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Card Shop Kid's itch.io pageBootcamp Track
Journeyman
Devs finishing their first games
Reference Game
https://johnminer.itch.io/human-please
Bootcamp Discord username
Greg#7518
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Bootcamp Track
Devs finishing their first games
Reference Game
https://johnminer.itch.io/human-please
Bootcamp Discord username
Greg#7518
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
Comments
Man I loved this. Absolutely frickin cool idea, and has such a vast potential, I'm kind of jealous I didn't think of it :D Seriously though, the core concept and mechanics are superb, and the world has the potential to be something really quite original and very very cool. Only cos I loved it so much, I'm gonna give some constructive criticism on the art, for me it was the thing that failed to meet the standards set by the other parts of the game. For me, pixel art is a matter of scaling, and really the kind of size portraits and detail needed for the cut scenes needs a lot of work, and is easily the hardest thing to do with pixel art. Like, it's worth it, but it will take a long time and a lot of work to get a pixel art cutscene looking as good as it needs to be to support the rest of the game. You could consider digitising some photos or pixellating some vector art using whatever pixel art software you use, or even getting AI to do it just for the cutscene portraits and then keep the backgrounds in the style you have. The main game sprites are cool but I think they could be made just amazingly awesome with a bit of work, if you basically get a OG pokemon ash type sprites and use a MSX, NES or GBC palette. Like, I'm not sure if it's your thing, if your learning pixel art then sweet, within a few iterations you'll be getting there anyway, if it's a drag for you then just get on Fiver or something and get some made up, or even just find assets on Unity Store or wherever, or I'd be more than happy to do some 16 x 16 sprites for you, just cos I love this idea so much, no charge obvs :D But tbh it's all subjective stuff and maybe you much prefer this style, and that's totally cool but I would think about the cutscenes.
Aaaanyway, back to the game - man I LOVE the cards, they totally rock. Awesome art and characters. So cool ;) Game loop is really cool and fun, I'd defo like to see day/night cycle, character has to go home, speak to mum, maybe have some interactables and stuff - bit kind of Persona ish :) Also I think each time you unlock a character in the shop they should appear on the map in day time and you can interact and maybe play them at the card game. This might happen, I've only played for 25 mins so far and failed badly at first haha, but it hadn't happened so far. Also, I think you need more interesting and varied idle animations, that'd be cool I think. If you did bring other characters on map, they could even be doing things, like on swings or kicking a ball or playing the card game.
So yeah, absolutely frickin cool idea, really well executed in the time, and basically a brilliant effort and a triumph of the boot camp method haha :D
Hey Davy, thanks a lot for the kind words! :)
Yeah I totally get what you mean with the art. I'm no artist, but the cutscenes in particular I had to rush to get the game finished in time. :D I already had a plan to work on those over time and improve my skills by practicing with this game. The art I worked on the most would be the character profiles, as you might be able to tell. They're a bit better than the rest of the art. If you want to contribute with 16x16 sprites for the kid characters I'm on board! I love collaborating on a project with other game devs, so I welcome you with open arms.
The art on the cards is AI art, which I'm kind of on the fence about replacing it with my own art or not. On the one hand, I would like the whole game to have my own art in it, but on the other hand, it saves me a lot of time and since they're fictional creatures for a card game within my game, the art style doesn't necessarily have to match the rest of the game.
The rest of the ideas you brought up were already on my TODO list. :) Day/night cycles, other characters to interact with on the playground, etc. I plan on continuing this project for a while, adding more to it until I feel like it's ready for Steam (it would be my first Steam release)!
Awesome man, that's great you're carrying it on. I'd defo be up for the sprites, in fact I've started on a few already :D I'll get in touch on Discord and send you the ideas and see what you think. Tbh they are pure 80s/early90s GB style, but at first I'm using the Master System palette just cos it's simple and I love it. All that can be changed. Also, you may think they aren't that great. and that's fine, no pressure to use anything I make at all :) I've gone ahead and started doing a few buildings as well haha.
That's awesome you've already started to work on that other stuff, it is gonna be such a cool little game!
Tbh sometimes AI really nails it haha, a lot of time it's janky as shit and all that, but those cards are really quite cool. You could use them as a template for a paid artist if you get any budget behind the game, but really for what you are doing now, they seem to be so perfect it'd be kind of a shame not to use them :D
Excellent work man, like I say I'll get in touch on Discord and see what you think about any sprites I've made ;)
nice game. i could play this for a while for sure. 1 major issue and a few things to talk about though.
1) having a cut scene as soon as the game loads is not the best way to start your games. don't show the cutscene until the user presses new game. this will fix future situations such as if they want to play the game on a saved file then they have to skip the cutscene each time it loads just to get to the title menu so you can continue your journey.
2) on The title screen, initially every button is a different color and when i hover over the start new game it turns from green to a gray-ish which is counterintuitive. suggest that all the buttons (excluding exit) should be the same or a similar color and change only when you have one of them selected/hover over it so its easier to know what you are clicking on. if continue option is disabled make it a darker color than the rest (you did this but all the colors are different so it doesn't show its disabled easily)
3) settings menu had a drop down for resolution but no options in it otherwise it seemed to be setup rather well.
4) when other characters are talking, either highlight / bold their name or try to put their name on the first line and their conversation on the next line so its easier to read what they are saying without figuring out where the end of their name is and the conversation starts.
5) find a way to organize the cards by name or rarity. feel like my character has ADHD with the way his cards are in a random order and i have to keep scrolling around to try to find what people are looking for.
6) when you buy booster packs from the store, it should show all the cards you gained visually and highlight or label the ones that are new to your character. scrolling repeatedly up and down to see if anything new gets cumbersome fast.
7) not sure if this is intentional or not. you cant open shop once a day ends by just interacting with the shop again. you need to step away from the shop and move back towards it to get into the shop again.
8) keep track of which character said what. it gets boring reading the same lines over and over without being able to do anything else about it but wait for them to finish talking. especially if they are saying the same thing time after time.
9) selling hellhound card caused the game to crash with an error code. not sure if it was that specific card or just a random occurrence. (this took place after i won the game and went back in using the continue button, dont think that has anything to do with it but want to give you as much info as i can about the crash)
10) restricting the max booster packs to 99 at a time sucks. i had way more money than i could spend and had to go in and out of the store multiple times to spend it all.
i completed the game on day 7 with 98 card. the concept is very fun. wish there was more interactions in the playground than just the loan shark kid. maybe you could have a way to gather people to go against the bully or maybe you could actually battle other kids with your cards. something else to do besides buy booster packs, sell the cards and pay off the loan shark kid would be nice. I love the aspect of haggling for price, that's a great mechanic in the game. i did come up with what i think is a decent strategy for earning as much as you can per day. ill keep playing to verify if my thoughts are correct or not. i was able to continue my journey after i paid the loan shark kid but using the continue button brought me back to before i paid him. if you have time, suggest to add some type of environmental aspect to it such as some days are sunny or raining or foggy so it changes things up a little bit. maybe a mysterious trench coat purchaser comes on foggy days only or a lost elderly couple visits on rainy days only. just some food for thought. hope you continue to work on the game and make it even better. was enjoyable to play what i could before it crashed.
Thanks a lot for the detailed feedback Silence! I've been working on an update the last few days which should resolve some of the issues in your list already. :)
1) I wasn't aware that the cutscene at the beginning was in the way. I figured it would be a good way to remind the player of what the game is about, and they can skip it if they already know, kind of like a lot of games do it, but maybe I'm thinking of older games which used to do that before the title screen. I have to consider if it's still something newer games do. I'll think about that one.
2) I agree that the hover colors don't quite match, though I don't agree about the disabled button. I think because it's not "colorful" and also because it doesn't have a hover effect, the continue button should be fine the way it is. In fact, even if the player were to click on it, nothing happens, which should tell the user that it's not clickable. :) I'll add the hover colors of the title screen buttons to the TODO list though. It would be better to have matching hover colors to the starting button colors (something like a lighter version of each color).
3) Since you used a save file, I assume you downloaded the game. It's strange to me that the dropdown didn't give you any resolution options. I used a built-in Unity functionality to show the possible resolution options based on what's available, and it works for me, so I'm not entirely sure how I can go about fixing this. I can take a look at it though and see if there's a better solution.
4) This is a good one. I've been using this dialogue system for a couple games now and no one brought something like this up. I'll make sure to make some kind of change to the name to make it more obvious which part is spoken and which part is just information.
5) This one was resolved in my latest fixes, which I will upload later today. I automatically sort the cards in alphabetical order now, so it's a lot easier to find the card you need based on the name. In the future I'll consider adding some other filter options like rarity.
6) I'll add this to the TODO list. You're right, the only thing the player really cares about when opening new booster packs is if there are any new cards. Maybe I can sort them by new cards first, then older cards.
7) This is something that's on my list already. I plan on making it more obvious when it's recess time and when school's out, so it's more obvious to the player when the day is starting or is over.
8) Since you played to the end, I guess you actually got to the end of their dialogues. After you've interacted with a character long enough, eventually their lines loop, because they have to say something anyway. I can consider adding some kind of randomness to the dialogue at the end, but either way the player will just skip it if they already got to the end of a character's dialogue, so I'm not sure how much sense it makes. I think the character that has the most unique dialogue and the most to say is Gossip Kid. Apple and Orange kids also have connected dialogue based on what you gave the other kid, since they're rivals. Bully Kid also has his own unique mechanic based on the answers you give him. So I tried to give the characters some level of variety, but I could only get so far within the bootcamp's timeline.
9) Thanks a lot for the bug report! Yeah I also noticed some crashes sometimes, but I need to dig deeper to figure out what the issue is there. With your information I can maybe figure it out more easily.
10) I never figured anyone would ever continue playing after beating the game, so I just added an arbitrary cap to the purchases to avoid bugs, but maybe it's not necessary. :P I'll remove it.
Thanks again for all your feedback and for enjoying the game! I'll keep putting in the work to make it a lot more fun and engaging!
2) you are welcome to setup the title page any way you want. was just giving you stuff ive learned in the past
3) I did not download the game. the save file came after i beat the game. it auto saved somehow and gave me the option to continue when it pushed me back to the title screen. i was running it in chrome browser. as far as the resolution stuff, i was more or less trying to advise you to make the resolution option hidden when you export it to the webGL version (or whichever one you are using for web). if you can manage it, have the software figure out what version it is and auto hide then you don't have to remember to enable/disable it all the time. give this code a try. (i haven't tested it but i think it would work for you.)
// If the game is running in webGL then dont show resolutions. if(Application.platform == RuntimePlatform.WebGLPlayer;) { // ... disable the resolution options here }else{ // ... enable the resolution options here }8) if they have to have some kind of dialog then i don't think they need to say anything beyond a 1 line message "Hey, do you have this card?" or "I'm looking for this card, do you have it?" that way its much less clicking for the user. obviously the bully should have his full dialog because you have the options in there. possibly the card shark kid goes into a loop of "you owe me X and there are only Y days left, better start paying up!" you did a great job with the dialog aspects for the bootcamp timeframe, please don't take that the wrong way. I'm trying to give you feedback to expand beyond that time frame into the next level of your game.
let me know when you update it and I'll give the game a few more run throughs to see if i can determine what is causing the crash.
Thanks again for the feedback Silence! It's interesting that the game gives you a continue option in the web version. I was not expecting that, but I'm glad it works. Thanks a lot for the code example. I already added to my TODO list to add something like this to avoid having to think about which build I'm using, like you said.
It's definitely something I thought about to make the looped line shorter than the other ones, but I think I only did it with certain kids, and ended up giving other looped lines too much dialogue perhaps. I'll continue iterating on the dialogues and see if I can make it make more sense.
I'll let you know when there's a new version up.
There's a lot of meat to this game and it's easy to really sink time into this one. I also love the business sim part of it. Kudos for giving it an Earthbound-like vibe, down to getting in Apple and Orange kid lol! Hit a crash with my browser (Edge browser, HMTL issue), but I definitely want to play this one again.
Here are my thoughts on places of improvement:
- Allow resell of cards. You might have too many of a type and folks don't seem to be interested in. Might require some balancing overall, but it would be nice to walk over to Neon and be able to resell at a lower price some of your extra crud.
- Allow the option to offer up a different card to a customer if you don't have what they want.
- Be able to skip dialog with another button or something rather than trying to click.
- I really loved the opening cinematic and the art overall, there's some charm to it and I think it can be polished without destroying the style. I'd try to bring the AI card art to the same level.
- Be able to upgrade your store would be neat!
- We gotta find a way to deal with this bully, dude was cramping my style lol
- I like how the Haggle could go either way, so it's a risk. Could use some better feedback when you select it though.
- I agree with what someone mentioned below, it would be nice to add some more life to the playground by being able to see some of the other characters just hanging around.
- Hit a bug where I closed out a dialog too quickly while the dialog sound was still playing and it kept on going for a while but eventually stopped.
Great job on this game, was a lot of fun!
Thanks a lot for the feedback Raul! I'm glad you got the Earthbound easter egg. :) I'll take a look at the bugs...
I also had some ideas planned for your extra cards that you want to get rid of. I'll let you guys know when I have an update for the game and you can try it out!
I'll have to take a look at the dialogue skipping and continuing. It seems like click isn't the way to go, but rather pressing E.
It's interesting that you want to change the AI art for the "charming" art! :) But I guess that makes sense. It makes the whole game more cohesive. I was just trying to save time with the AI art anyway, so it might make sense to take my time and polish the art in general over time.
Upgrading your store was something I considered, but what kind of upgrades would you expect? I guess I could come back to this after I add more gameplay options, like reselling cards and other ideas I want to add to the game.
The bully has one correct answer out of the four every time he shows up. If you can get all the right answers eventually, he might stop cramping your style. ;)
The haggle was also mentioned by someone else. I'll definitely add some feedback to it. Some level of juiciness is missing there.
The playground was added specifically for that purpose. I wanted to add the characters in there and make it possible to talk to them and even do stuff for them like quests to get some rewards, like cards or money. I of course could've just left it out and make it possible to change to the Neon shop scene directly, but I thought I would add it in for the future.
With the store, I think that improving its look over time with different materials would be cool, it shows the progress you as the player have made over time as you become a more savvy card seller. The look would go from a rinky dinky scrap wood stall to something looking like a really nice kiosk or something along those lines.
You could even have stages of progress, where maybe paying the loan shark back is like a chapter 1 end, and then in the interim between chapters, you could upgrade your stall with new materials, items, and details.
Along those lines, what if you could "level up" after a certain time, and upon level up, you could choose a new upgrade that helps influence your haggle price, update your stall to "charm" the kids on the playground to offer better deals (or intimidate the bully, etc), or provide some other benefit. Now, this might be stretching your basic mechanics or gameplay too far, but I hope it's good food for thought!
Interesting concept, I can see how you could add depth to increase players strategy.
Here are my points, mind you I don't think I've played similar games in the past:
- It's very personal but character and cutscene art is really a turn off for me, and it's the first thing you see. The cards and game presentation look much better;
- I didn't see any mention about the drag mechanic in the controls, still figured it out eventually;
- Clicking with the mouse to leave a dialogue doesn't feel intuitive, pressing E again should be supported;
- The customer request didn't seem clear to me at first, I wasn't sure if I was looking at the selected card from the list on the left or why it was greyed out, you could probably have used more of the stand, things feel a little crowded;
- There's no feedback letting you know if the haggle was successful, you can only tell by looking at the amount of money you have;
- There doesn't seem to be a way to back down from haggling too many times with the same customer. I clicked on the last option without reading it looks like it was an automatic request reject?
- Not sure if I just got lucky but all my haggles went through successfully;
- It'd be nice if the cards were sorted alphabetically, also if the rarity would show without having to click on them, you already have a color code in place, seems fairly simple to reuse it on the list of cards;
- I have no idea what sort of balancing you have in place, but after the bully took 20 of my money, I was left with very little money, and it felt like I needed to 1) get the required cards and 2) haggle hard if I wanted to survive;
- The overall goal of the game seems to be a little contradicting, you're doing all this to help your mom pay rent, but the only visible goal is to repay the loan shark;
- It'd be nice to have a list of cards, seems like one of the appeal for games like this is to collect and discover all the available cards;
- Feels like a missed opportunity to not try to sell a non requested available card to a customer, based on card similarity, but maybe that'd have been too complex to implement within the timeframe;
- I find the notion of end of day a bit misleading as I was first expecting there was something else to do, go back home or a different activity, but instead you just need to reopen the stand immediately after the day has ended;
- Might be interesting to let players buy cards from other kids as well, they could come and go in the playground which would help it feel less empty than it is now, or maybe there's a bigger boy to help you against the bully, just give him the right card and get your money back;
- The point about interacting unique kids in the description feels misleading as I got several repeats very fast, including the dialogue. Seems like the emphasis of the proposition should be on something else, like being a savvy card trader.
Thank you very much for the extensive feedback! I really appreciate it! A lot of the issues you brought up I already had in mind to fix in the future (as you said, you only have so much time in this particular bootcamp), but there were a few ideas in there that I can definitely add to the list of improvements, like buying cards from kids. I thought of doing "quests" for them on the playground scene, or maybe trading cards with them, but I didn't think of just straight up buying the cards they have to offer.
Also, the ultimate goal of the game is to pay back the loan shark kid. There's a countdown for when you have to help your mom with the rent. In a way, the losing condition is not being able to help mom with the rent, while the win condition is paying back the loan. I admit, I didn't have enough time to add more information for the player, so I rushed it, but I'll get there eventually. :)
Also, I did the art myself with very little time, so I agree that it's not that great (I'm but a simple programmer). The art on the cards is AI art, so that's why it's leagues better than my own, but it has it's own style and of course strange little quirks and mistakes that AI tends to do. But quirks are ok for fictional creatures in the card game, so I was fine with it. But I wouldn't use AI for the characters. My current plan is to just iterate on the art myself until I get it to an acceptable level.
Great game. Ended up playing it for half an hour or so. It seems a bit easy for me, maybe because I like these kinds of games. But at the 13 days mark with around $150 or more, it crashes?
Oh, that's definitely not supposed to happen... Did you play the web version or the download version? I'm definitely glad you enjoyed the game. :) I'm going to continue working on this one until I feel it's ready for Steam.
I think you've got a really strong game here, I'm just pretty terrible at it as a player, second attempt and I'm still bankrupt! I'm liking the character design and the art plus the dialogue you've created has a really cohesive look and vibe to it, the descriptions on the cards are a really nice touch too and add loads to the immersion - that kind of attention to detail is awesome.
As a suggestion I'd say maybe add a few more hints in-menu for how to succeed at the haggling mechanics, or card trading system generally for those of us who really have no idea.
I'm going to have another go, maybe if I buy a few more of them I'll actually get lucky in my booster packs and have a card the kids want this time!
Thanks for the feedback! Yeah the main issue there is when I was working on the game I had only one card of every rarity as test cards, so a total of 5 cards. So as I tested it, it felt balanced to me. Then later on I realized that adding more cards would upset the balance, since you have less and less chance to have the cards the kids want, so I just raised the prices of the cards in total, so you get a lot more if you happen to sell a card.
But yeah in the long run I plan on changing how the kids ask for cards, and also adding more systems for selling cards in case no kid wants the ones you have.
Congrats on finishing your game and publishing it up. Card Shop Kid is full of personality. I really like the dialogue and each character feels like they have their own distinct personality, great job!
I found myself wanting some quality of life improvements, such as the ability to sort or search the card list for the right card, and click through dialogue quicker (only for the dialogue I had already read though).
I like the introduction of the haggle feature. This made it a bit more of a gamble whether to try to haggle or not.
I eventually got a crash, I should have screenshotted this for you but it was some html error and I was playing in the browser. Did you get the save feature working on the downloadable version?
I think you've got a really strong game here, with plenty of options for additional features and improvements.
Thanks for the feedback! Yes I got the saving working in the downloaded version.
I agree about the skipping dialogue option. I feel like some people who play just want to skip the dialogue in general and just want the gameplay, so making it somehow more skippable seems like a good idea. Also people told me to at least sort the cards alphabetically so they can find their cards a lot better. But yeah sorting functions could be nice as well.
Had to give it a play again. Great job, looking forward to seeing what football kid does in the future.
Thanks @Lawlessssor! I'll keep the group updated as I work further on the game. 👍