Summary

This update focuses on clarity and consistency, with the goal of creating a simpler more robust set of board rules that never involve guesswork or memorization. The tactics should be about tempo, position, planning and card play. Not memorizing the various weird cases where there are exceptions to the normal rules or complex behaviors.

Streamlining or reworking the rules and designs that contribute to confusion or ambiguity
The pattern we have seen in videos and feedback is that there is a frustrating amount of ambiguity with the rules, and that that isn't really a good fit for a game with such high stakes to every decision. "I didn't know that would happen" is something that just kills us to see, and we are striving to completely eliminate those moments from the game.

Increasing the consistency and amount of information
The other side of the coin, is there is too much hidden information, so in tandem with the above we will be surfacing more information that is missing and creating categories and keywords with predictable rules so you know what the deal is at a glance.

Performance and stability
Ongoing work on tech debt and improving the core systems continues, this time focusing on card interaction and animation
Also, there are a few things in the game that take up a huge chunk of the dev time dealing with edge cases and bugs so we took that as a sign they are too complex and streamlined them to fit the adjusted core rules.

Core Changes

Every game element is now categorized as one of the following types:
Slorf, Enemy, Object and Terrain

The rules these types must conform to:

• Enemies always appear in the turn sequence, have a turn, and must be cleared to get camp card
  
• Objects are never in the turn sequence (although they may have end round effects), and can always be harvested and removed
  
• Terrain is inherent to the tile, and can have effects, but can never be removed or harvested
  
• Buffs can always apply to Enemies and Slorfs, and never to Objects or Terrain
  

Every existing game element that was in a grey area between these has been reworked to fit the new rules (see tuning section below)

Effects

All effects are visible in the tooltip in a box showing which of these causes trigger them:

Enter Tile
Enter effects happen when entering the tile, but no longer are allowed to occur at the end of the turn.
Only Slorf's trigger enter effects (enemies don't each mushrooms, fall in sinksand)

Harvest
Harvesting always removes the target, no exceptions (sinksand, giant mushroom, etc)
Every object can be harvested (harvest can remove boulders, trees)

Destroy
This effect happens on destruction of enemy/object

End Round
After the entire turn sequence is over, these effects resolve in sequence before the next round starts
When an end round effect happens, the camera always shows it (things like lightning strikes, grubs)

Enemies Cleared
These effects happen as enemies are cleared (Eg. bug eggs going inactive)
Evening is no longer a term, and is replaced by "if enemies are cleared"

General: Effects can no longer fail to resolve. Examples: Walking on mushrooms at full food, using a nut card at full health

Content

New crafted card
Sticky Trap - Structure, Immobilizes an enemy in range during end round, and is removed from tile

Tuning

Reworks

Underflock

• Were in a grey area between an object and an enemy, so have been promoted to full enemies of the Slorfs
  
• Elevator removed (for now)
  
• New behavior suited to an enemy with a turn rather than the reaction of a game object
  
• Turrets now have two versions and get stronger later in the game
  

Water

• Is now terrain
  
• Fills water at end round, rather than on entering the adjacent tile
  

Graves and Ghosts

• Were in a grey area, and graves complexity caused confusion and bugs so streamlined
  
• Ghost are now an enemy with evade and low health but retaining that horrifying 99 attack
  
• Graves are now an enemy and have been reworked to have a turn
  

Boom Berry

• Now explodes during end round after being damaged instead of instantly
  

Underflock Nest (spikes)

• Cycling spike behavior removed (will be used for special levels in future, but not in the general pool)
  
• Nests now lay in wait and attack any Slorf standing in the tile at end round phase
  

Linked Glyphs

• Now appear side by side and made clearer that you choose one
  
• Note, you can get both effects with an area harvest
  

Misc

• Enemies clear check moved to end of turn (safer, avoids happening middle of a sequence of events due to area, etc)
  
• Slorfs can no longer attack their own structures
  
• Tutorial writing improved and some tuning to level 2
  
• Rotating turret no longer turns in a direction with no tiles, and reverses direction instead (scanning back and forth)
  
• Fish in pond made huge and obvious
  
• Root mother range increased so they don't just do nothing on their turn
  
• Bug egg, conforming to object rules, can be harvested to remove safely (from a distance)
  
• You can harvest glyphs as well as enter them
  
• Cards tuck downward when not able to be selected
  
• Attribute keywords used in cards/behaviors shown in tooltip (tree, water, thrix, etc)
  

Bug Fixes

Fixed issue where widgets failed to remove, resulting in performance getting worse over time
Fixed entity HUD disappearing until rolling over a card
Maximum panning momentum of map clamped to avoid rare cases where map can go flying 100km
Slorf hex is no longer a clickable move hex during movement
Work/Labor now recognizes buffs when deciding which card to discount
Ranged Thrix no longer prepares an attack vs a stealthed slorf
Fixed instances of loot animation being delayed by other animations
Fixed glare enemy buff tooltip text that referred to the enemy drawing cards
Burrowing Thrix no longer loses Mark buff when retreating