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A jam submission

Monster SolitaireView game page

Submitted by bpander — 51 minutes, 37 seconds before the deadline
Rated by 11 people so far
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Godot Version
4.4.beta3

Wildcards Used
Mimic

Game Description
Like if solitaire was a roguelite dungeon-crawler.

How does your game tie into the theme?
You defeat (erase) monsters to progress through the dungeon (I know, kind of a stretch lol 😅)

Source(s)
N/A

Discord Username(s)
delabrad

Participation Level (GWJ Only)
2

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Comments

Submitted (5 edits)

Ok, THIS is how you play:


Basics:

  • Ace is Low (1), Jack Queen King are 11,12,13. Joker is somewhere between 13 and 15. Probably 14.
  • Suit doesn't matter. Only colour does.

From FlyingStupid's comment below:

  • You Click on a card in your hand
  • THEN you click on a PART of a monster.

Monster Stats:

  • Monster HP is at the top (this stays the same until you kill it)
  • Monster's attack is at the bottom, and changes each round.
  • Multiple monsters will appear side-by-side as the levels go on.

Turn order:

  • Draw Phase (player and monsters)
  • Discards
  • Play select phase
  • Player does damage
  • Monsters do damage

Draw Phase:

  • Every round, you will draw up to your maximum hand size (4)

----------------------------

Damage you take:

Rules

  • The bottom card is monster's attack
  • Below the monster, is the number written out. This is the HP you are liable to lose from that mob this round.
  • If you do nothing, you lose the sum total of all the monster's attacks from your health pool in the top left (starts at 30 Easy, 20 Hard)
  • You can use cards of the SAME COLOUR as a monster's attack to block (or partial-block) the damage that round. To do that, you need to 
    • click on a card in your hand, 
    • then on the monster's bottom-most card.
  • If you KILL a monster, you take no damage from it.
  • Your HP transfers between encounters. Ie: if you take 2 damage from the first mob, you will be on 28 for the 2-mob round.
  • Once your HP hits 0 (or below), Game Over. Start a new run.

Visuals:

  • If you select a card from your hand, 
    • and it could be used to (partially) block a monster's attack that turn, 
    • then you'll see a grey shield appear next to the monster's attack value
  • If you're going to block a monster's attack entirely that turn, the shield turns white, and number disappears.

Example:

If a monster has 9 of hearts as an attack, you'll see a -9 Claw marker under it. To block damage:

  • click a bunch of red cards in your hand that add up to 9 or more
  • then click on the monster's attack card

OR

  • individually click on a red card in your hand
  • then click on monster's attack card
  • then keep repeating that until the damage indicator is 0-ed out

OR

  • Put a card on top of the monster to kill it (removes the attack number instead of 'zeroing')

THEN

  • Press Play Hand


----------

Killing monsters:

Rules:

  • In a single round, you need to equal or exceed the monster's HP (top-most card)
  • You have to use the OPPOSITE COLOUR of the monster's HP to damage it
  • To attack, you 
    • click a card in your hand, 
    • then the enemy's top-most card

Visuals:

  • If you click a card in your hand that will kill a monster, a grey sword will appear over its head
    • If a card would only 'damage' a monster, but not kill it, this indicator will not appear
    • If you select multiple cards, that together will kill a monster, this indicator will appear
  • If the monster will die that turn, the sword over its head turns white. And its attack damage number disappears.

Example: 

If the monster's HP card is 6 of hearts, you can 

  • click Jack of Clubs in your hand, 
  • then click on the monster's HP card, 
  • then "Play Hand"

-------------

Discards:

Sometimes you won't have the right cards. 

At this point, you can use one of your 'discard' chances.

To do so:

  • Click the 'use discard' button
  • (optionally) Click the cards you don't like in your hand
    • note: replacement cards are drawn in to your hand
  • (optionally) Click all the monster attacks you don't like
    • note: replacement monster attack cards are drawn on to the monster
    • also note: this could make it worse for you
  • Press the 'discard' button to discard and re-draw selected cards.

This does NOT use up your turn, or move a round forward.

Discard chances last for the whole run! Use them wisely.

Visuals:

  • Cards that can be discarded are 'highlighted'

=========

Strategy:

Basic:

  • If you have cards that can kill monsters, do so.
  • If you don't, try to block the damage instead
  • If you still don't, weight up whether it's worth taking the damage, or trying to discard some cards to make the situation more advantageous to yourself.

Advanced:

I won't tell you how to play the game, but here are some extra tricks

Sleight-of-hand:

If you don't want to keep cards from your hand, but don't want to waste discards

You can 

  • Play 

or 

  • just highlight at the end of the turn

cards you don't like. And they will be 'discarded' between turns 'for free'


Card Counting/Fixing:

From the dev's comments

  • Played cards go to the bottom of the deck

Meaning, you can not only -

have a good guess at which cards are about to come up

As well as strategizing about which cards you can/want/need to use.

But actually - 

you can know which cards will come up for sure after a point (in theory. I'm not good enough for this)

========================


In closing:

I'm frankly blown away by the polish on this game, once you figure it out.

If I could improve one thing - it would be to somehow indicate to the player that once they've clicked a card, they also need to click on a monster part to activate it.
Maybe arrows indicating action, or force the player to "drag" the cards instead?

Maybe a confirmation window for "are you sure you want to end the turn without playing?", or the 'end turn' button being a 'skip turn' button if there are no attacks or defences selected?

I'm just spitballing

Submitted(+1)

Really cool idea and really really great visuals. Took me a bit to internalise the rules and apparently couldn’t wrap my head around what cards can block in what situations (I was confident and wrong so many times hahah). Even still the symbols when I can attack or block helped a tonne. A really fun puzzle to figure out best execution order. I may have just been bad at keeping track but I assume the deck resets after each battle?

Could be fun to pull from trick taking games and take advantage of fuzzy card counting, having some idea what’s left in the deck based on what you’ve played (obviously perfect math would make this a little insufferable so probably would need some light randomiser). Just would like to have consequences for what cards I play, Maybe I take the hit here cause I really don’t want to use all of my kings early sort of thing. Also would force players to try and only ever spend the exact number they need no more.

Really fun concept would love to see what this could be expanded into!

Developer(+1)

Great feedback! Thank you so much!

Regarding "the deck resets after each battle?", the short version is it doesn't. Played cards go to the bottom of the deck, and new cards are drawn from the top. I DEFINITELY should've telegraphed that better (or at all). I wanted to add animations so you could see what each card did and where it went, but I had to cut that for time.

That's an interesting idea about trick-taking. I hadn't considered that. I had an inkling the player should have more control over what gets put into play, but I couldn't think of an elegant way to do it. It's nice to have that assumption validated, and that sounds like a good thread for me to pull on. It might also work well with some other risk/reward stuff I wanted to implement but didn't get around to.

Thank you again!

Submitted(+1)

It is defenetly a fun game to play!
Even though i couldn't figure out the exact rules for the life of me ^^"

Submitted(+1)

I'm in love with the art and vibe. The style is incredible. Controls feel good too. I just couldn't quite figure out the rules!

Submitted(+1)

Cool game! I found it a little difficult to figure out how to play, but it seem really fleshed out and its a pretty unqiue idea. Nice work!

Submitted(+2)

I liked this. It was a fun puzzle to figure out how to survive. I took me a little while to figure out how to play. I didn't realize I needed to select my cards and then click where I wanted them to go. It also wasn't clear to me at first if I would still take damage from an enemy that I would defeat in that hand if I didn't also block. I think I made it to the end (don't want to give anything away) and that fight was hard. I didn't not make it. This is something I'd play again. Especially if you have a chance to add more "Juice" which is the only think I think you were lacking

Developer

This is great feedback! Thank you so much!