Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD50 → Debt Train (card construction game)
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 183 | 3.66 | 45 | |
| Fun | 129 | 3.73 | 44 | |
| Innovation | 66 | 3.95 | 43 | |
| Theme | 490 | 3.17 | 44 | |
| Graphics | 313 | 3.44 | 44 | |
| Audio | 318 | 3.14 | 44 | |
| Humor | 374 | 2.50 | 38 | |
| Mood | 294 | 3.27 | 44 |
Interesting game. Unlike in real life, my main problem in this game was that I had way too much money. Also I had way too many stations that I couldn't do anything with. I think the game could be pretty fun if it was more difficult and more balanced. I think if the amount of rail cards and debt cards were increased in the deck it would be a more strategic experience.
Cool game! Unfortunately it seems like there are some balance issues and it's easy to end up with too much cash.
Aside from that, the biggest thing I wanted while playing this game was little trains driving around!
Overall the user experience is very swish, I really like the concept and execution, just needs a bit more tuning and polishing.
I had a lot of fun with this - I drew 202 cards. I don't know how RNG and strategy affect people's experience but I think you did a great job.
Music was solid for the style of game I felt appropriately challenged with the cards I drew User feedback was good
Overall I really liked this one! Thanks for uploading! You could probably continue working on this a little to give quality of life improvements on the setting of stations (maybe snap to the nearest track)
Interesting idea combining cards and rail drawing. If it wasn't built around the theme "sooner or later you're going to fail, it might be base of rather interesting strategy game.
Very cool. The whole card-game experience is very smooth. The UI works great here. I wish I could preview the expected range of the stations before I lay the tracks so that I can plan the paths better. It also seemed like I was drawing a lot of stations and not enough track cards, but perhaps I was just out of luck.
Thanks @darandin, really cool you got this far! :) Definitely a lot of stuff I could add to this!
Did you all enjoy the track building part? I was thinking that maybe a grid-based, single cell placement system would work better? Or add more traffic management to make it a bit more than simply optimizing station distances. Not quite sure.
This is neat. The UI is very satisfying, as is the core gameplay loop itself. It's always satisfying to paint the map, build cities and infrastrucutre networks, etc., and this game taps into that nicely. I would also love to see little trains on the tracks :)
The balance felt off - I was getting too much money and stations from the card stack, and not enough track. Also feels like there should be more money sinks (use money instead of tracks if you don't have any? maintenance costs for stations? I'm sure you thought of stuff like this). I lost interest after a few minutes. That said, I think it's good for jam games to be tuned easy rather than difficult since people don't want to spend too much time on them, so maybe it's a blessing in disguise.
Such a fun game! It's easy to get too much money at the beginning but when I covered half of the map it started giving me a lot of consecutive debt cards so I think it's fine. Just noticed some minor bugs where the sometimes a card in your hand would disappear, and at some point the map would turn pitch black when placing stations or rails. Regardless, it's a cool concept and game.
Great little game! As others said it's easy to make a lot of money at the beginning of the game and with another gameplay mechanic things would be a little more interesting to keep playing but overall is a very good and almost-relaxing experience. Congrats!
Nice game, though I probably have to agree that the card stacking is pretty easy, it makes a nice concept and it's well executed, without any bugs, removing some houses or balancing of the incoming cards could solve the problem I guess but it's a perfect game to just relax and enjoy.
I like this game. It took me a playthrough before I could figure out the UI and how the game works - but once I did I wanted to play it. Well done and creative puzzle-type game. I typically don't like pulling cards as a mechanic but this worked due to how placing cards works. Very satisfying connecting multiple 'houses' to one station and seeing those $ cards come in.
Nice original take on the theme. It was satisfying to see the trainline slowly expand. Could definitely be worked on more, as it's a solid concept.
Really cool game concept, I like the mix between building and managing. The artstyle and music fit well and the gameplay was really enjoyable! I might change the money card pick rate a bit, I had way to much money availible and not enough train tracks to build with. Maybe a feature where you can use money to buy certain cards would be helpfull with that.
IT's LIKE I'M A GODDAMN RAILROAD TYCOON. WHOOO WHOOO CP RAIL COMIN' THROUGH BOYS!
It was comfy and I enjoyed planning routes, but I felt no stress or challenge of running out of money any time soon. Even when I tried to.
The only complaint I have is that sound effect had a horrible clicking every time they played.
I wondered if the game have a good end if we manage to touch every house with a station, but I didn't make it and ended with 202 cards draw - and as the deck is more likely to draw dept cards as we take some, I'm not sure this is possible ^^ I played it for a fair long time with fun, so this is a good entry, well done!
I'm not sure if I'm delaying the inevitable (bankruptcy) or if the game is delaying the inevitable (me putting stations for every house). At some point (3/4 of the map done ?) I got bored. But hey, it has been fun for a time, so that's great! I think the game would need different kind of objectivs, and that the dollar/debts cards works for 10 minutes longplay, but not so much after that, since it just renders the game slower (again, it's 100% ok for a jam game). Another tip: there are some weird clics on the audio that could be cleaned by putting some fading in and out.
I would love to see a expanded version of this game with more kinds of buildings (to build and to connect to!). Good job!
Really clever comment to drive engagement :guardsman:
I really enjoyed this one. Spent way more time in it than I meant to. The only problems I had was placing tracks at first and figuring out that the train stations connected the houses and not the tracks. Excellent entry.
I like the music, the UI is very nice and the gameplay was original. I feel like in the end the game gets pretty unfair and makes you pick a lot too many debt cards (I once picked about 10 in a row). Also, I got a bug where the screen gets black. Considering the time you had, this feels like a great concept and the beginning of a game is really enjoyable!
Clever game and well made! The mechanics felt very well implemented and intuitive. I did find that the RNG seemed to hate me, but randomness do be like that. The game felt very snappy and well-optimized. The music and sounds suited the visual style, too.
Incidentally, I don't know how I'd feel about living in a town were every single house was just metres from a train line.
Great work!
Very nice controls and UI. Everything is clear and intuitive :thumbsup: Regarding the balance I have a theory - since everyone is expecting to bankrupt soon, maybe the game itself (not the player) is delaying the inevitable :thinking: :smile:
The game felt a bit easy to me, but I might have been very lucky RNG wise :sweat_smile: I still enjoyed putting down my tracks and stations. It was very satisfying. :train2: I wish for a couple of quality of life changes like the game automatically taking money out of my hand with the debt (that is how debt feels too). Good job, I had a good time! :thumbsup:
@cryptomnesi haha, maybe a tiny bit of that, but I literally wanted more feedback on the track building part (people are commenting on the card part). This project made me want to keep improving it, and I was wondering if a simplification would work too, kind of like this: https://tinyurl.com/34hfaeve
I have a weakness against train based games so this is automatically the nest game of the jam but I think without my biases I still think this game is great. Absolutely love the idea of the game and the executions is top notch. All the music and sound effects really give it life. I did find it a bit easy and for a railroad that was failing I was quite prosperous but overall a great game. I love it!
That was fun! I managed to draw 32 cards. Sometimes the card seem to get stuck invisibly to my cursor when I got down to my last card (had a station stuck there and it tried to place it anywhere I clicked, and then money stuck there later, but luckily was able to draw a debt card and place it on that or something).
I enjoyed the simplicity of it, and the fun of laying out my tracks to get as many buildings as possible, once I figured out how that all worked ^_^.
Come on... 7 debt cards in a row, an inevitable amount of unluck for a total of 109 cards. Game is really chill, music helps this chilling feeling, it's really good work, pleasant, well done.
As a board game fan I'm already in love with the basic mechanics. With a bit more tuning and balancing this could be really interesting. Well done!
Very nice, the gameplay was intuitive, It didn't take long to figure out how to play.
My main critique would be that many of the sound effects had quite harsh popping noises when they started or finished. It was quite noticeable on my headphones, and a little unpleasant. That was for the web version.
Excellent game. Easy to learn and the interface was fairly intuitive.
Hi all, thank you for the great feedback!
I published a new post-jam version under https://zommerfelds.github.io/ldjam50-post-jam/.
I didn't change much, just some bug fixes and balanced the incoming cards a bit. Not sure if I want to continue working on it though.
This is really addicting and fun, it's probably a bit too easy to gain cash as you always have plenty of stations. The minimalistic style works great and the music fits well even if it gets a bit repetive. Nice job!
your game is very suitable for this topic, I like the design and the mechanics of the game surprised me, great game
First of all the game is done very well. I think sticking to free-form rail drawing rather than grid-based was a correct choice. Sounds and visuals are spot-on especially for gamejam game. The idea and controls are simple and easy to learn.
Though as some have mentioned before there are quite a few areas to improve it: * After 30 or so card I want a checkmark that allows to automatically pay out the debt card when draw; * Placing station (cards) sometimes covers whole area I am interested in building over. Making it hard to see if all buildings I am interested are covered and if I have left-over track to build on later; debt-train-ui.png * After losing it would be nice to zoom out to max, to look at your railroad empire; * Would be nice, if initial automatically built station would not be directly at the end of rail. That way you could give player more flexibility where pursue money, rather than always upwards; * I am sure the theme this time is a poor fit for this kind of game. Drawing `Debt` so much debt is somewhat discouraging; * The game excitement / chore ratio is rather bad. It's very easy at the start (and fun) then it rather quickly gets tedious (played to see if I actually can connect all houses) and then the math kicks in, bringing inevitable doom; * What could help here are more actions; * More clearly defined `Rounds` rather than infinite deck of actions; * Maybe even allow choosing what cards are added to the deck depending what houses are included into railway network. * For example there could be standard houses (gives money), commercial (gives houses or money) and industry (gives rails or stations, but takes money cards from the deck) map locations. That way there is another layer of strategic choice where you want to build to. * Paying money would allow shuffling discard cards into deck. Essentially doing extra calculations and weighting if there are more negative cards in the deck than positive, and if it's worth paying up-front to increase chance of drawing a positive card; * Special rail cards to place across water, to heavy industry (oil)?
I could go on and on :)
Oh, this is my map if you are interested: debt-train-endgame.png
Overall the game gave me `Transport Tycoon`/ `OpenTTD` vibes. Interested if you will develop anything further and what choices you will make!
@bloodycoin thank you very much for the detailed feedback. You certainly pointed out some things I didn't know and nobody else gave that level of feedback. I hope I could triple-like your post.
I agree with all your points. I'm not sure if I have the capacity to work more on it, but I'm thinking about it :) I originally focused on touch screens (mobile), but maybe this would be better suited as a PC game, given its Transport Tycoon nature.
There's a special fun to be had when trying to build larger and larger railway, and I'm a little disappointed in how the theme gets in the way of this fun, instead of harmonising with it. I mean, being able to connect every single house in the game for 100% would be so magnificent!
I felt there was too much card manipulation - drawing cards, accepting cards, placing cards. The more debt cards I got, the more of a chore the game became (another reason why the inevitable debt is a poor fit for this game). Rather than cards, these could be abstracted as random events: +1 funds, -1 funds (i.e. debt), +1 track, +1 station, and then placing tracks and stations would just be a matter of drawing-and-accepting the tracks, or finding the right spot for the station. Having to draw a track, then place the cards on that track is such a drag (and drop). Having to pay the debt manually instead of it cancelling my funds is even more of a drag.
Other than that, the game played pretty nicely and kept me entertained for the while. Once more, I just wish I was able to actually integrate every single household into the railway network. ^^'
Very relaxing game, I had a good bit of fun until I drew what felt like 10-15 debt cards in a row, which promptly led me to bankrupty after only 150 cards drawn. Still had a lot of fun building a somewhat big railway. Lovely game.
Nice game, though i would like the game to automatically take money out of my hand with the debt and the way to pay multiple track cards at once.