Bling!

human-writes-code 2021-10-05 06:01

Considering that you didn't quite get the game finished, I think what you have done is really impressive and quite fun. I like a card-based battler and the minimalist art style is also very appealing. I'm not 100% sure how it fits the theme but I'm sure that would have become clearer once you fleshed it out more.

There's no real point in criticising an incomplete game and I'm sure I wouldn't tell you anything you didn't already know, so I won't bother with that. I'm glad you have a plan to finish it off and I'll be interested to see it once it's done!

brainloaf-studio 2021-10-06 06:27

First off, the UI and effects do indeed look really nice! I particularly enjoyed the dashing/attacking animations, and the cards looked really satisfied when in play. I can see this improving a lot with tweaks and further development, like it seems you're planning! (PS The background music is a jam)

100th-coin 2021-10-06 16:42

Woah, those smoke particles are rad! It might be buggy and unfinished, but I still enjoyed playing it. I even had a good laugh when my dead body was still fighting the enemies! I'm glad you were still able to submit something; This was a rough theme. I'm glad to hear you're planning on making a post jam version. Keep it up, and great job!

trexxak 2021-10-07 01:25

Very fun mechanics! I didn't think of the quick discard mechanic to highly up until it was combined with the dodge mechanic and I saw how that allowed for a very meaningful qte! The dodge card is thus one that requires some level of skillfulness from the player to not lose a lot of cards accidently, which I liked a lot!

Of course the sprites aren't done, yet as you may know I admire the way your characters look, and thus I'm very confident and curious to see what those silhouettes will turn into!

The particle effects look amazing, especially the Winning-Screen :D

I look forward to see where this game is going!

simon-rahnasto 2021-10-09 14:40

The concept is really cool, I love card-based games myself. Like usual your particle game is just SO strong! :fire:

Let's take the combat transition sequence which triggers after you win a battle. That just makes you feel like a total badass! The movement particle effect is super satisfying as well. The whole minimalistic art-style just works so well!

You say that the game is more like a prototype, but it does have a lot of cool components. The shop was a very nice feature which I did not expect. And you have some nice quality of life things, such as not needing to select an enemy for an attack if there only is one remaining. The bottom line is that I enjoyed playing this entry, and I think you did a fantastic job! :)

mixedletters 2021-10-18 05:02

Will say that I wasn't sure how this fit the theme, but the overall design of it was really cool. And glad to see you have interest and a plan to continue it, because this concept is one I can definitely see being a smash hit if polished. Very cool way of having a 'card game' fighter that still felt dynamic and like you were actually still 'fighting' the battle yourself, having to make continual decision instead of just strictly playing cards. Can definitely see further iterations of this with more cards like the dodge mechanic card being really cool, and I wish you the best in making this even better going forward!

zimny11 2021-10-19 08:57

The fights are amazing. I really like the defense mechanics and the transitions are so cool. The music is nice, but get repetitive quickly. I guess, opponents going idle in first fights is to go easy on player. If the value of a defense card is in percent, it would be nice to have % sign on the card, just in case. I won 2 fight and got stack on the shop :( I was really surprised that there is a shop! It was a lot of fun to play. Great job with the game!

paulsams 2021-10-19 17:14

The animation and the particles are nice). But so far, in mechanics, you don't really use tactics. But overall, this game was a pleasure to play).

salazin 2021-10-20 00:31

I enjoy a good card and turn based action game, so I enjoyed the gameplay of this, even though I struggled to see how this fit the theme of "Unstable". I played the updated version and I did find the tempo of the explanations, choosing cards and actions to be a bit too fast paced for me. I found myself a little confused at times, trying to read and watch the actions happen so quickly. And while I like the animations of the movements, it felt off since they didn't seem to fit the simplistic art style of the rest of the game. But if you update the art to match the animation/vice versa, I think it would look really good. You published it as an unfinished game, but I think you're going in a really good direction!

ryjcio 2021-10-20 01:43

Dude, dodging mechanic is awesome. Where did you get it from? Overall very fun!

lilkrit 2021-10-20 03:06

Damn. The polish in the game is just awesome. Really ambitious to make a card game too. Very impressive!

kuro 2021-10-20 12:05

@human-writes-code @brainloaf-studio @100th-coin @trexxak @simon-rahnasto @mixedletters @zimny11 @paulsams @salazin @ryjcio @lilkrit Thank you all very much for the feedbacks. I'll try to address them all in one response since they overlaps at several places. (And I'll try to make it brief as not to bore you.)

First of all: How it fits the theme. It doesn't really, at all. It was supposed to: the dodging and multi-attack mechanics are a part of a wider array of sub-mechanics that were supposed to introduce greater randomity - instability if you will, to your deck, and to the gameplay rules. As you may have guessed, I didn't manage the implementation in time. (I never manage to implement the intended theme mechanic, [sans my very first LD entry on this page](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/the-passion-of-a-peasant).) This should also answer @ryjcio 's question - I kind of made it up - it's a derivative of a more complex mechanic I had in mind.

@human-writes-code any input would be welcome anyway .)

@simon-rahnasto I forgot to mention it in the update. The auto-targeting of the last enemy is actually something I added after jam. It got mixed into the fixes - it really took me a long time to fix all the things that were wrong with the game and I might have forgotten that I was just trying to make it playable.

@salazin the tempo might be a bit too much. It's one of the things I'm trying to figure out, bc the first version's tempo is a drag in 100th combat, and second version's tempo is outright confusing if it's your first battle.

**Anyway, thank you very much for your feedback ppl.**