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Kershuffle's itch.io pageJudge feedback
Judge feedback is anonymous.
- The game plays well in the browser, a little heavy on the CPU but that's fine. The GDD is very detailed and explains a lot about the game. It is a great base for requirements to develop the game and its very well written. The card selection feels good, but the meaning behind the numbers are not as clear, having like numbers pop up during combat to see why a certain card beats another card would make it clearer to the player. Adding poker mechanics like in Balatro would make the selection of cards a bit easier as well, so like stacking a certain suit with the same level would form a squad or platoon to have higher chances to beat the other hand would give another tactics aspect to the game. The theme of the jam got a bit missed, as you wrote yourself "The player acts as a General that must decide their battle strategy." the general is normally not the weapon executing the action, so the player is leading the weapons into battle. Hopefully we will see more of the game in the future, keep it up.
Link to your Game Design Doc on Google Drive.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VgcY6It-3tJuaYOGCZQADFlE1XVqjhIJ0Woau5VpC70/edit?usp=sharing
Have you checked that your GDD is publicly accessible ?
Yes
Is your game set to public on itch.io so we can see it?
Yes
Summarise your game!
Kershuffle is a quick card game for 1-2 players where you take on the role of a General and are tasked with winning the war! You are provided units which have strengths and weaknesses but be careful - losing units will be destroyed. Organize your units, maximize your points, minimize your losses, and win the most battles to win the war!
Please explain how your game fits the theme:
Cards have suits which are based on weapons and certain weapons perform better or worse against others. As the player you must select and organize the weapons to be used during the round. Each match can be considered a “war” and each round can be considered a “battle” with each card being a single “unit”. The player acts as a General that must decide their battle strategy. As each battle is executed each unit has a chance to win or lose. Losing units are destroyed and removed from the war. Although the General may not be fighting themselves, they are the ones calling the shots and are just as much of a weapon as the units themselves.
Is there anything you'd like the judges to pay particular attention to?
Gameplay
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Comments
Cool art and animations , gameplay feels like rock paper scissors , needs to be less random to provide a layer of strategy , music and se were on point with a card game , my first impression was this look exactly like balatro
Thanks for playing! Rock paper scissors is the main inspiration for the gameplay and the look was based off Balatro :)
Look, feel, sound design and music, are extremely polished, really surprising at first glance looks like a finished game, gives a really strong first impression for a game jam game. Gameplay wise, i was a little confused at the start, but kind of got it after the first "PLAY". I kind of felt like i was guessing while selecting the cards, as there was not enough information for me to plan.
By itself is kind of hard to understand how the "structure" of the game works. After reading the explanation, it is more clear, and makes me even more curious in how a more complete/bigger version of this game would be. Its the kind of game i would love to make but i would not even know where to start XD.
Of course i didn't read anything before i play, because i 'am that kind of player. sorry
Nevertheless, i feel this game has lots of potential, it already feels extremely polished, if you ever decide to update it i will try it again. Easily one of the more promising entries i have played so far.
Thanks for playing! I will accept your apology 😔
A very well designed card game. The rules are simple but allow for a level of complexity that can make for some interesting decision making by the player. Figuring out your cards and trying to determine what your opponent will play leads to some moments where you're discarding and hoping to draw into that perfect card still in your deck. That does point to discarding being your main mechanic for control over the state of the game. I'd love to have a little bit more ability to either reorganize my cards or even alter the suits of my deck. It does occasionally lead to some frustrating moments where a card I'd want to be up first ends up being played last. Aesthetically the visuals and animations are solid and fun with good clarity on the cards, mechanics of the game, and the current round. Even without a tutorial it was fairly simple to determine what was happening and how to win. My only complaint there is that the font used for the '5' made it look a little smudgy and like a weird '2'. The sound design for the cards was good, and the music loop had me grooving a little bit.
A simple game, with good mechanics, that was executed very well! Very impressive for 48 hours and I'd love to see this concept expanded upon.
Thanks for playing! Yes you're supposed to be able to reorganize cards but there were too many bugs with positioning to enable for the jam. Thanks for the feedback!
A really fun game! The art, animations, music and sound effects were phenomenal! In terms of just looks and sounds, the game already seems complete. But a lack of a tutorial really hurts as it is quite confusing to play. A settings menu would also be great to turn down the music as it is a little loud. I liked how you mentioned your team had limited experience with Audio, but also how your team only has one person, which is Paige
Some of the numbers were a little hard to see initially, specifically the 2 and the 5.
While counters are nice, it feels like there is too many of them, a total of 7 different weapons that each have different strengths and weaknesses. With the lack of a tutorial, I had to look through the GDD to understand that direct counters (from the arrow to the weapon) were not the only things to look out for, and that the number of arrows in a clockwise direction also matter. This was very confusing initially, as I did not know why specific weapons, like Boxing Glove vs Spear resulted in the Boxing Glove winning, despite them not being next to each other.
The rank of the card seems to be a little irrelevant unless for counting points, as I expected a rank 5 card to destroy a rank 1 card, but they simply just draw, and in the Count Cards modifier, the rank doesn’t seem to matter at all.
I don’t really mind the RNG nature of the game, but involving some skill, or agency that the player has to win would be great. As currently, it’s more of if you can guess what the enemy might have.
Still a really great game for a 2 week game jam! I saw that you included a total dev time, which was a nice detail! Great work!
Thanks for playing and the detailed feedback!
This is a super cool game!
At first I didn't realize that my opponent had the same cards as me until I read the comments. After I realized that the game became much more interesting.
I think it'd be good if the modifier card was a toggle-able feature. Learning the basics can be a little difficult when the core rules are changing on you every round.
I love the art and animations. The game feels incredibly polished. I can tell you put a lot of work into this.
Awesome game, well done!
Thanks for playing! And yes for the tutorial I plan to use the default modifier! Alas... time...
Very nifty, sort of a "trick-taking" game with a more advanced version of a "trick". Had to read the GDD to work out all of the rules but after that there's a pretty interesting decision tree of "Do I think my first card will win?" -> "If so, what do I play next?" vs "If not, how do I counter what beat it?". I think there's a really unique card game mechanic here that I'd love to see explored further.
As others have stated, visually this game is top-notch. Some clear Balatro influences, but it maintains an identity of its own. Thanks for making it :)
Thanks for playing~ And reading the GDD 😭 I'm glad you enjoyed it.