I am making Axe Ghost

Hey, my name's Thomas. This is unusual content for this channel. I realize I've been working on this video game called Ax Ghost. Just recently, I've published a demo of it on Steam, and I'm just going to play it here—play the current build—and let you see what it's like and, uh, yeah, just talk about it a bit.

So, uh, it's a daily challenge-based game. You play the part of this ghost who has to battle a horde of monsters and ultimately defeat the boss, the end boss. Depending on how well you do, you may or may not reach the top of the leaderboard.

Okay, so in this initial setup here, the monsters have advanced kind of halfway down the grid, and these are the cards I have to play. These first three cards have two icons each. I can play one of each of these icons, and these ones, with this little toggle button, they can be played in different directions. I can choose up at the top; you can see a kind of preview of what's going to happen.

So for now, I'm going to move these ones over to here, and I'm doing that to group up enemies of the same type so that they form a contiguous group. By doing that, I can destroy more of them in one turn. Later on, I'm going to push these skulls over here. I'm using this one, which pushes them as if they are individual elements rather than as one group. So when I push them across, they kind of break apart. When one of them butts up against this devil here, the center bead is a new one that I've been experimenting with, so I'll try it out now.

When you use it on an enemy, it looks for adjacent empty squares on the same row, and it’s going to fill those up with the same kind of enemy. So by doing that, I've attacked these two skulls to the same group here. This is a special card that ends the game, so I'm not going to play that now. The idea is you do that when you have no other choice, when the monsters are about to leave the bottom of the grid, 'cause that's game over. So I'll leave that there and I'll end the turn to bring this next set up into play.

Every turn, the monsters take it one step further downwards. So the object is to rearrange them and destroy them long enough to reach the battle with the end boss and then defeat him. This is the axe, a kind of a special weapon. Most of the time, this is the one you'll be using to actually remove the monsters.

So, I destroy this set of skulls there because I want to push this group up to connect with this one. And with this push vertical one, what should I do? For now, I'm just going to push these devils up as well. I can see the centipede again, so I'm going to use that to join these up together and I'm going to move him over there as well. I think this one switches the types of enemies, so if I use it here, what it does is it swaps all of the devils for the green ogres and it swaps this green ogre for a devil, which is good 'cause it connects these ones over here with these ones over here.

The monsters are almost at the bottom; this is not good. I'm going to remove the ogres first of all, and I have to push these skulls upwards, I think. Yeah, and I'll connect these two. They're at the bottom again. Let's see if I swap them to make them all skulls. It's not bad. I'll do that. Then I'm going to use this one, which pushes an entire column upwards by one step or downwards if you do it that way, but I want it to go upwards. I'll do that here to stop them beating me. I think that's as good as I can do at the moment.

This one, this is called, I call this one L. It pushes twice: first horizontally and then vertically. So, I'm going to push—am I going to do it? I'm going to push these ones into that hole over there. I think I have to destroy the skulls now, and what should I do? If I do that one instead, then I can join them all together like that.

The way the scoring works is it helps to destroy many enemies in one attack. So with one attack with an axe, because each enemy that's destroyed in the same group is worth one more point than the previous one, so it goes 1 plus 2 plus 3 plus 4, etc. You are better off destroying many enemies in one turn than the same number of enemies over multiple turns.

I will group these up. Oh, I didn't need to do that today. And then I'm going to swap all these for devils to join all those up, and I don't know, I'll just join those there. I have a choice between using the centipede or the axe, and I can see that there's no way of destroying them coming up, so maybe I have to use the axe now, but I'd prefer not to. What I could do instead is I could push them all upwards and hope that it doesn't break the formation too badly. Let's try that; it's not great. But then I can join them back up like this, and then I'll just push this skull back up to the top.

Ghamar is near, so this is the end boss, and here it shows a kind of countdown of the turns until he appears. The big group of devils is adjacent to several groups of skulls, so if I could swap all of the devils for skulls instead, I would be better off. So I think I can do that here, so I'll swap with this one because this just turns one skull into a devil. I think that's good for me.

I can't destroy them yet. You know what? I'm going to freeze these. This is the ice weapon. It freezes a group of enemies; they can't move for one turn while all the others can, so I hope that that will help me out. So this one's called join them here. I have the axe now, but I also have the MT weapon and that destroys all enemies of a different type that are adjacent to the group that you target.

What's interesting about that sometimes is that it means you can kind of eliminate enemies that are getting in the way of joining two other groups. That doesn't help me much in this case. Let's see, is there a better play? Maybe I could add a few more skulls by swapping these two, but I'm probably better off swapping all these skulls for ogres again. And I want to just swap as few ogres as possible, so I think that's this one.

There we go. If I push them all to the right, it highlights the ones that are going to be actually influenced by that move. I want to do that because I want to attach these two before I use the axe. So I'll do that.

Okay, so when you destroy enough of the enemies on the screen all in one go, the remaining enemies run away and then they come back again. They advance halfway down the screen again, but as a reward for creating the route, you get this coin. And when you play the coin, it discards any cards that you have left and immediately moves the next hand into play.

So usually, you'd want to play all your cards, then use the coin, and then use the next set of cards as well. It's like having a double turn. Let's see, is that interesting? Not really. I'll CH those up; look, that guy up there. This one shifts a whole row horizontally, and enemies at the edges wrap around when you do this. So I don't like the way this devil is on his own on the end here, and I can see there are some up there, so I'm going to push this whole row to the left. It's going to join these over up, and it won't harm the connectivity of these either, so I'll do that.

I'll push him. Oh, wait a sec, which one do I want to preserve? The ice is handy, but the switch is even handier. I'm going to switch these guys; I'll push him up. Alright, I’m going to join those with the centipede, and I'm going to push these guys down instead of up to join them before I get this whole group. I'll do the same with these if I can.

So this works on this whole group, but only this one's going to move, which is what I want to link them up there. Maybe I should make them ogres; that works even better. Does it help me if I do that? A little bit, 'cause then—oh no, I messed that up. Let's see.

Okay, here's Ghamar at the top. This is the end boss. If you defeat him, you've successfully completed a run. He has a different mechanic where you can't damage him unless he's surrounded on four sides by monsters of the same type. And right now, he's not. In fact, this is just about the worst possible configuration he could be in.

Let's see if I push him to the left, though, this whole row to the left, then we're better off because then he's almost surrounded by skulls. What else can I do? Just going to move these all over there to stack them up a bit. I push them all the way to the top. No, that doesn't work so well. Push them over, and then there is a poke vertical coming up, so if I push him over here, then the next turn I can push that column downwards and then he'll be surrounded.

I'll try that, and I think I have to get these guys as well just before I do it. I'll wait. No, I'll swap them like this so I can get a few more. Okay, so if I push this column down, then he gets this exclamation mark indicating that he's vulnerable now.

Alright, I'm going to, uh, yeah, that's okay. If I do that, then I create a great big group of skeletons; that's good. I'll push him up. I've got the axe. Yeah, so the B takes several hits. You have to deplete his armor first, and then he takes one more hit after that. Each successful hit, he gets pushed back one square. What am I doing, actually? You know what, I'll freeze this guy, so I'll give the reds a chance to surround. See, this is always handy.

What's best? Yeah, this is pretty good because then I can push these guys upwards and then he's almost surrounded—not quite. Can I get him now? Yeah, so if I push all these to the left, then this row here is going to hem him in. I don't like that these ones are not going to be connected anymore, so they're kind of dangling over here as their own group. You know what? I should just spawn another guy there instead.

These ones just spawn the enemy of that type, and then I can give him another. Alright, yeah, don't let me know. I'll push that skeleton up. I'm going to talk him into that corner there, so I didn't like him dangling out where he was. Maybe I should swap these to make all of those skulls, should I, or is B to swap those?

What's coming up? There is an ogre spawner coming up in the next turn, so I should probably try and surround him with ogres instead. In which case, yeah, maybe that's a good move. So I can shove all of those over to the right, but that's not great 'cause then I don't get to use this one, and I think I need him either here or here.

What happens if I push all these down? That's not great either 'cause then this column is right at the bottom and about to beat me. Okay, I'll do this. Yeah, I'll destroy those 'cause they're getting too close. What if I push them back again? H, it's not quite far enough 'cause this row three will be just missing him.

Okay, I'll do it like this instead; then he's surrounded on three sides at least, and then what? Let's move those down. Okay, if I push him up one, can I then—no, I can't. Okay, I'll clean these guys up a little at least, and I'll do that.

Okay, I'm going to block him in like this and then freeze all those guys. That will freeze him as well 'cause when he's surrounded, he acts like one of the monsters in some respects. Okay, he's down to one piece of armor. Should I do that? You know what? I'm going to just push him right the way up for now, and that will help surround him later.

And this robot guy, you can't kill those, so you have to just keep pushing them back. I'd rather he not be there. Okay, alright, I think I have a shot at surrounding him with reds somehow. Okay, I'll do that and then I'll freeze this guy. Oh wait, this is kind of a problem, isn't it?

Okay, alright, there are three separate groups that are about to leave the bottom of the screen. This might be it; let's find out. He's almost dead; if I could surround him this turn and hit him with the axe, then I would have won the run. I don't think I can.

Let's find out, though, if I push him there—yeah, maybe that's it. Push him there, then push all of these reds upwards as individuals with this one and then hit him with the axe. Absurd abolition, this was a GH in its current state at least.

I hope you enjoyed what you saw. If this is your kind of thing, then go to the Steam page, download the demo, wishlist it to be informed when it gets released and when it goes on sale and that kind of stuff. And thanks for watching; I'll see you around.