trobboj 2024-04-16 07:22
Loved all the card graphics. I did struggle a bit without the rules but figured out most of it as I went. I did get overwhelmed by cultists though :(
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD55 → Forest of Madness
By negator2vc, spyranteros, fabianfucci and Dimi Kaye
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 999 | 3.18 | 38 | |
| Fun | 952 | 3.06 | 38 | |
| Innovation | 787 | 3.13 | 38 | |
| Theme | 973 | 3.11 | 38 | |
| Graphics | 946 | 3.06 | 38 | |
| Audio | 692 | 2.88 | 37 | |
| Humor | 662 | 2.89 | 36 | |
| Mood | 1030 | 3.01 | 38 |
Loved all the card graphics. I did struggle a bit without the rules but figured out most of it as I went. I did get overwhelmed by cultists though :(
@trobboj Thank you for playing our game! Unfortunately bugs prevented the ingame rules to appear. These bugs will be fixed asap. Rules explanations are important for games like ours. You need to defeat exploration cards [top middle] that will give you better cards for your deck (in the beginning you can try buying a few cheap adv.explore card - middle right - to boost your explore "production"). These better cards are putted in your discard pile and shuffled in your deck when you need to draw cards. Some exploration cards also give you other benefits like healing (lake) which you need to survive. Exploring the location (aka current mission) also reveal new exploration cards for you to choose. Since enemies put in your deck dead cards like wound cards when for ex. you kill one of them you can use the rest button and skip a turn to remove wound cards that you have in your hand permanently from your deck.
Card games seem so difficult but I love what you did with this one :) Thanks for the rules I will try it again
EDIT: Overwhelmed by cultists again haha but really like this one
Difficult, but I think I got the hang of it. The art style really shines, especially the main menu image.
@farmerhoggit Thank you! Glad you like it! Actually all the main menu art is supposed to be for the cards (including elements like tree & village gate that we didn't have time to add them in the location cards at least not in the jam version) We simply reused the card art for a nice main menu! Have you managed to finish the game? Are you familiar with deckbuilders (especially physical ones)? I will push an update later that will fix the tooltips & ingame help (they don't appear in the current version due to bugs!)
I like the idea of a digital version of Arkham Horror TCG, but I would like to see some original mechanics added to this. Keep working on it!
Didn't get the rules(( I thought it is like hearthstone)
Good game. I liked the art a lot. I felt it too dense, and would prefer the explanation to be more dynamic, but once again, nice entry!
Wow I thought this was really good, probably the best idea I've seen so far! I've never played a story based deck builder before, I feel I now need to check out if there are any released game in the genre :)
I didn't like the overload of rules when starting the game. Maybe it could have been eased in a little bit more? I felt, fuck it, I'll just learn as I go after the first or second prompt. I think that the help button is great though! It's really nice to be able to skim through the rules when you feel you understand 90% of it but are wondering over some detail.
I think it was unfortunate to put the player max health at 80 - I kept thinking the healing card was broken or that it was supposed to go in my deck, maybe a health bar like in the old pokemon games (where you have both the number and a bar) could be a good idea. Or just 69hp -> 69hp/80hp.
If I understood it correctly the wound card was added upon defeating an enemy, and that felt a wrong to me - maybe the attack could do both dmg and add the card? Or maybe it could be called it "cursed" (or whatever) instead and some enemies could add "curse" cards as their attack while some could do damage (if both would be to hard/annoying for the player).
Also if you spam play the card that has "draw one card" on it, I'm pretty sure you can bug it and draw multiple card. I think that's minor though, I noticed it an chose not to abuse it, but I really don't feel that matter in a game jam game.
All that said, well done! I really enjoyed the game! And Arkham is safe once more, I disrupted the summoning!
@bumblebee-studios @yule4ka @braulio-jg Thanks you for playing our game!
@bumblebee-studios actually the game is inspired by Lord of the Rings TCG. The original design had many more cards with different mechanics but there is only so much you can put in a weekend jam entry ;-)
@yule4ka The game is a deckbuilding game where you build your deck during the game instead of using a prebuilt one. It's inspired by physical deckbuilding games where the player usually play their whole hand each turn gaining resources that can be used to explore and acquire better cards (from the cards on top middle), defeat enemies (middle), complete his/her mission (top right).
@braulio-jg True the explanation would have been better if it was more dynamic. Maybe in a form of a tutorial location explaining the mechanics?
Loved the complexity of the mechanics, it's awesome for a jam game! I feel like the theme is well used and the gameplay is fun:) Would love to see an extended version of this Great game, gg
Hey
I really like the idea of combining exploration with card games, and I also enjoyed the music and your drawing style. I saw the "win the game" card but wasn't able to gather enough exploration points to acquire it. 😞
I wish there had been more options and decisions to make during gameplay. Since the hand, resources, and damage aren't persistent to the next turn, it felt like my only choices were whether to play or rest. When I decided to play, I could use all my cards and then either kill or explore the most expensive card I could afford.
Great entry overall, I had a fun time playing it!
@bjornstenlund Thanks you for playing our game and for your excellent feedback!! Will check those bugs and will post an update asap.
Soo true about the absence of story based deckbuilders. In fact that the main reason of our entry. Some has to make the start ;-)
The overload of rules was an unfortunate side-effect of the jam (no time for a proper tutorial that these type of games really need). The 80 life are needed to help (at least for the jam entry) with bad draw especially in the exploration cards. And alternative that we tested but didn't have time to implement was to stack a little some of the game decks (except the player deck of course!).
The wound cards are inspired by the physical deckbuilders. Adding too much wound cards (for ex. during enemy attack instead of enemy death) could easily fill the player deck with useless cards forcing the player to rest every other run just to be able to play something. Beside some enemies also ambush the player and give the player wounds when the enter play, in addition of those upon death. Finally in the original design Madness (the other "wound" card type) was supposed to boost some player cards like the Necronomicon when drawn together giving the player extra tactics. Unfortunately cards like those were cut from this jam but we will be certain to use them in the future.
pleasant visaul style, something reminiscent of munchkin, but the way the game works was really hard to figure out
@gabriel-bissonnette @obittner @heretic Thanks you for playing our game!
@obittner Thisis the main mechanics of physical deckbuilders. Unfortunately the mechanics where the player much choose carefully the order of the cards played was left out due to bugs. Cards that produced different effects depending on when you played them really will have added a new level of strategy to the 'just play you hand'. The irony this were completely designed on physical cards that were used for testing the mechanics.
@heretic munchkin was exactly the style we were going for (big fan of the game art style here). What part of the game did you find difficult? I can answer any questions you have here (if you want to try again) and even include some of those answers in the ingame help that could help other gamers in the future.
@negator2vc /negator2vc
maybe it makes sense to make a training level, so to speak a mode for "lobotomites":)
@heretic there was supposed to be a training level (the village). In fact the village gate art that was only used in the main menu in the submitted version was going to be the card art of this location (training level).
The graphics are pretty. The first stage is sooo hard, but I really liked that!
@yopin Thank you for playing our game!
I'm not a big fan of card games so it was more difficult for me to play XD. It could be improved by giving more visual aids instead of having so much text. I really liked the designs of the characters and the drawings, they give a very interesting humorous touch. Well done!
@emaigualmc2-art Thank you for playing our game!
I loved this game. I've never played a story based card game before so this was a pleasant experience.
@cainetinyarms Thank you for playing our game! That exactly the reason we wanted to make one. All other card game of this genre focused only on the card mechanics and the roguelike element avoiding completely any narrative element! We wanted to change that and it looks like people love the combination of card game mechanics with story.
Fun and addicting game. I did three attemps at beating the game, but Shaggoth is too overpowered. Please nerf. Music is good. Grats!
@andriybyelikov Thank you for playing our game and it's Shoggoth! ;-) ;-) Did you gain a few good attacks cards in the first location or did you rush to the second location? You need to build up your deck in the first location gaining a few good attack cards like shotgun, magic dagger. We plan to push an update this weekend stacking a little the enemies deck so any Shoggoth don't appear the moment you step in the Old Woods location but later giving you extract time to build further your deck.
Fun game! There were a few typos in the descriptions (not a big deal, these things are easily fixed and easily missed when working on a quick project). I liked the art and sound design of the game. I really appreciated that there was a help button to go back and reread the rules. I'm not super experienced in card games, but I started to get the hang of this one after a while. I think it's a pretty interesting concept where you build your own deck over time, and having the WOUND card made things interesting. Nice job!
@pres2300 Thank you for playing our game!
This is one of those games that I opened, played a bit (cultist swarm ahhh!), lost the tab, then played some more when I found the tab, and ended up losing maybe 30-45 minutes to? I was determined to beat it, and I did! There's a fair bit of strategy and complexity involved, especially for a jam game, which made it really enjoyable, even as Shoggoth was driving me mad. The artwork is great; I'm not an artist, so I can't really articulate what I liked, other than to say that it has style. I did have a hard time with the background music, however. I thought maybe my browser was blocking it, so I refreshed a few times, but it was just really quiet compared to the sound effects. I would have loved to be able to hear that better without cranking my volume up so high, as that meant the sound effects were a bit too loud.
Great game overall, though. Anything that I sink so much time into playing deserves top marks there!
I didn't know how to play at the very beginning, I figured it out no later. Good job and nice visual!
@fionnabhair @thegreatcarpet Thank you for playing our game. @fionnabhair Sorry to hear you had trouble with the music. Have you tried the downloaded version (problem with audio in web versions of games are not uncommon. In my tests before and after I saw your post the web version music sounded both in firefox & chrome. I uploaded a new version. If you have the time can you check if the music sound better now? @thegreatcarpet This type of game really need a proper turotial in addition to ingame help & tooltips. Current version of the engine (code is a little messy) prevent me from adding a tutorial for now. Glad to hear you found out how to play the game.
@negator2vc I tried it out again in Firefox and Chrome, I think it's a bit better but the difference in volume between the effects and the main background music still seems significant, at least to my ears. It's not bad if I play on my phone, though! (but the graphics aren't as nice, alas.) I may also be an outlier, as I do tend to listen to things at a lower volume than other people might. Also, yeah, audio problems with web versions might definitely be a factor; I was fighting with that a lot with my own game. I use a Mac, though, so I can't test out the downloaded version.
Aaaaand now I'm sucked into this game again! 😆
@fionnabhair Thanks you for the feedback. I will make a mac export within the next hour (I don't usually do since I don't have mac to test it). Obviously it will be untested. UNTESTED macOS export uploaded on itchio page!
Great effort! For the most part, the cards and UI had a great graphical style and the audio was very fitting too.
One thing I do need to address: this formula needs a form of card removal. Look at Slay the Spire or Star Realms, or at Dominion in the tabletop space - [Dominion's Chapel card](https://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Chapel) is widely regarded as one of the strongest cards in the game: it shreds up to 4 cards from your hand. To be able to create effective hands, you need to not only add to the mess, but prune it too. Maybe have the Madness cards just take up space, but have the Wounds deal one additional damage to you, then have Painkillers as rewards from exploration (like the lakes) removing X Wounds from your deck...
@pebkac Thank you for playing our game and your feedback (really like some of your suggestions)! There were in fact several cards (both player and exploration cards) designed in our physical prototype that did exactly that (allow he player to remove cards from hand and/or discard to help improve the deck). Unfortunately we didn't have the time to add them in the game (at least not in the jam version). It's way easier to design cards on paper that to implement them in digital format ;-) We plan to add them post jam and also add other type of cards we left out like for ex. cards that make use of madness cards (like for ex. the famous necronomicon that give way better attack if you also draw 1 or more madness).
@negator2vc I'm a bit of a cards designer too, and for physical prototyping (and easy importing into Tabletop Sim.) I've recently started using [Dextrous](https://www.dextrous.com.au/) - go check them out!
Nice game, love the art style, and sound effects are fun! I almost won, but lost HP in the end :')
I want to get into this game but I don't understand, how am I to stack 3 attacks in order to kill a cultist when I lose all attacks afer a turn?
I fell into a rabbit hole of playing this game for waay longer than I intended! So fun! Great job & cool idea.
@syudzius @kr4ft3r @hilary-fischer Thank you for playing our game!
@syudzius have you used the lake exploration cards? they heal for 20 hp and if not wasted (for ex. explore then when you have lost less than 20 hp) can really help.
@kr4ft3r Each turn you play cards from your hand to gain resources (attack, explore) and use these resources (by clicking on cards on the "table") to automatically spend them (if you have enough to meet the requirements of the card). The initial deck is very light on cards that provide attack (3 out of 10 initial cards). The whole mechanics along with the losing of resources gained at the end of turn is part of the core mechanics of deckbuilding games like our game.
You cannot beat the game with just the original deck. You have to improve it first. So in the first few turns you need to buy a few adv.explore card (middle right) to further boost your explore "production" (your deck start with 7 cards that give explore) and start beating some of the exploration cards (top middle). These cards provide you with cards with good cards that give good amount of attack resources & other effect (for ex. allowing you to draw additional cards in the same turn).
You can find more exploration cards by "exploring" the current location (top right). In fact this is also how you beat the game. When you "explore" the location enough the objective exploration card appears and when beaten you advance to next location or win the game (depend of the objective exploration card).
Fun little card game. Love the deckbuilding aspect, and the clean artwork. Well done!
@digital-bacon thank you for playing our game!
@negator2vc finally got a chance to test out that Mac port. I ran into an issue in that it wouldn't launch, the error message, "ForestofMadness is damaged and can't be opened. You should move it to the Trash." Apparently this is because Apple is adding an extended attribute to the file, com.apple.quarantine. I found a solution [here](https://discussions.apple.com/thread/253714860?sortBy=best), tested it out on my own machine, and then ~~played~~ *debugged* for a few rounds, with no problems whatsoever (aside from all the cultists).
I don't know if there is a way to port the game in such a way that this doesn't happen, especially if you can't test it yourself, but maybe add a help file to the zip with instructions on removing the attribute?
@fionnabhair thank you very much for the macOS port info! Glad to see that the game is working on macOS after you used the solution you found. I will add the info on the game page itself (I cannot directly update the macOS zip file Godot produce since this may reset permitions on the files included). Again thank you very much!
Very fun spin on the theme, really liked your implementation of the deckbuilding mechanic. I played for quite some time, each time getting a little further, which felt quite rewarding. Well done!
@hare-software Thank you for playing our game!
The card designs are amazing. Love it.
The balance seemed a bit off at first, as with your starter deck you are very unlikely to be able to kill anyone or explore, just trade in for advanced exploration, which helps a bit with exploration but makes killing even harder, and then when you can kill people, they just get replaced and you build up bad cards. But then it dawned on me that the strategy is to leave cultists alone until there's no room for more of them, and just keep exploring. The balance seemed correct after that realization. The game was still hard and still had meaningful decisions to make, but it was beatable.
Minor UI quibbles:
- The tooltip appearing to the right of the card made it appear that it was for the card to the right of it and there was a cursor alignment problem. Maybe above / below the cards would be better based on their position, and with a little triangle like a speech bubble pointing to the card it's about?
- Maybe add something to indicate that max health is 80, so people don't waste heals?
- There didn't seem to be any downside to collecting all the cards if you planned to collect any of them, and especially since the cards recenter after every click, a "collect all" button would have been a timesaver. There are subtleties to work out around the cards that draw more cards, but I think you can just add those to the hand and people can click again, and if you expand on it and add cards with penalties, people can manually click instead of using the button.
- I didn't know reaching a new level heals you and removes the existing exploration cards, and didn't see that in the instructions, and it would have helped.
This is honestly one of my favorite entries this LD, and I would love it as a printable card game too. Good work!
@monika Thank you for playing our game and for your Awesome feedback! Unlike other deckbuilding games the main objective of our game (as the player find out) is exploring not killing stuff unless you need to (enemies are obstacles not objectives and also there are drawbacks for killing them like the wound cards). This was inspired by the adventure card game genre (which was also the inspiration the narrative/campaign element unlike most other deckbuilding games where you just try to reach the boss).
Of course they are plenty of things that could have been better explained to the player (as you pointed out - thank you for that). Especially in the UI like the stuff about the tooltips, player stats, the healing between locations.
The reason for the absence of a "play all cards" button was that the original design contained cards that produce different effects depending on the order the cards were played (a main mechanics of physical deckbuilders that were the inspiration of our game' deckbuilding part). A "play all cards" button needed more thought due to this.
The plan is to make fixes, implement changes based of player feedback, add cards left out of the jam version in a post jam version. Also reuse the engine in the future in similar games.
Since physical cards were used to test the design (way easier than implementing the mechanics in an engine) a printable card game is definitively something very much possible.
Huge props for experimenting with a such a complex mechanic during the jam! I had to constantly make meaningful decisions during my playthrough, and the difficulty felt just right for me.
What is the reason enemies shuffle "wound" cards to your deck? If that's to create choice (should I kill the enemy or not?), it's mostly nonexistent, because you die quickly if you don't kill them. But maybe the mechanic could work if there were ways to get rid of cards in your deck (or these "wound" cards specifically).
Overall, I'm looking forward to the expanded version of this! Ways to draw specific cards from your deck, synergies and cool combos will definitely add a lot of fun and depth to the game.
@nick-blackwood Thank you for playing our game! You don't have to kill all the enemies. Just kill enough of them so you can survive until you can explore the current location and the objective exploration card (forest path for 1st location, ritual site for the 2nd location). Enemies are just obstacles for the player not the objective unlike most other deckbuilding games. Also there are exploration cards (top middle) like the "Lake", that you can find by exploring the current location (top right), which can heal you (one time effect) if you spend enough explore resources on them.
You can get rid of wound cards by resting (using rest button) which will skip your current turn and remove all wounds you have in hand from your deck. In fact this is after a while a choice for the player. Does he play a weak hand or does he rest to remove wounds in hand from his deck. This part should have being better explained with a tutorial something that this type of game really need.
There will be a expanded version of both this game and most importantly this card game engine. There were plenty of cards that were designed but never got time to implement them in the jam entry. Cards that are very important for this style of deckbuilding like player cards that allow the player to remove other weaker cards in his deck, cards that have synergies with other player cards or even with wounds & madness cards. In fact that was the main reason for the madness cards that in the jam entry end up being just wound cards with another name.
The cultist art seems to be inspired by oldschool cartoon network? I dig the goofiness.
I tried 3 times to get to the second location and I just couldn't survive against the cultists. They spawn way too quickly to try and keep up with damage. I get that maybe I'm supposed to just 'run' to the next location with my explore cards, but damn. Between wound cards and barely ever being able to draw 3 attack per turn, I just couldn't clear the cultists to stop or slow the DPS they did.
I think you have a really interesting concept on your hands. The deckbuilder as an adventure game where exploring is a key mechanic is really neat. I'm a big fan of games like Hearthstone, Magic, and Slay the Spire, so I see potential in your project, but the balancing feels brutal for the first round. Sure, up the difficulty as the game goes on but for players trying to learn all of your mechanics, fending off that many cultists was too overwhelming.
The music and sfx help set the mood, but a little background art, card art, and card animation would definitely help flesh this out further. Solid job developing complex mechanics, just wish the onboarding was a little smoother!
@deadjolly Thank you for playing our game! It's important that if you get wound cards in your hand (and you cannot do much with the rest of your cards this turn) to use the rest button to remove them completely from your deck. You can only rest if you didn't play any cards this turn. The rest of your non wounds cards are discarded and your turn ends. This will help you to always (or almost always) draw the full 5 cards giving you a better chance to do stuff in future turns. There are exploration cards like the 'Lake' that give you acces to healing and can provide you with the take you need to build up your deck. I hope a proper tutorial that is already in progress for the post jam version to help players better understand the mechanics and to also provide them with tips that are especially important at the beginning.
As for the mix of deckbuilder and adventure elements the reason you described is the main reason of creating this game style. While I love all those games you described and many other like them, all of them use combat as the main mechanics. You have to defeat an opponent to win (either another player or some boss enemy). I wanted to try something different where the enemies are obstacles only and not the main objective. Judging by the comments on this very page there is interest for this style.
I plan to not only improve the mechanics of the current game, based on the feedback received, but also used the improved mechanics on future games including ones using different theme (scifi, fantasy, etc...).
@negator2vc Ah, I thought rest was used for healing purposes, didn't realize it would discard the wounds. Thanks for the explanation. I agree about using cards to explore, that's a pretty unique mechanic! Good luck with your future project(s)!
Good game, the sprites are amazing, really love a good card game
@josang1567 Thank you for playing our game!