byazzle 2024-04-15 05:11
Cool game. The tutorial is pretty hefty but cool little drafting/deckbuilder thing once I got the hang of it. Excellent art :D
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD55 → Arcane Ante
By rob6566
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 168 | 3.51 | 48 | |
| Fun | 146 | 3.50 | 48 | |
| Innovation | 158 | 3.38 | 48 | |
| Theme | 276 | 3.05 | 48 | |
| Graphics | 303 | 2.69 | 49 | |
| Audio | 125 | 3.36 | 47 | |
| Humor | 118 | 3.20 | 45 | |
| Mood | 238 | 3.03 | 44 |
Cool game. The tutorial is pretty hefty but cool little drafting/deckbuilder thing once I got the hang of it. Excellent art :D
The design of the cards is very basic it's a shame, the game is very confused, and the cut scene to see the special combo card with black screen is very disturbing.But people love this kind of card game very chill and relaxing, so you can easily made a complete game with more card and creature, and a story mode. That's great for a compo game !
Its not very intuitive to play even with the tutorial, but its fun anyways. Cool game
Cool game. I had played some Belatro so it was fresh in my mind, and I thought this was a very good evolution of that. Really cool mechanic to take some of the card + mult and the deck modifying and combine it with being able to pick "lanes" to make hands to defend against attacks.
Absolutely love it. As previous people mentioned, tutorial is not very straightforward but it's easy to understand after the first round. I would prefer a pick and place card instead of one of 9 buttons, it would remove frustration for me. Other than this really great job and good luck!
I definitely see the Balatro inspiration :smile: But very well executed! Being able to influence the next 3 cards adds a very cool mechanic, though I had some trouble at first understanding which cards will be the one in the next round. My biggest complain is that I feel like 100 HP is way to small. Once the opponents hit 500 HP its like basically clearing them completely or instantly lose. But I at least managed to see a 1200 HP opponent :smile: Maybe you could call more attention to when an upgrade in the shop is available, because I often times accidently skipped, but upgrading is crutial to succeed! Had a lot of fun playing this game!
Interesting deck builder. Aside from some visual bugs (some elements like the discard pile and speech bubbles over scaling/using different scales) I really like the main concept of it. Even with the tutorial I was bit confused when choosing a card and getting the next hand.
Visually I was expecting the first one to replace the used card. And I would've loved either heals or more time for the bigger foes. Or maybe I was unable to utilize upgrades proper. For example, I didn't realize at first the timer delay was on draw/use instead of immediately.
Good work! I'd like to see more polished version of this.
Including the dimming of the lanes is a life saver from a UX perspective, I appreciate its inclusion. Fun battler/balatro combo game, great work
Thanks for the feedback - as a few of you said, it takes a lot of inspiration from Balatro!
@byazzle Thanks for your help playtesting! I think it's a lot more balanced after you went infinite and I buffed the enemies / nerfed the timer manipulation (the original timer manipulation increased the timer of all enemies)
@robowarrior1982 I decided in the last hour before submission to do my own card art for the face cards rather than the default images instead of cleaning up the "score"/"shop" pages. Not the best idea, I guess! Thanks for the feedback.
@danigabe Thanks. I probably bit off too much scope with this, and spent too little time on polish. I had originally planned to have the cards animate to their new position when you drafted one, but ran into problems with it and did the button hovers instead. I think that would have made things easier to understand.
@candlesan Thanks!
@oadt Yeah, the UX on which cards come out is pretty confusing. As I mentioned above, I'd originally planned to animate the card movement, which might have helped. 100% agree on the HP - it kind of defeats the purpose if you will always die in one hit. And agreed on the shop too. A friend suggested automatically popping up the shop a card is purchasable. Animating the button was my attempt to draw attention to it. Thanks for the feedback!
@coderaurus Thanks - yeah, I did notice the scaling bug (I think when you clone a card the copy isn't scaled correctly, but then fixes itself on shuffle). Yeah, I did think of having the "next-up" cards just slide to the right instead of grabbing the three beside the card you selected. It really just needs the card movement animations to show what's happening. I might change the Timer delay text in the shop to clarify it.
Thanks @abrds - yeah, the dimming was my compromise after animating the card movements wasn't behaving.
Very clever mechanic! It was super satisfying to build up a powerful hand and seeing all that damage take out an enemy. The core idea was very understandable (if a little underwhelming visually) but some of the auxiliary mechanics seemed a bit obtuse. I'm still not too sure of the specific of the card shop (do I need to select both a card and an upgrade? what exactly does "all suits" do?), and I don't even know how someone could make it past the 1200 health demons. I think adding some of the visual flairs you mentioned like moving cards would help a lot with information conveyance. But overall I loved the idea and would be interested to see where you take it!
Thanks @niterich - and congrats on getting some high scores! Yeah, I'm not much of an animator, and tend to pick off a fairly big scope and not get around to animation. I might practice making stuff look a bit prettier before I do another jam. "All suits" makes the chosen card count as all suits - useful for Flush, Flush House and 5 Flush. A friend was doing some playtesting just before the jam ended and went infinite, so I hurriedly made it a bunch more difficult (increased the big eye from 1000->1200 HP and decreased it's timer from 17->12). I'd generally prefer the difficulty to hit a brick wall than to be playable infinitely (although it is still possible to go infinite).
Yeah, I'm leaning towards making a post-jam version with some more visual flair and quality of life stuff. From the top of my head: - Some more monsters and smoother difficulty scaling. Possibly a "boss" every 50 rounds, possibly you fight Fizzlebeard and the game ends. - Prevent more than 1 '+1 timer' on a card. - Make the "scoring" page look a lot better. - Animate buying a card, so you can see the effect being applied (or at the very least, put it on top of the discard). - Animate cards moving when you draft one. - Animate enemies spawning. - Animate enemies attacking. - Give the player a bunch more HP, so you don't pretty much always die in 1 hit. - Make the shop vouchers thresholds ramp up a bit faster. - Improve art. - A UI that shows the composition of your deck.
Windows-Paint-style art is always appreciable! I had a good time building a deck. As someone mentioned above game takes inspiration from Balatro, but I have nothing against it. Would like to have a little bit more clear UI. Everything else is cool
Thanks for a game. And have a nice Jam!
I tried to collect a super big hand in one row however a stronger enemy spawned in another. :laughing: Anyway poker fight is surely a good idea, and the 3-row predictable drawing make the game more strategical. Nice work!
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Nice tactical card game, enjoyed the strategical gameplay and the cool soundtrack.
Someone's been playing Balatro 8)
Cool game, it took me a while to understand the interface, it's not super intuitive at first glance despite the tutorial. What makes it confusing is that cards to be picked and future cards are lined up with the hands, but after a couple of tries it's easy to use. Audio is a nice touch, and making poker combos is always satisfying. Kudos for doing the compo!
Fun game, it felt like next up cards sometimes disappeared. Good concept overall thought!
What a fantastic game, truly. My sincerest congratulations; it kept me entertained for quite a while. I do have a question that I'm rather curious about: why use French playing cards? Wouldn't custom cards that align with the game's lore be better? Or perhaps it was a design decision, which I find intriguing. Again, my sincerest congratulations; developing such a game system in such a short time is admirable. Out of curiosity, do you design or enjoy designing board games? I created one a while ago and am considering getting back into it, I find that world fascinating too. Great game!
Thanks @promzona! Yep, Paint art is about as good as mine gets :laughing:. Agreed, it needs a lot of UI/UX work. And yes, very much inspired by Balatro.
@inkweeper Sorry to hear about the stronger enemy! There's definitely a bit of strategy around delaying hands so you don't have to deal with a new timer until the other hands are almost ready to go.
@vinzbad Thanks!
@nazorus Guilty! Agreed on the confusing UI. In hindsight, I think I could design it so the cards aren't lined up like that, instead in circles linked to the card.
@lightningst Thanks! I have't seen the next up cards disappear, but there could definitely be some bugs. If you shrunk your deck down so there wasn't enough for Next Up I think it would refer to unassigned elements and crash.
@milq Thanks! I loved your game too. There wasn't really a design choice behind the cards - I just grabbed some that weren't copyrighted. If I take the game further, I'll probably do custom art that fits the lore (but I didn't have time in the jam). I'm a keen board game player (I own over 200 and have have played most of the BGG top 100), but have only designed a couple of (not very good) prototypes. I decided to switch to computer game development as it's far cheaper and easier to distribute and has more design space. I've played a tonne of roguelike deckbuilders (and am building one, probably releasing next year). Do you play on board game arena?
I like this game! You guys are great!
Very good game! I had a lot of fun playing it. I did encounter a bug though, I had a straight on hand but the game said it was just a highcard.
@rillep Thanks! Do you remember which cards were in the straight? I had a friend report this too. Will test a bit. It's probably either a card not showing the correct image, or not handling Ace being high and low.
@rob6566 Yes, it was 10 - Ace.
Thanks @rillep , I've just patched that:
Before:
before.png
Fix:
code_fix.png
After:
after.png
Great work! Definitely Balatro vibes but with your own dope twist!!
Amazing game, it was quite fun tu play it
Hey, that was really good. At the beginning it was super confusing, until I realized it's pretty much 3 lane balatro. The music was pretty good and I liked how it got more intense when the timers got low.
I'm not much of a card game guy, so for me this was kind of confusing. The music was really exciting and fun and the card graphics were well made. I imagine that his could be quite enticing for someone who enjoys cards. A very well made game for a 48h compo. Well done!
I've actually bookmarked this game. Definitely coming back to it! If you ever release a full version, I'm buying it!
Thanks @denhette! I'm currently deciding whether I spend a week or two doing a more polished post-jam version of this game or switch back to my bigger deckbuilder project. Either way, I'll tag you if I release something.
Awesome! This game had really fun and challenging game mechanics :D
The graphics are super cute and I noticed the effort on the animations, good job =) It wasn't easy to understand the gameplay but then it was all right after some time!
Interesting and the bass line was fun, but it was hard to understand how the card previews worked. When purchasing a card, it would be nice to be able to see what you had already played and what was coming up to help inform the purchase.
@rob6566 Yes, I used to play various board games on Board Game Arena (Catan was the one I played the most recently), but I always ended up playing the same game: MTG. It's easy to get started; I just bring my deck and don't worry about it, the games are always different... If I were to create a board game, it would be a card game! But I don’t underestimate classic board games! They are so fun!
@milq Yeah, I'm a big MTG fan too. I started at around Invasion, but haven't played much the last 5 years (my favourite format is cube drafts). Any games I build will be solo deckbuilders though - no stuffing around with networking or getting enough people online simultaneously.
Solid game! A bit hard to understand at first, and lacking some feedback animations and such, but otherwise very fun! Music worked really well, and the sounds were good. Great job!
The art and dialogues are cute and funny, didn't take me too long to figure out how the game works, and the mechanic is pretty unique. The moment I finish a hand and score being calculated is satisfying. Good job.
Good job for a Compo, so much work between the audio, the development and the art! :clap:
Fun game ! I couldn't participate in LD52, so I didn't try the game your goblin originates from, but it's a cool idea to bring it back ! I like card based games, though it took me a couple hands to understand exactly how everything was working. I might go for another run later, currently "ZOG" in the leaderboard after the first name in my game. The animations are a very nice touch, nice polish for a compo game !
I really love this game and I really love poker, sadly I am also not too good at poker. The amount of work you put into making clear to the player how the score is calculated really helped me but in the end it could not make up for my lack of skill. As I really like the game, I would love to see a post-jam version. If you decide to continue working on it, I would love a UI change where the cards you can select are not next to the different hands. I know this is just me not paying attention, but I kept thinking that cards belonged to a certain hand and then clicking the wrong buttons. Overall I think you made something great, well done!
Thanks @sharploaded, @tomatoomelet and @deformhead!
@shared Nice work making the high scores! Actually I messed up, it's LD51. TBH Bluort is a lot less famous than he thinks he is. Thanks!
Thanks @hare-software. I am working on a post-jam version at the moment. Yeah, there's definitely UX problems with: - Grokking which hand cards are going to. - Understanding that the 3 "next up" cards to the left of the chosen card will be available next.
So far I've added colour backgrounds to the available cards and the next-up ones and offset them a bit (as some people thought they got the rightmost 3 images). I'm also planning to animate the cards moving.
I'm thinking of letting the player drag cards to hands instead, and possibly getting rid of the buttons (with maybe a config option to show them).
ui_so_far.png
I quite enjoyed the game! The art for the characters is quite charming, haha. There is a lot of strategy involved, like adding cards to hands deciding which cards you get next, which enemy to attack and when to finish the hand, etc. It does take a round or two for the gameplay to click, but when it clicks, it really clicks. I was able to reach the big 1200HP enemies twice, but couldn't DPS them down in time. My highest score was about 2450-ish. Not enough to beat Fizzlebeard, but not bad I guess.
I like the idea of a shop to improve the deck, but in practice the new cards didn't show up regularly enough and didn't have enough of an impact in the battle when played. Well, that could also be skill issue on my part.
Also, excellent job designing and building the entire game in just two days! The dialogue in the game was entertaining as well.
This was an interesting game with a lot of potential! The 3 upcoming cards seemed bugged, sometimes they were the next cards I got, sometimes not :sweat_smile: I'd be really interested to see if you took this idea further! Keep on making games :smile: