Genre: Strategy, Turn-based strategy (TBS), Indie, Card & Board Game
Shapebreaker
Update v1.0.1
Hi everyone,
Version 1.0.1 is now live. An important balance change and bugfix.
Patch notes:
Reduced damage of the Shapeless from 99 to 50.
Fixed a bug that caused the game to freeze when playing difficulty 1 or up with the S deck.
Got any feedback? Help improve the game by sharing by pressing F8 in-game, on the discussion forums on Steam or on Discord.
Enjoy! Alexander
Release v1.0.0
Hi everyone,
We are finally here. After more than a year of solo development, after 10 months of Early Access, Shapebreaker is ready for a full release!
How it started
The idea started when I wanted to combine the classic Tower Defense genre with modern Roguelike Deckbuilders. The success of Roguelike Tower Defense games showed that there were definitely more people out there that would enjoy such a game, just like me.
I posted early prototypes on Itch.io. I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of people that enjoyed playing such a bareboned game. It was very motivating and I knew I had to keep working on the game. All the feedback was extremely helpful for understanding what needed to be improved and to determine what was required for an Early Access release.
Early Access
The game released in Early Access on Steam on July 19 last year. This brought in a lot of new players thanks to Steam and content creators like Retromation and Wanderbots.
Since the start of Early Access new content was added like:
Act 3 with a unique boss
Branching act paths
Challenge decks
Difficulty modes
Elites
New cards
New curios
New curios
Events
Steam achievements
Support for various aspect ratios.
What now?
The roadmap for v1.1 and onward will be determined by the feedback I receive on v1.0. Definitely let me know what you like, like less and would like to see on Discord and the Steam discussion forums.
Thank you
A big thank you to everyone that played Shapebreaker during development. It really fueled development and shaped the roadmap. The game would not be the same without you. Thank you!
Enjoy! Alexander
Update v0.8.5
Hi everyone,
Version 0.8.5 is now live. Couple of bugfixes and preparations for full release.
Patch notes:
Feedback info in the bottom left is no longer visible. The in-game feedback feature will stay in the game! You can still press F8 to provide feedback.
After your core reaches 0, you now have the option to either start a new run or go to the main menu.
The game now handles the case where you survive the Shapeless reaching your core.
Fixed a bug that caused the next difficulty to not unlock if you defeat the Shapeless in that run.
Fixed a bug that caused you to be able to use items on Shapeless after having played an Bonus Credits card.
Fixed a bug that caused changes to the maximum life of your core to not apply correctly for deck 8.
Got any feedback? Help improve the game by sharing by pressing F8 in-game, on the discussion forums on Steam or on Discord.
Enjoy! Alexander
Update v0.8.2
Hi everyone,
Version 0.8.2 is now live. Ready to take on the Shapeless?
Patch notes:
The health of the Shapeless now persist between runs.
Defeating the Shapeless unlocks a new challenge deck.
Fixed a bug that caused attacks/second on a card or tower to be displayed with a lot of digits.
Fixed a bug that caused bonusses to max health to not apply to the Collect or die trying challenge deck.
Fixed a bug that caused tower tooltips to show range boost as absolute number instead of as a percentage.
Fixed a bug that caused the game to not continue after defeating the Shapeless. (Yeah, some players were actually able to defeat the Shapeless in 1 go. Crazy stuff.)
Got any feedback? Help improve the game by sharing by pressing F8 in-game, on the discussion forums on Steam or on Discord.
Enjoy! Alexander
Update v0.8.0
Hi everyone,
Version 0.8.0 is now live. Big update with new challenge decks, difficulty modes for each deck and Steam achievements!
Patch notes:
Added 4 new challenge decks.
Added 6 difficulties for each deck.
Added Steam achievements.
Changed the ordering of the challenge decks.
The Danger Zone starter deck now draws 1 card less at the start of the turn.
Reduced difficulty of Act III first map.
Renamed Stock expandor curio to Stock expander.
Renamed Credit extractor curio to Credit extracter.
Renamed Extended vision curio to Vision Extender.
Renamed Core expansion I & II curios to Core expander I & II.
The escape menu in the deck selection screen now has a 'Main Menu'-button instead of a 'Save & Quit'-button.
Got any feedback? Help improve the game by sharing by pressing F8 in-game, on the discussion forums on Steam or on Discord.
Enjoy! Alexander
Update v0.7.3
Hi everyone,
Version 0.7.4 is now live. Variation in map layouts has been increased as this was the most requested change on Discord. Come vote and hang out if you haven't done so already.
Patch notes:
Increased map variety for Act I, II & III.
Curios that increase credits gained or affect shop prices, can no longer be encountered in the shop.
The elite modifier that increases shape density by 100% is replaced by a modifier that increases spawn rate and movement speed by 40%.
Renamed Inspirational extendor curio to Inspirational extender.
Fixed a bug that caused the game to malfunction when you have more than 7 curios.
Fixed a bug that caused Stock scrapper and Card recycler curios to have an identical icon.
Fixed a bug that caused elite maps with increased shape health to have 30% increased health instead of 40%.
Got any feedback? Help improve the game by sharing by pressing F8 in-game, on the discussion forums on Steam or on Discord.
Enjoy! Alexander
Announcing second price increase
Hi everyone,
I am hereby announcing the second price increase 2 weeks in advance as promised on the Steam Store page. On March 9 the price of the game will increase from $3.99 to $5.99 or €3.29 to €5.89. This change will also affect other currencies in a similar fashion.
This will not affect anyone who has already purchased the game.
Thank you all for the support! Alexander
Update v0.7.3
Hi everyone,
Version 0.7.3 is now live. Big update with 18 new curios!
Curio patch notes:
Added a major and minor curio that reduce shop prices by 40% and 15% respectively.
Added a major and minor curio that increase max core health by 15 and 5 respectively.
Added a major and minor curio that increase the base damage of towers by 2 and 1 respectively.
Added a major and minor curio that increase the base attack speed of towers by 0.2 and 0.1 respectively.
Added a major and minor curio that increase the base range of towers by 0.5 and 0.2 respectively.
Added a major curio that increases energy gained each turn by 1 but reduces card options from card rewards by 1.
Added 2 new major curios that let you draw a card when you play a tower card, and one that let's you draw a card when you play a module or element card.
Added a major curio that provides 1 energy each turn but reduces the maximum health of your core by 10.
Added a minor curio that let's you draw 1 extra card when your discard deck is reshuffled into your draw deck. Designed together with competition winner chuckjirka.
Added a minor curio that provides you with 3 credits each time your draw deck is shuffled into your discard deck. Designed together with competition winner chuckjirka.
Added a minor curio that increases the number of card options from card rewards by 1.
Scrap recycler major curio now causes you to also no longer heal between acts.
Energy recycler major curio now provides +2 energy per deck reshuffle instead of +1.
Credit extractor minor curio now increases all credit rewards by 20% instead of 50%.
Defeating an elite map now allows you to choose between 2 small curio options instead of 1.
Other patch notes:
Shops now offer 2 minor curios.
You can now purchase card removal only once per shop.
You can now look at your deck in the Act screen.
The same elite modifier can no longer occur twice in the same run
The Transformatorium event now allows you to choose between changing a card into a random non-basic tower or a random element instead of changing a card into a random card.
The Disposal Facility event now offers the option to remove 1 card for either 40 credits, 8 damage to your core or 4 reduced maximum core health.
The chance for Thief element to reward you with 1 credit is now more stable instead of being purely random.
Increased damage taken on the Sacrificial Market event options from 0/5/10 to 0/10/15.
Increased card triplication cost of Duplication event from 50 credits to 60 credits.
Reduced damage boost of Enrage from 60% per charge to 55% per charge.
Decreased difficulty slightly for Act 3 map 4 and 5.
The names of the competition winners have been permanently added in the source code of the game.
Fixed a bug that caused damage over time effects like Poison and Burn to deal less damage to armored shapes and more damage to fragile shapes.
Fixed a bug that caused Thief element to reward 2 credits instead of 1.
Fixed a bug that caused Sacrificial Market event to not interact with curio's that affect credit rewards.
Got any feedback? Help improve the game by sharing by pressing F8 in-game, on the discussion forums on Steam or on Discord.
Enjoy! Alexander
Competition winners
Hi everyone,
The competition has ended and I am happy to announce our winners! 🥇 chuckjirka 40590 🥈 Tobbzn 16390 🥉 Kn1nJa 11438
Congratulations to our top 3 competitors! These scores are once again amazing. Winners will receive the following rewards: • 🥇 Design a new card, curio, shape, event or elite modifier with me • 🥇🥈🥉 Name or nickname permanently added to the source code of the game • 🥇🥈🥉 Role competition-winner with bragging rights on this Discord server until the next competition
Our winners were kind enough to provide us with some insights into their strategy:
🥉Kn1nJa🥉
"My strategy was to focus on lucid towers as they have more module capacity and range. Then I made sure to get a decent amount of extra energy and card draw. The main source of damage came from collector and wealth, with wealth doing a majority because I saved my credits up. Then as always, moon was invaluable."
🥈Tobbzn🥈
"I've experimented with many new builds recently; enrage, poison, and overload have all earned my respect. I used to think only Frost and Moon could be relevant, but my runs with that combo didn't actually get as high as my moon and overload run, which is the one that got 16k. While I think the perfect moon and frost run probably beats this score on a shapeless damage sponge, I think Overload is going to be more reliable on regular stages."
🥉chuckjirka🥉
"Once again moon and frost were the best options, frost basically increases the amount of time it takes the shape to travel, which allows all the other towers to shoot it more. When you stack frost like this, you actually get an exponential damage boost to all the towers in range to shoot at the shape, which is what makes frost so powerful, and moon is the only current way to boost frost tower's attack speed. This makes a good balance and placement of frost and moon towers the best way to maximize frost stacking.
Since the player can only draw 5 (or 6 with extended vision) cards per turn, and only has 3 mana (or 4 with one mana boosting curio, or 5 with 2 mana boosting curios, in which case they can no longer have extended vision), the maximum amount of cards a player can play while having enough of a choice to not have very poor placement and cycle through core cards fast enough is 32, since 4 mana with extended vision is fairly manageable, and there are only 8 waves. An alternative that I mentioned that could surpass this limit would be infinite mana through reshuffling with 2 change target cards, 5 other cards in deck and energy recycler + extended vision, but that would require the right 2 specific curios and a lot of card removals, not even mentioning the right cards to make a good use of the mana. That setup could probably beat the shapeless completely, but it is way too unlikely to happen. Since the more realistic setup allows only 32 cards to be played, and our strategy is built around elemental towers, we can only place 16 towers. Fortunately, each of the 2 spaces for towers in the shapeless boss fight layout had just enough space to fit 16 towers. The best way to place those towers is to have as many towers attacking the shapeless at the same times while applying as many frost stacks; the standard strategy of prolonging the path by tower placement is simply inferior to more frost stacks at once.
That led me to this tower placement. Behind the score is hidden another frost tower. the placement in this case wasn't actually ideal, because I had way too many damage boosts in my deck, but the goal was to stack as many frost towers at one place and supports them from the sides with moon towers. This maximized the amount of frost stacks by giving all the frost towers as much attack speed as possible and making the all share similar range. as for actually getting a good deck and curios, card removal was definitely a must have. In fact this run I didn't manage to get credit extractor, a credit boosting minor curio, and only got a credit generating card, which still helped a lot with card removals, but it wasn't enough to get rid of more damage mods. The towers I aimed for were primarily slingshot towers; the reason for that was that they are the only high range tower with the highest high range attack speed without increased mana cost. Rapid fire towers could also be used near the path, but I didn't get them in this run so I settled for slingshot only. As for the moon towers, as long as it's high range and low cost, anything worked.
That's about it, as you can see I placed 15 elemental towers, which adds up to 30 mana, and I applied 2 damage mods to the bottom right moon tower, a total of 32 mana."
I very much enjoyed the competition and would look forward to organizing one again in the future. Should something change for future competitions? Let me know in the comments.
Enjoy! Alexander
Competition Leaderboard
Hi everyone,
The competition is still going strong. Here's the current status: • 🥇chuckjirka: 40590 • 🥈Tobbzn: 16390 • 🥉Kn1nJa: 11438
Last competition winner chuckjirka is protecting their position on the throne with a whopping 40590. Tobbzn and Kn1nJa have entered the ranks with a very competitive score. Can you beat them? The competition lasts until February 13, 15:00 CEST.
For more information check out the details on the Discord server: https://discord.gg/EKxcb63DvP
