Adding mana 💧 automating balance check ⚖️

In the last months the game did not evolve much visually, but I've been doing good process under the hood. Following a remark of a player, I added mana cost to cards; so that you can't play your whole hand at every turn. This was long due, and all the more relevant because I'm focusing on having a balanced game (and mana obviously drastically changes the balance). Here's a screenshot showing the player's mana pool (the blue droplet to the left) and the cost of mana is shown on each card in its top left. In this screenshot, there's not enough mana to play the Human General, whose mana cost is 3; while there's only one available mana:

I've also implemented automatic testing of the teams' balance. Whenever I do a change, I can easily see its effect on balance. For that I implemented different AI levels. The balance uses the "Easy" AI level, so that my test can play approximately 5 games per second. This allows to run many random games to check the balance on a representative number of games.

I also implemented the Fear and Terror skills for the Undead team. A creature with the Fear kills its opponent at the beginning of the opponent's turn, if the given created has 1 HP. Similarly a creature with the Terror kills any opponent with 2 or less HPs. In the screenshot below, the Vampire will hereby kill the Spearman in front of him at the beginning of the turn of the Human team.

I want the team to play differently and so I'm carefully crafting each skill and card so that it has a unique flavor.

Hope you enjoyed reading this, spread the love of indie games ❤️