Topic: 🍁 PUSH SQUARE GAME CLUB 🍁 | November | The Plucky Squire ⚔️

@Th3solution Your spoiler tags are probably needed, as all that stuff I was glad I did not know going in.

All I can say is yes, yes, maybe, and yes.

Ah man, ok… I totally suck at this game. Am I supposed to be struggling this much? 😅

I can’t seem to beat the Angler. I was able to get through the Prospector fairly easy and the normal battles I can usually win, depending on the luck of the draw, but I’ve lost 3 straight times to the Angler and sent back to repeat from the beginning, and I’m starting to get frustrated.

I have been able to solve several of the puzzles around the room. In addition to opening the safe (they basically give that one to you through Stoat), I have, through major trial and error, solved all 4 of the cabinet puzzles. I actually have no idea how I did it, but I just kept moving the pieces around until I got 5/5. 😂 Same for the clock — I just kept messing around with the hands and ended up solving it by blind luck. Also, I’m not sure what putting out the candle over by the skull and globe does.

Anyways, the real issue is the card game. I totally get it but I’m getting pulverized in the Angler fight by the birds that can attack from the air and then hide under water. You can’t kill the rascals because they go under water, and you can’t block them unless you have like 4 air blocker cards to deploy. Then it’s death by a thousand cuts while I’m floundering to even keep one or two cards on the table for more than two turns.

Anyways, just had to express my frustration after playing for about 4-5 hours I really don’t feel like I’ve made much progress. I’m not sure if failure this many times is part of the design…? I get to make a new personalized card everytime I die, but so far those have barely ever made it into my hand anyways, so what’s the point?

@Th3solution I remember using a bird to attack the spaces behind his water cards. Have you found the pliers yet?

@R1spam Ah exemplary my friend, good to hear your endorsement. Any suggestions for April?

@Th3solution Try to have a few cards as possible to draw from, and that you have lost cost high powers cards available. Have you been upgrading cards. There are a few hidden things which make things a bit easier.

@R1spam Yes, I have pliers available for my backpack, if that’s what you mean. I haven’t had a lot of birds available to me in my deck, but I will definitely keep that in mind as I build my deck on this next run

@JohnnyShoulder I’m having trouble with knowing exactly what happens at each of the types of spaces on the board, so it’s been a bit of a mess with the card upgrades. I still don’t always recognize what each icon means other than I know the campfire will upgrade health (or attack power, I think happened once?) and the little card icon means I get to choose from three cards. But there’s lots of nebulous spaces where I end up having a woodcarver and I choose a sigil and a species and it makes a carving, or the one where you sacrifice a card to enhance anorher card, etc. and I just have been guessing about what happens on some of these and I have made some stupid mistakes where I sacrifice a really good card by accident, because I really don’t know what’s going to happen — is the card going to be enhanced, or sacrificed? The game is really vague about what will transpire until you do it. So I have to try to learn what happens at each category of space and I’m just not very good at that yet. I wish the rule book had a way to look up the meanings of those like they do for the sigil meanings. Or better yet, a way to hover over the space and press a button to give you a preview of what happens if you land there. Maybe it does somehow do that but I haven’t discovered a way to know. That’s a good point that I need to limit the number of garbage cards I have in the deck. Only being able to pick one card per turn is a real problem when you’ve played most of your hand. That’s what makes the Prospector boss fight easier is that about halfway through you can usually kill his pack mule and suddenly have a full hand of like 5 new cards and then it’s easy from there.

Part of the issue I’m having early on is probably that I keep experimenting with picking new cards when given the chance because I want to see how they work, and so I often end up with crap cards in the deck because they’re just not very useful. On a side note; I’m not sure the purpose of the pelts, other than they work like a defensive card to take some damage and can later be used to trade with that lady, but they can be a useless card sometimes.

In another side note, the Stoat mentioned that there’s a third talking card somewhere in the room and that they have key information (or something like that), but I just don’t know where to look. That’s why I spent a lot of time unlocking the puzzles around the room that I can interact with, but so far, I don’t think I’ve come across that card yet and I don’t know if it’s critical to my progress currently.

Not to toot my own horn but... I did really well on my first ever run of the game.

The second run I ended up dying partway through the second area though. Looking forward to trying again tonight!

@HallowMoonshadow Nice! Those Yu-Gi-Oh skills are coming in handy! 😛

I have done about 4 or 5 runs at this point. I’m finding the card game aspects fun, but it hurts my brain to strategize sometimes. 😅 There’s a lot of cards that move around after played, like left or right, and I feel like I should be more tactical, but sometimes it’s tough to think 2-3 steps ahead about where a card’s effect is going to land. I’ve been experimenting with new cards that do different things, but often the skills of the card don’t end up being helpful.

It’s still enjoyable, if not a little frustrating.

How are you getting along with regards to exploring around the room? Do you have a grip on the items and puzzles around the room yet?

Yeah the moose and Elk cards that move are extremely annoying to deal with. I'm not used to a card game where you have specific lanes and must attack directly ahead of you rather then any card on the board @Th3solution.

A lot of the effects/sigils the cards have are very similar to how Magic the Gathering works.

There is a very easy strategy to help with the Angler's first phase if you wanna know it? You don't mention it in your initial post so it'll potentially help you out quite a bit.

This thread is like the MS Activision merger court case, everything is redacted.
Good to hear your struggles @Th3solution because when I tried Inscryption last time ( Im sure it was a previous Game Club game) I gave up quite quickly as I didn't have a clue what was going on but your woes have shown me that I have to persevere this time.

@Bundersvessel I'm hoping by April, some of the work and life stuff will have calmed down. I'll go for celeste and desperados 3, both games that I've meant to play for ages and get a lot of love but I've never got round to trying. How your good and thanks for organising! I'm not getting too much time to game just mow but I notice from your tag your playing helldivers 2. I've played a bit too, hopefully we get the chance to spread some liber-tea together!!

@Th3solution I should say sometimes there are ways to give cards that aren't birds the flying properties so useful to look out for. I'm jealous of you playing for the first time as while I'm usually not a card game guy, something about this one got its hooks into me.

@R1spam Thanks, I’ll do that.

I do enjoy the game so far, honestly, but after several hours of limited progress I needed to take a break. The only other rogue-like experience I’ve had is Returnal, which I ended up loving, so I think I’ll have the patience to make progress eventually.

@CaptD We can definitely be in it together. The value of Game Club is commiseration and rallying to fail or succeed as one! 😄

@HallowMoonshadow I’m not sure if you’ve come across it yet but there’s a card that I really like which allows you to attack in front of you and diagonally to each side. ↖️⬆️↗️ I really like that skill because if there’s no cards there it’s 3 hits/teeth against the scale, but if there’s cards there then it will damage 3 cards at once.

I’m a solid 8 hours into the game now. So needless to say, I made it past my first stumbling block, and then some.

I was able to bear the Angler and then also beat the Trapper. He was a little bit easier, I thought. For the Angler I got a little bit lucky, because I had a few cards fall my way.

It’s tough to know what to say, due to spoilers, but I’ve been gradually given more information.

And I’ve settled into a groove for the card game, but I’m still not all that good at it. It is helpful to know the cards, which ones you like and understand how to use, and then go from there.

Man, this game 😅
My playtime is at 12 hours, and so those who have played the game know where I am. It’s hard to say without spoiling things, but I’m quite enjoying it. Some of this latter gameplay isn’t my usual fare but there’s so much creativity and experimentation that I can’t help but appreciate it for what it is.

Hard to say how close to the end I am. I fully expect more curve balls being thrown my way, but I also wouldn’t be surprised if I’m close to the end.

For those who’ve beat it — I’ve beaten 3 of the 4 bosses in the 2D pixel world. So I don’t know if things end after the last boss or if we go back to FMV live-action toryline, or what

@Th3solution Its a great game right? The meta-narrative is really engaging as well, and the 'found footage' / Youtuber angle it takes (no spoilers)

Keep going, there are 3 acts in total and I personally found the 3rd more captivating that the 2nd. (Albeit the 1st is still the benchmark and such a tough act to follow!)

I started and played for maybe an hour - managed to beat the miner first time out. Love the opponent who seems a great balance of creepy and comic. Got to a point where I'm stuck on the forth scale puzzle at the back of the room. Unfortunately I managed to do the first three just by moving stuff about and dumb luck so I've no idea what the puzzle actually is... Guess I'm just gonna have to keep sliding things up and down and hoping I figure it out.

@CJD87 Yes, it is a game that gets under your skin, so to speak. I suspect that I’m going to like the last stretch even better. This middle part is entertaining but not what I was expecting. 😅 But to be honest, none of this game has followed expectations.

And it definitely takes a little warming up to. I would guess that a lot of people drop off in the first couple hours due to its cryptic nature and niche gameplay. You can see from my early post in this thread that I was getting a little frustrated in the opening hours. But then it started to click after a while and by the time I was running through the board for the 4th or 5th time I was just destroying the opposition with my card skills 😜. I do think it helped that I was able to solve all the puzzles in the room, even if it was by dumb luck. But the more powerful cards and the boons like the ring really came in handy for later. When I had to face Lechy, or whatever his name is, I was fairly overpowered because I had the magpie boon which allowed me to go through my deck and pick whatever card I wanted and the double draw boon so I got two cards every turn. So I had squirrels out the wazoo and I had my best cards all lined up from the word go. This 2D pixel section has been harder because the cards mostly are trash, but at least there’s no rogue-like repeat and you can just refight the boss again immediately when you lose.

Anyways, not sure what the weekend will bring but hopefully I finish it within the week.

@sorteddan Yup, that was my approach for those puzzles. 😅 I still don’t understand them even while looking at the solution.

@Th3solution
The most surprising thing from your spoiler tags was where you admit your never heard of a stoat! I mean how does that happen? ... So some knowledge that my gran passed onto me many years ago...

A weasel is weasely recognisable but a stoat is stoataly different.

Hasn't helped me much in life but I've never forgotten it.
(Also coincidentally just finished NfS Unbound and one of the characters, Rydel, was wearing a stoat T-shirt during the last cutscene).