This is like the most fun game ever, despite being in Japanese. I wish I could read it, just for the little extra help it would provide. A lot of it is really intuitive, or can be figured out through an attempt or two.
I could go on for paragraphs writing all the things that I figured out gradually by playing.
I can’t tell 100%, but it seems like the main purpose of the blue guys is to contribute to certain combos later on that have “status” effects, like “weak”, “charge”, “stun”, and “block”.
This is compelling, though I have no idea how well or badly I’m doing.
Key seems to be maneuvering for four healers in a row early on to bring your health up closer to maximum.
The only upper-right corner power I’ve used is “Boost.”
My high score is 8421 after 121 turns and 30 battles. I’m not sure I could have lasted much longer, especially once the creature shows up who turns some of your figures into children. It really forces you to play profitable lines as you discover them instead of waiting to organize them into better combos.
(Maybe those other two unused powers in the upper-right would have been a help.)
By focusing on healing and defending, I got up to around 11000 HP twice now. I had 2 copies of both “power heal” and “block”, which combined really well with “extra attack, 5 combo”.
The first time, I died horribly because an enemy kept using “attack up”, I didn’t realize in time, and I was hit for thousands of damage.
The second time, I was careful to kill those guys quickly. Then, enemy healers showed up alongside enemy attack-up guys, and I was stuck in a stalemate. I waited slightly too long to kill them, and their attack power was high enough that I couldn’t stop blocking or I’d die, and their healing power was enough that I couldn’t kill them in one strike without 4 red guys… which meant I couldn’t block, which meant I died.
This is an amazingly fun game, but when you get far there is far too much strategizing and paying attention required. My tiny little brain can’t take it.
Yeah, I played again and realized there seems to be effectively no maximum HP value, despite what the bar graphic might suggest. (Or the “divine” spell or simply four in a row w/ the healers raises the maximum HP?)
So with that new information in mind I managed to get to what was announced as the final round, and possibly to the final section of that round (battle 50), but my HP was too whittled down already to handle it (and the boss kept turning the priests into children).
This would be perfect as a phone game.
I wonder if someone might stumble by who could translate some of the text?
So I played through again, and this time managed to make it all the way through to the end. The basic strategy that worked to make everything go smoothly was to seriously maximize HP, spending the first half of the game focused almost exclusively on making complete lines of Healers and then hitting the Boost button before redeeming them. (I also used shields this time, thanks to Dave’s comments above; the trade-off is that the blue become almost entirely defensive units.)
The end boss — at least using this initial strategy — was, however, a bit of a chore, thanks to its two minions, thanks to all three of them having the power to transform your units into children, and thanks to their 40HP party-wide healing ability (and high defensive stats?).
I guess I won’t spoil what strategy eventually worked there, but it’s not really counter-intuitive once you think through the numbers. It probably should have taken me much less time to think through, but may have still taken a lot of time to implement (making the absurdly large amount of HP handy, though I think I never dropped below 20,000 at any point there, so obviously there was room to improve things by focusing a bit more on power-based skills).
Terry, I wouldn’t get too down about it! You have your own unique sense of style and a particular set of talents that would add to, expand upon, or mutate this idea you feel is too similar.
After all the base mechanic behind this game is almost like Video Poker + Maths + Monsters, or Set + RPG + Slot Machine. It is also similar in a way(but still different enough) to Bejeweled & Puzzle Quest. These facts don’t make it any less great, and the same goes for your game. (We don’t fault Nethack cause it’s like-Rogue.)
Things I’d personally like to see in Encounter 2(that Encounter doesn’t have):
Monsters and Bosses that matter(Making them have distinctly different attacks and ways to mess your party up, perhaps by shuffling your board, obscuring/hiding your unit type so that you might have to navigate by memory, or dividing/reflecting your multipliers with their own power-ups).
More variety in your own units(it felt funny that I was killing off/using my four same characters over and over, and that their was an inexhaustible number of badass wizards). If this is an epic puzzle war, give me some sense of that.
Plot, and or, story or maybe just environments(these are minor requests as the game is great as is, but if one were to know the stakes of the battle they are in, and what they are fighting, even just in skippable Advance Wars-ic text between stages, I think it could add to it a bit)?
Anyway keep working on your distinct visions, gaming is better for it! Thanks!
Getting all defensive/healing upgrades seems like a solid strategy if you just want to win. Might not give you the best score, though. I still had ~75000 life left at the end…
Awesome game, at first I thought the difference between 3 of the same and 4 of the same was too great but I see why it makes sense now. Not sure how to get past the 40hp healer battle, I got lucky and did some combo that did 2000 dmg but didn’t understand why.
my best score is 40881 this game is hard at points but so fun! i got to the point where getting 4 heros did a 10000 damage 8 combo…. awesome
maybe i should do a lets play of this
oh also. the key to beating this game ive discovered is upgrading the priest/hero move in addition to power heal, dual attack(the double hero thing),triforce, and triple of the rest of the characters, and the times 4 when you get a 5 combo. that way almost everything is a combo. and use the upper right buttons when you need to kill an enemy (such as the children transformer enemies, priests, or damage multipliers) to set yourself up a combo
dont focus solely on health
hope this helped someone 😀
Chose a bad build on my first successful run, yielding a party that was hard to kill, but required tedious waiting for a 4x red combo to do any damage.
I love how the developer isn’t afraid to let the numbers get crazy large. Support which increase their party’s strength each turn, including the strength of their own strength increasing spells.
Maybe by “very basics” you don’t mean *this* basic, in which case this might be inappropriate, but the very basic rules are:
– On your turn, click one of the red triangles to select a row, column, or diagonal.
– The units in that row, column, or diagonal are then mobilized against the enemy. (You can target a specific enemy by clicking on one, though one is always selected by default.)
– The units’ various powers are, in general, multiplied by selecting a row, column, or diagonal with two, three, or four of a kind.
— These combo-like multipliers can be greatly increased by (eventually) choosing from various passive traits along the bottom of the screen. There seems to be a hidden combo-meter that, when reaching certain thresholds, triggers the bottom of the screen to allow you to at that moment select a trait for one of the slots.
— Most of those traits give larger rewards for two or three of kind matches, but some grant special status effects when matching, say, a blue with a priest.
— Priests heal; purples cast spells on all the enemies at once; oranges have stronger attacks against a single enemy at a time; the blue’s strengths seem to vary widely depending on what traits are selected when given the chance to do so. (They can end up being good fighters or, say, blockers.)
— The buttons in the upper-right are single-use powers. They do not use of a turn. Once used, they become usable again after acquiring a certain number of points.
— One of them replaces all current units with a new batch. One shifts the last column into the first column position (I think). One gives a “boost” to all of your units currently in the field (signified by flames surrounding them). This adds an extra multiplier, whether to their healing or fighting qualities.
— After each of your turns, the enemies all get a chance to attack you, generally lowering your Hit Points, though some of their moves have other status effects.
— And when your Hit Points reach zero the game is over.
— The game is also over when you complete the 50th battle.
And those are the rules!
(I hadn’t determined what the letters inside of the circles under the HP meter stand for. Possibly a category indication of your selected combo strengths?)
After playing(and loving) this on and off for 3 days I have conquered it!
My initial strategy was to focus on sheer power, first in might, then in healing. This got me far, but I would die due to randomness when I couldn’t make the bitchin’ combos line up. So, I thought about it a bit, and decided a different tactic was needed. I would only invest in skill that need two characters to work, not doubles or triples, 1x type skills, and the only multi-skill I took was the Whole Party skill(and the 5x power-up). This works out to steady high damage(1,000’s across the board), but not obscene damage, all while steadily healing you each round(by 200-400’s, my max HP was never over 5,000.). I might’ve been hit 20 times total. By using the single multiplier combinations, your gauges refill almost every round, allowing you to Boost, Reload, and Shuffle at any time, thus allowing you to refill again them almost immediately. This strategy is so powerful that the game is now a bit broken for me, but I kinda see finding this completed solution to the game as an elegantly didactic way of saying “Friends that works together always win!”. Final score was: 101,043 after 66 Battles, 171 Turns. Great game!
I just got to fight 51 and I don’t know why. I had enough blocks stocked up that i took no damage in the last fight, so that might be it?
184 turns, 20583 score. [d] [ ] [t] [l] under the health (no idea what they mean)
couldn’t tell you what exactly got me there!
ok I beat the game and as Glark said above, it can get a little bit broken once you find a winning tactic, but it was the act of finding a winning tactic that I had the most fun with. There is the core of something really special in here, and I’d love to see the idea developed further.
I always love when Japanese games get posted on fig because it means their appeal is gonna be obvious through the game’s design rather than through tutorialising. I’d be curious to know what the tutorial actually says, because for me the game’s fun came from working out the systems on my own.
I like how the enemies don’t just grow arbitrarily in power as you progress, they also get new abilities that they can use to go exponential just like the player (although in a slightly different way). I died to a party of rats? using attack up and healing until they were ridiculously strong.
Also, I found that skills with small requirements in units are generally preferable to stronger, 3-4 units skills. It seems to me that just being able to make the combo chain one step longer far outweighs the benefit of stronger skills. Maybe I’m wrong, I haven’t played with all the skills yet.
The enemies that turn your units into children are also a nice touch. It’s annoying, but I mean, throwing children at oversized rat priests? Priceless.
(Try not bothering to attack unless you can attack with four of a kind. Make maneuvering into four-of-a-kinds your entire strategy and always Boost when you make one happen.)
I died to the final boss on level 60, score 99981, he pinkifies 2/3 of your guys in one go AND boosts power, accompanied by 2 healers.
I had no 4 in a rows and reload gave me nothing, I died having about 9k health.
This is like the most fun game ever, despite being in Japanese. I wish I could read it, just for the little extra help it would provide. A lot of it is really intuitive, or can be figured out through an attempt or two.
I could go on for paragraphs writing all the things that I figured out gradually by playing.
I can’t tell 100%, but it seems like the main purpose of the blue guys is to contribute to certain combos later on that have “status” effects, like “weak”, “charge”, “stun”, and “block”.
This is compelling, though I have no idea how well or badly I’m doing.
Key seems to be maneuvering for four healers in a row early on to bring your health up closer to maximum.
The only upper-right corner power I’ve used is “Boost.”
My high score is 8421 after 121 turns and 30 battles. I’m not sure I could have lasted much longer, especially once the creature shows up who turns some of your figures into children. It really forces you to play profitable lines as you discover them instead of waiting to organize them into better combos.
(Maybe those other two unused powers in the upper-right would have been a help.)
By focusing on healing and defending, I got up to around 11000 HP twice now. I had 2 copies of both “power heal” and “block”, which combined really well with “extra attack, 5 combo”.
The first time, I died horribly because an enemy kept using “attack up”, I didn’t realize in time, and I was hit for thousands of damage.
The second time, I was careful to kill those guys quickly. Then, enemy healers showed up alongside enemy attack-up guys, and I was stuck in a stalemate. I waited slightly too long to kill them, and their attack power was high enough that I couldn’t stop blocking or I’d die, and their healing power was enough that I couldn’t kill them in one strike without 4 red guys… which meant I couldn’t block, which meant I died.
This is an amazingly fun game, but when you get far there is far too much strategizing and paying attention required. My tiny little brain can’t take it.
Yeah, I played again and realized there seems to be effectively no maximum HP value, despite what the bar graphic might suggest. (Or the “divine” spell or simply four in a row w/ the healers raises the maximum HP?)
So with that new information in mind I managed to get to what was announced as the final round, and possibly to the final section of that round (battle 50), but my HP was too whittled down already to handle it (and the boss kept turning the priests into children).
This would be perfect as a phone game.
I wonder if someone might stumble by who could translate some of the text?
I’m at level 57 and no signs of ending.
Reload is useful to remove pink characters
So I played through again, and this time managed to make it all the way through to the end. The basic strategy that worked to make everything go smoothly was to seriously maximize HP, spending the first half of the game focused almost exclusively on making complete lines of Healers and then hitting the Boost button before redeeming them. (I also used shields this time, thanks to Dave’s comments above; the trade-off is that the blue become almost entirely defensive units.)
The end boss — at least using this initial strategy — was, however, a bit of a chore, thanks to its two minions, thanks to all three of them having the power to transform your units into children, and thanks to their 40HP party-wide healing ability (and high defensive stats?).
I guess I won’t spoil what strategy eventually worked there, but it’s not really counter-intuitive once you think through the numbers. It probably should have taken me much less time to think through, but may have still taken a lot of time to implement (making the absurdly large amount of HP handy, though I think I never dropped below 20,000 at any point there, so obviously there was room to improve things by focusing a bit more on power-based skills).
This is really, really good.
Sadly for me, it’s very similar to a game I’ve been working on for quite some time… 🙁
I would like to see your version of it!
Terry, I wouldn’t get too down about it! You have your own unique sense of style and a particular set of talents that would add to, expand upon, or mutate this idea you feel is too similar.
After all the base mechanic behind this game is almost like Video Poker + Maths + Monsters, or Set + RPG + Slot Machine. It is also similar in a way(but still different enough) to Bejeweled & Puzzle Quest. These facts don’t make it any less great, and the same goes for your game. (We don’t fault Nethack cause it’s like-Rogue.)
Things I’d personally like to see in Encounter 2(that Encounter doesn’t have):
Monsters and Bosses that matter(Making them have distinctly different attacks and ways to mess your party up, perhaps by shuffling your board, obscuring/hiding your unit type so that you might have to navigate by memory, or dividing/reflecting your multipliers with their own power-ups).
More variety in your own units(it felt funny that I was killing off/using my four same characters over and over, and that their was an inexhaustible number of badass wizards). If this is an epic puzzle war, give me some sense of that.
Plot, and or, story or maybe just environments(these are minor requests as the game is great as is, but if one were to know the stakes of the battle they are in, and what they are fighting, even just in skippable Advance Wars-ic text between stages, I think it could add to it a bit)?
Anyway keep working on your distinct visions, gaming is better for it! Thanks!
It’s not really that similar.
(but it is awesome)
Man, you guys are kicking my ass in score, I was happy to break 2k. You’re all stallions! 😯
It’s amazing once you get all the nice combos unlocked. With my setup, I can do 800 damage with a party (1 of each) attack. It’s… satisfying.
Getting all defensive/healing upgrades seems like a solid strategy if you just want to win. Might not give you the best score, though. I still had ~75000 life left at the end…
Awesome game, at first I thought the difference between 3 of the same and 4 of the same was too great but I see why it makes sense now. Not sure how to get past the 40hp healer battle, I got lucky and did some combo that did 2000 dmg but didn’t understand why.
my best score is 40881 this game is hard at points but so fun! i got to the point where getting 4 heros did a 10000 damage 8 combo…. awesome
maybe i should do a lets play of this
oh also. the key to beating this game ive discovered is upgrading the priest/hero move in addition to power heal, dual attack(the double hero thing),triforce, and triple of the rest of the characters, and the times 4 when you get a 5 combo. that way almost everything is a combo. and use the upper right buttons when you need to kill an enemy (such as the children transformer enemies, priests, or damage multipliers) to set yourself up a combo
dont focus solely on health
hope this helped someone 😀
Chose a bad build on my first successful run, yielding a party that was hard to kill, but required tedious waiting for a 4x red combo to do any damage.
I love how the developer isn’t afraid to let the numbers get crazy large. Support which increase their party’s strength each turn, including the strength of their own strength increasing spells.
This game is pretty fantastic, even if I can’t read half of what’s going on, it kept me playing for the art style alone!
I love the way the gameplay is so intuitive that most of us can seamlessly play without understanding what the text says 🙂
What I don’t like so much, however, is that I personally can’t play this at all nor can I understand the very basics of its rules 🙁
Looks fun though.
Maybe by “very basics” you don’t mean *this* basic, in which case this might be inappropriate, but the very basic rules are:
– On your turn, click one of the red triangles to select a row, column, or diagonal.
– The units in that row, column, or diagonal are then mobilized against the enemy. (You can target a specific enemy by clicking on one, though one is always selected by default.)
– The units’ various powers are, in general, multiplied by selecting a row, column, or diagonal with two, three, or four of a kind.
— These combo-like multipliers can be greatly increased by (eventually) choosing from various passive traits along the bottom of the screen. There seems to be a hidden combo-meter that, when reaching certain thresholds, triggers the bottom of the screen to allow you to at that moment select a trait for one of the slots.
— Most of those traits give larger rewards for two or three of kind matches, but some grant special status effects when matching, say, a blue with a priest.
— Priests heal; purples cast spells on all the enemies at once; oranges have stronger attacks against a single enemy at a time; the blue’s strengths seem to vary widely depending on what traits are selected when given the chance to do so. (They can end up being good fighters or, say, blockers.)
— The buttons in the upper-right are single-use powers. They do not use of a turn. Once used, they become usable again after acquiring a certain number of points.
— One of them replaces all current units with a new batch. One shifts the last column into the first column position (I think). One gives a “boost” to all of your units currently in the field (signified by flames surrounding them). This adds an extra multiplier, whether to their healing or fighting qualities.
— After each of your turns, the enemies all get a chance to attack you, generally lowering your Hit Points, though some of their moves have other status effects.
— And when your Hit Points reach zero the game is over.
— The game is also over when you complete the 50th battle.
And those are the rules!
(I hadn’t determined what the letters inside of the circles under the HP meter stand for. Possibly a category indication of your selected combo strengths?)
This is exactly what I meant by basic. Thanks! Will try this again.
A great rundown on the game right here:
https://www.rubyduvall.com/?p=1043
After playing(and loving) this on and off for 3 days I have conquered it!
My initial strategy was to focus on sheer power, first in might, then in healing. This got me far, but I would die due to randomness when I couldn’t make the bitchin’ combos line up. So, I thought about it a bit, and decided a different tactic was needed. I would only invest in skill that need two characters to work, not doubles or triples, 1x type skills, and the only multi-skill I took was the Whole Party skill(and the 5x power-up). This works out to steady high damage(1,000’s across the board), but not obscene damage, all while steadily healing you each round(by 200-400’s, my max HP was never over 5,000.). I might’ve been hit 20 times total. By using the single multiplier combinations, your gauges refill almost every round, allowing you to Boost, Reload, and Shuffle at any time, thus allowing you to refill again them almost immediately. This strategy is so powerful that the game is now a bit broken for me, but I kinda see finding this completed solution to the game as an elegantly didactic way of saying “Friends that works together always win!”. Final score was: 101,043 after 66 Battles, 171 Turns. Great game!
Got to 50 then died. Wow, that was addicting.
Any idea what unlocks battles above 50? (I wonder if you have to be below a certain turn number when you get there?)
I just got to fight 51 and I don’t know why. I had enough blocks stocked up that i took no damage in the last fight, so that might be it?
184 turns, 20583 score. [d] [ ] [t] [l] under the health (no idea what they mean)
couldn’t tell you what exactly got me there!
I love this. I keep getting through a few dozen fights and wanting to start over with a completely new set of tactics. very very cool.
oh man that last fight is really hard! I need to reshuffle my tactics just to deal with the fact that fight comes eventually. this game is so awesome.
ok I beat the game and as Glark said above, it can get a little bit broken once you find a winning tactic, but it was the act of finding a winning tactic that I had the most fun with. There is the core of something really special in here, and I’d love to see the idea developed further.
I always love when Japanese games get posted on fig because it means their appeal is gonna be obvious through the game’s design rather than through tutorialising. I’d be curious to know what the tutorial actually says, because for me the game’s fun came from working out the systems on my own.
lovely pixelart game, thank
I like how the enemies don’t just grow arbitrarily in power as you progress, they also get new abilities that they can use to go exponential just like the player (although in a slightly different way). I died to a party of rats? using attack up and healing until they were ridiculously strong.
Also, I found that skills with small requirements in units are generally preferable to stronger, 3-4 units skills. It seems to me that just being able to make the combo chain one step longer far outweighs the benefit of stronger skills. Maybe I’m wrong, I haven’t played with all the skills yet.
The enemies that turn your units into children are also a nice touch. It’s annoying, but I mean, throwing children at oversized rat priests? Priceless.
oh crap i used a super defensive strategy and now the final battle is an unfinishable standstill 🙁
(Try not bothering to attack unless you can attack with four of a kind. Make maneuvering into four-of-a-kinds your entire strategy and always Boost when you make one happen.)
I died to the final boss on level 60, score 99981, he pinkifies 2/3 of your guys in one go AND boosts power, accompanied by 2 healers.
I had no 4 in a rows and reload gave me nothing, I died having about 9k health.
Wow, this is great. Somehow didn’t notice my life meter until the game ended. Wish there was sound for it.
Wasn’t mentioned yet: To get to Battle 66 you need the four medallions which are under the life bar.
D – Total damage taken under 2500
S – Score over 30000
T – Turns under 300
L – Life over 1000
The best strategy to get there is the one Glark described.