Alien Artifact by Simple Potential

[raw]
made by Simple Potential for LD36 (JAM)
First let me start by saying I think I have a good idea in the works here but this is VERY MUCH A PROTOTYPE. Life just got in the way of this event unfortunately and I've only worked on it for maybe a total of 10 hours. But enough with excuses, here it is, Alien Artifact...

The premise of the game is that you've been searching the globe and finding odd tablets with Glyphs on them (cards). You then find an ancient alien artifact with all kinds of sockets on it.

That's about as far as I got with any kind of story...

Object of game:
You have a deck of 51 cards and are dealt 3 cards each turn. With 5 Player Points (PP).

From the three cards, chose one of them to place in a socket (the grey circles) by clicking on a card and then clicking on a socket. The other two cards will be removed from the game.

Each card has a PP cost associated with it which is the number in the upper right corner of the card.

After placing a card in a socket. The mechanic on the card you used will apply. Some will give you a flat amount (#) of Energy (E) or Player Points (PP). Some will give you +/- E/PP per turn.

If you run out of PP, the game is over. If you get 100 energy built up, you will activate the artifact and win the game.

4 sockets will be randomly chosen with a semi random bonus applied. The Orange ones give you either a flat amount of PP or will increase your PP per turn. The Blue sockets do the same but for Energy instead. I initially intended for the bonus socket to have to match the type of card but wasn't able to get to that. It would also likely have applied the bonus as multiplier of the card inserted.

That is pretty much it. It does have a win condition (100 energy) and you can lose so from that perspective I suppose it is complete. I like the concept here and may built on it later. Other items I'd like to add/fix:

1) UI is not properly anchoring as the resolution is changed (so play it in 1024x768 for best results).
2) There should be a hover feature on the sockets that have glyphs on them so you can see what the glyph does
3) More cards. There were going to be bad cards in the deck as well such as randomly destroy a glyph but gain a good bonus
4) Adjacency bonuses. All those connectors you see were suppose to be a way to deliver energy to the artifact at the center and also apply certain bonuses to sockets along the same connectors.
5) Make it so that it isn't so easy to win :)
6) Randomized Levels or maps loaded from a sprite/text file.

In any case, most of this is with the compo rules applied. I'm not 100% that a couple of the sounds I used were originally made by me but I think so.

Engine: Unity
Art (if you can call it that): Paint.NET

Feedback

Thirzen
30. Aug 2016 · 00:21 UTC
I don't have quite time to get the whole idea, but after loosing few times I finally won, so I like it :)
Austinat
30. Aug 2016 · 02:30 UTC
Pretty cool!
MartinFernandez
30. Aug 2016 · 07:26 UTC
Cool entry, very original
nervous.composers
30. Aug 2016 · 12:38 UTC
An interesting concept, I won twice.
The mechanics are a little difficult to grasp in the beginning though, and one game I got stuck, and clicking restart didn't do anything, but other than that I like it =)
kingpirux
30. Aug 2016 · 13:14 UTC
Very intresting concept but the randomnes makes it very frustrating, you can instant loose if you dont get cards with pp at the begining or too expesive ones. But when you get those, you can play a little until randomnly cards are against you. More card control could be cool.
UrsiGames
30. Aug 2016 · 14:47 UTC
unique game , though after few moments of playing I was able to win almost every time. It would be nice if i could see more advanced version, who knows maybe even with multiplayer.
I think you did great job making it in 10 hours :)

~DagerRad
Culpo
30. Aug 2016 · 15:54 UTC
Very original
🎤 Simple Potential
30. Aug 2016 · 17:02 UTC
Thanks all! I had so much more planned for it, I might indeed take it further.
Mathiouza
31. Aug 2016 · 09:53 UTC
Very cool game ! The concept is interesting but there is some things to do and you're game will be awesome. Just one negative point : the "music" x) It is pretty aweful, sorry x)
🎤 Simple Potential
31. Aug 2016 · 12:47 UTC
@Mathiouza - I completely agree! Not my strong suit by any means but I still could have done better. One thing I believe though when I do a game for these contests is that sound is a must no matter what that sound is, I'd rather have crappy sound than no sound. Can't stand to play a game like Slither.IO simply because it has no sound (which is really sad)
The Mad Strauss
12. Sep 2016 · 17:50 UTC
It is always good to see new puzzle games. I like this kind of games and I enjoyed a lot. Nice entry