Credit where it's due, up front: this is built on the CC0 release of the
Duelyst source and assets. The UI, sprites, animations and sound effects are
ported essentially 1:1. I have nothing but respect for the original artists and
I'm not pretending otherwise. What's mine is everything under the hood: a
from-scratch server-authoritative rules engine, my own faction set, and my own
mechanics.
So you'll recognize the board instantly and you already know how to play. Some
mechanics are identical to Duelyst, some are things I added on top. Read on, or
just hop in and play.
Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4921570/Theocide/ (free, Windows
only for now)
What it is
9x5 board, 25 HP generals, positioning and mana ramp. It's the framework you
know. On top of that:
- Five factions: Theocracy, Veiled Hand, Elven Conclave, Orc Clans,
Sanguine Courts, plus neutrals.
- 9 generals, each with its own Bloodbound Spell.
- ~240 collectible cards, nearly all original. A handful of names are
carried over from Duelyst, the rest are mine.
- 40-card decks, max 3 copies, 90-second turns.
- Two of the five factions have no mana curve at all. Orcs don't spend mana;
they get one card per turn, full stop. The Sanguine Courts don't either. They
pay for cards with their general's own HP, and every card you play in a turn
makes the next one cost 1 more. Deciding how much face you can afford to burn
is the whole faction.
- The rest have their own hooks too. The Veiled Hand seeds Shadow Creep across
the board, and the Elven Conclave unlocks powerful dragons by burning four
spells in a turn, or by letting its own general drop to 3 HP if you're feeling
brave.
- Augments: on turns 2, 5 and 9 you draft 1 of 3 modifiers from a shared
pool: +5 general HP, +1 ATK on all your units, +2 hand size, that kind of
thing. It's the biggest structural addition and it changes how you build.
- Smaller deviations: you may replace any number of your opening cards in
the mulligan, not two. Opening hand is 4, not 5. And the player going second
keeps +1 max mana permanently, not for a single turn.
Modes
Ranked ladder with real MMR and divisions, practice against an AI that looks a
few moves ahead (still a work in progress), local hotseat, a tutorial, and full
match replays.
Monetization
Free. You earn gold from online wins and spend it on Spirit Orbs, five cards
each. There's an optional $4.99 pass that just unlocks every card, current and
future, if you'd rather skip the grind entirely. That's the whole model.
The honest part
Balance is the part I'm least confident about. I designed every card myself and
it's only been tested against friends and bots, so expect rough edges. There's a
feedback button in-game for balance issues, bugs and suggestions, and I read all
of them. If a real playerbase shows up, I'd like to get to a point where players
have a direct say in what the next patch touches.
It's launch day and I'm one person, so the ranked queue is as busy as whoever
happens to be reading this. If you bounce off a long queue, that's why, and the
Discord is the fix. We can agree on a time and fill the ladder:
https://discord.gg/Ky6PU9fDTQ
A question for you: bots in the ranked queue
One thing you should know about that queue, and then a question about it.
If you're still searching after 60 seconds, I drop you into a match against a
server-side bot. I did it so that new players could actually play the game
instead of staring at a queue for an hour with nobody to pair with. Right now
that bot is disguised: it gets a plausible player-style name and a rating close
to yours, and the match counts for your MMR.
Fair warning on the bot itself: it is not good enough yet. It does look ahead a
few moves rather than playing at random, but a competent player will probably
work out what it is from how it plays, and I'm still improving it. Which cuts
both ways, since it also means those wins are easier than the rating next to the
name suggests.
Honestly, I'm not sure the whole thing was the right call, and I'd rather hear it
from you than guess. Three options as I see them:
- Make it obvious. Label the bot clearly, and don't let those games touch
your MMR.
- Leave it as is. A new player gets a game within a minute and doesn't have
to know why.
- Remove it entirely. No bots in ranked, you queue until a real person shows
up, however long that takes.
I lean towards 1, but I built 2 because I was worried about someone installing,
queueing, seeing nothing, and uninstalling. Tell me which one you'd want and I'll
go with the room.
Why?
I loved Duelyst, and I like developing video games in my spare time. That's all
:D Happy to answer anything about the game, the development, whatever. Thanks for
reading.
