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A jam submission

CardistryView game page

Submitted by AveragePerson22 — 3 hours, 6 minutes before the deadline
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Cardistry's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Originality#1673.2804.400
Gameplay#1702.8323.800
Art#2232.6833.600
Black and White#2233.7275.000
Overall#2452.6343.533
Music#2701.6402.200
Theme#3201.6402.200

Ranked from 5 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

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Comments

Submitted

The sprite you used for the cover image of the game, the character with the cape, I was hoping to see that in the game! Too bad! Couldn't figure out how the "loop" theme was worked into the game, but maybe I didn't progress far enough. I think the difficulty starts out quite high - I wasn't really given much opportunity to learn the bullet patterns or how it feels to move around and use the cards. If you reduce the frequency that the bullets are coming out for an initial stage or two, then speed it up to make it more challenging, I think I could have gotten better and played longer. Still, it's an original combination of mechanics to me, and it has potential to be a great game!

Developer(+1)

I wanted to draw a character but I barely had time to do the basic game stuff after I finally had an idea. Thanks for the suggestion, I´m thinking of bettering the game so I´ll take your feedback into account.

Submitted(+1)

Now this ... is really cool. Makeitafullgamewithanandroidport.

Huh...what? Nothing.

But for real, the art and concept and ... EVERYTHING is so nice. Good work. Imagine if you had the idea earlier. It would have been a full blown game. Maybe you can work on it post jam?

Developer(+1)

Probably will keep working on it, don´t know about adapting to android tho, I´ll consider it. Thanks for the feedback!

Submitted(+1)

This is very impressive for a game done in one day! The art is great. Some thoughts I had about the mechanics:

  • Seems like the 3 cost lightning strike was the most efficient in terms of damage/cost. The 5 cost assassin's dagger didn't impress much. 
  • There's an exploit where when you're out of energy you can still draw as many cards as you like.
  • Shields were really important!
  • The energy crystals felt unpredictable and I didn't feel like the player could plan ahead with them. So it made the game feel a bit more luck based than it should.

If you're thinking of expanding this game I think a tutorial stage at the beginning would help a lot, since I had to do a lot of trial and error to understand what I could do.

Developer

I felt like the daggers had a better cost/damage efficiency but I really didn´t do the math haha. I didn´t know about that bug, I´ll have a go at fixing it. I´m thinking of adding deck building and more specific cards for specific enemies/situations, so I hope that´ll tilt it a bit more to skill than luck so it balances out. Thanks for your thoughts!

Submitted(+1)

Hi, I really like the concept of your game! I liked the mana refill mechanic because it had the effect of tying the card game aspect together with the 2D bullet hell part of the game. Also think the card drawing system is cool and could be something that creates really fun situational battles that make replaying the game super fun.

As for feedback, I guess these suggestions aren't really about what could have been done differently, since the time span of the game jam IS super tight, but maybe rather about what could be added in the future? 

What I sort of felt was that which card I chose in the moment didn't really matter all that much. Shield gives me shield, missile launches missile, etc, but really I could spam every card while drawing new ones and just focus on grabbing the mana and they'd all have a loosely positive effect. Maybe the boss might have certain phases where it makes it more advantageous to use one card type over the other? Maybe there are elemental types and respective elemental defenses? Maybe the boss gets an armor HP shield sometimes which could be shredded by a certain attack type? As omalley suggested, a time stop card would be sick for targeting hard bullet hell phases too. While playing a game like this I would expect there to be a lot of moments where I go "damn I wish I had X card type right now but I just used it!"

I guess another thing is that in terms of where my attention is going it's kind of hard to think of dodging the attacks and also choosing which card to use at the same time, and it feels like I'm being mentally pulled away from either one in order to do the other. I suppose an ideal polished version (again, maybe not in the scope of this jam) would either use something like a hotkey system, or a time slow system while choosing, so that there's less "mental CPU overhead" in terms of the flow of dodge -> attack with cards -> collect mana. Perhaps the switch between choosing -> fighting -> choosing is more explicit? As in, maybe when you choose, the boss doesn't attack, and you get infinite time, and after you confirm your cards, there's a battle phase that lasts for a bit where you fully see the effect of your cards? These are just some ramblings that might totally not work with whatever other systems you decide to build on top though lol

Lol sorry, I meant to just take a minute to leave a few short thoughts but it ended up stretching out super super long, it might sound sort of like a rant. But honestly though, I don't usually leave comments or suggestions unless it makes me excited for what a finished version of the game might look like, and I think there's potential in this game that I was drawn to. I've played other games in the jam and a lot of them have polish and "tight controls" and "sick puzzle mechanics" and whatnot but it doesn't seem like it would be something I'd like to play for more than ten minutes at a time. While this game is still sort of bare bones, it's really interesting to me that it played to me like the kind of game that I could daydream about during the day and come up with ability ideas and boss phases and mechanics and stuff for, and honestly I think game ideas that sort of creatively occupy the game like that are actually good ideas.

Developer(+1)

I can´t thank you enough for all this feedback! Even though I often get carried away with the next project, this is one I am almost sure I´m coming back to, soon. You are right, each card is mostly the same, only the animation, cost and damage change for now. Your suggestion of making specific cards for specific situations/enemies is really good, and goes along well with deckbuilding, as you´ll have to build the right deck for each battle. About having no time to choose what card to play I will probably either use your time slow suggestion (even though I have to make it so it can´t be abused to be in timeslow the whoe game) or have a 10 sec. timer of timeslow or total time stop before each boss attack. Thanks for that one as well, really good idea! 
Your comment didn´t feel to me like a rant at all, I really appreciate all the feedback and suggestions, hope I´ll get to all this soon enough so it´s a more interesting and lasting game.

Submitted(+2)

I really liked it, one of the most fun ideas in this jam. I'm sure programming this was a lot of effort, well done! With some expansion of content (enemies, cards, deckbuilding etc) I could easily see myself playing this game for a few hours.

Some suggestions:

I had some lag/timestop when I clicked on a card, not sure if this is intentional but it disrupted the flow of the game. Might be caused by me running the game in linux? Not sure.

Some cards which affect the player/enemy in some way that isn't +/- HP would add a lot I think. For example a card which makes you faster, or a card that slows down enemy bullets, etc.

Some type of border or line that clearly shows where you can move would help, dividing the screen into "card area" and "move area".

Developer

Thanks! I do intend to update this game a little, so if I don´t get carried away with some new project I´ll probably cover a lot of your suggestions. Yea, I think this game´s biggest fault is content, I got a creative block and so had little time to do it.  Deckbuilding and more cards are guaranteed for the future, as well as more bosses or enemies. The timestop when playing a card is intentional, but I might take it off later. Your suggestions on effect cards are great! I thought about a freezing or time slowing card, but really didn´t have the time. Glad you enjoyed the game!