ethernalstudio 2023-05-02 18:19
I really love th graphics and the idea is pretty good too.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD53 → Tight Five: Still Alive
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 663 | 3.50 | 43 | |
| Fun | 608 | 3.41 | 42 | |
| Innovation | 112 | 3.97 | 43 | |
| Theme | 500 | 3.98 | 43 | |
| Graphics | 788 | 3.35 | 43 | |
| Audio | 376 | 3.55 | 42 | |
| Humor | 154 | 3.87 | 42 | |
| Mood | 591 | 3.53 | 43 |
I really love th graphics and the idea is pretty good too.
The idea is hilarious, it had me laughing the whole time, I like the blackjack mechanics too.
Great idea. I like the premise and the absurdity of the 'jokes'. I didn't really get a good hang of how to play effectively. I think I was too tempted to flip over all the cards, where I guess I should have been be pulling cards and playing them more blindly, I guess? But the concept was really intriguing and had me hooked. Very cool!
@the3rdhunter thanks for playing and the feedback! Actually a big part of the game is discarding cards you don't need. You might have missed the discard tutorial prompt. Maybe I'll put something about that in the description.
The idea is very good, the graphics weren't too bad either. Thanks for the play
Discard tutorial did come a bit late, yes... and I think nowhere it was told that fliping uses a turn, so you kind of guess it while playing.
Its a bit difficult to understand how to play though, especially with hecklers completely wiping your score while you setting it up. Probably because I never played in games similar though. Sometimes it would give me 5 actions, sometimes only one I don't know why any of it happens and how to manage those. And sometimes it happens so there is nothing I can drag to a heckler and only way is to reset?
Was kind of confused whole way through and didn't manage beat game on "easy" haha. But sounds and ambience were really cool and idea is fun as well :)
I want to start by saying I really loved the concept of this game. It's both a unique take on the theme of 'delivery' and a good one too. I unfortunately had the game crash on me a couple of times (I think when I was trying to place a card into my deck). I also found it quite confusing, I didn't realise at first that you spend your "card points?" on either flipping or drawing cards - However I can see how this could make for interesting strategy. I also still don't really understand how the points work. I thought I was doing well by getting the higher numbers in the top left but then I lost? I just wish that the game did a better job explaining it all as I think this had a lot of potential and the stuff I did , I found very interesting.
Overall good job though, very cool game.
Really nice idea and nice use of the theme ! The mechanics seemed complicated at first, however there are a lot of deep and interesting gameplay ideas. Great job !
Very nice take on the theme. It did take me a while to figure out how to play the game itself. I didn't even realize there was a blackjack type component until the end of the first game when I busted. I think this game has a lot of potential though!
Very cool concept. I got into character and got myself into some trouble trying to force the jokes to actually make sense, when I should have just focused on scoring to stay alive. That's on me! I did enjoy landing a few nice off color 1-2 punches, but spending points on coherence is not a luxury I could often afford.
I was moderately confused at first. I figured out the state transitions, the color coding, and then the action points. I didn't understand why I was losing action points between rounds or what that heckler was for, so the tutorial video was super helpful. After watching that I started playing more strategically and did better. Then after a handful of plays to learn the ropes, I knocked em dead.
I really liked the vibe, and since you put in the effort for the tutorial vis, I thought I'd make some notes on some things that still confused me after playing:
- Why can't I put this card into my hand face down? It's the first card of the game. I was able to put the next three in face-down but this one had to be flipped before I would go in my hand. TightFice-CantMoveCard.png
- Playing face-down cards is weird. It says "?" but I can see the total so it's not really a mystery, except in the moment of the joke when I may go over 21. I guess I should always play every first joke blind because I can't go over, and I can spend the action points to draw more cards rather than flip for the first joke.
- Small but recurring UI nit: I wish I could right click a face-down card in my hand to spend a point and flip it, rather than having to left-click-right-click-left-click it. (That said, programming this game must have been a nightmare of UI state management and it's really overall very low-friction once you get going.)
- I don't fully understand why I can choose how many jokes to tell on a turn. If I do zero, I was not clear about the consequences and whether I am burning through chances, but I often had to do it if I had, say, an 18 and couldn't play without failing. If I do more than one, I burn cards and limit flexibility, so I only did that when I had the 21 already in hand.
- I was also unclear about the scoring. I got a 20. Then I resolved a heckler and my score was zero. Was that good or bad? I didn't know if I had gotten "nearly perfect" in round 1 and then moved on to round 2 with a feather in my cap, or whether I had failed for not getting exactly 21 and been sent back to the start to try again. Eventually I did get a 21 and saw that it shooed the heckler away and set me back to zero without having to feed him a card. This made me think the reset to zero was NOT bad, and my 20/21 was a good score.
Anyway I liked this and spent some time with it, hope the nit-list didn't feel negative. Wouldn't spend the time writing it if this was not a very cool game.
The robot pose-art was on point, and the sounds were well-chosen to create a cool ambiance. But what I appreciated most was definitely the conceptual theme of the robo-standup.
Nice entry!
idea is very cool!
@pkenney Thanks a ton for the thoughtful playthrough and feedback it really means ALOT (espcially with a game this complicated).
-The reason you cant play that one card face down is that I had to force the player to learn to flip and I didnt have time to put in a state for tutorialized and un-tutorialized players so unfortunately it's just like for now. You're right-- in an ideal version you would not be forced to play that face up.
-playing face down cards does still show you the total, but it hides the suit, which can matter sometimes on the hard levels
-Yes I wanted to add flipping cards in the hand it's literally at the top of my to-do list. I tried to put it in at the eleventh hour and it broke the game so I took it out haha
-The part about burning cards is somewhat intended-- I wanted it to be a drafting game with limited hand space. I do think it could definitely use some balancing though. Originally I pictured cards that would expand or contract your hand, etc. but never got around to it. I do wish I'd done six cards as the base though... I think maybe 6 cards is the sweet spot, currently there are five.
-I should have mentioned this in the video tutorial: getting rid of the heckler clears your combo but saves you from a fail state. There are upsides to it also, in that if you can get rid him you keep some of the hand you've built and essentially start over. There is a quick animation but it's easy to miss.
Since you gave me such thoughtful feedback dont let me forget to give your game the same-- I plan to play some more tomorrow and I'll definitely start w yours. Thanks a ton!
This is such a good way of using the theme.
Took me a bit to figure it out, but once I did made me laugh and kept going.
nice job! :D
Nice submission bro!!! Great game! I thought it will be tough, but it was easy to learn!!!
Also play my game!
I love it! Couldn't win a single time but I got close Quick feedback on the bugs/issues I found: - The heckler thing is confusing (telling us to say something Dark, I make a joke with something dark and he's still there so I guess I should just save up a card to feed it to him when he asks for it? Or is there another way I didn't get?) - Saw the win condition only by my third play, maybe I missed the tutorial - Number of cards I can draw/flip for each turn felt random (I think it needs an explanation on how it is calculated) - Some times I could not flip cards already in my hand (in the middle of the game, not just the first one) - One of the punchline (can't remember which one) has the wrong voice over (climate change one instead of what's written on the card) - Not sure what to make of the message that I won threee skill cards (did I unlock three new skills that will now appear randomly, or will I have three skill card during my next run?) - Would like to be able to give a face down card to the heckler on the off chance it's what he's asking for (would feel less frustrating than clicking on end turn knowing you've lost)
Very impressive you did so much in so little time
aaaah finally ! I was waiting for a game that took this direction of the theme Delivery.
@random-ideation-studios I'll add yours to my list for tonight. I'll be streaming it so I'll send you the VOD
@justine-d
- Thats a good point-- the heckler should go away BEFORE the fail state check if you play a combo with the suit he wants... or maybe only if you can play that suit on both the punchline and the setup?
- Yes the number of cards to draw is a bit hard to follow-- it counts down by one but then if you cleat the heckler it goes back up to 4 (one round before heckler appears) so it basically goes 5,4,3,2,1,(heckler)4,3,2,1,(heckler).... though I'm guessing whats really happening is that some people are getting to the action round, not having any cards to play and then the game counts down and send you back to draw-- but you can also just hit "end turn" during the countdown and I think some people are hitting it JUST after it goes into the draw phrase again making it seem like you skipped a round.
- the skill cards should appear randomly in your next gig, you should always get one within the first 9 draws and the other two are random
- You can, in fact, give a face down card to the heckler if it's the right suit underneath :)
Thanks a ton for the thoughtful feedback I'll definitely try to give the same to yours!
I had a hard time figuring out how to play. I managed to play some cards but most of them had to be face down. I was only able to flip two cards. The idea is very interesting tho! A deckbuilder comedy game :)
Very nice! I love the attention to detail to bring TTS into it to actually deliver the lines you put together. :D
So, I got one win on medium and tried for a while to get a win on hard, this is what happened; Its the last turn before the heckler nails me. In desperation I play 2 face down cards. it goes from 13 to 27... wait, that means those should be aces... can I switch them to a 1. IT WORKED! 21! go to end turn. Click... click again... spam click... nothing. I get caught on the screen unable to progress. willIwin.png
I liked the game a lot. You put in a lot of effort on mechanics and polish, great job! It started to click once I realized you don't need to play a joke every turn. I would fill my hand with face down cards because I knew I could flip them later. I would try to get a decent amount on the field and filter cards until I had a winning amount. The constraints of needing a specific kind of joke, along with 21 points, along with accounting for the crowd type, along with keeping a card for the heckler makes the window for victory very very small. It feels like a lot of luck is needed to win.
other tiny criticisms: The way that jokes are made is clever, and I got a few chuckles out of some combos. But you can end up repeating jokes a whole lot and they can get old. also I'm not sure if this is intentional, but I had a crowd that was apolitical but I needed a political joke to win. I restarted after the first heckler lol, didn't feel like making my victory window even smaller. Bug.png
Great Submission!
@knatt THank you for the awesome feedback-- The hard mode audience moods (apolitical, pearl clutching, etc.) I meant to be able to actually work in your favor and bring you back down below 21 in some circumstances, never really got a chance to test and balance them though because I threw them in at the 11th hour.
As for the repeat jokes thing I totally agree-- I literally wrote the punchlines and setups (30 each) in like 20 minutes and just went with it and recorded a custom sound file for each. One of my programmers was saying he probably could have rigged up an actual text to speech module that would read out whatever we wrote but it would have taken too much time. If we had gone that route we could have done literally hundereds of jokes bc we wouldnt have to do custom audio for each.
Anyway, thanks a ton for playing!
Great idea! Loved the visual style and the tts. I found the gameplay loop itself a little confusing though. In normal blackjack an ace can become 1 if you've drawn too many, which doesn't seem to be the case there. I don't think there's any penalty for skipping your turns (other than triggering the heckler maybe?). It was quite difficult to beat even the easy level but maybe I just didn't give it enough time. Other than that I don't really have anything to complain about. It's a really interesting spin on the theme and it's well realized. Loved the game, good job with this one!
Controller is bugging so hard. Got stuck eventually
@legromp honestly didn't even realize there were inputs still in there ... Whoops.