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Mega Crit, developers of the successful Slay the Spire have released a free new game called Dancing Duelists, after publicly calling out Unity recently (as did many others) and moving over to Godot Engine.

Created for the Jump Ship Jam, a Game Jam for developers to test out something new as it reads: "Curious to set sail in uncharted waters? Your mission: Craft a game using an entirely new-to-you engine or tool based on our announced theme."

So for it Mega Crit created Dancing Duelists, a "deckbuilding autobattler dance off with a BUMPIN' soundtrack". You pick a dancing character, picks some cards and then battle it out. Seems like a really nice idea and impressive what they were able to come up with in only a few weeks.

Pictured - Dancing Duelists on Kubuntu

In the Steam announcement posted on the Slay the Spire store page the developers said: "Due to recent events, the Mega Crit team has been looking for an engine to migrate our next big game to from Unity, so we've been working on this little game for a few weeks now to acquaint ourselves with Godot, our new official engine of choice! It also just so happens to coincide with the Jump Ship Jam, an event that encourages game developers to branch out and create something with new engines & tools!

We're super proud of how this project turned out in such a small timeframe, and we'd love for you to check it out!"

One of their team, Casey Yano, also wrote a Medium post on their thoughts for those interested.

This new free game is available on itch.io. And while you can't pay for it they suggest funding Godot instead.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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8 comments

g000h Oct 17, 2023
I gave it a try, and the game did certainly come across as a game-jam prodigy. I didn't "get" the play aspect of the title. Is the core mechanic to just choose a set of cards and then let the game auto-battle, because there didn't seem to be any meaningful choice after choosing the cards?


Last edited by g000h on 17 October 2023 at 2:48 pm UTC
Purple Library Guy Oct 17, 2023
If the game developer's post was good I was thinking of reading it, but apparently it's just Medium.
GetBeaned Oct 17, 2023
I couldn't get into this. I've tried quite a few autobattlers and the only one I could ever get into was Clash Mini, and I think that might've been because the strategy element to it is so upfront and obvious. Playing this, I just felt like I wasn't really doing anything.

I'm looking forward to Mega Crit's next game though. I've been playing Slay the Spire like crazy the last few weeks, it gets better every time I return to it.

Still never beat the game with the Watcher though lol.
Anza Oct 17, 2023
I also tried it and it seems that there's some strategy, but mostly it's luck.

Slay the Spire has option of skipping cards, which would give bit more depth to your choices. though it will make the game easier. There are some cards that have synergies, so if you would be able to keep the deck small, synergies would trigger more often.

Also one thing to note is that HP can go over the maximum, so you can get quite tanky. Only time I won the tournament, I had luck to get three HP generating trinkets and on top of one HP generating card that had synergy with one the trinkets.
Grogan Oct 17, 2023
From the "Medium" link
https://caseyyano.com/on-evaluating-godot-b35ea86e8cf4

"It was a stupid thing Unity was doing, I don’t even like their engine that much, and I’m an indie dev who wasn’t feeling very independent when told that this “for the community” engine was tacking on fees and never fixing their buggier components after they IPO’d."

There it is again. Nobody uses Unity because it's "great". VERY stupid thing to do, add incentive for people to bite the bullet and find a better engine.
Pyretic Oct 19, 2023
Do NOT read the Steam community post's comments! There are so many people complaining about Slay the Spire 2 not being released yet or this game not being released on Steam (despite that publishing on Steam costs money and that this is a free jam game that they built in a few weeks).
Philadelphus Oct 19, 2023
Quoting: g000hI didn't "get" the play aspect of the title. Is the core mechanic to just choose a set of cards and then let the game auto-battle, because there didn't seem to be any meaningful choice after choosing the cards?
I mean, it's described as a "deckbuilding autobattler", so that's pretty much what I would expect from the description. I haven't played an autobattler (and can't comment on the relative quality of this one), but it seems like a genre that's been becoming more popular over the last few years.
14 Oct 20, 2023
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The demonstration Mega Crit did here is amazing.
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