Big thank you to everyone who has played the Choppy Waters Demo and shared feedback so far! Some of you mentioned wanting the combat to feel more like pirates eating sushi rather than sushi fighting back, so this update focuses heavily on improving the game’s "combat" readability, visual clarity, and overall onboarding experience.
Gameplay & Visual Changes
Reworked combat visuals to better emphasize pirates eating sushi.
Sushi now visibly get more eaten as they lose HP.
Added new in-game guides to help explain core mechanics.
Improved the clarity of many tutorial messages.
Improved sushi ability tooltips.
Made several smaller tooltip and readability improvements throughout the demo.
Added telegraphing for movement and card spawning abilities using “phantom cards” previews.
Balance Changes
Budget List Bobble
Old:
“Whenever you craft a sushi card with 3 ingredients or less, gain 1 gold.”
New:
“Sushi cards crafted with 3 or fewer ingredients gain an additional 1 AP and 1 HP.”
Pedestal Bobble
Old:
“If you END your turn with only one active sushi card, that card doubles its AP until the start of your next turn.”
New:
“If you BEGIN your turn with only one active sushi card, that card doubles its AP until the start of your next turn.”
Enemy Balance Changes
Increased Black Beard’s base HP from 15 → 20.
Increased Blue King Slime’s base HP by 1 in all forms.
Bug Fixes
Fixed several small bugs and visual issues throughout the demo.
Thanks again for all the feedback and support so far! Choppy Waters is still evolving rapidly, and player feedback has already helped shape a lot of these improvements.