Buffet: A Vore Card Game (0.22!)

[WhatTheNani]

0.4.3 is great so far. Plum being 1 energy made her so much better, Gianni's rework makes her way more interesting to play with (and with her high capacity she is honestly pretty good, if potentially unreliable), Deyla went from broken to feeling like she's in a great spot while, and while I have played around with them extensively the rebalancing to the mobis makes me wanna test them out more.

Oh, and I got a new high score of 2633 on my third quick round of the patch. The change to prey drawing has rocketed nexxi up to absurd levels. It seems like higher cost cards, nexxi included, might have had their chance of being drawn lowered, which is probably as good a nerf to nexxi as any, but if you can get her to lvl 2 early she's can pop off even harder now.

That being said, I don't have any particularly good ideas (outside of maybe an energy cost increase) as to how nexxi could be brought in line (at least for high scoring) without either compromising her identity or just making it super hard for her to get snowballing, neither of which sound fun. Honestly, she's my favorite pred because trying to set her up to become an all consuming monster is a lot of fun and as is I'm totally ok with her being the end all be all of high scores if the alternative is taking that away.

[kitsune12]

just want to say i think mobi needs a stomach cap thanks to the new patch... i got a score of 2702 with them and was not really min maxing it...

[Umbumbry]

Yeah... Theres a few things that should be capped...

[slimjam]

Caps? Naaaaaah we good.

[Moebius]

Thank you all for the feedback!
I ended up introducing since it got a bit absurd, but long term I will include mechanics that allow to remove the cap.

Speakling of:


New Update!
https://m0b1.itch.io/buffet

[Moebius]

This is a big one, less flashy but quite a big update regardless:

https://m0b1.itch.io/buffet

Let me know what you think of this direction for the Campaign Mode!

[DADAOROU]

How to use the purchased item?



ok...I don't think any items in the store need to be used

[Content2020]

That update changed everything. For the better. This game is really solid now.
However, is the campaign endless? I only got as far as 2000

[Moebius]

That update changed everything. For the better. This game is really solid now.
However, is the campaign endless? I only got as far as 2000

Thanks! <3
Actually 2000 it's the current final milestone, so if you beat that one you beat the Campaign Mode

[Moebius]

Decided to open a Patreon in case you want to support the developement of this and future games. No need to feel any obligation for it, but it would help me to invest more time into game developing!
https://patreon.com/user?u=93316313

[Moebius]

New Update! Let me know what you think
https://m0b1.itch.io/buffet

[WhatTheNani]

Queen Deyla is a nice new addition, but she doesn't currently have an sound when eating. Also I found myself appreciating the new background more than expected. I never minded the empty white space, but having something there is nicer than anticipated. Unfortunately Insta-Digestion (the card) does not override indigestion, though haven't tested the insta-digestion effect of GIanni so that might work.

Balancewise, a lot of the shop items feel too expensive for the amount of tickets you get, even in a totally victorious run, especially when weighted in value against some of the cheaper ones.

[marceber]

Queen Deyla is a nice new addition, but she doesn't currently have an sound when eating.

She does have sound, it's just very low.

I wish there was a way to get rid of cards in between rounds. I tend to run into the issue of having too many specials or of the same type of card and they clog my hand from my usual strategies in the long run.

[Moebius]

Queen Deyla is a nice new addition, but she doesn't currently have an sound when eating. Also I found myself appreciating the new background more than expected. I never minded the empty white space, but having something there is nicer than anticipated. Unfortunately Insta-Digestion (the card) does not override indigestion, though haven't tested the insta-digestion effect of GIanni so that might work.

Balancewise, a lot of the shop items feel too expensive for the amount of tickets you get, even in a totally victorious run, especially when weighted in value against some of the cheaper ones.

Like marceber mentioned, she has one, but I need to adjust it to make it waaay louder. Will do soon! The Insta-Digestion not overriding Indigestion is a bug for sure, will take a look at it.
Thanks about the background! Once I added I was surprised it took me this long really.

About over priced items, do you have any example of an item you think should be cheaper due to the effect being not that much better than the cheaper ones?

I wish there was a way to get rid of cards in between rounds. I tend to run into the issue of having too many specials or of the same type of card and they clog my hand from my usual strategies in the long run.

Actually working on it! The idea is that besides the shop between stages you get other options to customize your run

[Moebius]

Both the sound issue and the insta-digestion card not nullifying Indigestion should be fixed now!

[WhatTheNani]

About over priced items, do you have any example of an item you think should be cheaper due to the effect being not that much better than the cheaper ones?

Well I would say the Frequent Client Card is one, but that has less to do with it being expensive and more with its affect just not making enough of a difference to justify buying it unless you are on the last round and have nothing else to spend on.
For the ones where it's actually about the price, the Metabolism Enhancer is by far the stand out, since it needs nearly all of 3 rounds worth of tickets for an effect that, while nice, is almost certainly not going to come close to what else you could buy with that, probably even for the preds that benefit from it the most. The 200 cost ones, Hunger Enhancer and Time Warper, I think might also be a little bit much though with those its less because the effect doesn't justify the cost and more because it feels like some of the cheaper ones are just more money efficient (the +1 and +2 points to prey seem way too strong to pass up for nearly all strats, and the +1 energy is for all intents and purposes a slightly weaker Time Warp for half the cost) and between that and the +1 reroll items just feeling so useful for helping you be less at the mercy of rng it's hard to budget in a way that lets you purchase either of the big 200s without having to pass up something important. Though since I think you said there might be ways of getting rid of your cards coming up the reroll at least might become less important which would free up some room for the 200s at least.

I will add though, that because its so expensive I haven't actually tried the Metabolism Enhancer yet, so it's possible that I have misunderstood its effects and its more useful than I anticipated. What I understood it as was you digest twice in a row when you end your turn without getting to add in prey in between. However, if it does let you digest once then eat more prey before digesting again (borderline doubling the effectiveness of your turns) then that would more than justify the cost.

[slimjam]

Love the game!

I just have a couple thoughts on a few things. I've been exclusively playing the campaign so all of these suggestions are going to be in reference to that.

#1 quality of life improvement:
When picking packs in campaign mode, it would be nice to be able to check what's already in our deck or at least have some indicator of how many of a card we already have. Maybe something that says "you already have X of this card" underneath where it tells you how many you're getting in the pack.

#2 bonus money:
If you can significantly exceed the number of points required to pass a round it would be nice to get some bonus money to spend in the shop. Perhaps if you hit 150% of points needed to pass (so if a round takes 100 to pass you get the bonus if you hit 150) you get 150% of reward money (If normal reward is 100 cash, you get a bonus 50). If 150% for the bonus is too easy maybe 200% for double the reward would be a better fit.
It could be as easy as having overkill points get translated directly into bonus money (overshoot the points to pass by 34 points? get 34 bonus cash). I don't think this is as broken as it sounds because I usually averaged 50-150 overkill points in the first few rounds and after about round 3 I was just barely passing the rounds with only 20ish extra. I think this would be a good answer to the handful of items that seem a bit too cost prohibitive for the benefit they provide (want that metabolism enhancer? Do really well in rounds 1 and 2 and it's all yours)

#3 Gianni tweak?
I'm not completely sure how I feel about the Insta-digest perk. If you boil it down, due to her high digestion what it really translates to is "I have a 10% chance of digesting what I'm already going to digest in most cases". It still feels pretty wimpy compared to everyone else unless it interacts with the 20% chance of indigestion is some special way (which takes priority, indigestion or insta-digestion?). Now that I think about it, flat out "immunity to indigestion" might be a better perk for her. We already have "prevents escape" as a pred perk so I don't think it's unreasonable for the goth girl (I'm sorry her name escapes me at the moment!) to have a hard counter as well.

#4 Mobi tweak?
I think 4 points is a bit much to pay if the all-consuming void that is Mobi has been capped at 30. Not suggesting the base price shouldn't be 4 but if you pick them as your fave, the price should be dropped to 3 (and then 2 if you spring for the pred licence).

#5 wacky craziness
Ok hear me out.
New action card: Eating Contest
"Select a seated pred and feed them to another seated pred"
Cost: 1
Overpred (the one that is doing the eating) gains the "Overstuffed" quality for the next turn, preventing them from being fed further and at the end of which they insta-digest all prey in their stomach and in the stomach of the pred they ate and gain points appropriately.
Overpred does not need stomach space available for this.
Underpred gives bonus points equal to twice their energy

[WhatTheNani]

#2 bonus money:
If you can significantly exceed the number of points required to pass a round it would be nice to get some bonus money to spend in the shop. Perhaps if you hit 150% of points needed to pass (so if a round takes 100 to pass you get the bonus if you hit 150) you get 150% of reward money (If normal reward is 100 cash, you get a bonus 50). If 150% for the bonus is too easy maybe 200% for double the reward would be a better fit.
It could be as easy as having overkill points get translated directly into bonus money (overshoot the points to pass by 34 points? get 34 bonus cash). I don't think this is as broken as it sounds because I usually averaged 50-150 overkill points in the first few rounds and after about round 3 I was just barely passing the rounds with only 20ish extra. I think this would be a good answer to the handful of items that seem a bit too cost prohibitive for the benefit they provide (want that metabolism enhancer? Do really well in rounds 1 and 2 and it's all yours)

I do like the sound of some kind of bonus for overkilling the score by a significant margin, but with some strategies scoring over 1000 even with no items is plenty feasible, so would need to be carefully balanced so as to give at least a little reward to someone who overshoots by 100 points and while not giving a crazy reward to someone who overshoots by 1000 points.

[slimjam]

#2 bonus money:
If you can significantly exceed the number of points required to pass a round it would be nice to get some bonus money to spend in the shop. Perhaps if you hit 150% of points needed to pass (so if a round takes 100 to pass you get the bonus if you hit 150) you get 150% of reward money (If normal reward is 100 cash, you get a bonus 50). If 150% for the bonus is too easy maybe 200% for double the reward would be a better fit.
It could be as easy as having overkill points get translated directly into bonus money (overshoot the points to pass by 34 points? get 34 bonus cash). I don't think this is as broken as it sounds because I usually averaged 50-150 overkill points in the first few rounds and after about round 3 I was just barely passing the rounds with only 20ish extra. I think this would be a good answer to the handful of items that seem a bit too cost prohibitive for the benefit they provide (want that metabolism enhancer? Do really well in rounds 1 and 2 and it's all yours)

I do like the sound of some kind of bonus for overkilling the score by a significant margin, but with some strategies scoring over 1000 even with no items is plenty feasible, so would need to be carefully balanced so as to give at least a little reward to someone who overshoots by 100 points and while not giving a crazy reward to someone who overshoots by 1000 points.

Maybe just cap the overkill bonus at between 150 to 300 bonus cash?

[Revx_Z]

This looks really cool! Is there some way to make it run windowed, or save progress between sessions? I don't like needing to leave a fullscreen game open to preserve my progress.