LD55 - Ritual of Cards

judjudson 2024-04-16 16:31

I'm a sucker for card games, and this is no exception. I had to find a resolution where I could see all the buttons and most of the cards, but from there I had a great time trying out different orders and strategies. I wish there was more mana generation in the deck, or your mana per turn escalated with each turn, but that might not be a good design idea. I just always find myself wishing I could make crazier and crazier decks in card games, and this definitely scratched that itch.

kseniya 2024-04-16 22:14

very poorly developed design and visual

nathan 2024-04-16 22:28

Took me a beat to figure out that the resolution was preventing from seeing a couple of important things (like the end turn button!), but once i understood the game - which to be fair, is quite intuitive, this was actually a fun little game. Could it use polish? Sure. Were the graphics basic? Sure - but you made a game, in a few days, and you know what - be proud of that achievement. Well done!

Pros: Made think a little about the combinations ahead of time, liked the variation, fit the theme. Cons: Clunky UI, no sounds.

Great effort!

lehmy 2024-04-16 22:35

I like deck builders and this one is obviously on. The idea behind the game is pretty nice, but i would have liked it to give me more choice on building the deck. I'm a bit bummed by being stuck with the 5 choices and only being able to get new ones if i draw from on pile (if i didn't miss a function of the game, if so please tell me), of course this is part of the game itself, but maybe there could be a possibility to reroll with high costs.(this would make it more like a real deck builder for me). But overall good job on that, even if the graphics are pretty basic :)

reulan 2024-04-17 02:30

@JudJudson Yeah we are both fans of seeing long combos resolve and having fun card interaction between the different elements. I personally would love to make more cards and add some mechanics (like mana gain - which was discussed for the water element but not added), having a deck of 10-20 cards per element would really mix up the variation!

@Kseniya thanks for the honest feedback, we are both programmers and don't have much art experience and it really shows... Lots of animation and board readability ideas were discussed but we couldn't implement them in the scope of time we had unfortunately.

@nathan Thanks for the bug report, yeah we had some issues with resolution - but this was just hotfixed and the resolution scaling should work now! Glad to hear the game was intuitive, we really just wanted players to craft a hand of cards that would be fun for them to see play out.

@lehmy Yes, we actually have 2 coded mechanics that allow for deck manipulation though they were both scrapped. One was "burn" where you could burn a top card of a deck once per turn. We also had a deck reshuffle feature below the end turn button which allows you to reshuffle all decks twice per game. (reimplemented with the resolution hotfix)

olddog 2024-04-17 07:34

very good design and game idea,love this game ,wish to have more detail and feedback of each movement ;waiting for more content to play

sleepystudios 2024-04-18 13:17

Really love the idea of the random summon at the end based on the gameplay (which to be honest was easy to pickup). Like others have said its missing that visual element and some UX tweaks but I totally get it so nice work!

thetatautau 2024-04-18 13:23

The gameplay idea is good. I played another jam entry with a very similar concept and it was very fun.

But only 5 turns, 3 manas per turn, and some of the cards cost 5 or 6 mana. So there is no time to make combos.

IMO just with 10 turns instead of 5, with the ability to reuse a card slot, and cards that generate mana, the game would have been quite fun.

Also, adding basic UI animations and music would have improved the game feel by a lot without taking too much time (as it is a jam entry so you were allowed to use existing music).

pado 2024-04-19 22:36

Card Games. I love them. The mechanics are interesting, I didn't immediately realize that you can save mana. A little disappointed by the limited card slots. Fun arcade.

brainles-etertainment 2024-04-20 11:25

I need a book where described all the rules of summoning, otherwise I cannot really understand which card to use.

ryrumeli 2024-04-29 03:59

I love card games. My own entry was a card game as well this time around!

It took me a while to understand how to play, honestly. A couple of passes until I could go into looking for combos and finishing up with more interesting summonings. The idea of it ending like a card combo is indeed capturing one of the nicest parts of any good trading card game, which makes it interesting from the get go! I feel that some UI elements being more reactive, and illustrating better costs and mutations of a card during highlight it(Even if just the instantaneous ones) would have made it easier to be eased into the game. Sound effects also would have gone a long way.

Also the UI layout itself was clear, I love the readability on the cards, I didn't feel the need to bend down to read them better or the like, which made it flow nicely. Visuals are important sure, but having a strong game with clean UI at this stage beats the need for flashy art or any of the sort, and that was a clear worry here.

It has strong ideas and I would like to see it further developed in the future, with the multidecks aspect being a worked on as a differential and the summoning combos this could be the start of a new, interesting full fledged card game system if you ask me!

chuchugeralt 2024-04-29 17:25

I also do like some good deck building games. The idea to use an amount of cards to summon your monster is a nice idea. I would have loved to have a goal besides summoning the monster. But we all had some time constraints! As others have mentioned, i would have loved to habe the ability to erase cards (in exchange for some mana perhaps?) so that I could plan my moves more. But overall, nice entry!

dekisenpaitm 2024-05-02 17:31

A very solid entry, I i personally think its an awesome base do develop further! I'd love to see the summoning mechanic get a bit more complex and as mentioned before erasing cards would be good to recover from mistakes :D Overall solid entry! <3