Foon →
Ludum Dare Explorer →
LD55 →
rotator
rotator
By gallant-dev
View on ldjam.com
Comments
I don't really understand why the game is named **Rotator**, i think it's a reinterpretation of the card game "La bataille", which each player choose a card to present to his opponent and the powerfull card win. The music is very good, the graphics is pleasant, its lacks of animation and indication (a cursor or an highligh of the card select for example). The tutorial page is not very clear, more indication with arrow etc and different step/phase of the game could be better. Simple but works fine, good job ! (oh i had not read your post the game is a paper/rock/scissor, not based on the "bataille" ^^ but clearly than can be better to make a bataille and select card in your deck ! think about that, like you i'm not happy with this theme "summoning" i prefered to do nothing)
its named rotator because there is no winning card they 'rotate' through(its also a small statement about the nature of people due if you consider the cards I've used), also its a palindrome so IRL you can spin the cards. And fair enough haha, but I like the challenge of trying to create a strategic Rock Paper Scissors. do you(or anybody reading this) have any suggestions for better indication? I struggle with UI alot because I prefer something aesthetic or at least something that doesn't add visual clutter and I think you are right in this case that I went too minimal and my tutorial page is really bad haha.
@gallant-dev if you need to mention personn and create a notification you need to use '@' pseudo else the chance of see your text is minimal... ui indication, a small hightlight of the card, or triangle under them for example, because i notice when the cards is use the menu stay the same and i need to make a lot of left and right to select the last card for example.
Fun interpretation on rock-paper scissors! I could use a bit more explanation because I didn't get it at first :sweat_smile:
kr4ft3r
2024-04-15 23:58
Hey, did you turn off the ratings or it's the website glitching?
Anyway, despite the rough gameplay with glitches and having bad luck at starting rounds, I ended up playing until the "end", due to story mode. Somehow, the text between rounds and art kept me going.
In my game there is a bug where magician wins over any card even the emperor (if I udnerstood it should lose to emperor?) but that actually addded some spice to otherwise random gameplay. It was enjoyable to give this a spin.
exister
2024-04-16 02:28
Played this game for a bit, love the aesthetics a lot. Between it and the music, the game's vibe is really on point and solid! As previously mentioned there's a bug with magician winning when it shouldn't, though in my experience it was beating emperor and fool but trading with itself. Anyways, as I played, I tried to figure out some strategy for a bit before deciding it's just all luck. I began quickly playing cards, (which caused a bug sometimes where cards that were already played would linger with no cards to play against, after a bit it would resolve and the deck would shuffle and things would move on) and fell into a rhythm. I was questioning the point of the game was, as I rhythmically played cards... but reading the text between games, I think I understand. This is supposed to be a gambling card game played to pass the time aboard a ship. It has no point but to be idle entertainment. Once I understood that the game clicked for me. I don't know if "The point of the game is that there is no point!" is your intention, but it's the way the game feels to me. If you look at it that way, the game works really well! Played two more people before calling it quits. Excellent simulation, sub par game, if that makes sense. A unique experience that I'm glad to have had though
Really compelling overall vibe with this. The intro story was a little slow (or rather, it wasn't clear about what it was doing, so there were a few times where I thought the game was frozen as nothing was happening for a relatively long time). The mechanics were interesting - not super clear to me what I was supposed to do for a bit, but there was a very clear sense of what the game's overall feel/mood was about, which was impressive. Well done!
The art is very cool, it's immersive.
I like the feel of the game a lot and the art is great. Sound is awesome too. It was fun to kill 10 minutes or so with this one and I enjoyed my time with it - great job!
partkyle
2024-04-17 01:08
the art and music are great!
A visual indicator of what card is selected would be great, and playing with the mouse would be fun too.
felixx
2024-04-17 06:35
the art is AMAZING! The game is ok I think :D
The art style and music gives the game a great mood and vibe. I have to admit, even though I was able to play cards and the number went up and down - I'm not exactly sure what the rules of the game were or if I was playing it properly. I __think__ I was trying to play a better card than my opponent but I'm not sure what made one card better than another or if I am just completely misunderstanding.
Anyway, I liked the pixelly graphics and the general feel of the game.
Good work!
markwu
2024-04-17 10:49
idea and art are very nice, i dont know why sometimes why emperor beats fool, magician beats emperor, is it designed (rotator?) or what, so when im trying to think about strategies i got confused or maybe its just me.
The art and sound are cool, but I really don't understand the point of the game. Is it just a loop of playing your 5 cards?
Also I don't see where is the "Summoning" theme here
Really good music and general environnement, I didn't exactly understand the rules of the game, I tried the story and battle mode, is it possible to have more explanation ? Thanks :)
lexi89
2024-04-17 15:47
Art and music are on point. Couldn't figure out how to play the game...
boodle
2024-04-17 16:40
I think the skeleton of this game, especially aestethically, is quite strong. Some deeper strategy than this seeming randomness (or feels like, if I am interpreting the rules correctly there are 15 of each card, so especially during the third round you have quite a bit of information?). A nice reminder of which card beats which on screen, and some clearer indication of which card is selected, would be appreciated!
Beautiful artwork! Honestly, fantastic. I would love a tarot deck in this style.
Not sure I enjoyed it as a take on RPS, because the hands are random and there are no indications of what the other player has, there isn't really any possible strategy.
The gameplay aspect of it takes a while to understand if you are not familiar with this kind of game.
Needless to say that the art is stunning, keeping a cohesive style being a stylish pixelart
I thought it would make sense to have some mouse hover feedback and controls
wuppos
2024-04-18 02:58
As everyone has already said the art and music is amazing! It really fits the atmosphere of the game. I was a bit confused about the gameplay. You mentioned it is a 'strategic' rock-paper-scissors, but I dont really understand where the strategy is? How can I different that picking a random card and hoping my opponent does not beat me? I guess I might misunderstand the rules of the game :) Anyway, really well done!
I also cannot seem to rate your game unfortunately :( Was this on purpose?
custodi
2024-04-18 18:03
Great artwork and music, game has a good wibe. But game core mechanic a little bit screwed, too confused and nothing related to the name.
ir really needs a cursor to know what card im picking, but i liked the atmosphere
fosf0
2024-04-18 23:52
Nice concept! The game was a bit difficult to understand at first
Nice artwork! Why did you disable the ratings though?
Took me a while to understand how this was played, but was really nice once I did. Solid entry!
zirzak
2024-04-22 03:27
Really nice colors, music and specially portraits. Very compelling. I too would have liked a better indication of what card has been selected. Maybe something simple, like an arrow or a subtle outline on top of the selected card? It would also have been nice for the game to skip the cards that were already played, since you have to go through empty cards as it is now. In any case, the vibes are there and I think it has great potential.
The graphics are incredible, it's clearly the most beautiful ludum dare game, I love this style which goes so well with the pirate atmosphere. The music is also perfect and gives the whole thing a strange and disturbing atmosphere. But no matter how much I look at the rules and try to understand what it is, I can't play it... is there a way to play to win other than tossing the cards to the table? chance? Really too bad that all this atmosphere and these graphics are not at the service of a game that is a little more understandable... for my part anyway.
Beautiful, nice art, but pretty difficult to understand and play.
The minimalist art style is really nice. I am sure that there are other similar card games but it reminded me of the card game called E-card from famous gambling manga *Kaiji*. Good job!
Thank you for opting out of ratings - from your comment about wanting rock/paper/scissors to win, I am guessing that you started on this early and just committed to it regardless. And isn't that one of the greatest things about this community; to still get a chance to have you game up there and have some feedback and dialogue about it!
I was a little confused about the mechanics/actual 'game' at the centre of it, but the art is undeniably great - really consistent aesthetic and overall, quite a vibe.
I liked the art! The mechanics was a bit awkward to be honest. I managed to select no card at all as well as getting one card left when all opponent's cards had been played. It seems to me to be entirely a game of chance without any strategy to it, which does take away some joy of playing. A small change that might be interesting to test would be to show the opponents hand but not their pick until you've selected yours. That way you know their distribution of cards and it might give a bit of strategy and agency to the player.
rene
2024-04-27 15:36
Good mood, and scope. With a couple quality of life fixes this is really solid as a little game. There is a strategy element (mind games like in fighting games) if you track what cards the opponent has remaining isn't there, which is cool. Aside from the obvious nitpickings the game difficulty was a bit too hard to be able to see all the content.
Each tab I hit, I got stuck on a static screen, I unfortunately wasn't able to play the game after multiple attempts. It looks cool! But that's a bit unfortunate 😠[huh.png](///raw/abf/32/z/64e7d.png)
steffo
2024-05-03 23:24
The mood is awesome! Well done on that aspect; both the graphics, the story, and the music complement each other well!
---
Sometimes cards seem to get stuck... Weird?
---
Seems like Emperor loses from both Fool and Magician, so it's more of a rock-paper-paper than a rock-paper-scissors :)