Trade Secrets and Moving Enemies (Jun 05 2026)

The new Flower Draft game is out, which also means the old Flower Draft is gone. When naming the game, I tried to come up with a name that suggested offering cards, and some of them are hidden. When I came up with Trade Secrets I knew that was too funny to not use. As for the game itself, part of me wonders if I could have been more innovative with the gameplay, rather than having it be a slightly tweaked Flower Draft. But I do have a soft spot for Flower Draft, and I think it was worth the time and effort to polish it.

I also put some of the extra polishes (audio, settings) in Crafts Fair. While doing that, I considered a rules change to how the twists worked. Previously, you removed a counter from a twist when you chose that token. Now you check if anyone had chosen that token that round, and if someone did, a counter was removed. At first I thought this new rule would be simpler. If there was 1 counter on a twist, you knew that if anyone chose that token this round, it would trigger. It answered the question of, what if a twist has 1 counter, but 2 players chose that token? Finally the old rule has this problem: if everyone chooses a different token every round, it would take many rounds for a single twist to trigger, which is a lot of turns of very little happening.

But as I was typing this, I realized that maybe the new rule wasn't as clearly better as I thought. If 2 players choose a token, it does seem intuitive that 2 counters are removed. Besides, writing out the rule of “check if anyone had chosen that token that round, and if someone did, a counter was removed” makes it seem way more complicated. But also, the new rule switches the previously mentioned problem into something else: if all players choose a different token every round, multiple twists could activate on round 2. Meanwhile in solitaire there’s no way to activate multiple twists by round 2. But I think I’m ok if the game makes it easier to activate twists, as it speeds the game up and they’re fun. So I’m sticking with the new rule anyway (plus I already programmed it).

I do have one idea for what I could do for a new Battery RAM, but I think I want to properly update Relentless Waves instead. After some time away, I realized one thing I struggled with was that enemies in the game tend to stay on the top of the screen. If they were at different positions, that would let me do more things with weapons and stuff. This makes it hard to make weapons, because they have to shoot upwards. Then I realized, what if all the enemies could move? The easiest way for them to move is like the planet, which follows you. I gave this a try and quickly realized that it meant all the enemies would group up in the same spot, since they’re all trying to go to the same spot. My next solution is, instead of going directly towards the player, they pick a spot around the player and go there.