peace-of-cake-games 2021-04-26 06:57
Now this is pretty darn cool! Kind of like card games meet politics meets Among Us. Very very original, I had a blast becoming the most "sus"!
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD48 → Deep Cover
By liam
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 583 | 3.25 | 29 | |
| Fun | 638 | 3.01 | 29 | |
| Innovation | 267 | 3.55 | 28 | |
| Theme | 677 | 3.16 | 29 | |
| Graphics | 676 | 3.01 | 29 | |
| Audio | 702 | 1.60 | 22 | |
| Humor | 319 | 2.80 | 25 | |
| Mood | 747 | 2.65 | 28 |
Now this is pretty darn cool! Kind of like card games meet politics meets Among Us. Very very original, I had a blast becoming the most "sus"!
@peace-of-cake-games thanks for the kind words! It was maybe a little bit too complicated an idea to pull off. Glad you had fun!
Would love to see this with more text and with more or less real politics inside) Could be great satire piece.
It was a little confusing at first, and I'm still not sure I understand the mechanics completely, but I enjoyed it!
@anthonyharmitage Haha, was a difficult decision on Sunday about how to spend my time: writing jokes etc or smoothing mechanics/difficulty out. One of the ideas I would have loved to work in was the idea that the two factions were led by deep ones, Cthulu-esque gods and cults mixed into the politics maybe to be a bit more on point for the theme. Time always the problem! Thanks for playing!
@bigbadbison Thanks, glad you enjoyed it! Definitely would have liked to smooth out the learning difficulty and mechanics/UI so it was a bit clearer. I've learnt a lot about making card games this jam!
Really cool game!
At first it was a bit confusing, but once I got my head around the rules, it was really fun. Well at least at first. TBH you could crank up the difficulty. I finished with -29% suspicion on red and something around -6% on blue. Maybe the cover identities should noit give defense points when you loose the minigame? Once my identities improved to around 20, suspicion went down each turn (on average).
All in all verry fun game :)
@stmatn Thanks for playing! I know what you mean, I was balancing difficulty up until the last minute to get the right balance as you progress through the game. Originally identities were capped at 10, I should probably have reduced them from 20 (maybe 14/15 is the sweet spot) when I added 2 Loyal Friends instead of 1. It's also a bug being able to get below 0 suspicion, should stop at zero!
@liam Well balancing is something that I really dread since it seems to be quite hard. I think to get it right you either need to play lots and lots of times or come up with a way to compute (or at least estimate) the probability of winning. Or both :)
After some time I started to always draw exactly one additional card on story telling. If I had exactly the starting deck in the draw pile this strategy would give me ~80% chance to level up. (When the deck gets bloated with suspicion this number might go down) So in 4/5 cases it would increase defense by 2 and in 1/5 cases decrease by 1. So on average it will increase by 1.4 points each time you play that card with that strategy and deck. You could bring this average down to no increase by reducing the defence by 8 on each fail (or nerfing the gain by dividing by 8). In order to find a good factor I would try come up with a way to automatically simulate that mini game for a given card deck (and hand) and use this (obviously rough and flawed) calculation as a starting point.
Enough math lessons for now. The game is fun after all :D
Nice game, with very good ideas. I liked it.
By reading the rules it was a bit difficult to understand how to play. But after a few seconds playing it becomes clear.
It would indeed require a bit more balancing, but achieving a good balancing in such a short time is not an easy task.
Also, I would have liked to get information on the new cards added to my deck at each encounter (maybe it is somewhere and I missed it?).
@loig You're 100% right there, wish I'd had more time to work out some better instructions/tutorial/tooltips. I think one of the critical things the game is missing is a way to look at the deck and discard piles, that would help you understand what cards are added. Thanks for playing!
I love the aesthetic and enjoyed playing this, but I never really felt like I was making meaningful decisions - there was always a clear and correct best way to use the cards in my hand. Maybe an expanded version would have some effects that create/expend some resource, like money?
@stmatn Very good points, I had been logging out the odds myself at some points and considered actually having it in the UI. I think if I build a card game again, I'll try to crunch the numbers when I'm building early concepts. It might be a way to make me rein in any complexity in game jams, I'd realise early if something might be a headache to balance!
Wow this was awesome, I'm gonna play again in a bit and see if I can get further (that's how you know you made a fun game). Sadly I believe I was too sus for blue and that ultimately led to my downfall. Great job!
@lsk oh for sure, it's v simple in a lot of ways, I think you can definitely make less than optimal decisions whilst you're figuring it out (which can be fun, probably one of the only ways it is now!). I think in an expanded version, it could also be a bit more of a deck builder so you can add in new cards/tactics after each opponent (maybe that make use of the loyalty mechanic more). I had always intended for another card that could sacrifice the "Loyal Friend" :speak_no_evil: Thanks for playing and the feedback!
@clemonades Thank you! Glad you enjoyed it!
Brilliant - such an original take on the theme!
This did take some time to figure out the rules and how the different systems interacted. Maybe there should be some quick animations to help us understand what is happening? I'm thinking something like the attack number and the defense number collide and leave the number of 'damage' you are going to take. Reading the descriptions and trying to understand them might turn some people off.
UI was simple and clean and didn't get in the way. The only suggestion there is maybe make the cards you play higher contrast. I know that the monitor I'm playing on is bright and has the colors slightly washed out, but it was very difficult to tell which cards I had already played this turn.
Nice job!
@m11 Thanks! I wasn't sure of it was too much of a stretch but glad you thought so :smile:
@minibobbo That would help so much, I was concerned that there was too much text to take in, but animations showing the interactions would improve the game a lot, thanks for playing and great feedback!
I was having a few problems with the hand draw animation, you may have seen a bug where when a"Under Suspicion" is removed, the animation plays again. My less than optimal solution for cards you'd played to change colour slightly instead, maybe a 30 degree rotate as well as more contrast. A very good point again!
Clever idea! I'm not much for card games, so this would need something to raise the suspense slightly. Maybe music that changes based on the current state of the game?
@cogcomp Thanks! One of the painful things about this jam was that I recorded some dialogue for the cards and spent hours making some tracks for encounters and everything else... then really struggled with the audio implementation. I just hadn't practiced with Howler and React beforehand which was my undoing. One of the terrible tracks is hidden in the source still!
I must say that I'm not a big fan of card games, but it's clear that you've put some serious thoughts into this. I admit it was a bit hard for me to understand the gist of it in the beginning. I believe this is one of those games where a tutorial that helps you in the first phases of the game would really help. I can see this turning into a fully fledged game.
@tanis Serious thanks for giving it a go then! I knew it might not be everyone's cup of tea and I think you're totally right, a tutorial/animated intro to explain a turn would help new players so much.
Neat game some serious balance as well. The main issue is just that everyones health bar is so large. It would be better if the game went faster instead of playing the same hand for 5 minutes. But still great work!
Really interesting game. It took me a bit to understand all of the mechanics, but then there is a surprising amount of depth to the game.
Minor flaw: I normally have my browser window not maximized and the second tutorial screen has so much text that the "Let's go" button wasn't visible for me, I thought the game was broken at first, but then I discovered the button when I maximized my browser.
What a lovely game! and it's very creative, I love the combination between the card and politics system, I enjoyed the game and also saved to keep playing with it later, well done.
Ha so happy to see a card game here! Really original entry and take on the theme, really refreshing one !
So sad I'm quite bad, but I'll give it a try again later to completely finish it :D
Bravo to you for doing this in 48h !
@techsec Thanks! I think some variety in the hands would help when the encounters are longer, that's probably what I will work on for v2.0 but I agree that the early battles should be quick!
@likirus Glad you found it interesting! Thanks for pointing out that flaw, I would have liked to have spent some time sorting out the layout for screen sizes down to mobile but just didn't have the time. I'm going to fix the reset bug now but I will make sure the text gets a scroll bar if it overflows too.
@fadrikalexander Thank you for the kind comment! Several hours in I was thinking: "oh no, this is gonna be too complex!" but comments like yours make me glad I stuck with it!
@soarendev I'd got it into my head in the run up to LD48 that if I could come up with a card game for the theme then I was gonna go for it, I'm a big fan of card games and board games so just wanted to give it a shot! Thanks for playing and such a positive comment :smile: If you manage to have a good run, and after a few tries get the hang of the system then it's possible to really break the game and you'll win! Definitely some balance issues there! Thanks again!
@liam it's not complex it's simply not easy to understand what I mean by that everyone for example in slay the spire know the verb attack or the strength word or let's say poisen but in your game you have some words that are not commenlly used like influence, loyalty to a faction or suppression, I hope you get what I'm saying hhhhh even if the game have the same mechanics with any card game it representation is unique check "Urban Cards" for example
@fadrikalexander 100%, I get what you mean :smile: I feel like some little animations to make it clear how the unfamiliar terms are in fact stuff a player might know already would have helped a lot (as suggested by a previous commenter)
Really great game! It took me a while to figure out exactly how all the mechanics worked but after I did I was hooked! I ended up spending a ton of time playing until I figured out a strategy to win...it got super intense when I had 95% suspicion on the final opponent :sweat_smile: Thanks for sharing such a wonderful game!
Very fun card game with an innovative concept neatly tied together by an interesting, funny story. Would love to see more of it!
The only criticism I have is that I felt that my actions were rarely strategically impactful, apart from deciding when and how to defend, but this is not so important if the goal of the game is to focus on the narrative. I'm impressed on how you were able to "paint a picture" through gameplay. I hope you keep fleshing this game out as it has immense potential for a commercial title, great entry!
Fun game. The instructions at the beginning were very confusing, so I had to lose once to get the hang of it, but on my second run I was able to win. I thought there were some fun elements of strategy in how you needed to manage resources over many fights. The strategy I settled on in the end was a little simple, but I still felt like I was barely hanging on in the last boss fights.
Awesome game. I love that you could change the text speed. nice polish.
@perfectsquare Really glad you enjoyed it, I think most of the fun people have had is when they are figuring out the game's slightly obscure system, then you get your strat and it's then possible to win :smiley: Thanks for playing!
@pijamar Because of comments like yours, I am definitely going to work on building a more polished version, building a card game has been fun and I'd like to get better at it. Definitely agree that once you've figured out the game, the optimal play is often only the same set of decisions and it would be much much better if you had more impact on the strategy. Thanks for playing!
@boxedmeatrevolution Really nice to hear you had fun! I have learnt my lesson about big blocks of instructions, a tutorial and in game tips will be the way I go in future! :laughing: Thanks for playing!
@emmyoop I'm guessing you were rating a bunch of diff games at the same time :smile: So thanks for playing but I think adjustable text speed was a diff game!
This is a unique blend of mechanics! It's a little hard to understand at first, though. Well done on this entry!
@jacic Thanks! I was pretty unsure about it during the compo but I'm happy with what got built now
uk politics is in fact the worst. Machiavelli himself would blush at the unscrupulous duplicity.
and that is something i think you recreated with this game. i cant say i fully understood everything that was happening or even the entire concequences for my actions but the idea of some bastard in the background playing both sides is the most british thing i can think of.
Looks like a great game, but when I go fullscreen in the web browser, my screen isn't big enough to fit in the "end turn" button, so I kind of just click cards until I'm softlocked. If this is fixed, I can't wait to try it!