Games [WIP & Early Access] Drifter's Tales - a strategic cards game

Steam Page​

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1935960/Drifters_Tales​

This strategic cards game allows you to live small stories in the universe of The First Spine.

In a valley forgotten by all, a Maze erases the memories of anyone who crosses it. You are a traveler, maybe a merchant, maybe a mercenary. What is certain is that by traversing this Maze you have become a Drifter.

Discover the secret of the valley by playing different stories featuring unique mechanics and challenge devious and powerful enemies. In Drifter's Tales, you play as a wizard whose possibilities are materialized by cards with unique effects. These cards have to be placed on a game board, allowing you to advance to your opponent to ensure you the victory.

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About the early access

This early access is free on Steam. The final version will not be free (tiers 9.90€).

You can tip to support the development and see your name in the game credits. This tip of 5.90€ will be made from the purchase of this DLC:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1950880/Drifters_Tales__Early_Access_tip_for_developers/

State of the early access

Early Access presents you with three stories (including the introduction). We will be implementing two more stories in Early Access. The final version will contain 5 to 6 additional stories. The cards available during battles are all implemented and can be changed freely.

We also have a specific schedule on Early Access updates:

• End of April :
  • implementation of the first feedback from the community
  • mouse and gamepad support
    
• Early June :
  • community feedback implementation
  • added a new story: River of Ashes
    
• End of July :
  • community feedback implementation
    
• End of August :
  • community feedback implementation
  • added a new story: The Authority
    
• Mid September:
  • full game release

Devlogs

We started development mid-September and ran some devlogs during the early stages of production:

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Let's talk about some technical things

So we are in a development forum, I will share with you some challenges that I had to face during the development of the game

Feedback on the Steam publication

Deliver what you promise (even in Early Access)

During my publication on Steam, I faced a problem concerning the promises of Early Access, in particular on controller compatibility. Indeed, Drifter's Tales must be compatible with 100% controller gameplay at the exit of early access. So I announced this compatibility in the characteristics of the game.

However, even in Early Access, Valve does not accept features that are not yet implemented in the game. So I had to remove this mention on the store page to put it back in a future update when controller support will be supported.

No payments outside of Steam, even for tips

Of course, it is common knowledge that Steam does not accept payments outside of its platform in order to charge a more or less significant commission. But did you know that they don't even allow payments via a link, and - worse - for tipping developers?

So I had to implement a fixed cost tip DLC system rather than a variable cost tip on Drifter's Tales. Of course, the additional work to add this feature took a significant amount of time in the Steam release sprint.

The problem of separating data and display

To ease the separation of concerns, the general architecture of the game will be separated in three parts:

• the entities - the data
• the systems - specifics and large sets of behaviors
• the behaviors - small and reusable scripts
  

Core concepts

The entities

The entities are data-oriented scripts that focuses on loading / validating / dispatching the data. Commonly, an entity will be attached to any game object that needs this data to behave.

The systems

The systems are large & specifics scripts that use the entities to render the data. The data is not calculated in the systems, this belongs to the entities.

The behaviors

The behaviors are small & reusable scripts that can be attached to any object to change how the object behave. Behaviors should be preferred as small as possible to encourage composition over inheritance.

Example

For example, a Card object will have three scripts:

• An entity that will have setters (with data validation) & events dispatching
• A system that will fill the texts (e.g. stats, title…) and change the materials of the card (e.g. frame, icons, illustration…)
• A small behavior that will move the object in front of the active camera
  

The difficulty of multiple interactions

Context

With the previous experience I had with Arena (here’s the Github page: thefirstspine.github.io), I struggled with the available interactions that are available during the game. What was decided in the days of Arena was to generate actions that can have multiple interactions. The actions are stored in a stack where each action can have a priority: only the actions with the highest priorities can have a response.

But this approach had a problem that we did not identified on the early stage of the development: we had to crawl every interactions in the actions each time the game is updated. Another problem was that some interactions was concerned by two diferent actions, and we had to store a pointer during rendering to the interactions.

The interactions at first

In Drifter’s Tales, things are differents: we chose that the player respond to interactions, not to actions directly. This approach has many advantages:

• Input flow is clearer, starting to the interactions, ending with the stack
• Responding to interactions is participating the sparation of concerns: input logic & rules logic are clearly separated
• We do not have to think about storing pointers when two interactions target the same card. We already have the actions linked to the interactions.
  

 

Hey!

We have done the first update of Drifter's Tales!

New features:

• Implemented new cards with graphics & battle animations: Mara’s Banshee, Mara’s Fox, Volk’ha, Argento’s Barbed Wires, Argento’s Tower, Growing Oak, Insane’s Ruin, Insane’s Putrefaction, Achieve
  
  
• Implemented new battle animations: Damage, Ether, Deadly Viper, The Wall
  
  
• Implemented new capacity with tip: Growth
  
  
• Cards from leveling and covenants have different borders
  

Improvements:

• The characters have now a special background during the exploration
  

Improvements from community:

These improvements was submitted by our players! Thank you everyone for all your feedbacks!

• The cursor is now displayed during character creation
  
  
• Added an in-game menu that allows player to quit a story
  
  
• Added support for playing with the mouse
  
  
• Changed button label for replacing mods
  
  
• Quitting the game is now outside the options menu
  
  
• Added a message to go to the next step in the introduction
  

 

We released a new update of our free early access \o/

This second update of the early access will feature fixes & improvements from the community.

Problems fixed:

• Missing animations for barbed wires invocations from Behald & heal spell was added
  
  
• Fixed unexpected behavior by clicking on a card that can move and passing to confronts at the same time
  
  
• Fixed mill key translation missing
  
  
• Fixed wrong background for banshees
  
  
• The image chosen by the player was not displayed in some configurations
  
  
• Fixed click areas when exploring
  

Improvements:

• Informative mode is now compatible with the mouse control
  
  
• Tips are now adapted with the mouse control
  
  
• Added tip for the covenants
  
  
• Betrawing a covenant will remove all the play’s gems
  

Improvements from community:

These improvements was submitted by our players! Thank you everyone for all your feedbacks!

• A music was added in the title screen
  
  
• Added option to mute music or ambient sounds
  

 

Since the latest message, we updated the game twice! Here's the changelog of what append:

New features:

• New illustrations of Meleyfir in The Dead Forest
• New Story: River of Ashes
• New Covenant: Hunters on Borrowed Time
• New card: The Sacrifice
• New mechanic: some cards are placed randomly to make the story less predictable
• New mechanic: the player can now lose life while exploring
• Added asynchronous multiplayer events

Fixed problems:

• Fixed click areas when exploring
• The covenant trick could not appear in the forest
• Correction on the Putrefaction card in the intro
• Fixed texts on Dead Forest direction
• On some resolutions tips were not displayed correctly
• Fixed a bug when the player displays the menu while a merchant's interface is already displayed
• Some punctuation with a non-breaking space have been fixed in French
• English translations was added in “River of Ashes” story
• Gems are no longer displayed in the rewards screen if there are no gems
• The number of moves when betting in the “Scholars” story has been fixed

Improvements:

• An indicator is now displayed to highlight the player's current position
• Textures have been added on floors
• Added missing artwork on some items
• The title screen was revamped
• The buttons was revamped
• The number of cards to pick for bets was reworked
• Messages have been added during multiplayer events

Improvements from the community:

These improvements were submitted by our players! Thank you everyone for all your feedbacks!

• Putrefaction card readability has been improved
• Modifier names have been added to the interface
• Added modifier tip
• Added feedback when the player uses an item in the menu
• Added messages to cancel an action in progress during fights and to exit the menu
• Addition of a counter of remaining moves to win the bet chosen at the beginning of the story
• All the cards are now removed when the player is lost in the Dead Forest
• Successful bets now give random modifiers