Skip to main content

Indie game storeFree gamesFun gamesHorror games
Game developmentAssetsComics
SalesBundles
Jobs
TagsGame Engines
A jam submission

Card Shop KidView game page

Run a TCG shop on a playground with unique kids as customers!
Submitted by Greg — 15 days, 14 hours before the deadline
Add to collection

Play game

Card Shop Kid's itch.io page

Bootcamp Track

Journeyman

Devs finishing their first games

Reference Game
https://johnminer.itch.io/human-please

Bootcamp Discord username
Greg#7518

Leave a comment

Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.

Comments

Submitted

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.

Developer

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.

Submitted

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? 

Developer

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.

Submitted (1 edit)

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!

Developer (1 edit) (+1)

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.

Submitted(+2)

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.

Developer(+1)

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.

Submitted(+1)

Had to give it a play again. Great job, looking forward to seeing what football kid does in the future.

Developer(+1)

Thanks @Lawlessssor! I'll keep the group updated as I work further on the game. 👍