yamzho 2022-04-04 09:51
Great game ! Even though mouse control would have probably been easier, it is easy to navigate between the cards. Graphics are simple but very effective. Well done !
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD50 → ...Rise of the Toasty Tomato
By snesgaard
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 476 | 3.13 | 28 | |
| Fun | 417 | 3.10 | 27 | |
| Innovation | 438 | 3.00 | 27 | |
| Theme | 581 | 2.64 | 27 | |
| Graphics | 304 | 3.46 | 27 | |
| Humor | 251 | 2.95 | 26 | |
| Mood | 469 | 2.88 | 27 |
Great game ! Even though mouse control would have probably been easier, it is easy to navigate between the cards. Graphics are simple but very effective. Well done !
Cool game, i love the art style and thematics of it. Like you mentioned in your postmortem, input feedback I think was the biggest thing holding it back. The combat system was cool and very in depth, a lot to master. Battles are unpredictable which is good, in a deterministic game like this, it keeps it fresh. Great Entry!
Solid Entry!
Only thing i picked up on was when i wanted to "activate" the played cards, i have to select the "no" option. So it seems the no and yes option was reversed
@yamzho Agreed! UI is pretty hardcoded, so was a bit much to implement mouse control before the deadline :(
@bosco Yea action feedback is something I will definitely prioritize for next LD.
@rottenthunder997 The button with white text and black body is the active one in the confirm menu. Thought it was the most intuitive, but have heard the opposite from you and others, so I guess not XD Will keep that in mind for next time.
I agree with what the other commenters have said, I also got confused with the black and white buttons and would like to have mouse controls. I found it a bit confusing on what the events did, would be nice to have a description there. Other than that really good concept good job! I like that you made it with LOVE as well, my favorite framework :D.
Solid game! I love the 1 bit art style. Need an evil deer? Add a pentagram to it! Loved it. UI mostly felt good. I don't like that the cards resolve in opposite order to the order they were played, and the confirmation dialog I feel "enter" should work for "accept". Overall though I really like the mechanics. Deckbuilders are hard, this is a really solid creation for a couple days.
The art style is great, with the monochromatic art. The gameplay is pretty decent, although I was confused by the lack of mouse controls at the start. I feel like adding color to differentiate the cards would make it more easier to understand. I ended up breaking the game as I selected an enemy after I died, and the menu stayed while the battle was occurring.
Very ambitious to make a deckbuilder in 2 days but I think you did a good job. Like others have said the controls and feedback is lacking but the gameplay itself is well done. Nice one.
instead of having space and enter for select i would have just went with enter or for that matter just use mouse clicks. the begining screen was confusing because i didnt know about the selection scheme in the game. not sure what the calculate thing was after playing a card you can just apply a hit effect. and there was a lack of effects i wasnt sure if i hit the thing or not. most the time when i played a card it didnt do anything to the enemy and it took 5 points of damage to me.
I love slay the spire so it was cool to see a deck builder in the jam. The UI was kind of confusing when it came to selecting options because I was expecting the option selected to be in white and not black. I think it would've handled better with a mouse, but otherwise a cool submission!
Unfortunately I got an error when trying to run it ..2022-04-05_10h56_14.png
Love the black-and-white aesthetic! Very impressive to have been able to implement all these card mechanics within the jam's time frame :)
Visuals were solid, basic gameplay loop makes sense and is a nice direction, would have liked to see more interesting choices or secondary effects on cards.
@lako Really? Haha not surprised, the main game logic is very spaghetti :P
@sam-bigos Yea I agree, kinda of crazy in hindsight.
@jcmonkey @ollie-d Yea GUI and user feedback in general needed some more work. Actually my first time designing something this UI-driven, so the feedback is very much appreciated.
@purpledartfrog Love2D requires OpenGL 2.1 at minimum, so if you do not have a graphics card that can handle that, it probably won't work for you :( If you do, maybe you need to update the graphics drivers or something?
@kazuren Big fan of LÖVE! Like that it is very code-driven, unlike most of the game engines out there.
Fun game, and the mechanics are easy to understand. I actually got hooked to it for quite a bit. However, I didn't find the controls to be intuitive. I recommend you make them closer to each other next time.
Pretty fun game. Loved the art. Main things holding it back are the UI/UX, and controls. Also even a little bit of sound would have added a lot.
Solid art for 1-bit style. I did find the confirmation dialog box could be confusing, but otherwise it had it's own special charm, and I liked all of the different enemy sprites. That darn Tomato is my nemesis though! I tried to wait out the scaling for a couple of turns to find an opening in his defenses and got destroyed, since he only grew in power. Considering this was your first go at a deck builder, I'd say you have a real knack for it. Keep it up!
super cute animal silhouettes :) not my fav control layout but that's easy to add to
Fun game. The card mechanics worked well and the descriptions/effects were clear. The art for the enemies looked good. The controls were a it clunky.
I had a weird time with this game, I feel like it just didn't work for me.
When I turned it on, it prompted me to choose an event. I picked an event, selected my cards, chose to play them, but nothing happened at all. I tried restarting the game several times, playing different card combinations, but nothing seemed to work :c
Too bad because the game seemed so promising on paper. Am I doing something wrong?
@sodoj You might've forgotten to end the turn! When you play your three cards, try pressing enter, then space.
@snesgaard I never dared to build a deckbuilder for Ludum Dare. It would be too much code for such little results, it would be hell to add in a comfortable amount of cards and enemies, the bugs would be through the roof, there would be too many mechanics for me to add in such little time. But you made a deckbuilder! In a compo, none the less!
I think this is a solid compo entry. It lacks a lot of polish of course, but you have a solid amount of diversity in monsters and cards, you innovated in the mechanics (this is like a cross between STS and Gwent), the monsters and descriptions are humorous, you plain did a good job. Adding to what other people have said, here are some notes (you probably realized most of these, but, eh):
- This is probably really confusing for people who don't play deckbuilders. To help, I would consider removing the "spell stack" in favor of instant effects, people would immediately see their results and understand them. I would also consider removing the attack/block symbols on the bottom of cards if they have 0 attack/block. That would just make it easier to read and mentally parse. - There was a bug (feature?) where if I defeated a monster with my last card, I would die. It made me sad. - The coins don't seem to do anything, consider removing them (at least visually). Currently they're another UI element to look at and worse-case get confused by. Alternatively, consider adding easy card effects that manipulate coins (e.g. Gain 5 coins and deal 20 damage, Gain 5 coins and increase attack and block by 5, et cetera). - Consider making it obvious when flavor text is just flavor text. For instance, for the Slap and Block (and upgraded variants) cards, consider making the flavor text gray. Again, for easier reading. Games with lots of text benefit from being easy to parse - The early game was quite difficult, even when I learned to save my cards until I needed them. To make it a tiny bit easier, maybe add a new starter card (like "Draw 2 Slaps", although I know that would probably clash with the code), or allow the player to pick an extra card to keep at the start of the run. After the first two encounters the difficulty was fine though
I really liked this game. It felt satisfying when my numbers started getting big. Monsters and players trading damage instantaneously made it so I still had to play my cards carefully when they were low on health. The card rewards were neat, too, I liked that I could remove cards as I added them.
Good game! You better participate in Ludum Dare 51. You better!
@bucketh3ad Yea, as I mentioned in the post mortem, balancing is very hard. Especially when you create most cards and monster 2 hours before the deadline XD
@celtican Thanks for playing and the feedback!
* Yep, in retrospect it is basically the same system as Slay the Spire (attack and block) just way less intuitively presented. * Oh, that is definitely not intentional! * The coins are leftover from ideas I had earlier in the process, which I didn't have time to implement. You know how it is with LD and time management :) * Would be a good idea yes. Or italics ala magic the gathering. * Agreed. Would have wanted to let the player select from some predefined card loadouts, with a bit more strategy and flavor to them.
And don't worry, I'll be back next time!
On the linux build I could not get past the initial choose an event screen.
Very nice. I like the choice for the black and white visuals, and the game play felt pretty solid