Kleptomancy
Kleptomancy is a fast-paced roguelike with dynamic card-based combat from the fusion of the real-time and deck-building genres, set in a mysterious, dark fantasy world. Be it a respectable mythical beast or an honorably grotesque sac of filth and fury, defeat the bosses you encounter and steal their cards and artifacts to weaken them and make yourself stronger. Explore and experiment with different playstyles and deck builds, with five starting creeds to choose from. Enjoy the atmospheric 2.5D pixel art scenes accompanied by intense and melancholic original soundtracks.
Face the bosses, claim power, and die trying! Do it again, and have fun! But, know that this game can be a bit difficult for some, and even frustrating from the roguelike element. The card mechanics and controls, particularly, can take a bit of getting used to, and getting familiar with what the cards do and look like definitely helps and will come with repetition.
Also, tell us your best scores! We'd love to know how far you got!
NOTE: The web build does work, but it is set at a lower graphics quality and will have really heavy lag when loading the shaders for the first time. We highly recommend downloading the Windows version instead if you can for a much better experience.
Here's some gameplay footage (in case the trailer doesn't load):
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I have found the over powered strategy!
Summons are honestly super op, esp with 5 mana cost cementary that you can loot from lich. Skeletons are also super great.
How the strat works:
Pick creed of impulse, you will need the mana regen and won't be aiming at the end. Any boss that spawns extra enemies you take a card, otherwise take an artifact. Take mana artifacts (most summons cost 3+), and mostly filler is fine.
If you see gravekeeper don't loot a card, loot for artifact. He has a reasonable drop chance for a spade (it might even be guaranteed if you don't have it), and space gives u +3 dmg with little boss empowering.
Good bosses to loot:
Keeper of Cantharus: He has a laser summon! free dmg
Mucelian Patriach: Has a blight spawn that is good for tanking
Ash dude (forgor his name): He has a wizard summon who shoots fireballs.
Melee Bosses really like going after your summons, which means they stop being so much of a problem! You can kinda just sit back and just dodge the aoe weaponry after you start spawning in your army.
Ranged bosses just get overwhelmed and brutally slaughtered.
Basically built my own raid force by taking only summons.
I would've gone further if I had more time (died intentionally just to get to the end screen). Will send an update of how far I can get.
It has been done. Could've gone further and I wouldn't have lost but I proved what I wanted. I was able to stop aiming and just click on cards and win!
The general build (I kinda just switched out 1 artifact a lot)
We're so glad you really enjoyed playing our game, and for a whole hour! And thanks for sharing your tips and strategies! The minion build is definitely powerful, though it seems you never had the chance to get the Rite of the Red Ash card from the Ash dude (lol), which is basically the best one.
It was fun seeing how you interpret the drop rates, but one thing I'd like to clear up is about the artifact's boss buff. All bosses already start with 7 artifacts, and all artifacts (except the useless pebble) apply a buff based on whether it's held by the player or by a boss. Bosses already benefit from the artifacts they hold. So for example, exchanging the gravedigger's obsidian spade (boss buff is +40% area and +20% bolus area) with your useless pebble makes his attacks smaller as he now has a useless pebble (which does nothing) instead of the spade. But on the other hand, exchanging the spade that the player now has for, say, the ceremonial shears held by the hairbeast (which only has a boss buff of +25% area) will just give the hairbeast an extra +15% area and +20% bolus area.
Also, you thought the spade drops more from the gravedigger, but it's because it's actually exclusively his. Bosses have at least one exclusive artifact each that are a little bit more powerful than others.
Thanks again for taking the time to play and leaving this comment! It means a lot!
Drop rates must be kinda low for the rite of red ash cuz i looted that guy like 10 times. Either that or im very unlucky. Im assuming its the demon that he summons?
This one's so good once you get a grip on it!
At first I was too lazy to read "How to play" and thought it's a turn-based game, like Hearthstone or something. But then I watched a gameplay video and understood the idea. It's awesome! I love the concept, the visual component, the overall dynamics of playing, etc. So good! Did you make it all by yourself?? Let me know if you need a sound guy for some future projects :)
Glad you liked it! We're actually a duo! And thanks for the offer, we'll keep it in mind!
Very fun, butcher op pls nerf
Game got a lot easier after getting a couple of artifacts (namely damage). Got a couple of flat dmg artifacts, the prism artifact (+4 dmg super op) and a +30% dmg artifact.
I then swapped all my skills to either 0 cost dashing skills, or beam skills (cuz of artifact). This allowed for pretty easy kills, as I could dodge a bit more with the extra dashes from moves but unfort got beaten by the butcher who just jumped me so much my stamina ran out and my dash attacks weren't large enough to evade. (the run was done on creed of impulse for more mana regen to spam)
Suggestions:
It would be nice to try and make how artifacts work explained a bit more, I don't quite know what "duration" is, nor how increasing boss damage would do anything (as each hit only takes 1 heart). A more in depth explanation of all these abilities and what they do would be nice!
It did somewhat bother me that you always had to swap something after winning, but I realized that the theme of the game is kleptomancy and it would be dumb for me to suggest allowing you to skip.
Difficulty:
It gets much easier to kill the bosses once you have damage, so much so that the first 1-3 bosses are more likely to kill me than any other boss. Would be nice to have bosses nerfed, but have much stronger powerspikes as you grow, to keep the challenge.
Minion hp: Some feel immortal (they might be I have no idea), some end up cluttering the screen to the point where you can't walk (little green blob mine things).
Overall great game! It was very fun, albeit extremely challenging.
Thank you so much for playing AND for the really in-depth feedback! It's really nice to see how people do their builds. I didn't expect anyone to use cards for extra dashes, but there you were!
A more thorough tutorial or guide would be quite helpful for a game like ours. We just really didn't have the time, with this being a one-month jam. To answer your questions though, duration modifies how long traps last—which include blazes (DPS pools), mucus (slowing pools), blisters (green mines), and mists (DPS smoke)—as well as the HP of minions—which include cultists, skeletons, graves, etc., as well as the hellgate, which is unique in that though it has HP, it cannot receive damage but instead deals damage to itself. All the other minions are destructible, but keep in mind the distinction between them and traps—blisters are traps and cannot be destroyed.
Since bosses always deal 1 heart of damage to the player, their damage only affects the player's minions. We know that that doesn't really feel the most intuitive, but we had to work with it. We'll definitely rethink and refine this if we decide to publish the game.
You brought up how the first bosses are really hard and the first few cards/artifacts really boost the player's survival rate. THIS was the very balancing problem wetried so hard to deal with but couldn't quite perfect due to lack of time for playtesting.
The exchanging mechanic was definitely intentionally forced, and I'm glad you got the reason why!
Lastly, we do admit that the butcher is our most difficult boss. If you watch our gameplay video, we actually lost to him too lol. We'll see what we can do!
Thanks again, and we're really glad you enjoyed playing!
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I really enjoyed this game
Game is awesome, but I sure do suck at it. Best run so far is 1 boss beaten. Game's progression mechanics make me think the average player is expected to beat 2-3 after just a few runs. Nevertheless, it was fun.
The difficulty seems to be the primary complaint lol But practice really helps (and of course a tiny bit of good rng). Choosing a different creed could also help. The gameplay we posted on YouTube actually finished 11 bosses using the creed of ignorance, but our best run was 36 using the creed of obsession. I'm glad you still enjoyed though!
This game is, as one would say, "fucking awesome".
Great work, Shrimp Moose!
It means so much! Thank you!
I really enjoy this game it is smooth and satisfying with its movement, though having to drag attacks from the bottom of the screen can be a little awkward. The huge lag spikes on the web version are not cool and the game as a whole is very difficult.
Thanks for playing the game! Unfortunately, the web build does have problems with loading the shaders, causing those lag spikes, though once they've been cached the lag should go away for that session. Though if you could play it with the Windows version, that would be better (way less lag, way better graphics).
I think dragging the cards from the bottom is the core mechanic of the game that gives the nice deck-building vibe, so I guess it just needs some getting used to. Also, I can see why it might be difficult, though I think it has to since it's a fast-paced bullet hell, and the difficulty is what gives the adrenaline.
Hope you give it another shot!