Just found this game, super cool! I beat it (score of 6562), so here are my thoughts:
1. Focusing Prism freaks out if you use Geyser (but not every time? and sometimes with different spells?), gives some error message popup.
2. Does the Ghost Merchant have different dialogue based on how many SoWs are spent? I didn't end up spending a lot during my run, so I ended up hoarding 490 SoWs, lol.
3. The pure RNG is painful sometimes, lol. I was running Geyser and Cure, and boy does 80% accuracy hurt sometimes, especially later on. On the other hand, 20% procs pretty often! Stacking crit rate was pretty fun.
4. That smelter boss is super mean. If it was just the smelting action, it would be pretty tough, but the healing is painful, outpacing the one Harm spell I was left with.
Overall, good game! I'm thinking about learning how to do some Twine, and this is a great inspiration.
Thank you for the comment! It's great to hear you enjoyed the game and found it inspiring.
I must admit I haven't worked on or even looked at "The Tree" in a couple of years, so I had a difficult time answering your questions. Looking at the code, the Merchant has one unique dialogue option near the end (and gives you a small buff) if you spent a lot.
I agree the game is not perfectly polished or balanced, there are some bugs I sadly were never able to fix, some enemies may be too strong or too weak, and the RNG can ruin even good plans. It was a "speed project" for me (I worked on the initial release and each of the two big updates in bursts between writing another, bigger game, and I think I only spent 2-3 weeks total on it), but it was a good way for me to test out new ideas. If you think about learning Twine, I'd say go for it - it's great fun - and consider starting with something small. I also can't recommend the 'intfiction' forum enough - it's a super friendly community focused around text games and a good place to find beta testers, help with your code and general design, news about competitions you can enter to showcase your work, etc.
Sorry to hear about the bug. It would be weird if just casting the spell caused it, though. Were you only using Fire? What happens if you switch to a different spell, then back to Fire?
Unless it all happened during a single fight, the issue could have been with a different button as well - I tested it and the passage transitions are fast enough so that if you spam click, you can click another button that appears on a new screen without even seeing it.
If this is indeed some weird Twine issue, with the engine breaking down if you spam click too fast, I'm afraid I can't do anything about it, but if the problem is somewhere in the code, I'll try to find it and fix it.
it all happened in a single fight i think and i tried using other spells and the fire's damage was still NaN and also i dont know how but the enemy that i was fighting never attacked or did anything it keep saying the same message when you encountered the goblin (i forgot what was it called)
Tbh, I was kind of wondering if this was intentional, because this kind of weird interface screw wouldn't be out of the question in context, but... it's probably a bug, right?
The game autosaves after you've beaten a boss. You can then load the checkpoint if you get a game over, or if you close the game and return to it later (note, however, that like all Twine games, TTTTTM uses browser storage to save your data, so it won't work in private browsing modes, and saves will be lost if you clear your browser storage!)
There is no way to save in the middle of a level, since this game was inspired by roguelikes.
I was fighting an imp and it disabled my only usable spell, and now I am stuck. Should there not be a "Pass turn" option? - Or perhaps you can add an option "Attack with raw energy" (or something like that), that is always available and does a tiny bit of damage?
Do you remember which spells you had? There is a "next turn" button that should appear in this situation, but only if you're actually stuck (i.e. have no spells you can at least try to cast; if you have a spell that will not do anything but can be used, like Negate which the enemy's already affected by, you can cast it with no effect until the disable effect goes away).
Also, are you playing the most recent version of the game? The fix described above was added in one of the updates, if you downloaded the game a while back, it may not be there.
If you are playing the current version, then it's a bug, I'll try to fix it.
I played the game in the browser, so I assume it is the latest version. The spells I had were Drain, which the imp disabled, and Ray of Hope, which was not usable due to my HP not being 25% or less.
The issue was with RoH, I didn't include it in the earlier fix. Sorry about that! It's fixed now and you should be able to continue from the checkpoint.
I don't plan to add fusions for advanced spells. What I have planned for the next update, though, is spell enhancements - a new type of reward which lets you improve a selected spell in some way - it might be increased accuracy for Fireball, better freezing chance for Freeze, etc. This would allow for further increasing the power of your spell set in the later levels, when you may not want to exchange the spells you have.
Beat the game after a few attempts. It's pretty fun and the writing is very good. I wish there were more lore events even if they didn't directly provide upgrades, but it's certainly not a serious obstacle to the game being fun.
My first run-through I assumed there would be some benefit to going into the portal room earlier instead of grinding, and since I had started with the water spell and rothearts are resistant to water and common I figured the boss was likely weak to water as a game balance thing which turned out to be correct. I entered the portal room immediately and killed the boss in a pretty near fight. It was pretty disappointing when, after barely beating the second boss in a similar fashion, I died to a breath-taker on level 3 and found out when starting over there's actually no reason to ever enter any portal room early and a lot of reason not to.
Merging spells is a neat mechanic, though at first it was a little annoying you can't ever merge your last spell slot, I think it's actually kind of a neat mechanic since it garuntees the basic spells also see some use. If the game continues development, the current final boss's smelt move is nuts and adds a hefty dose of rng to the game since presumably the next floor with have exponentially more ridiculous enemies as always and losing the wrong two spells could definitely ruin your whole run. Plus I think it bypasses standard accuracy checks (i.e. light doesn't effect it) but idk for sure.
Finding out what merges do through play is a fine and quite traditional take for that mechanic, but I do wish they were a little more balanced. Freeze's damage and accuracy nerf makes it more of a (unreliable and short-lived) control spell than a truly offensive one so you'll really stuggle until you replace your lost offensive spells there, whereas Fireball is a straightforward upgrade to Fire and the accuracy drop is much simpler to play around than all of Freeze's baggage. Ray of Hope is super good so maybe it makes sense that it's hard to recover from losing a Light spell for a pure offensive option, but it's still kinda weird. Water+Mend=Imbue is still probably the most difficult to recover from I think. When I first did it it was frustrating because Imbue seemed useless compared to my main damage spell and the ability to heal, but now I recognize that it can be one of the strongest spells in the game. There are easier ways to get it, though, so it's still a little weird.
The enemy on floor three that eats your shards is really annoying. It+Breath Takers just seems like a much more brutal combination than anywhere else in the game, even if the stats on those enemies themselves aren't actually that high. I guess it's probably just to reward fast combat builds and punish buffing, which is a good idea, but it still is a pretty steep jump in tactics even compared to between floors 3 and 4 (Forgelings seem like they should be a bigger deal, but I've not had too much trouble with them).
If you use Imbue on the Void Master it seems like absorption and weakness should probably cancel out but they in fact do not, presently. Also I'm sure glad I had two attack spells, dang.
Is Light the only significant debuff in the game? I feel like it's pretty much mandatory past floor 2, since even a single use is generally enough to put Cure's healing/round above the enemy's DPR. I guess Cure is also mandatory, though, past floor 1.
Are items set? I got Luna's Sash of Healing on my victorious run through which was also the first time I didn't go to the boss ASAP and that item is both hugely useful and, if items are set, paired with a ring that seemed hugely not. The shops aren't really very helpful nor expensive in this game, so the extra money would I guess be nice for score maybe but not really contribute to beating the game.
Anyways I had a lot of fun with it and I hope you continue to work on it so I can see the whole story fleshed out and find out what happened to the two Sages.
Reading your update notes I think you may want to be aware that anyone using Advanced offensive spells with non-damaging base components may find themselves without an offensive option via smelt. It's not a big deal, but I don't imagine you'd only end up in that situation on purpose.
Yeah, I think I wrote the part about it being hard to be left without attack spells before adding the Spellsmith, and didn't edit it later.
I now introduced a small change - if you only have one attack spell, and it is an advanced one, the Spellsmith won't use Smelt on you.
Also, smelted spells are restored after you beat the boss (right now it just ends the run, so you can't see it), so Smelt won't affect your chances in the next level.
Regarding Light and how it affects/doesn't affect enemy moves: if an enemy move has "Accuracy" mentioned in the description, it is affected by Light. If it has a "Success rate", it isn't. Some moves have none of those things, which means if the enemy uses them, they will always succeed (Smelt is one of those). It's similar with the spells and enemy moves that reduce accuracy - only offensive spells, which have "Accuracy" in the description, are affected by those.
As for going to the portal early - it most often isn't worth it, as you miss out on rewards, but in my playthroughs I sometimes found it necessary - for example, I only had offensive spells that stronger enemies on a particular level (which appear only in the later rooms) resisted, or I had no healing spell and limited Healing Shards.
About relics - staffs and wands have separate events, all the other relics are in one big pool and two random ones are picked each time you get the relic event. There are no set pairs.
Anyway, thank you very much for your feedback! I'll definitely be making balance changes to existing levels and enemies in the next big update, so it's great to hear from the players about that. (For example, I think I'll reduce the frequency of Crystal Anomaly's shard eating move).
I love this game and I love the fact that there's a info page about every monster. It help me to understand it attacks a lot. Thanks for spending time making this!
Yes, when fighting the boss, you should come prepared. Try different combinations of spells. If you can (you have a healing spell or enough healing shards), don't head to the boss room as soon as you discover it, instead explore the rest of the level for more rewards.
A more specific hint about the worm boss (I put it behind ROT-13, because it could be considered a spoiler):
Gur svefg obff unf n zbir gung erfgberf 10 UC naq vapernfrf nggnpx cbjre (guvf nggnpx obahf fgnpxf hc), ohg vg jvyy bayl hfr vg jura vgf UC vf ybj. Fb gel gb hfr ohss/qrohss fcryyf svefg, naq jura gur jbez'f UC vf ybj, sbphf ba nggnpxvat. Be qba'g pnfg ohssf/qrohssf ng nyy naq gel gb birecbjre gur obff dhvpxyl, cersrenoyl jvgu jngre fcryyf gb juvpu vg unf n jrnxarff.
That's a cood catch. I mean, I want discovering different spell fusions to be part of the learning curve of the game, and I was aware sometimes you may end up without attack spells (that's why I included explosive shards & wands in the game, but again, you don't always have these), but I see this can be annoying. For now, I can unfortunately only recommend restarting the game, but I'll adress this in the next update - I'll probably make it so that if you're ever without an attack spell, you immediately get an event which gives you one of the basic ones.
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Just found this game, super cool! I beat it (score of 6562), so here are my thoughts:
1. Focusing Prism freaks out if you use Geyser (but not every time? and sometimes with different spells?), gives some error message popup.
2. Does the Ghost Merchant have different dialogue based on how many SoWs are spent? I didn't end up spending a lot during my run, so I ended up hoarding 490 SoWs, lol.
3. The pure RNG is painful sometimes, lol. I was running Geyser and Cure, and boy does 80% accuracy hurt sometimes, especially later on. On the other hand, 20% procs pretty often! Stacking crit rate was pretty fun.
4. That smelter boss is super mean. If it was just the smelting action, it would be pretty tough, but the healing is painful, outpacing the one Harm spell I was left with.
Overall, good game! I'm thinking about learning how to do some Twine, and this is a great inspiration.
Thank you for the comment! It's great to hear you enjoyed the game and found it inspiring.
I must admit I haven't worked on or even looked at "The Tree" in a couple of years, so I had a difficult time answering your questions. Looking at the code, the Merchant has one unique dialogue option near the end (and gives you a small buff) if you spent a lot.
I agree the game is not perfectly polished or balanced, there are some bugs I sadly were never able to fix, some enemies may be too strong or too weak, and the RNG can ruin even good plans. It was a "speed project" for me (I worked on the initial release and each of the two big updates in bursts between writing another, bigger game, and I think I only spent 2-3 weeks total on it), but it was a good way for me to test out new ideas. If you think about learning Twine, I'd say go for it - it's great fun - and consider starting with something small. I also can't recommend the 'intfiction' forum enough - it's a super friendly community focused around text games and a good place to find beta testers, help with your code and general design, news about competitions you can enter to showcase your work, etc.
i think i broke the game
i was spam clicking my fire spell so fast it became NaN damage
Sorry to hear about the bug. It would be weird if just casting the spell caused it, though. Were you only using Fire? What happens if you switch to a different spell, then back to Fire?
Unless it all happened during a single fight, the issue could have been with a different button as well - I tested it and the passage transitions are fast enough so that if you spam click, you can click another button that appears on a new screen without even seeing it.
If this is indeed some weird Twine issue, with the engine breaking down if you spam click too fast, I'm afraid I can't do anything about it, but if the problem is somewhere in the code, I'll try to find it and fix it.
it all happened in a single fight i think and i tried using other spells and the fire's damage was still NaN and also i dont know how but the enemy that i was fighting never attacked or did anything it keep saying the same message when you encountered the goblin (i forgot what was it called)
Thanks for the details - I'll see if I can do anything about this bug.
> Error: macro <<thebetrayerdesc>> does not exist
Tbh, I was kind of wondering if this was intentional, because this kind of weird interface screw wouldn't be out of the question in context, but... it's probably a bug, right?
You're right, it was a bug - I had a typo in the code. Thanks for reporting! I fixed it.
How do I save my progress?
The game autosaves after you've beaten a boss. You can then load the checkpoint if you get a game over, or if you close the game and return to it later (note, however, that like all Twine games, TTTTTM uses browser storage to save your data, so it won't work in private browsing modes, and saves will be lost if you clear your browser storage!)
There is no way to save in the middle of a level, since this game was inspired by roguelikes.
I was fighting an imp and it disabled my only usable spell, and now I am stuck. Should there not be a "Pass turn" option? - Or perhaps you can add an option "Attack with raw energy" (or something like that), that is always available and does a tiny bit of damage?
Do you remember which spells you had? There is a "next turn" button that should appear in this situation, but only if you're actually stuck (i.e. have no spells you can at least try to cast; if you have a spell that will not do anything but can be used, like Negate which the enemy's already affected by, you can cast it with no effect until the disable effect goes away).
Also, are you playing the most recent version of the game? The fix described above was added in one of the updates, if you downloaded the game a while back, it may not be there.
If you are playing the current version, then it's a bug, I'll try to fix it.
I played the game in the browser, so I assume it is the latest version. The spells I had were Drain, which the imp disabled, and Ray of Hope, which was not usable due to my HP not being 25% or less.
The issue was with RoH, I didn't include it in the earlier fix. Sorry about that! It's fixed now and you should be able to continue from the checkpoint.
I found this :
You encounter an enemy!
You encounter a rotting tree stump, which suddenly starts to move!
Rotheart takes $igniteenemydmg points of fire damage!
It was basically the same issue as with the Cancel message, it's fixed now. Thanks for reporting!
I was checking the spell book, I saw this :
Error: <<disintegratecard>>: error within widget contents (Error: cannot execute macro <<button>>: unable to parse macro argument ""Disintegrate<br>Advanced spell<br><br>Instantly kills the enemy.<br><br>Has a 70% success rate, -1% for each enemy HP remaining. ": unterminated double quoted string)
Fixed that, too :)
I just counter an enemy when I see this:
You encounter an enemy!
You're attacked by a tiny, mischievous imp!
Laughing Imp's $restoredmove move is no longer disabled!
Thanks for reporting! I fixed it.
I have a small question, will you ever add update that allows the player to fuse advance spells?
I don't plan to add fusions for advanced spells. What I have planned for the next update, though, is spell enhancements - a new type of reward which lets you improve a selected spell in some way - it might be increased accuracy for Fireball, better freezing chance for Freeze, etc. This would allow for further increasing the power of your spell set in the later levels, when you may not want to exchange the spells you have.
Beat the game after a few attempts. It's pretty fun and the writing is very good. I wish there were more lore events even if they didn't directly provide upgrades, but it's certainly not a serious obstacle to the game being fun.
My first run-through I assumed there would be some benefit to going into the portal room earlier instead of grinding, and since I had started with the water spell and rothearts are resistant to water and common I figured the boss was likely weak to water as a game balance thing which turned out to be correct. I entered the portal room immediately and killed the boss in a pretty near fight. It was pretty disappointing when, after barely beating the second boss in a similar fashion, I died to a breath-taker on level 3 and found out when starting over there's actually no reason to ever enter any portal room early and a lot of reason not to.
Merging spells is a neat mechanic, though at first it was a little annoying you can't ever merge your last spell slot, I think it's actually kind of a neat mechanic since it garuntees the basic spells also see some use. If the game continues development, the current final boss's smelt move is nuts and adds a hefty dose of rng to the game since presumably the next floor with have exponentially more ridiculous enemies as always and losing the wrong two spells could definitely ruin your whole run. Plus I think it bypasses standard accuracy checks (i.e. light doesn't effect it) but idk for sure.
Finding out what merges do through play is a fine and quite traditional take for that mechanic, but I do wish they were a little more balanced. Freeze's damage and accuracy nerf makes it more of a (unreliable and short-lived) control spell than a truly offensive one so you'll really stuggle until you replace your lost offensive spells there, whereas Fireball is a straightforward upgrade to Fire and the accuracy drop is much simpler to play around than all of Freeze's baggage. Ray of Hope is super good so maybe it makes sense that it's hard to recover from losing a Light spell for a pure offensive option, but it's still kinda weird. Water+Mend=Imbue is still probably the most difficult to recover from I think. When I first did it it was frustrating because Imbue seemed useless compared to my main damage spell and the ability to heal, but now I recognize that it can be one of the strongest spells in the game. There are easier ways to get it, though, so it's still a little weird.
The enemy on floor three that eats your shards is really annoying. It+Breath Takers just seems like a much more brutal combination than anywhere else in the game, even if the stats on those enemies themselves aren't actually that high. I guess it's probably just to reward fast combat builds and punish buffing, which is a good idea, but it still is a pretty steep jump in tactics even compared to between floors 3 and 4 (Forgelings seem like they should be a bigger deal, but I've not had too much trouble with them).
If you use Imbue on the Void Master it seems like absorption and weakness should probably cancel out but they in fact do not, presently. Also I'm sure glad I had two attack spells, dang.
Is Light the only significant debuff in the game? I feel like it's pretty much mandatory past floor 2, since even a single use is generally enough to put Cure's healing/round above the enemy's DPR. I guess Cure is also mandatory, though, past floor 1.
Are items set? I got Luna's Sash of Healing on my victorious run through which was also the first time I didn't go to the boss ASAP and that item is both hugely useful and, if items are set, paired with a ring that seemed hugely not. The shops aren't really very helpful nor expensive in this game, so the extra money would I guess be nice for score maybe but not really contribute to beating the game.
Anyways I had a lot of fun with it and I hope you continue to work on it so I can see the whole story fleshed out and find out what happened to the two Sages.
Reading your update notes I think you may want to be aware that anyone using Advanced offensive spells with non-damaging base components may find themselves without an offensive option via smelt. It's not a big deal, but I don't imagine you'd only end up in that situation on purpose.
Yeah, I think I wrote the part about it being hard to be left without attack spells before adding the Spellsmith, and didn't edit it later.
I now introduced a small change - if you only have one attack spell, and it is an advanced one, the Spellsmith won't use Smelt on you.
Also, smelted spells are restored after you beat the boss (right now it just ends the run, so you can't see it), so Smelt won't affect your chances in the next level.
Regarding Light and how it affects/doesn't affect enemy moves: if an enemy move has "Accuracy" mentioned in the description, it is affected by Light. If it has a "Success rate", it isn't. Some moves have none of those things, which means if the enemy uses them, they will always succeed (Smelt is one of those). It's similar with the spells and enemy moves that reduce accuracy - only offensive spells, which have "Accuracy" in the description, are affected by those.
As for going to the portal early - it most often isn't worth it, as you miss out on rewards, but in my playthroughs I sometimes found it necessary - for example, I only had offensive spells that stronger enemies on a particular level (which appear only in the later rooms) resisted, or I had no healing spell and limited Healing Shards.
About relics - staffs and wands have separate events, all the other relics are in one big pool and two random ones are picked each time you get the relic event. There are no set pairs.
Anyway, thank you very much for your feedback! I'll definitely be making balance changes to existing levels and enemies in the next big update, so it's great to hear from the players about that. (For example, I think I'll reduce the frequency of Crystal Anomaly's shard eating move).
Oh wait, I was fighting monster when suddenly they disable my attack spell and I can't heal to skip the turn because I'm full hp
Thanks for reporting the issue - I fixed it so now a "Next Turn" button appears if you're in a situation like that. Glad you like the game, BTW!
I love this game and I love the fact that there's a info page about every monster. It help me to understand it attacks a lot. Thanks for spending time making this!
Pretty good, but couldn't get past the boss worm thing.
I guess you need a buff character indeed to power past it?
Yes, when fighting the boss, you should come prepared. Try different combinations of spells. If you can (you have a healing spell or enough healing shards), don't head to the boss room as soon as you discover it, instead explore the rest of the level for more rewards.
A more specific hint about the worm boss (I put it behind ROT-13, because it could be considered a spoiler):
Gur svefg obff unf n zbir gung erfgberf 10 UC naq vapernfrf nggnpx cbjre (guvf nggnpx obahf fgnpxf hc), ohg vg jvyy bayl hfr vg jura vgf UC vf ybj. Fb gel gb hfr ohss/qrohss fcryyf svefg, naq jura gur jbez'f UC vf ybj, sbphf ba nggnpxvat. Be qba'g pnfg ohssf/qrohssf ng nyy naq gel gb birecbjre gur obff dhvpxyl, cersrenoyl jvgu jngre fcryyf gb juvpu vg unf n jrnxarff.
If you only have mend (harm/negate combined) and you can't heal, the game stops you from playing since you can't do anything
That's a cood catch. I mean, I want discovering different spell fusions to be part of the learning curve of the game, and I was aware sometimes you may end up without attack spells (that's why I included explosive shards & wands in the game, but again, you don't always have these), but I see this can be annoying. For now, I can unfortunately only recommend restarting the game, but I'll adress this in the next update - I'll probably make it so that if you're ever without an attack spell, you immediately get an event which gives you one of the basic ones.
The recent update fixes this bug (and many other issues).
That's an unusual take. Certainly different from other similar games.
Yo!
This is incredibly cool!
tysm <: