It's always possible to completely clear the map, and in fact, there's quite a lot of leeway here - it's possible to have cleared every square apart from the dragon, and still have a healing scroll, plus up to about 10 spare gold.
It's almost always possible to get 303, but very occassionally, you will clear the map and still only get 302, which I believe is due to a glitch in the level generation system.
If you run out of moves late in the game, it's because you played "inefficiently" earlier on. Using a healing scroll while you still have hearts remaining, is the most obvious source of inefficiency, but not the only one.
As you have already realized, the higher your level, the more hearts you gain from using a healing scroll, so using hearts while you're still at a low level is inefficient. In general, you will spend 1 heart to gain 1 gold, but there are ways to improve on that ratio, or even gain free gold:
1.) Walls - there are seven walls, and the ratio of gold received : hearts used to destroy, varies as follows: 1:1, 1:2, 1:3, 3:4, 3:1, 3:2, 3:3 (so the average is actually very slightly worse than the 1:1 ratio of normal monsters). Ideally, you would destroy the two walls with a ratio better than 1:1 as early as possible, and leave the others until later.
2.) Chests - two of the chests contain 5 gold each, and they don't cost health to open, so the sooner you find them, the better.
3.) Mines - there are 9 mines, worth 2 gold each, and they don't cost hearts to destroy, so the sooner you destroy and reveal them, the better. Make sure you already know where the you-know-what is, by the time you have enough hearts to kill them.
4.) Gnome - gives you 10 gold, but only after all empty spaces have been revealed, so ideally you would mark as many spaces containing monsters as possible, without killing the monsters until after you've caught the gnome (also don't destroy walls until after you've caught the gnome).
In general, the main key to winning is to expand the revealed area as quickly as possible, as cheaply as possible - it's usually better to kill low-level monsters than high-level monsters (cheap), and better to reveal a space you know contains a low-level monster (even if you're not sure exactly what it is) rather than killing a low-level monster that was already revealed (quick).
great tips! Modified my approach, driving towards corners to find the you-know-what ASAP and marking as many square as possible so I can take advantage of dead mines when the opportunity comes. also wondering if it's worth putting one hit on all walls (but no more)
Not sure about the walls - I think a proper statistical analysis would be quite complicated.
On average, the Gold:Heart ratio of walls is almost identical to that of normal monsters, so I don't think there's too much wrong with just treating them as such, and destroying them anytime it helps you open up an area of the map that you want to explore. You just have to avoid situations where you're on 3 hearts and relying on a wall to give you the last 3 gold you need so that you can level up.
You could track which specific walls you've already destroyed, and figure out the probabilities for what's left, but that's too much work for me, and not necessary.
I suppose the ideal time to use them would be when you have 1-2 hearts left, and need 3 gold to level up. Spending those hearts on killing monsters doesn't really help you, but there's a chance that a wall will break in 1-2 hits and give you the 3 gold you need, to save you wasting a healing scroll.
I tend to mostly use them when I'm about to heal or level up (and already have enough gold), but have an awkward number of hearts left, that I don't want to waste - particulaly very early in the game (when there might not be many rats about), and very late in the game, as you're mopping up the final few monsters, and burning through those healing scrolls.
Additionally:
Rats: Will always face the column that the Rat King is located in. Any rats within this column will sit upright and not face any direction
Gargoyles: Will always appear in pairs facing one another. Their eyes are indicators of where their partner gargoyle is located (i.e if one has two eyes, the partner is below. If it has one in a direction, it's left or right, and if it has no visible eyes, its above.)
Gazer: Will obscure a diamond of spaces 2 above and 2 aside itself. Only two will spawn.
Big Slime's & Warlock: The Warlock will always appear against the edge. The 5 open spaces surrounding him will be filled with bug slime's (since he cannot have 8, as he will be present in an edge. I do not believe he can appear in a corner).
Lich: Always appears in one of the corners of the map.
Additionally:
-Five chests (And one Mimic) will always spawn. One of the will always contain a scrying orb. That leaves you with two chests that contain health, and 7 revealed health scrolls.
-Though there seems to be no limit as to where the gnome can spawn, because of how the game generates, he tends to remain closer to the edge of the map.
Really fun! Reminds me of older games that give you just enough hints to put together how it works. The question marks were so confusing at first until I realized the pattern and then it was another interesting part of the puzzle. Is it available for download?
Liked it a lot. 189.
Would really like if you didn't start mining bitcoin while I'm not clicking to level after getting enough xp.
Cool game otherwise.
final score 218, took a lot of tries but I finally got the hang of it. Very good game, thanks for making it. :)
I see future in this game, honest! Will you keep working on this addictive game? Or port it to phone?
Mwahahaha the educated potshot
This is really neat! I thought I’d done pretty well to beat the dragon (with a score of 196) but looking at the screenshots here I see the real challenge is to 100% the thing. Nice to have an extra goal to aim for!
185! I'm legit happy with that because it took me innumerable attempts. Thanks for an awesome, challenging game!
263 is my new best and I think I'm leaving it there.
Amazing game! Bit mad at you though, it's super addictive - I had things to do today :p
Definitely recommending it to everyone I know ^_^
303! And I had two hearts left to spare thanks to careful chest-finding. Absolutely incredible game, I'm so glad I didn't see any spoilers. Like someone else said, the monsternomicon was indeed all I needed (and a bit of luck, I admit).
Absolutely CLEARED it this time! So many leftover hearts to spare!
It seems that killing the midget when you're naked makes him not drop anything. Did anyone else encounter this?
he didn't drop nothing because you had no health
how the gnome (calling him a gnome now due to mention of the other name possibly being a slur) works is that if you click on him he will teleport to a random unrevealed empty space, unless there are no unrevealed empty spaces, in which case he will give you his XP (think of him like a reward for clearing every empty space)
so what actually happened is that he just teleported somewhere else
Nice, I had not figured that out. Thanks for the explanation!
Where are you getting the name of the enemy from? Is it in the game somewhere?
Nothing in game as far as I know, I just picked a name that seemed obvious.
Is English not your first language? Because at least in America that word is basically a slur for short people. Did you mean something more like elf or leprechaun?
I’m being genuine here, by the way, not passive-aggressive. I know tone can be hard to read on the Internet, so I thought I’d clarify.
Brother, midget is not a slur.
It is actually. Little people (one of the correct terms for referencing people with dwarfism) hate being called the "m-word".
search "is midget a slur" on any search engine I don't have to explain this to you
No offense intended there, English is not my first language. The figure does not look like a leprechaun to me though. I Would dwarf be a more uncontroversial choice of words here?
Dwarf is the preferred term by a lot of short people as far as I know, and I guess this resembles the mythological dwarf enough to make sense. I just saw it as more of a joker-like figure (the card, not the Batman villain).
Fun game
AHHHH THE MISPLAYYY
AGAIN
AYYY I DID IT
Great game, congrats!
Really fun, but a bit punishing if you are unable to find the hearts soon... I would love a roguelike expansion of this game with a bit more randomize enemies. It would need a lot of balance, but there is something interesting lurking there ^^
Absolutely obsessed with this game
a great game, my gosh that was so good.
Why can't you set eleven?
super fun. Took me 4 tries to get 303
The luckiest rat in the world...
Arghh! 302!
260...
Great game. Reminds me of Desktop Dungeon quite a bit. Would love it if you put numbers of current / max for healths / gems. Would make it easier to figure out how many you need left / can spend to level up.
220
fun
Very fun game!
This is a really well designed game, well done, awesome work!
Oh my god this is amazing
Fun! Would love some way of being able to mark mines without the anxiety of having to right click 11 times and not accidentally left click ^^;
Nice! Took 2 days with a sleep break! 303~!
Thanks a lot! Completed with a score of 192
What an amazing game. I loved it!
I am stuck on the horizontal bar loading screen. Any ideas why?
So am I. I've tried multiple times on different days, with and without extensions activated. Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC 1809, Firefox 128.6.0esr (32-bit)