DINO MERCS is a roguelite deckbuilding game. You take the role of a veteran member of a shadowy private military corporation called Dark Solar Defense. To survive, you will need to build a powerful deck of cards while conducting operations and engaging in fierce combat.
[h2]Early Access Release v4.1.0 is live on Steam! [/h2]
This update might not seem like much at first glance, but underneath the hood, there's a lot going on!
[i]NOTE: since the game is still in early access, please be aware there will be plenty of bugs, balance issues, and missing things. If you find any of these, please let me know here on Steam or on the [url=https://discord.gg/G4TVhq7qtn]discord server[/url]!
[/i]
[h2]Notable changes:[/h2]
[h3]Simulated Combat![/h3]
Previously, if you looked at a card description, it would tell you its [b]immediate[/b] effect. This was slightly misleading because things would perhaps change by the time that card actually resolved. Now, every time you reposition a card, the game simulates a turn of combat and shows you exactly how much damage the card will actually do. This took a while for me to actually implement because it's kinda tricky to do this simulated combat in a way that is high performing and doesn't mess with the actual game logic. But now it's here and should help make card descriptions clearer.
[img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/41563742/f6f7245f7d4639a99d2e2824cde9ea2822d57aea.jpg[/img]
[h3]Combat Log[/h3]
This is another "invisible" change that you, the player, won't actually notice. But, it allows for some future things, like achievements based on certain strategies used in a combat encounter. For example, if you defeat an enemy only using Energy damage or Toxic Gas, the game will know that. I'll be doing more with this later.
[h3]Lots of Balancing[/h3]
I'll be upfront about this - the game is still not fully balanced yet, so this isn't perfect. But I did dramatically increase max stats, lowered initial stat values, increased Shields/Armor/HP and increased attack card bonuses. These changes should all help a bit. I'll be doing a lot more work on game balance soon, though. Please let me know your thoughts on how the game balance feels! That would help a lot.
[h3]A Bunch of Bug Fixes[/h3]
There were so many bugs I fixed, I stopped keeping track. Unfortunately, there's still a lot more. Next month will be the month that I finish stamping them all out!
[h3]Upcoming[/h3]
November will basically be the last month of development. In December, I'll be exiting Early Access unless something totally unexpected happens. If you'd like to know what else I'm working on during that month, here's my to-do list of major things to tackle and finish:
[list]
[*] Add in backgrounds variants
[*] Another slight UI overhaul
[*] Controller support
[*] Leaderboard
[*] Finish all card art
[*] More balance fixes
[*] Add the rest of the achievements
[*] Add that one boss that's missing
[*] Add attack animations
[/list]
That's all for now! Please let me know your thoughts on the new changes and what you would like to see me do in November (I'll try to squeeze in any requests, but no promises). Thanks everyone!
-Tim, the dev